Every teacher needs a magical carry-all, sort of Mary Poppins’ capacious bag that would contain all ‘necessary’, ‘absolutely necessary’ and ‘could be handy’ teacher stuff and supplies, including ‘an apron, a packet of hairpins, a bottle of scent, a small folding armchair, a packet of throat lozenges, a large bottle of dark red medicine, seven flannel nightgowns, one pair of boots, a set of dominoes, two bathing caps, one postcard album, one folding camp bedstead, blankets and an eiderdown’.
I’ve made my own super teacher bag and filled it with some essential tools to Play & Learn. I’m not saying that you can get quite that much compared to Mary Poppins’ carpet bag but it’s pretty roomy all the same.
And it is small. So small that it fits in your telephone.
The Toolkit Lite version I’d like to share with you today has 5+1 tools that every teacher needs every now and then.
Noise Maker
Eyes up, voices off! If you regularly use some attention getters in the classroom, or decide to use some of Let’s Go Physical activities, you’ll find the Noise Maker quite handy. It is loud enough but not annoying, and you can always adjust the volume. It has 5 eyes-on-me signals.
* Source: CC public domain sounds from Freesound.org: bell (b15.mp3), clap (clpamix.wav), glass (clinking glass.aiff), siren (siren.wav) and duck (toy ducks quacking).
Random Letter
If you often play alphabet games (‘A’ IS FOR ALPHABET, ‘G’ IS FOR GAMES), the Random Letter will become your favourite tool. Just tap the alphabet and it’ll do (actually say) the rest.
Random Wh-
This tool helps generate a random wh- question word. It works great with Question Charts and various question-based communication games.
Coin Flipper
Quite many of my games/activities include tossing a coin: e.g. PHRASAL VERBS: SPIDER’S WEB, SNAIL RACE: REVISION, THE NEVER BORING GAME, the FOOTBALL GAME, etc. Just tap the coin. Heads or tails?
Dice Roller
I think you can find a couple of dice in every teacher’s bag. It’s good to have a virtual die as well.
Pick whether you need a die or two dice, and shake the phone (or tap the dice).
ELTcation is turning 4 years old this month. We have published over 120 blog posts with various ideas and tips. I hope you find something interesting for your classes in its toolkit. Just press the button.
If you’d like to try the tools, click the Teacher’s Toolkit Lite app to install it in your telephone.
This version is for Android phones. If you’d like to cooperate with me and make an iOS version, please let me know!
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Teacher’s Toolkit Lite app (©Svetlana Kandybovich, ELTcation.com)
Ahhh, I was all excited to download it – then realised its for Android only though. Good work though, looks like some great upskilling!
Hi Pete, thanks! Trying new things!:) Sorry, they say there’s a cross platform for both iOS and Android but I haven’t tried it yet. Will explore and try to convert it into iOS, if possible.