BBC Learning English

The Teacher Idioms

The Teacher bbclearningenglish.com ©BBC Learning English 2007 Page 1 of 1 Ideas for using The Teacher in class: 1. Prediction Tell students the topic of the programme e.g. 'idioms about horses'. Students work in groups to write down as many horse idioms as they can; this could be in English and / or in their own language. 2. What's the idiom? Play the video so that students have an idea of context, but pause it at the moment just before The Teacher actually says what the idiom is. Students discuss together and suggest what the idiom could be. Play the rest of the video to check. 3. What's the idiom 2? Play the video so that students have an idea of context, but pause it at the moment just before The Teacher actually says what the idiom is. Give the students a choice of several idioms - all on the same topic - Students discuss together and decide on what the correct idiom is. Play the rest of the video to check. 4. Guess the meaning Tell students the idioms before they watch the video and give them a few minutes to guess what each of them means. Then play the video so they can check if they guessed correctly. 5. Gapped script Give students the text of an episode, with the idioms blanked out. They try to guess which idioms should go in the gaps and then watch the episode to check. 6. Dialogue writing Students write a situational dialogue containing the idioms from an episode (and more idioms on the same topic if you like) and act it out for the class. 7. More idioms After watching an episode of The Teacher, students use English-English dictionaries to find more idioms on a similar theme. They work in pairs or small groups to script an episode of The Teacher to explain their chosen idioms, and act it out for the class. Have you used any of these activities? How did they go? Please let us know any ideas you have for more ways to use The Teacher in the classroom – we'd love to publish them on our site. Email us at teachingenglish@bbc.co.uk.