Classroom Community Builders (. Dieser Artikel ist nicht verfügbar.Classroom Community Builders (

This is an indispensable book, for novice and experienced teachers, for teachers of young learners or adults, or in the ESL or EFL context. — Scott Thornbury

With solid pedagogical explanations for the exercises rendered in these pages, Burns offers a worthy professional tool for fellow teachers. — Kirkus Reviews

Tired of doing the same old icebreaker on the first day of class? Sick of choosing between doing a fun activity or getting down to work?

Classroom Community Builders solves the problem. This collection of almost 100 activities energizing do both! Each activity is designed to build community in the classroom, but also help students practice language work!

And let's not forget that nothing builds classroom community better than working together as a team toward a clear objective, so most of these activities work as group projects. In fact all the activities are highly adaptable and are described with variations so you can fit them into your class with your students!

A good mix of classroom favorites and more creative activities such as:

• Culture Shock: Students talk about how they do different things in their culture such as greet a person or give a gift. A great way for students to share their culture and create a space that is respectful of difference and diversity.
• Good Teacher / Good Student: Discuss what makes a good teacher and what makes a good student. A great way to set class expectations for everyone, develop self-reflection and encourage good study skills.
• Syllabus Scavenger Hunt: An interactive way to teach the syllabus and build community!
• Sentence Auction: Evaluate language knowledge while community building. Students bid on sentences, trying to "buy" correct ones and avoid wrong ones.
• Different Thoughts: Brainstorm different ways to do a simple task, while showing students why working as a team is better than working alone.
• Plane Crash Survival: A classic survival task that teaches students the importance of a diverse range of voices in a community. After a plane crash, students debate the usefulness of various objects.
• Sorting Line: A line-up activity. Students sort themselves into lines by age, height, years studying English or more. It's a great classroom community builder than also has students practicing communication skills.
• Picture Flashing: Students are given 3 seconds to look at a picture, then describe it to a partner. Strong descriptive skills and teamwork required!

There are also roleplays, logic puzzles, tasks, ideas for getting-to-know-you activities, and even ways to help the students get to know you, the teacher! A great resource for the new teacher, the CELTA graduate, or even an experienced educator looking for some new ideas!

As a teacher I am a teacher and materials writer from Connecticut. I fell in love with teaching English in the Peace Corps in Vanuatu, an island chain in the South Pacific which was the basis for Bali Ha'i in South Pacific. I had the most amazing class of Francophone Melanesian students who were working to complete their high school degrees. They inspired me and led me to love teaching. Since then I've worked around the world and taught a diverse range of students from Russian oil executives who needed to improve their English for business, to Kazakh scholarship recipients off to study in American universities, to Afghani high school students on the FLEX exchange program and middle-school children taking an extra-curricular speaking class. As a writer I began selling lesson plans and activities on my blog in 2007. There appeared to be an actual and growing demand for my work. So I began seeking out some small professional gigs, mostly helping fellow teachers develop lessons for their classes. My school began using me for more and more lesson plan development and editing. After winning a few lesson plan contests, I came to the attention of the Nick Robinson Agency and was very successful there. I continue to work with Nick and ELTJam, as well as independently. I publish my own books and lesson plans, write for publishers, copy-edit, and design activities and lesson plans for language schools, including online lessons as well as face to face classes. Clients for writing and editing have included Oxford University Press, Macmillan, Pearson, Compass Publishing, 2LTI Testing and New Horizons Language Schools. Since 2015, I have been part of the leadership team of the Materials Writing Interest Section of the TESOL Association, the international association for English language professionals.