Emily Bryson ELT

Snow days: The Beast from the East (in past tense)

Milngavie snow
40 cms of snow in Glasgow.

I was planning on posting my very first blog post this weekend.  It was going to be about getting students out and about and using their English OUTSIDE the classroom.  But since the ‘Beast from the East’ has kept most of the UK well and truly INSIDE, I felt it more topical to start off with a topical snow blog.

Snow has brought most of the UK to a standstill for the last few days.  College being closed meant lots of long, pretty (and cold) walks in Kelvingrove park for me.  It also meant hosting a lovely Belgian Erasmus+ visitor whose flight got cancelled on Wednesday.  After much Skyscanning, Trainlining and rebooking and cancelling of planes, trains and automobiles, she is now en-route to Brussels (via Malta)!

I very much enjoyed finding out about the Belgian approach to teaching the Dutch to Speakers of Other Languages, sampling Belgian chocolates and introducing her to new whiskies.  So the Beast from the East hasn’t been all bad at all!

It also inspired me to write a lesson all about snow, which I’m willing to share with y’all.

I’ve been working on past tense with my elementary class, and what better way to revise past tense than to give them some useful phrases to use for talking about and emailing their friends about snow? This lesson introduces useful vocabulary associated with snow days along with past tense regular and irregular verbs. Students read and then write an email to a friend about the things that they did in the snow (or things they did when avoiding the snow)!

Title: Snow days_EmilyBrysonELT_A2_PastTenseReview

Skill: Reading and Writing

Level: A2

Language: Past tense (regular and irregular)

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