Hi Folks,

I'm new to this forum, so just a few words of introduction.

I teach English as a second language in Thailand. I used to teach university students (about 16 years) but now a mix of upper primary and lower secondary students. I am about to loose my job teaching in a Roman Catholic mainline school (being replaced by Filipino missionaries), but have landed a job in a private school in town. I also do some teaching at home. At the latter, I teach basics of reading to some children and with others mostly speaking and listening but with some spelling thrown in (everything in a Thai classroom is based around reading and the exams certainly are).

I live in a provincial (capital) town that is a loooong way from anywhere. Nearest city is 160km away. The name of the town and province means "beyond" in Thai.

I ride a bicycle, always have. I run Linux on my computers and so LibreOffice not MS Office.

I'd just like to say that the MES sites are brilliant, I use a lot of the resources available. If I use other sites I often do so to generate materials to go with the MES ones.

That's all

Zoot - Welcome to the forums! And thanks for the nice comments about MES.

It's always awesome to hear about how people are using the materials. Do you or your students have a favorite MES activity?

In primary school, I have up to 35 students in a class, but mostly less than 30. The school provides no resources for printing materials, so up till this semester I haven't used any. But this semester, I decided to change and printed up enough materials for groups of six. I made flash cards for names, countries and cities (my own) and board games to practise each of the language points for basic introductions: What's your name? How old, From? Live?. We have been working our way through these. The end point is a modified Uno game, which practises all four questions which I made myself. (My kids are crazy about Uno and I came across a modified version on SightWords.com [a brilliant site], which keeps all players playing till the very end]. I will then introduce a pronoun dice to add variation once they have got the initial language off pat (so you go to: What's his name? What's their names?).

The secondary school classes I teach are at least 45 students. I don't play the above with them.

At my home I teach very small classes - largest is 5. I made several variants of Uno, to practise different language points (adjectives, superlatives, comparatives, have got, clothes, noun quantifiers, preps of location, jobs, introductions). I was using your flash cards to introduce the language, then bingo, mime (with the small game cards), then a little spelling (spaghetti spelling, word shapes, word scramble and word search) and then a board game or Uno.

I just came across your Big Town game, which is ace. I will be using this, maybe even at primary school (if I have time before the end of semester and me leaving).

My private kids love the racing board game. I make separate ones with images only and text only, because I am required to have a reading/spelling element in my lessons. (Two classes I teach are mostly learning how to read).

Anyway - time for bed.