TES ICT Blog: The easy way to create language exercises

15 February 2006 at 09.30

The easy way to create language exercises

In his second blog MFL teacher Joe Dale, from Nodehill Middle School on the Isle of Wight, explores the delights of a handy little tool called Teacher's Pet and shares his tips on how it can be used to create fun language exercises Well the comments have been coming in thick and fast. This blogging game seems quite fun. I hope it hasn’t been ‘too much tech and not enough teach’ though. That wouldn’t help, would it? Here is my new post for those teachers trying to use ICT in their classroom. I thought I’d blog this time about the fantastic Teacher’s Pet toolbar, great for use with an interactive whiteboard or for preparing a paper worksheet. Teacher's Pet runs within Microsoft Word as an independent toolbar. You can install it very simply and the buttons on its drop-down menu allow you to create language learning exercises quickly and easily. Just highlight your text and in a few clicks, it is possible for example to remove words, vowels, punctuation and spaces. Jumbling letters, words or paragraphs are equally as easy and you can even make flashcards with it. Brilliant. This means if you have some grammatically correct sentences in the foreign language you're teaching, Teacher's Pet will jumble them automatically for you. For example "Pour aller à la poste?" becomes "? poste la à aller Pour". In this case, your pupils have to unpick the jumbled sentence and put the words back in the right order by dragging and dropping them on the interactive whiteboard or writing them out on a paper worksheet. It's simple but builds confidence. Sounds interesting? Thanks to Teacher’s Pet, you can make a series of different exercises very quickly, without having to go to the trouble of manually doing the tasks yourself such as typing out individual letters or words in the wrong order. By creating these exercises regularly, you can give your pupils lots of written practice on the structures they are learning. They can all be prepared instantly with Teacher's Pet and be ready for use on the interactive whiteboard or printed out as a worksheet. I find that my pupils like the types of exercises that Teacher’s Pet can make and it seems to have a positive effect on their spelling, comprehension and understanding of word order. Using Teacher's Pet To get started, go to Teacher's Pet and download the version of the file you need. If you're running Windows XP with Microsoft Word 2000 or above, I recommend you click on the Download Button marked (zip file) for teacherspet4.zip. Save the zip file into My Documents and then extract the files by right clicking on it and selecting Extract All. Teacher’s Pet is a Microsoft Word template and the exercises are created using macros which perform a set of instructions in one click. For the macros to work, you need to open Word, go to Tools/Macro/Security/ and select Medium. This will mean that when you try and use Teacher’s Pet, a dialogue box will appear on the screen asking you to Enable Macros which you then select. There are two methods to install the toolbar, depending on whether you want it to always be there in Word when you open it or if you want to launch it only from time to time. For the former, double click the file Teachers Pet Text Tool 4 to open it and then double click on the word Activate to install the template. Follow the on-screen instructions. For the latter, open Word and click on the Tools menu at the top of the screen then on Templates and Add-Ins. Click on Add in the Templates and Add-Ins window. Click on the drop down arrow in the Look in box and select My Documents. Select the Teacher’s Pet template - it's the file with a yellow strip along the top. Click OK twice. The dialogue box about enabling macros should then appear. Select ‘Enable Macros’. You should now be able to see the Teacher’s Pet toolbar at the top right of the screen. It is easy to remove the toolbar if necessary by using the Templates and Add-Ins window or by going to the bottom of the menu’s toolbar and removing it from there. So don’t panic. To see examples of some of the different exercises you can make with Teacher’s Pet, why not download my example lessons from the Teacher's Pet site  file from and try them out. To apply a macro, highlight the required text and click on the relevant button from the toolbar and see what happens. As long as your Macro Security settings have been set to Medium, the macros should work fine. The author of Teacher’s Pet is Chris Lacey, an EFL teacher working in Hungary. I think we should all be very grateful to him for making such a brilliant tool. Finally, if you want a toolbar to remove accents, check out the Language toolbar developed by WELL (Web Enhanced Language Learning). This is similar to Teacher’s Pet and is installed in the same way using Templates and Add-Ins.

Comments (10)

A lot of tech, sure, and I'd like to see more of the students' reactions to these kind of dreag and drop exercises. That's the kind of thing I had in mind when I coined the phrase: "It's not about the tech, it's all about the teach" (http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2005/12/educators_dell_.html). It's what the students make of something that leads, so a large extent, whether I use it or not. These tools seem very traditional methods tarted up - is this right or is there more to them that I'm missing?

Posted by: Ewan McIntosh on 16 February 2006 at 12.44

Teacher's Pet appears to be a bit old-fashioned in its approach, but the exercises that it offers will certainly keep learners busy. On the other hand, I think most language teachers whom I know would find it difficult to use. Macros tend to send most teachers running scared - and ICT managers in schools are often loathe to allow teachers to set them up. Producing electronic worksheets is, however, a useful start to creating interactive materials and is covered in detail by Heather Rendall in Module 1.3 at the ICT4LT website - including the integration of sound and pictures into Word and PowerPoint. There are tools that are much easier to use. See, for example, Section 8 on Text Manipulation (by Sue Hewer)in Module 1.4 at the ICT4LT website. More ambitious teachers might take a look at Module 2.5 (by Paul Bangs) on authoring in general and Module 3.2 (by Ana Gimeno) on CALL software design. ICT4LT (ICT for Language Teachers) can be found at: http://www.ict4lt.org

Posted by: Graham Davies on 16 February 2006 at 14.31

I like the hand puppet, but there is a much better one at the web address above. The puppetmaster is a keen trilingual ventriloquist but he has forgotten his password to update his page and correctt he spelling mistakes.

Posted by: Mr Gorse on 16 February 2006 at 16.57

http://www.zarb.de/en/index.php I often use a similar programme to do my worksheets, it is called ZARB, it is not free of charge but it is great to do create activities in no time at all. For drag and drop, Easiteach is the best tool I have ever used with an interactive whiteboard. I will have a look at teacher's pet though!

Posted by: E. Mercier on 16 February 2006 at 17.30

Once installed, Teacher's Pet is brilliant for creating traditional exercise types, quickly and easily. Moreover, for language teachers who may not be fortunate enough to have access to an interactive whiteboard, Teacher’s Pet can not only be a timesaver, but a lifesaver for making worksheets to a deadline. You can make lots of different activities based on the structures you want your pupils to learn in a matter of minutes. This can give them plenty of practice and help their reading and writing skills. Many pupils seem to like these activities because as they are traditional, they know exactly what it is that they need to do to complete them. The exercises can take them from simple understanding to accurate reproduction allowing them to become more independent in their language use. Teacher’s Pet is not a cure-all though. It won’t do your marking for example! There are other resources out there which may be easier to use and which are more interactive. TaskMagic, Fun with Texts, Spellmaster and Hot Potatoes all have their merits and I would recommend them all. Don’t forget, Teacher’s Pet is free and it is very useful for creating certain types of traditional language exercise. Its main purpose is for making paper worksheets, but you can use it on an interactive whiteboard too. Why not try it out? What’s the worse that can happen? Anyway, what’s wrong with a bit of tradition?!

Posted by: Joe Dale on 16 February 2006 at 19.46

Dear Mr Gorse, Hugo et al, I’ve been using puppets for about five years now. They are good for teacher-pupil questioning and for pupil-pupil interaction when practising role-plays at the front of the class. I find my pupils love using them and seeing them talk. They put the pupils at ease and makes them more willing to ‘have a go’ at speaking. I’ve two main ones. ‘Monsieur Canard’ who is becoming quite famous now having appeared both on the TES website and in the TES Teacher supplement in recent weeks whereas his trusty companion Monsieur Oiseau only made it into the latter and I feel may be becoming a tad jealous! I first got the idea of using puppets when coming across an inspiring PowerPoint presentation involving that well-known character John Duff who was photographed galavanting around France by the local paparazzi no doubt. I’ve just checked and the presentation is still there in the Modern Foreign Languages section of The Staffordshire Learning Net. It would seem John has not lost the travelling bug as two more of his journeys have been archived and are available in PowerPoint form to download from http://www.sln.org.uk/mfl/PowerPoints%20for%20Teachers.htm In homage to John Duff, I made my own presentation back in 2002 ‘Les aventures de Monsieur Oiseau et Monsieur Canard’, a travel diary of that year’s school trip to Brittany. I photographed the pupils acting out various scenes with the birds during the week. Then, when I got back home, I put the shots together in PowerPoint and added appropriate speech bubbles. I still show it even now at Open Evening once a year as a guide to parents who are interested to know what we do when we go to France. Unfortunately, however, due to contractual difficulties between the two main protagonists, I don’t have the worldwide rights to put out ‘Les aventures de Monsieur Oiseau et Monsieur Canard’ on general release. Sorry about that. For more tips on using puppets, have a look at the following great article written by Rosemary Bevis and posted on the ELL forum back in 2001. No strings attached, honest. http://www.mailbase.org.uk/lists/ell-forum/2001-02/0022.html

Posted by: Joe Dale on 16 February 2006 at 21.27

Re: Using puppets to teach languages It's nice to see old ideas being revived. When I was undergoing teacher training at Goldsmiths' College in 1964-65 we had an enthusiastic teacher of German, Eva Paneth, who introduced us to using hand puppets in the languages classroom. I never had much success using puppets. The boys in the tough London comprehensive school where I did my teaching practice just took the mickey. I recall a session on using puppets at the TESOL 1987 conference in Miami, Florida, but I can't remember the name of the presenter.

Posted by: Graham Davies on 18 February 2006 at 15.20

I try to keep fairly up to speed with ICT in MFL ... but Teacher's Pet is new to me. Thanks for that Joe. With all the discussion forums we have(mflresources, linguanet, one might think that a blog like this was overkill ... but Joe's blog posts have been well thought out and researched, as have the comments. Cheers Joe, keep up the good work.

Posted by: RParker on 19 February 2006 at 18.00

Dear Ruth, I'm really pleased you've found the blog useful so far. Like you, I've tried to keep up with what’s happening in the wonderful world of ICT and MFL by joining forums like MFLresources and Linguanet at: http://www.mflresources.org.uk/ http://www.mailbase.org.uk/lists/linguanet-forum/ They are fantastic for finding out about ideas on what different MFL teachers are doing around the country. I find Google is also brilliant for doing research. Attending conferences or shows (if you can afford it) like Language World, BETT and The Language Show is great too. You may be interested to know that I’m speaking at Language World 2006 at The University of Manchester. Download the whole programme from The Association for Language Learning site here: http://www.all-languages.org.uk My session is called Free games, time-saving utilities and fun with MS Word: integrating ICT into the MFL classroom The other ICT related sessions are: Using photo-stories to develop writing skills, Mark Pentleton Working together to share best practice and resources...today and in the future!, Helen Myers Lights, camera, action: out-of-school film-making activities for languages, Mark Pentleton Blogs and podcasts: the learner is the resource, Ewan McIntosh ‘Working together’ - live online language teaching, Karsten Stephan Interactive whiteboard resources sharing forum: bring an idea – take 20 away!, Wendy Adeniji and Ros Walker Primary French on the interactive whiteboard (Heinemann), Jackie Coe The i-way to great lessons – and exam success! (Oxford University Press), Louise Perrier, Dick Capel-Davies and Richard Matthews Including every child: an analysis of student response systems in the MFL classroom (Promethean Technologies Limited), Ros Walker I also lead a whole day course for Dragonfly Training called Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom. The next dates are 26th June – Manchester Jurys Inn, 27th June – Birmingham Ramada Hotel (Solihull) and 28th June – London Ramada Hotel (Ealing). The course details are here: http://www.dragonfly-training.co.uk/Courses/JDale1_ICT.MFL.html I’ve noticed, you’ve started a blog yourself at http://www.cms.typepad.com/ Looks good!

Posted by: Joe Dale on 19 February 2006 at 19.27

very useful ideas thank you so much, Bravo!!

Posted by: fanel on 21 February 2006 at 15.14

See mention on ICT4LT link here