Simple toolkits to help students go beyond "er / sie ist + adjective" when describing friends and relatives. - He / she looks ... - He / she can be ... - I think he / she is ... - I find him / her ... plus a load of adjectives.

Write-up of the Gordano School Project "TALK so that students listen, and listen so that students TALK" which won a European Award for Languages and was awarded the Mary Glasgow Prize.

Handout to help students (i) understand how to form questions and (ii) to practize forming simple questions relating to free time.

TOOLKIT for reinforcing word order with WEIL and OBWOHL, for generating sentences to describe FAMILY and FRIENDS etc, and for the practising of key adjectives relating to CHARACTER and PERSONALITY.

I think the title just about captures it. These are based on a now redundant exam format, but are still good stimulus materials to base oral work on.

Extended domestic dialogue in which Lois Lane tries to help an improbably untidy Superman remember where he put an essential part of his outfit. Lots of practice of adjectives after the noun, and locations within a house. The dialogue is followed by a true / false exercise, a 'find the phrase' exercise, and two manipulation exercises.

Toolkit to help pupils describe unlikely accidents. Practice of reflexive verbs in the Perfect Tense followed by Present Participle to say what you were doing when you injured yourself.

A match-up activity with a list of questions on topics often covered in Year 8 or Year 9 and a list of answers. BUT there are two answers for every question and pupils must identify both matching answers for each question. Can be used subsequently as a platform for oral work.

Slides of accidents and injuries. (May not be for the squeamish). Pupils have to come up with a sentence in the past tense to describe what has happened. The are given the first letter of each word they need as a prompt.

Self-marking cloze exercise, in which businesswoman Claudia Langer talks about her career. Will work on PC or IW.

Two reports covering the failed attempts to help a lost whale in the Thames in 2006. The texts are followed by a 'richtig / falsch / nicht im Text' exercise, some questions in German, a 'find the phrase' exercise, and a writing task.

Text describing the personalities of the central characters from Farscape, an australian Sci-Fi series, which ran in Germany. The text is followed by reading comprehension exercises in german and a writing task.

Interview with Lady Gaga about school subjects. Students should (i) practize the dialog as it stands and (ii) improvize changes to the printed dialog, focussing on the words in bold text.

Nativity dialogue based on words and phrases from the French Christmas carol "Entre le boeuf et l'ane gris". Also includes a little bit of practise of the date.

Descriptive text about a journey in the North of Norway. The text provides a stimulus for structured poetry writing. Students have to list all the descriptive elements of the text and then re-arrange them until they have a poem. Classroom-tested!

Interactive drag-and-drop activity for practising the French equivalents of the 12 most commonly used English words

Text featuring characters from The Lord of the Rings, their roles in the plot and their relationships to one another. The Text is followed by True/False comprehension questions in German, a writing task, and some open questions about the story which could be used used as a stimulus for writing and / or speaking.

Interactive drag and drop exercise, in which pupils must match up the German and English titles of the Harry Potter films. Will work on PC or IW. Two of the German titles are not quite exact translations. You might want to challenge the pupils to find out which two are not quite the same.

Relatively simple interview with Jessie J, covering name, age, birthday, family and pets. Pupils can practise the dialogue as it stands and then adapt the language highlighted in bold.

A number of short blogs on the topic of marriage, followed by(i) reading comprehension questions in English(ii) a "Find the phrase" exercise(iii) manipulation of sentences in the blogs to create (slightly) new language.