I've always believed students can learn a lot by noticing mistakes.And by noticing someone's mistake, you might become more aware of your own.My sharing pick today is EVERY DAY EDIT.Every day Edit is an archive of short texts with 10 mistakes.Education World: Every-Day Edits | Everyday Edits | Every Day Edits via kwoutChoose one of the months and you'll get different texts to work with.They offer the text with mistakes and another one with the corrections.For tips on how to use this great resource, I recommend the reading of the wonderful post by Gary Hopkins with different activities for the same material. I guess that after working with these short texts on a regular basis, you can then invite students to correct writings made by their own classmates and themselves.Do you have any other ideas for working with ERROR CORRECTION?

This is why I like Edmodo so much.It's a free platform for educators which makes our lives so much easier. I'd like to share some video tutorials, a dear friend from Goiania (Brazil), Edmilson Chagas, has created to show other teachers how he's been using the site to give feedback to his students.                                                                                   PART 1PART 2PART 3 Thanks, Edmilson, for taking the time to create these tutorials and show us in detail how we can annotate using Edmodo. This is certainly a feature I'll be using A LOT this semester.

Sharing material our students produce in class with their parents is an important step when planning any project.Yesterday, I found out via a great blog called "The Cutest blog on the block" about a great way to do this by ordering a printed version of your blog.If you are using a class blog to record written texts, animations or drawings made by your students, wouldn't it be superb to turn the blog posts into a book which could be bought by parents?First, you go to THIS PAGE , complete the box with your blog URL and click PRINT MY BLOG.A 20-page softcover book - $15.95A hardcover copy - $25.95extra pages only 40chttp://blogger.sharedbook.com/pilot/enterBook.do?bookId=CutestBlogOnTheBlock

I've always loved using comics in the classroom, and now it's become even more fun with the possibility to add audio to my comics strips.http://www.pixton.com/I learned about it from Kevin's Meandering Mind (blog). Unfortunately, adding the audio layer is not a feature available for the free PIXTON version. You have to sign up for PIXTON FOR SCHOOLS in order to be able to do that. Well, at least they offer a 30-day free trial so let's see if I can get my students to create comic strips during that period.This was my first trial with the aim to welcome my students to our EDMODO group. After creating your comic strip you can publish it on a website, like I'm doing right now, or by clicking on the Edmodo icon, this way it's automatically attached to your message to an edmodo group of your choice.To listen to the recordings, hover the mouse over the SPEECH BUBBLES and click on the PLAY button.

Reading Janet Bianchini's lovely blog this afternoon, I learned about an interesting tool which lets you create interactive puzzles which can be embeddable on webpages or even shared in facebook and twitter. http://www.jigsawplanet.com/Janet posted a puzzle of a wordcloud with internet words.Janet, I have to tell you I tried hard but wasn't able to beat your time.This is my wordcloudAnd  below is the puzzle which I've just shared with my students in our EDMODO group. As the puzzle has a time counter, you can also use it on an IWB having different groups try to assemble the puzzle faster. In order to play, click on the SETTINGS icon below the image, click SCATTER and let's see how fast you can go.To make the wordcloud I used http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.htmAnd to make the puzzle, I tried http://www.jigsawplanet.com/

The activity filmed below aimed to help students internalize the usage of different phrasal verbs focussed in the lesson.Students created a dialogue using as many phrasal verbs as they could, rehearsed it and then we filmed it by using the free ipad app CARTOONATIC.  WHICH and HOW MANY phrasal verbs can you identify?

I was a great fan of POSTEROUS , and still am :(  ,   because of the great possibility of posting so easily with a simple e-mail.What I liked about it?Well, you didn't need to know much about codes for blogging. All you had to do was attach any file to an e-mail to the platform and they would magically turn it into a nice blog post. You could create a blog anyone could post to. Great for e-projects.After it was bought by Twitter, their closing has come as a very sad surprise to me.Panic, what can we do not to lose projects we've developed on the platform?Well, thanks to Chris Bohlander, a fellow teacher based in Goiânia, I learned about the possibility of exporting my Posterous blogs to WORDPRESS.My original posterous - http://an-image-a-week.posterous.com/The wordpress one - http://1imageaweek.wordpress.com/If you're interested in learning how to SAVE YOUR POSTEROUS BLOGS, I suggest you read the instructions HERE .http://en.support.wordpress.com/import/import-from-posterous/It's not THAT EASY, but if I managed to do it, I bet you'll do as well.If you want to read about the AN-IMAGE-A-WEEK project, you might enjoy reading http://lifefeast.blogspot.com.br/2012/02/project-image-week-with-efl-learners.html 

A new semester has begun and here I am trying to rethink my role as a teacher and how I can help my students learn English in a different way.Well, I've been reading and reflecting a lot about collaborative / cooperative learning and self-directed learning in search of ideas for my classes.But, changing your ways IS NOT EASY. I have to think of my own reality, with certain limitations as  the methodology adopted by the school and my own beliefs, of course.This semester, I have a beautiful and very enthusiastic group of teenagers with whom I'll be experimenting new ways of being in a classroom. Taking one tiny step at a time, we're going to follow a kind of a "project-oriented approach", in which I propose a challenge for students at the beginning of a lesson, we discuss what kind of knowledge we need to accomplish that goal and after 3 or 4 classes working with the content, students have to present a final product using one of the suggested tools. http://culturainglesaudi.wikispaces.com/Inter+A+ChallengesThese past weeks, students brought to class VOCABULARY related to kinds of food they like and we complemented it with vocabulary from the coursebook which we're supposed to cover. If we were to talk about our habits, we had to know how express them in sentences, which led us to the GRAMMAR TOPIC (Present Simple and Present Continuous).Yesterday, students started sharing their final presentations in Edmodo, which I then assembled in the school wiki page so that we can share it with parents as well. I was extremely happy with the results. From their presentation, I was not only able to learn more about my students but I could also  observe how well they could express themselves.THIS WAS ONE OF THE PRESENTATIONS SHAREDThe other presentations can be found athttp://culturainglesaudi.wikispaces.com/1.+My+eating+habits I prepared an activity with the most common mistakes I noticed from their presentations, we discussed them and then my students asked me to show some presentations in class to the whole group.Like I said at the beginning of the post, these are just baby steps aiming for more meaningful learning.

Do you like making lists? Well, it's a way to curate your content and share with other people.This post is aimed to focus on two webtools which I've fallen in love with:LISTLY and THINGLINKLISTLY is a site used for making lists of websites and videos. It's said to be a social experience as you can collaborate with others in building lists, besides commenting and voting. The lists you create or contribute to are not only shareable but also embeddable, like the list I've added at the bottom of this post.http://list.ly/#THINGLINK  allows you to tag images linking it to other websites, sound files, videos or even texts.http://www.thinglink.com/My inspiration for this post came with a pinterest post which shared a list curated by Lisa Johnson entitled "Thinglink EDU examples" which I've embedded below.Thinglink EDU ExamplesView more lists from Lisa JohnsonAs LISTLY is a collaborative tool, I believe it would be perfect for classroom usage where the whole class can contribute in collecting content about a specific topic.

Telling other people about memorable things that happened to us in the past, in my opinion, is one of the most challenging things to do when you're learning another language. Depending on what tense you use, the person listening to your story might not understand the sequence of events you're trying to tell.I remember very clearly the first time I tried to tell a story to some American friends of mine at a slumber party and they kept asking me so many clarifying questions that I noticed I wasn't THAT successful in telling my story.Last week, I presented the challenge for unit 1B which was  to record yourself talking about a memorable moment in your life.First, I asked my students to tell each other about something funny that happened to them in the past.Then, I asked them what verb tenses they had used and it was no surprise that most of them had used ONLY the Simple Past. Well, it was clear we had to learn some more possibilities.As some students were absent that day, I shared the GRAMMAR VIDEO CLASS below (a screencast created by me) with the whole class in our EDMODO group.  Then, I showed them my example recording and asked them to identify the verb tenses and the situations I talked about. After doing lots of exercises and practicing in class, at the end of the third lesson it was their turn to make their recordings.These are some of the recordings they produced:http://audioboo.fm/boos/1259269-my-audioboolisten to ‘My audioboo’ on Audioboo listen to ‘A nice surprise party’ on AudiobooAfter listening to their various recordings, I wrote down the most common mistakes and brought to class so that we could discuss them.For this specific project, the SUGGESTED TOOLS were:AUDIOBOO  http://audioboo.fm/VOCAROO http://vocaroo.com/CROAK.IT http://croak.it/ 

So, what do we need to know in order to be able to describe people in our family? After brainstorming different adjectives of personality students knew, we focusssed on the vocabulary suggested by the book which is adopted by the language institute I work at. I used this image below, to introduce the words for the first time. Students would come to the board and click on a word they would like to know and read the definition for the rest of the class. The same image was shared in our Edmodo group for students to go back to it if they wanted to.  We also used some QUIZLET FLASHCARDS to help students learn the meaning of the new vocabulary as well as play the games for recap.  An important moment in class was a discussion students had in pairs after listening to an interview where a psychologist talked about how your position in the family can affect your personality.The CHALLENGE for the lesson then was to DESCRIBE SOMEONE IN YOUR FAMILY.The instructions were:I gave students the option of using a tool for recording or a tool for using text and image. The tool my students liked best for the task was BUBBLESNAPS as can be seen below.

I've already been to big International conferences and I know how hard it is to choose what sessions to watch. In big conferences in Brazil, we might have about 15 sessions taking place at the same time. However, IATEFL presents a bigger challenge to people attending it, sometimes there are about 22 sessions taking place at the same time, and HOW TO CHOOSE?Well, the first thing I did was try to find the programme. It can easily be found at the IATEFL websitehttp://www.iatefl.org/liverpool-2013/liverpool-2013  or by clicking below.Another great idea, MY FAVORITE in fact, is to download the IATEFL app from here http://www.iatefl.org/mobileapps.html for your iphone/ipad or android devices.Then, explore the programme, bookmark sessions, add them to your planner and you'll have a better idea of what to expect.I've used two different apps to create quick tutorials of how I've organized myself for NEXT WEEK at IATEFL 2013 Liverpool. The first one is a simple SNAPGUIDE,   http://snapguide.com/guides/use-the-iatefl-app/Check out How to Use the IATEFL App by Ana Menezes on Snapguide.The second one is a SKQUEAK which allows you to draw and record your voice as you talk about the images you've selected.  Now, if you're attending the conference for the first time (like me ) it is interesting to watch the WEBINAR presented by Susan Bardhun HERE.

I was planning to write blog posts while attending the IATEFL conference but I'm glad to say I  HAD NO TIME for sitting down on my own to write a blog post; so many people to meet, to talk to and to learn from. Face 2 face interactions definitely won over the magic of blogging.Well,  people who also follow me on Facebook and Twitter know that the beginning of the journey was not  as smooth as I thought it would be (check my furious tweet).After getting to Liverpool one day after I had expected, the days went by very quickly. There were lots of sessions to choose from but I decided to follow a tip given by someone from the IATEFL committee: to focus on one of the Special Interest Groups. Therefore, most of the sessions I attended were related to Learning Technologies.Now, it's funny that lots of people say the virtual environment is cold and the relationships which take place online are superficial. However, as this group is always in contact via twitter, facebook and blogs, I dare say it's one of the warmest groups EVER.During these days in Liverpool, I had the wonderful privilege to meet so many e-friends I had never met f2f and others I've met only a few times.I shared a room with a wonderful friend from Recife, Roseli Serra, who I met online last year during an online course but have kept in contact ever since. The first session I had the pleasure to attend was Vicky Saumell's. I first met Vicky f2f two years ago in Buenos Aires and loved giving her a hug before and after her wonderful presentation on E-publishing in the classroom. Getting to know Michelle Schwertner, another award winner, was also a pleasant surprise. I met Michelle online via two common friends and we decided to meet in Liverpool. We laughed so much together! Meeting Carla Arena, my mentor and inspiration for many years, and being able to learn more from her was a precious gift. I also had the chance to meet for the first time some people with whom I've exchanged messages and tweets FOR YEARS, such as Joe Dale, Nik Peachey, Burcu Ayol, Beyza Yilmaz, Marisa Constantinides. The learning surpassed the room walls and whenever we got together there was some kind of sharing taking place, "there's this app......", right, Joe Dale? Another informal learning moment was the APP SWAP  proposed by Carla Arena where each one shared interesting apps and explained about it. The app sharing can also be followed at the todaysmeet page below.Networking made the IATEFL experience rich in learning and warm in connections.Plans for the future? I've heard it through the grapevine that we could have a LT (Learning Technology) event in Brazil this year. Graham Stanley, I'm crossing my fingers about this one.

When I started attending conferences years ago, I normally used the notepad provided by publishers to take notes during the sessions I attended. I used my pen to jot down whatever I thought was pertinent to my teaching practice and kept these notes stored for some time before I threw them out. I also kept the various hand-outs given by the presenters.This year at the IATEFL conference I noticed a big change in the way people are storing information. First, I could see an ocean of mobile devices being held above people's heads taking photos of slides being shown. Many people tweeted throughout the conference.Others used their fast fingers to blog about the sessions and resources being shared. Check GRAHAM STANLEY's blog posts at http://blog-efl.blogspot.co.uk/Image by Carla ArenaOthers like me, used their ipads for taking notes. I had thought of using the EVERNOTE APP but something went wrong and I decided to give another note-taking app a chance. NOTABILITY was the app I used each day to keep notes and pictures taken during the sessions.WHAT I LIKED ABOUT IT?Well, it was pretty easy to type the notes, take pictures from within the app to add to the notes, save them and then share them via e-mail with a friend at the end of the day. It's also possible to share your notes via Facebook or Twitter. Another great difference which I've been noticing more recently is the way people have been sharing their ppt presentations and resources after the session. In the past, most presenters would share their e-mails with the audience and promise to send the ppt to anyone who wrote them an e-mail. Honestly, I hate this method as some presenters never send you their slides later on. Nowadays, there are SO MANY OTHER OPTIONS. Some people like Vicky Saumell and Carla Arena,  shared cards with the link to a webpage with resources and their own presentations. Vicky created a protopage and Carla wrote a  blog post.Vicky's resources: http://protopage.com/saumell_iatefl2013Carla's resources: http://collablogatorium.blogspot.com.br/2013/03/contentcuration.htmlOthers, like Gavin Dudeney shared a QRCODE at the end of the slides so that by scanning it you would be taken to their shared presentation. If you don't have a QR reader, I suggest THIS ONE (for iphones or androids ).Others, like sharing LIVEBINDERS with their links ( I learned this one from Shelly Terrell).http://www.livebinders.com/play/play/202342?present=trueAnd some others, still use two very powerful technologies: PAPER + PEN.Now, is there a best way to store information? I don't know, I think the most important thing is to keep some sort of  information so that you can retrieve later for further reflection.WHAT ABOUT YOU? How do you take notes during presentations and conferences nowadays?

If you've attended the TEACHMEET International 2013, this post is dedicated to talk a little bit more about the project presented this morning.Many beginner students of English tend to learn isolated words and sentences and that's all they seem to use for the first years studying English. These students have very little opportunities for expressing themselves a bit more using the target language.This semester, I'm teaching a group of beginners which have studied English for 5 months only (classes are twice a week). I asked them what sort of writing they did last semester and I was told most of what they wrote was in their workbooks and the few times they wrote short texts the only person who read it was their teacher.Well, aiming to provide opportunity for this groups of students to develop their writing skills in English to express themselves I proposed the following project using the EDMODO platform.Each week, I would share a bit more about myself by writing a short text using language learned that week. Students then would try to do the same over the weekend. But this time, they would be writing about themselves, we would be reading everyone's text and would be able to learn from each other. I mentioned to them, my objective was to give them further reading and writing practice , to learn more about them and to see from their language use where they needed further help.This is how we started:Then, it was my students' turn to write their own texts.I tried to respond to the content of the text and not use the replies for correction purposes. This way, I intend to make students feel more confident in using English to talk about themselves.After reading several texts written by the students, I took notes of the most COMMON MISTAKES and in the following class, without identifying who had made the mistake, I tried to elicit from them how to make the sentence grammatically correct. A big challenge I've been having is to get students to keep the conversation going, like I did with Talita, in the example above. They say they don't have enough time to go back and do more reading. Let's see how it goes.ANOTHER EXAMPLE:These were the slides used to present. Teachmeet anamariacult from Ana Menezes The LIVEBINDER with resourcesResources TeachMeet 2013

WHAT'S AN APP SWAP?It's an informal teachmeet where all teachers have the chance to share apps they find useful.During IATEFL Liverpool, we had a very interesting moment of sharing apps when each one of us suggested apps, explained why we liked them and also used the webpage http://todaysmeet.com/appswap to keep track of what was being shared. Photo by Roseli SerraAs most apps suggested on Todaysmeet don't have a link and descriptions, I carefully explored 50 + of the apps shared and organized them into an INTERACTIVE LIST which can be added by anyone who wishes to contribute as well. To suggest an app, all you have to do is click ADD TO LIST and paste the URL of the app suggested, remember to leave a description.App Swap IATEFL 2013View more lists from Ana Maria Menezes

These are the resources I used for a Cultura Inglesa Workshop this Friday, 26/04/2013. This is the video used to invite teachers to join us. I used an app called TELLAGAMI and then exported it to youtube. https://tellagami.com/. The topic chosen was QR CODES. These are the resources I shared.

I guess everyone who uses the web on a regular basis has a routine for reading and bookmarking what they find useful. The two tools I use the most for BOOKMARKING are Diigo and Pinterest.These are some of the bookmarks I saved this week and would like to share with you.This is a QUIZ SCORER which I've learned via a colleague, Georgia Teixeira. You enter the names of teams and quickly can start keeping the score on the screen. Great for IWBs.http://www.curriculumbits.com/prodimages/details/misc/mis0014.htmlI've always been worried about helping students become aware of the digital footprint they leave behing and this blog post I found this week offers wonderful resources.http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/04/a-great-guide-on-teaching-students.htmlWHAT'S A DIGITAL DOSSIER?Another post I enjoyed reading was one about PLAGIARISM and how to avoid it.http://whatdoyouteach.blogspot.com.br/2013/04/plagiarism-and-google-tools-to-reduce-it.htmlI've also collected some more INFOGRAPHICS to my infographics board at PINTEREST, such as one about the history of smarphones and another about the evolution of the internet.I read Isabella Villas Boas' blog post about her IATEFL presentation where she talks about her experience turning a f2f course into a blended one. I loved the way she described the path she followed. http://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/going-blended-if-i-can-do-it-so-can-you-part-1/Another video I found useful was one created by a chemistry teacher before the beginning of the semester explaining to students about the FLIPPED MODEL which would be adopted that year.Oh, last but not least, I've bookmarked with stars an article about Avatars in Education published at the excellent website MINDSHIFT. I was contacted by them a few weeks ago about my work using VOKI avatars. http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/05/a-new-role-for-avatars-learning-languages/Well, these are just some the bookmarks I liked the most. If you're interested in exploring more resources you might want to check out my PINTEREST BOARDS.

It's wonderful to see how much you can learn  (I was going to say "from your own couch") anywhere you are w/ a smartphone. In case you didn't have a chance to go to IATEFL 2013 personally, I've heard lots of people followed the conference via LIVERPOOL ONLINE . They recorded many of the sessions, unfortunately, not all.  Like I said in a previous post, most of the sessions I attended were related to the Learning Technologies SIG.These are some sessions I attended and truly recommend watching:NICKY HOCKLY - Moving with the times: mobile literacy & ELT  LUKE MEDDINGS and BURCY AKYOL - Unplugged and Connected: where ideas meet (DOGME + TECH)  NIK PEACHEY - Evaluating web-based tools for language instruction  RUSSELL STANNARD - Using technology to provide content-rich feedback  GRAHAM STANLEY - Creative pedagogy, language learning and technology  It's a pity I couldn't find the recordings of other SUPERB sessions I would love to share as well, such as : Carla Arena's, Joe Dale's , Gavin Dudeney's , Paul Driver's and some I didn't get to watch such as Shelly Terrell's, Heike Philip's and the list goes on. Hope you enjoy my selection.

In a few minutes, one more Virtual Round Table event is about to start.If you've never attended one, it's a FREE Web Conference for ELT teachers.About 79 presenters from different parts of the world will be presenting talks on educational topics during 48 hours. You don't need to attend all the sessions, just have a look at the program, choose the talks which interest you and click on the ROOM NAME (Ex: ROOM MERLIN in the program) to join the web room. Participants can participate via chat sending questions and comments.THE PROGRAMThese are the links to the rooms:http://lancelot.adobeconnect.com/arthurhttp://lancelot.adobeconnect.com/merlinhttp://lancelot.adobeconnect.com/tristanhttp://lancelot.adobeconnect.com/avalonhttp://lancelot.adobeconnect.com/camelotThe conference will also be broadcast live on FACEBOOK.https://www.facebook.com/vrtwebcon/app_190322544333196orhttp://tinyurl.com/vrtlivestreamonfacebook  I've already attended previous VRT web conferences but this time I'll be presenting as well. The presentation abstract:My presentation: Digital tools to help creative language use.Friday, 8:00 p.m. (in Brazil) - 11 GMTSee you there !

What a great experience !THE RECORDINGI'd like to thank Miguel Mendoza and Heike Philip for the moderation and kind words and to all participants who were in the room with us.These are the resources  I shared yesterday:

This activity was inspired by some posters I discovered at Pinterest by the ever so creative Tony Vincent. http://learninginhand.com/blog/2013/1/30/quotes-with-qrcodes He created some posters where he provides the beginning of the quotes by famous people and then omits the ending by using QR CODES. In his post, he says he normally sticks these posters on the walls during workshops for teachers. Quotes learning ppt from Ana Menezes Last week, I tried something different. I created my own posters with quotes by famous people about the topic LEARNING and turned them into a SPEAKING ACTIVITY. 1. Show a slide / a poster and ask students in pairs or groups to guess what the ending of the quote could be.2. Elicit suggestions with the whole class.3. Ask students to use their own cell phones to scan the QR code and see the ending of the quote.4. In pairs/groups, students discuss what they think the quote means.I tried this activity with a group of teachers and it worked really well. I supposed it would be appropriate for advanced EFL students.To create the qr codes on the posters, I used http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ 

The SUNSHINE AWARD is an award given by bloggers to other bloggers they admire.According to Claudio Azevedo, who kindly presented me with this award,It is given to "bloggers who are positive and creatively inspire others in the blogosphere"Receiving this award from you, Claudio, means a lot. You know I'm a great fan of the work you develop at MOVIE SEGMENTS TO ASSESS GRAMMAR GOALS and the time you devote to sharing your wonderful activities with fellow teachers.As with other similar awards, there are certain rules that must be followed:Rule 1.  Post the Sunshine Award logo on your blog.Rule 2.  Nominate 5 to 10 other wonderful  bloggers.Rule 3.  Announce their nomination in their blog’s comment section.Rule 4 .Mention links back to their blog, including a link to the person who nominated you.Rule 5. Answer seven questions about yourself.  This is designed to help people get to know you better.Here are my nominees:Carla Arena - http://collablogatorium.blogspot.com.br/My inspiration!Monica Veado - http://cronicasurbanas.wordpress.com/  (Portuguese)I love her wise words and sense of humour.Viviane Bengezen - http://bengezen.blogspot.com.br/  (Portuguese)A brave Brazilian friend who develops inspiring work with her students.Camila S Sakai - http://2teachis2touchlives4ever.wordpress.com/Another Brazilian who's been spreading her shining light at American schools.Roseli Serra - http://roseliserra.blogspot.com.br/A dear friend who's just started blogging. Loved what you've written so far!Now, a bit about myself.1. Favourite color: blue (no doubt about it)2. Favourite animal: cats and dogs (no birds, please)3. Favourite number: yes, the same as Claudio's, 13.4. Favourite non-alcoholic drink: pineapple + mint juice, hummmmmm.5. Favourite alcoholic drink: I love drinking wine with my husband.6. Facebook or Twitter: Facebook, it's my playground area.7. My passions: reading, travelling and dancing.

After attending Nicky Hockly's session at IATEFL, I wanted to try a type of dictation which she presented to teachers. Students use any notetaking app from their own cell phones to type sentences the teacher dictates. DETAIL: the teacher dictates the sentences letter by letter and students add the gaps between words as they see fit. The objective of the lesson yesterday was for students to be able to talk about obligations and necessities using MUST/ MUSTN'T , SHOULD/ SHOULDN'T, HAVE TO / DON'T HAVE TO.The course book we use is New English File Intermediate (unit 3A). The language topic of the lesson is CELL PHONES. I decided the mobile dictation would be a good warmer for this class. I created  4 sentences using the modals mentioned above.This is the sequence we used:1. I divided the students into groups of 3 students.2. Students would use their cell phones for a dictation (if any student didn't have a cell phone, they would use pencil + notebook for the same activity).3. I dictated the questions, letter by letter, without repeating it. At the end of each question, students could compare their sentences with the other members of their group.4. After the dictation, I elicited the questions on the board.5. Students used the same questions to develop a conversation with their group.MY IMPRESSIONS: I was surprised to see ALL my students had their cell phones with them.They were totally involved with the activity and fully concentrated.It was an excellent exercise for spelling and their perception for when a word would end and the next one would start.Asking them to check their sentences with the group seemed to be a good idea as they interacted with each other.