Many moons ago when I began my formal training as a teacher, I remember an excitable MFL bod standing in front of a lecture theatre of trainees to declare Teacher’s Pet ‘the single greatest resource’ designed for teachers.
Sounds decent, I thought.
Downloading and installing for free from http://www.teachers-pet.org/download.php, I found it was an add-on for Microsoft Word (or Open Office). Quite simply, it lets you quickly convert any text into a personalised worksheets in a few minutes (or moments, when you know what you are doing).
As an English teacher, I found myself increasingly wanting to personalised resources that took advantage of my IWB-with-a-bulb-that-works. Therefore, I found myself using Calibre to convert ebooks (that were out of copyright, of course) to text files, and then using those text files to create personalised worksheets. As I visit the very many coffee bars (i.e. Starbucks) around Beijing, I read my key texts on my tablets/phone. As I do so, I am able to highlight text and create comments. From this, I can search for key comments (such as mentions of AFs) to create worksheets from key points in the text with due impunity. Once again, I am beginning to laugh in the face of TES resources, and doing so while having time to have a life.
Teacher’s Pet can create worksheets based on:
Synonym/antonym search
Rearranging paragraphs/lines/clauses
Inserting Punctuation
Removing Accents
Wordsearch/Crossword Creation
Flashcard creation
15+ more worksheet types
For me, it’s a powerful tool that is available to students, too. Creating their own worksheets based on keypoints in the text is a worthwhile activity in itself that is suitably high on Bloom’s Taxonomy, and (once they are used to the principles of such worksheets) demonstrates that they are active participants in the processes of the classroom.
Give it a try. It is entirely free, with a modest fee of a small meal to the teacher who made it if you want to remove a pop-up and unlock further features.
http://www.teachers-pet.org/download.php
