Hey Rich,

Sounds like a good idea - I wouldn't worry too much :-)  Just do ya best as me mam says :-)

I assume the debate would be in the hall as they are trying to get as many pupils involved as possible, I think they just want two English speakers to ellicit some converstaion from the students, but things aren't that clear cut here, trying to find what EXACTLY is required of you can be an exercise in itself. I put forward: Maybe getting representitives from UK, USA and Australia to talk about why their respective countries are best would be a good idea (in some kind of TV talk show type format) obvioulsy it would all be in jest, adding humorous debates (the soccer/football cliche would be an obvious one) would entice students to come along and at the end they would vote who gave the best argument and why they would chose/not chose to live permanantly in that country.

They seemed to like that. But then I started thinking of the challenges of different levels i.e. not making it too difficult for the lower level students to understand but not too simple that the more advanced students would get bored. What worries I have.

Hi Rich,

Sounds like you are getting into the swing of things!  You have some good ideas.  How are you going to do the debates?  In class or in a big hall?  Debates work well if students have the time to prepare and are confident enough to express their views.  If they are not then it can fall flat!  When you said students will attend a talk will all of the school do this together?  You may want to think about doing this in their ability levels.  Also try to use lots of pictures and make it as interactive as possible.  A good way to do this is ask a question - ask the audience what they think and then tell them the correct answer.  Try to make it interactive.  Also remember that speakers will have to tailor their language - nice, slow, easy language - if students don't understand they will switch off!  It's some times nice (size of the audience providing!) to have some questions posted around the room and students walk around and discuss what they think the answers are.  Then they have more of a need to listen for the answers!  Do you have a Interactice White Board?  Or a projector?

Bulletin board: Comparing different words sounds like a good idea.  Different informal ways of saying hello in each country...I always teach 'trainers', 'sneakers' and 'runners'....perhaps you could do it as a quiz where one is missing for a country and students have to find out the missing answer - so it's more interactive and gets them thinking?

Extra curricular activities: Book clubs? Film clubs?  Debate teams?  Projects? Drama group (performing plays is always popular!), English games classes (playing hide and seek etc)....