This webinar "Out of Your Seat Grammar" demonstrates fresh ideas for introducing and practicing  grammar as well as blending communicative activities with assigned textbooks and curriculums. In this webinar, teachers will find lessons ideas that are easy, effective, and engaging and be provided tips for creating a comfortable class environment, giving clear directions, and modifying activities to fit various themes and levels. Teachers will find strategies and inspiration they can use immediately. This resource includes an online webinar recording and the downloadable presentation.

In "Further Down" singer Kris Gruen combines catchy lyrics (and an especially catchy chorus) with the soft sound of the acoustic guitar, making this song an endearing example of what is called indie-folk music. In addition to the acoustic guitar that we hear in the first part of the song, we can also hear in "Further Down" a beautiful combination of different instruments, such as the acoustic guitar, the violin, the banjo, accordions and drums.

In this song, Kris Gruen sings about the life choices we can make and the fact that there is always hope “further down the line". There is always time to change the direction of our own lives, as long as we have the courage to do so. However, Gruen knows this is not an easy task when he sings: “The whole world is out to find, how to make the roses and violins sing their strings". This beautiful and positive message is accompanied by an equally beautiful violin arrangement.

Lyrics and Classroom Activities
Do you want to use this song in your classroom? Here are the lyrics and classroom activities to get started.

The Arizona-based band Hacienda Brothers describes their music as “western soul”, as they blend together country music and R&B (rhythm and blues). The song "A Lot of Days Are Gone," written by Jeb Schoonover and Dave Gonzalez, illustrates this style of music with the steady drums and cymbals, the electric guitar, and the bass. But perhaps most noticeably, the pedal steel guitar is featured in this song.

The pedal steel guitar is one of the most distinctive instruments of American country music, and is played by manipulating foot pedals, moving a metal bar (the ‘steel’) across the strings of the instrument, and plucking the strings with the fingers or a guitar pick. The lyrics of "A Lot of Days Are Gone" also express a typical country music theme: that of regrets for the events of the past, and longing for a loved one who has been lost.

Lyrics and Classroom Activities
Do you want to use this song in your classroom? Here are the lyrics and classroom activities to get started.

This section presents three stand-alone language-learning activities related to trains.

1. “Train Lineups,” designed for students at the Intermediate level and up, encourages students to speak and listen to one another and to cooperate to achieve an objective.

2. “Train Dictadraw,” for Intermediate students, helps students practice and produce vocabulary related to trains by describing and drawing.

3. “Who Gets to Ride?” is for Intermediate and higher levels and can be used to develop pair or group cooperation and critical thinking skills.