Dear bloggathonners (is there such a word?),

What does biscotti have to do with teaching? A lot actually, plus it goes well with coffee. I made a batch yesterday, the cinnamon hazelnut kind, and have been dunking them into my Evergood (a special coffee blend) with pleasure ever since. However, this is a blog(athon) about English teaching. So, what are the "educational" uses of biscotti?

- a batch of biscotti can be shared with ones colleagues in the teacher's room and will make everyone happy. Happy teachers do better work! Happiness is contageous and before you know it, the smiles will have spread to the students and voila - we have created a happy teaching environment.

- biscotti can be used as a prize to motivate students to do good work and to behave themselves well! I know some teachers use candy for this purpose - or stickers or gold stars or whatever, well - biscotti should work just as well.

- biscotti can (in smaller pieces perhaps) be shared with students (make sure none have food allergies) as an attention getter. The lesson could be about giving instructions ("how to make biscotti"), writing a process paragraph ("steps in making biscotti" :-), food vocabulary (the ingredients of biscotti) or even a lesson on Italy or Italian Cuisine...

Have a nice day everybody!