Here are some helpful tips we've compliled about tutoring teaching. We hope they prove useful.

Stories from nothing
Here's a nice 'trick' to play on a student, which also gets a good story from a class. You choose a student and take him/her out of the room. You tell them that the class has a story that this student must guess by asking questions. The class can only say yes or no, so the questions must start with auxiliary verbs. Go back into the classroom and tell the class what you've told the student. The only thing is, there is no story. The questions will be asked round the class, and the response of each student depends entirely on the last letter of the question. If the last letter of the last word of the question ends in a consonant, the answer must be yes; if the last letter of the last word of the question ends with a vowel, the answer given must be no. The poor student is now brought into the class, given a board pen and the whiteboard to make notes, and begins to ask the questions. This may seem a rather cruel trick to play on a student, and it's true that you should choose a student who doesn't mind being the centre of attention. The interesting thing is that you actually end up with a story. The last time I tried this we came up with an octopus that had a party because his girlfriend had left him, and a bus crashed into the party although no-one was driving it! There you go, where else will you find a story like that without the aid of illegal substances to aid creativity!
Television adverts
These can be used in a number of ways with classes. I approach them as part of an advertising 'theme', with radio adverts and newspaper/magazine adverts. Get the students to write down and discuss their favorite advert (they invariably say Coca-Cola, for some reason?), and why it is their favorite; this will lead in to your TV adverts. A certain amount of previewing is required and you'll generally need to sit though ten adverts before you find one that you can use. The two ways that I use them is:
1). an advert where it is not clear the product or service that is being advertised. Play the advert and freeze frame it at the vital moment. Students in groups try to guess what the product or service is that is being advertised.

2). play an advert where it is clear what is being advertised, but freeze the action before the caption comes up. Students, again in groups, have the task of coming up with a concise, witty or catchy caption, which they write on a piece of paper cut up into the shape of a raindrop. That is then stuck to the screen (the static will ensure that it stays on!), the sharp part coming out of the person's mouth, or from the product, and a winner is chosen. This is then compared to the original.
Of course this then leads in to the production of a television advert by groups in the class.

Helpful tips for busy teachers, arranged by skill
Grammar
Vocabulary
Reading Comprehension
Listening Comprehension
Writing
Speaking
Pronunciation