Teacher Discussion Forums

I teach English at our local university to visiting scholars from Korea and China. Part of my responsibility is to teach idiomatic English. We use a textbook that is full of idioms, phrasal verbs and so on. Each chapter is based on a particular theme. For example, today was Communication and included idioms such as "Drop me a line."
What I want is to liven up my approach. I am looking for new ideas and activities to teach idioms. Ideas?

Have you tried lyrics, songs?
Or a good work of fiction - Jack Kerouac, for instance?