Abstract Picture
Draw a big rectangle on the board. Draw in the rectangle a
variety of squiggles (lines), doodles, shapes (and colors if you have them).
Ask the class what they think the picture represents. Assure the students that
there is no right or wrong answer and encourage them to use their imaginations.
Adjectives and nouns
Students suggest adjective-noun phrases, for example, 'a
black cat', 'an expert doctor'. Contribute some yourself. As the phrases are
suggested, write the adjectives in a column down the left-hand side of the
board, and the nouns on the right-hand side. Then they volunteer ideas for
different combinations, for example 'a black doctor' or 'an expert cat'. See
how many the class can make it. If someone suggests a strange combination,
he/she has to justify it.
Ambiguous Picture
Draw a small part of a picture. Ask the students what it's
going to be. Encourage different opinions. Don't confirm or reject their ideas.
Add a little more to the drawing and ask the question again. Build the picture
up in about four stages.
Associations
Start by suggesting an evocative word: 'storm', for example. A student says
what the word suggests to him or her. It might be 'dark'. The next student
suggests an association with the word 'dark', and so round on the class. Here
are the other words you may start with: sea, fire, tired, holiday, morning,
English, home, angry. Or use an item of vocabulary the class has recently
learnt. Blackboard Bingo
Write on the board 10 to 15 words which you'd like to
review. Tell the students to choose any five of them and write them down. Read
out the words, one by one and in any order. If the students have written down
one of the words, you call out they cross it off. When they crossed off all
their five words, they tell you, by shouting 'Bingo'. Keep a record of what you
say in order to be able to check that the students really have heard all their
words.
Brainstorm round a word
Take a word the class has recently learnt, and ask the
students to suggest all the words they associate with it. Write each suggestion
on the board with a line joining it to the original word, in a circle, so that
you can get a 'sunray' effect. If the original was 'clothes' for example, you
might get: dress, scarf, skirt, coat, shirt, hat, socks, jeans
Chain story
Begin telling a story. This can be the first few lines of a
story from your course book, or improvised or you can invite a student to
start. Then, going round the class, each student has to add another brief
'installment' to the story.
Changing sentences
Choose a simple sentence pattern, which can be based on a
grammatical structure you've recently learnt. For example, if you have been
studying indirect objects take a sentence like: 'She wrote a letter to her
sister.' Then the students invent variations, either by changing one element at
a time: 'She wrote a letter to her husband'
Comparing things
Present the class with two different (preferably concrete)
nouns, such as: an elephant and a pencil; the Prime Minister and a flower; a
car and a person (preferably using vocabulary the class has recently learnt).
Students suggest ways of comparing them. Usually it is best to define in what
way you want them to compare, for example, by using comparatives; 'A pencil is
thinner than an elephant'. Or by finding differences; 'The Prime Minister is
noisy and a flower is silent. Or similarities; 'Both a car and a person need
fuel to keep them going'
Correcting mistakes
Write up a few sentences on the board that have deliberate
mistakes in them. If you wish, tell the students in advance how many mistakes
there are in each sentence. Here are some sample sentences; 'Yesterday I'm very
ill', 'The flowers was in the garden', 'They will come, isn't it?'
Cutting down texts
Take a short text of up to about 30 words (it can be from
your course book), and write it up on the board. Students suggest any section
of one, two or three words that can be cut out, while still leaving a
grammatically acceptable - though possibly ridiculous text. Sections are
eliminated for as long as it is possible to do so. For example: 'The princess
was awakened by the kiss of a handsome prince'. 'The princess was awakened by
the kiss of a prince'. 'The princess was awakened by a prince' . 'The princess
was awakened'. 'The princess'. 'Princess' Detectives
One volunteer is the detective and goes outside. You give a
coin to one of the students in the class to hide on their person - he or she is
the thief. The detective returns and accuses any member of the class: 'Did you
take the money?' The accused, whether guilty or innocent, answers, 'No, I
didn't take the money, X (names one of the others) took it'. The detective then
accuses X, using the same formula as before, and so on, until one or fifteen
people have been accused (it is up to the students to make sure that the real
thief is named). The detective watches the accused people and has to try to
detect by their behavior, which one is lying. Give him or her three guesses.
Diaries
Ask the students to keep a diary, and allow five minutes
once or twice a week for this to be done. The diary can be about the students'
experience of the lessons and what they feel they have achieved, or it can be
about other matters of concern to them. The diary doesn't need to follow the
convention of a day-by-day record. It can be kept private, or shared with
another student or shared with you.
Dictate numbers
Dictate a random list of numbers in English. Both you and
the students write down the corresponding figures as you say them. Then check,
by writing the answers on the board, or asking them to reformulate their
figures into words.
Discussing lessons
Five minutes before the end of a lesson ask the students
how the lesson was divided and what basic activities were done. Write these on
the board. Indicating one of the activities, ask what the students feel they
got from it. You might ask if they felt it could have been improved as an
activity. Ask if the learning point needs more work in future lessons. When a
point has been made by one student, check with the class as a whole to find if
the view is shared. You might conclude by summarizing what you were trying to
achieve and what you feel you've learned from their feedback.
Don't say yes or no
One volunteer student stands in front of the class. The
rest fire questions at him or her, with the aim of eliciting the answer 'yes'
or 'no'. The volunteer has to try to answer the questions truthfully without
these words. This will mostly be through the use of 'tag' answers such as 'I
did' or 'She doesn't'. If the volunteer says the forbidden words, he or she is
'out' and another is chosen. Give a time limit of one minute; if within that
time the volunteer hasn't said 'yes' or 'no', he or she has won.
Draw a word
Whisper to one student, or write down on a slip of paper, a
word or phrase that the class has recently learnt. The student draws a
representation of it on the board; this can be a drawing, a symbol, or a hint
clarified through mime. The rest of the class has to guess the item.
English words in our language
In pairs or small groups the students think of as many
words as they can in two minutes that they know were originally English but are
commonly used in their own language. Write up all the words on the board.
Alternatively, do the activity as a competition and see which group has the
most words. Erasing words
Write on the board about ten words, which are difficult to
spell, and give the class a minute to 'photograph' them. Point to one word,
then erase it; the students write it down from memory. And so on, until all the
words have been erased. Check the spellings.
Evidence
Two students stand with their backs to the board: they are
the 'detectives'. You write up a brief situation. The rest of the class are
'witnesses' and suggest, orally, concrete evidence (sounds, sights, smells,
etc.) for the existence of the situation, without mentioning the situation
itself; the 'detectives' have to deduce it from the evidence. For example if
the situation is 'The school must be on fire', the 'witnesses' might say: 'I
can smell smoke, It's getting hotter in here, I can hear the alarm bell, People
are jumping out of the window'.
Expanding headlines
From an English-language newspaper pick out an abbreviated
headline, like 'Oil spill off the west coast', and write it on the board, or
just read it out. The students write out the information in full sentence form,
for example: 'A quantity of oil has been spilt into the sea off the west
coast'.
Expanding texts
Write a single simple verb in the center of the board.
Invite students to add one, two or three words to it. For example, if the word
was 'go', they might suggest 'I go', or 'Go to bed!' They go on suggesting
additions of a maximum of three consecutive words each time, making a longer
and longer text, until you, or they, have had enough. The rule is that they can
only add at the beginning or end of what is already written - otherwise you
will end up with a rather untidy (and hard to read) series of additions. Add or
change punctuation each time as appropriate. For example :(Go!, Go to bed!, Go
to bed! said my mother, Go to bed! said my mother angrily, You must go to bed!
said my mother angrily)
Express your view
Near the beginning of term, tell the students that you want
each of them to be ready to talk exactly four minutes on a subject they care
about. Each week select a name randomly (perhaps from names in hat). That
student must prepare his or her talk for the following week. At the end of the
talk the other students can ask questions and express how they feel about the
ideas expressed.
Fact and fiction
Ask all the students to write a statement, which is either
true or false. Choose ten students at random to take it in turns to read out
their sentences. The rest of the class (including the nine students who are
actually reading out their own sentences) note down their names, listen
carefully and make a tick or cross according to whether or not they think each
student's sentence is true or false. When the ten students have finished,
compare responses and then ask the ten students to say whether their sentences
were true or false.
Favorite words
Write on the board one of your favorite words. Tell
the class it is one of your favorite words and explain why. It can be a
favorite for any reason you like: it sounds nice to you; it looks nice; it's so
useful; it reminds you of good friends, occasions, places, etc. If you feel the
students need more examples of words and reasons for liking them, write one or
two more on the board. The students should now write down some of their
favorite words and then give their reasons for choosing them to their neighbor.
Some students might volunteer to write their favorite words on the board and
give their reasons for liking them to the class.
Feel the object
Collect various objects from students and from around the
room. You can do this by asking the students to bring them to you. Put the
objects in a bag. Hold the bag and ask students to feel the objects and to try
to identify them.
Finding the page
Write up or dictate a series of words (possibly ones they
have learnt recently). The students have to find each word in the dictionary
and write down the number of the page where it appears. You, of course, have to
do the same! How many of the words can they find the right pages for in three,
four or five minutes?
Find someone who
The students have one minute to walk around the room and
find at least one person in the class who was born in the same month as they
were: they get one point for every person they find in the time. Then they have
to find someone who was born on the same day of the month. Give further similar
tasks for as much time as you have. (For example: Find someone who has the same
numbers of brothers/sisters as you, Find someone who has the favorite color as
you) At the end, see how many points each student has. Five-minute writing storms
Tell the students that they have exactly five minutes
to write about something. Set a subject which you feel will focus the students'
minds but encourage personal rather than generalized responses.
Tell them that you will not mark any mistakes of language but
will only be concerned with the ideas or experiences they describe. (You can
note down general errors and give a language focus activity on these forms at
another time.)For the next lesson, prepare general comments and select texts
written by the students, to read out.
Flashing
You can flash any of the following for a brief moment:
picture mounted on card or in a book; a text on a strip of card; a book cover;
a newspaper headline; an object. The students then identify and/or describe
what they saw. Encourage differences of opinion and don't confirm or reject any
ideas. Flash several times to promote attempts at identification and
discussion. In the end, show the text, picture or object.
General knowledge
Announce a general knowledge quiz and then ask different
kinds of questions. The students can volunteer answers or you can ask them to
write down what they think the answer might be.
Guessing
Choose an object, animal or person, and tell the students
which of these categories it belongs to. They have to guess what it is.
Encourage 'narrowing-down' questions, and give generous hints if the guessing
slows down or seems not to be progressing towards the right answer. The student
who guesses the answer chooses the next thing to be guessed.
Hearing mistakes
Tell or read a story that is well known to the students (it
can be one they have recently worked on in class), introducing deliberate
mistakes as you do so. When they hear a mistake, students put their hands up,
call out the correction, or note down the mistake.
How do you feel?
Tell the students to close their eyes; they might
like to place their heads on their arms. Ask them to think about how they feel;
they might think about their day so far, or about their previous lesson with
you and what they remember of it, what they learnt and what their problems
might have been. After a few minutes, students who are willing to do so can say
what their feelings are.
How many things can you think of that ...?
In groups, students try to think of and note down as many
things as they can that fit a given definition and that they know in English.
(For instance, you might tell them to think of as many items as they can that
are small enough to fit into a matchbox or that work on electricity). After two
or three minutes, pool all the ideas on the board, or have a competition to see
which group can think of the most items.
If I had a million dollars
Tell the students to imagine that a million dollars (or an
equally large sum in the local currency) is to be won by the person who can
think of the most original (or worthwhile, or exciting) thing to do with the
money. Listen to their ideas and decide who has 'won'.
If I weren't here
The students note down the answer to the question: 'If you
weren't here, where would you be?' Share ideas. Then introduce a slight
variation: 'If you weren't here, where would you like to he?' Other similar
questions: 'If you weren't yourself, who would you like to be?' Or: 'If you
weren't living now, when would you have liked to live?'
Imaginary classroom
Tell the students to imagine that the room is absolutely
empty: no furniture, no people, nothing. They have to create their ideal
classroom by suggesting how to 'refurnish' it. For example: There is a thick
soft wall-towall carpet on the floor. There is a television in that corner,
with a video. Imaginative descriptions
Hold up two pictures chosen at random and ask the
students to suggest a possible relationship between them. Encourage imaginative,
even ridiculous ideas. For example, a picture of a car and a picture of a
packet of cigarettes: 'They are both dangerous to other people, not only to the
driver or the smoker. They both give a lot of taxes to the government. I don't
like it when people smoke in a car.
Imaginative identifications
Hold up a pen and start a conversation.
You: What's this? Student: A pen.
You: No, it isn't! (Pretend to fly the pen around as if it
were a plane.) What is it? Student: It's a plane.
Give the pen to a student and ask him or her to pretend
that it is something else. Continue around the class for as long as imaginative
ideas are forthcoming.
Important people
In small groups or pairs, students tell their
neighbors which person has been an important influence in their lives and why.
Interrupting the story
Tell the students that you are going to begin a story and
that they should try to stop you saying more than a few words by asking
questions. For example: You: The other day… Student A: Which day was it? You:
It was Tuesday. Student B: Was it in the morning or afternoon? You:
Afternoon. Anyway, I was… Student C: What time was it?
Interview an interesting personality
Imagine that you are a person who is well known to the
students: a famous national figure, a singer or actor, a local personality, or
a character from the book. You are at a press conference; the students are the
journalists. Tell the students who you are and invite them to ask you
questions; you, of course, have to improvise answers, as convincingly as you
can. After the first time, a student can take over the role of the interviewee,
choosing his or her new identity. Invisible
elephant
Tell the students that you are going to draw a picture for
them. Draw the outline of an elephant in the air with your finger. Ask them
what you have drawn. Encourage different interpretations.
It was the way she said it
Take one word or a short sentence and ask the students to
say it in as many different ways as possible. You might like to discuss with
the students what difference the intonation makes to the meaning in each case,
in what circumstances this intonation might be used (Ex: I love you, Hello,
Good morning, Well, Come here, Please)
I would
like to be a giraffe
Write down the following words on the board: lake,
waterfall, river, and ocean. Each student decides which of these he or she
would prefer to be and tells his or her neighbor. They ask each other follow-up
questions for example: 'Is it a very high waterfall?' 'Is it a lake in the
mountains or a lake in flat country?' 'How do you think an ocean shows your
personality and interests?'
Jumbled sentences
Pick a sentence out of your course book, and write it up on
the board with the words in jumbled order: (Ex: early the I week to during have
to go sleep)
The students work out and write down the original sentence:
(I have to go to sleep early during the week). If there is time, give a series
of similar sentences, and the students do as much as they can in the time. You
can use this activity to review a grammatical point, taking the sentences from
a grammar exercise.
Jumbled words
Write on the board words the students have recently learnt
or ones they have difficulty spelling with the letters in jumbled order. It is
best to have the words all associated with one given theme, otherwise the task
of working them out can he too difficult and timeconsuming. For example, you
might give an elementary class a set of words like: (gdo, sumoe, owc, knymoe,
tca, tnhpeeal, ibdr) and tell them these are all animals. In the time given
they work out as many as they can of the answers: (dog, mouse, cow, monkey,
cat, elephant, bird)
Kim's game
Say that you are interested in seeing how observant the
students are and what sort of memories they have. Collect about seven or eight
objects belonging to the students (with their agreement!). Let the class see
each object before you put it into a bag. If there is sufficient time, ask the
students to write down from memory the names of all the objects, what they look
like and who they belong to. If time is short, ask the students to call out the
names of the objects, their appearance and who they belong to. (You can check
these by looking in the bag.] Do not immediately confirm or reject
descriptions. Encourage argument! Finally, show the objects and return them to
their owners.
Listening to sounds
The students close their eyes and rest their heads on their
arms. They should then listen and try to recognize all the sounds they hear. If
some students deliberately contribute to the noises to be identified, that is
useful, but don't let it get out of hand! After two minutes they open their eyes
and describe and discuss what they heard, first with their neighbor and then
with the class as a whole. Both the simple past tense and continuous past tense
are naturally contextualized by this activity. Example: There was a car; it was
going past. It was accelerating. Somebody dropped something. I think it was a
lot of wood ... or some bricks. Somebody was whispering in the class. Somebody
was laughing. Somebody closed a door. There was a bird; it was singing.
Martian
Draw a picture of a Martian on the board. Place your two
forefingers on either side of your head and tell the class that you're a
Martian. Pretend that you are unfamiliar with everyday objects, for example,
cars, coffee, ships, music. Pretend also that you don't have a wide vocabulary
in English. The students should try to help you understand what each object or
idea is, but you must continually ask questions as if you don't understand. For
example: (Martian: What's a car? Student A: People travel in cars Martian:
What's travel in? Student B: Travel means you go from one place to another
place Martian: But what does a car look like? Student C: It's like a box on the
wheels
Martian: What's a box?)
Match the adjectives
Write three adjectives on the board. For example:
important, dangerous, heavy. Ask the students to suggest things which could be
described by all three adjectives. For example :(Student A: A car Student B: A
plane Student C: An army)
Miming
Write a list of vocabulary on the board which you feel
should be reviewed. Students take it in turns to mime one of the words so that
the class can identify the word that he or she has chosen.
Miming adverbs
One student goes outside, and the others choose a manner
adverb (for example: quickly or angrily). The student returns and orders one of
the members of the class to do an action by saying, for example, 'Stand up!' or
'Write your name on the board' or 'Open the door! The person addressed has to
carry out the command according to the manner adverb chosen: to stand up
quickly, or write their name angrily, for example. The student has to guess
what the manner adverb was.
Mistakes in reading
Select a text in the students' course book. Say that you're
going to read the text aloud and they should follow in their own book. Add that
you feel tired or you haven't got your glasses and might make a mistake: they
must tell if you do. Read to the class, but substitute, add or omit words. The
students should tell you immediately. Thank them, correct yourself and carry on
making more mistakes.
Music
Play a cassette of music you like and you think your
students will like. Play the music. Ask the students to write what the music
inspires them.
My neighbor's cat
Introduce it as your neighbor's cat. Say, 'My neighbors car
is an awful cat!' Write the word 'awful' on the board. Write all the letters of
the alphabet under the a of awful. Say, 'What can you say about your neighbor's
cat?' Tell the students that they can offer ideas in any order they like. As
the ideas are suggested, write in the adjectives next to the appropriate
letters. (Ex: You: My neighbor's cat is an awful cat. Student A: My neighbor's
cat is a wonderful cat. Student B: My neighbor's cat is a quiet cat. Student
C: My neighbor's cat is a beautiful cat. etc.)
Numbers and letters in my life
Each student thinks of a number and letters which
are important in his or her life - a date, a telephone or house number, an age,
name, city, or whatever. A volunteer writes his or her numbers and letters on
the board, and the others try to guess what it is and why it is important.
Odd one out
Write six words on the board from one broad lexical set.
For example: Chair, table, windows and cupboard. Ask the students which word
does not 'belong' to the others. Challenge the students to argue why this word
is the 'odd one out'. For example, a window is outside and inside a building
and the other objects are all inside. Encourage students to argue that another
word is the odd one out. One might say that chair is the odd one out because it
is the only one that you normally sit on.
Opposites
Write on the board or dictate a series of six to ten words
which have fairly clear opposites. In pairs or groups, the students help each
other to think of and note down the opposites. Check, and supply any words the
students did not know. In some cases, words may have two or more possible
opposites, for example 'light': 'heavy' or 'dark'. Also, you should be open to
original, imaginative suggestions from the students, provided these are
accompanied by reasonable justification! Oral
cloze
Read a story or prose passage, which can be from your
course book. Stop occasionally before a key word and get the students to guess
what it is going to be: they can either volunteer the word orally, or write it
down. If the passage is one they have worked on recently, this can function as
a review exercise of key vocabulary.
Picture dictation
Describe a scene or person, giving the
students time to draw what you say. Let them compare pictures with each other.
If there is time, they can then dictate the picture back to you while you draw
it on the board. Piling up a sentence
Start by telling the students something you like, for
example: I like pop music. Then ask a student to recall what you like, and add
a 'like' of his or her own: (The teacher) likes pop music, I like watching
television. Another student adds a further item: (The teacher) likes pop music,
Jaime likes watching television, I like ice cream. . . . And so on, with each
student adding something, until the chain becomes too long to remember.
Proverbs
Write a well-known English proverb on the board (Ex: Don't
cry over spilt milk). Discuss its meaning, and compare it with similar or
contrasting proverbs from the students' own culture.
Reasons for wanting an object
Tell the students you have an item to give away as a gift,
and the person who can give the most convincing reason why he or she wants it
will get it. The item can be something that is really desirable (a new car or a
winter coat, for example); or something that is not (a baby crocodile or a
stone) so that students really have to use their imaginations to devise reasons
why it might be needed.
Recalling words
Write on the board between 15 and 20 words the students
have recently learnt, or that you think they know. Make sure all the words are
understood. Give a minute for everyone to look at them, then erase or conceal
them. Individually or in pairs or groups, the students try to recall as many as
they can and write them down. Find out who remembered the most (and spelt them
correctly).
Say things about a picture
Do a drawing on the board or simply select a picture
from their course book, or a magazine picture or poster of your own. The
students look at the picture and say things about it; you can give directions
that these must be in the form of complete, grammatical sentences, or simply
acceptable shorter utterances. For each acceptable contribution write a tick on
the board. How many can the class think of in two minutes? Or can they find at
least 20 or 30 sentences?
Search through the book
Tell the students this is an exercise in quick scanning, a
useful study skill. Open your course book at random, read out to the students a
name, caption or sentence that is prominent on the open page: can they find the
place and tell you the page number? You may need to limit the scope ('This is
between pages 30 and 50', 'This is somewhere in chapter 5'). Give a little time
after you have seen that the quickest student has found it in order to give the
others a chance - then ask for the answer.
Seeing pictures in your mind
Ask the students to close their eyes and to sit in as
relaxed a way as possible. Say that you are going to describe a picture for
them to see in their minds. Describe the picture, slowly, for example: There
are broad fields and in the distance there is a low hill. There are trees on
the hill. Above is a great sky filled with clouds. Have a look at the picture
for a few moments. Ask the students to open their eyes and to describe their
landscape to their neighbour. Almost certainly they will discover that each saw
the landscape differently. Prompt discussion by asking questions, for example:
What could you see in the fields? Was it grass? Was it corn? Were there any
animals? How did you feel about the picture?
Selling freezers to Eskimos
Give the picture of an object to a student. Challenge him
or her to 'sell' it to the class by arguing why they really need it. This
activity can be done seriously or humorously. For example: (Student: (holding
up a picture of a home knitting machine) We are all tired at the end of the
day. We can watch television or we can go to the pub with our friends. But if
we go to the pub every night it costs a lot of money. Knitting is the answer!
Knitting is relaxing. We can give the jerseys, etc. to our friends or we can
sell them. So we can relax, express ourselves and make money! Who wants one? )
The students then decide whether the sales talk was persuasive or not. Simon says
Give the students a series of simple commands to perform:
(Stand up! Open your books! Put your hands on your head!) Then tell them that
only commands prefixed by the words 'Simon says' are to be carried out - anyone
who makes a mistake and obeys other commands loses a 'life'. After three or
four minutes, how many students have still lost no lives? Or only one?
Slow reveal
You will need a picture large enough for the class to see.
Put the picture behind a piece of paper or in a large envelope. Reveal the
picture in stages. At each stage, ask the class to identify what they can see
and what the whole picture might be. Encourage differences of opinion and
promote discussion. The disappearing text
If you have written a text on the board and no longer need
it, erase a small part of it, not more than one or two lines. Ask a student to
read out the text on the board to the rest of the class and to include the
missing words from memory. Erase one or two more words. Ask another student to
read the text on the board and to include the missing words. Continue in this
way until the whole text has been erased and remembered.
The most
Give or ask students to suggest, a group of six or
seven items linked to a common subject area, for example, names of animals. The
students try to define each as 'the most. . .' or 'the -est' of the group. If
the items were horse, elephant, spider, cobra, parrot, dog, they might say:
(The horse is the fastest. The dog is the friendliest. The cobra is the most
dangerous, etc.) Other possible subject areas: food, clothes, famous people,
furniture, household items.
The other you
Tell the students that you will ask some questions and that
you want them to answer by pretending to be the sort of person they would like
to be. Give the students a minute to imagine the kind of person they would like
to be. They can do this seriously or humorously. You then ask the questions,
but students should give their answers to their neighbor. (Ex: Are you a man or
a woman? What job do you do? What makes you happy?)
Tongue twisters
Write a tongue twister on the board, and read it with the
students slowly at first, then faster. Make sure the students' pronunciation is
acceptable. Then individual volunteers try to say it quickly three times. Here
are some examples of tongue twisters. (She sells sea shells on the sea shore.
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper.)
Unusual view
Draw a familiar object from an unusual point of view, for
example, a rectangle representing the top of a table. Ask the students to
identify it. Encourage different opinions. Use
the dictionary
Give a set of six to ten English words the students
probably don't know yet. They find out the meanings of as many as they can from
the dictionary within a given time: three minutes, for example. Check the
meanings. This activity can be used to prepare the vocabulary they are going to
meet in their next reading passage.
We both . . .
In pairs, students ask each other questions in order to
find as many things as they can that they have in common. They are not allowed
to use ideas that are immediately apparent through looking at each other, for
example, 'We are both tall.' They must discover them through talking. After two
or three minutes, invite pairs to tell the class some of their results.
Sentences will tend to be of the form: 'We both ..." or 'Neither of us
. . .'
What did they say?
Towards the end of the lesson, challenge students to recall
things that have been said by the teacher or students during the course of the
lesson-but they must report them in indirect speech. For example: Andreas said
he was sorry he was late. You asked us if we had found the homework difficult.
What has just happened?
Write a series of exclamations on the board not more than
about ten. In pairs or groups, students choose an exclamation, think of an
event which might have caused someone to say it, and write down a brief
description of the event, using the present perfect. For example they might
choose 'What?', and write: Someone hasn't heard clearly what was just said.
Then they choose another and do the same again. After two minutes, invite
students to read out their sentences without identifying the exclamations that
gave rise to them; the rest of the class guess what the exclamations were. Here
are some exclamations: (I'm sorry, Never mind, Goodbye, Congratulations, Great,
Thank goodness!) What might you do with it?
One or two students stand with their backs to the board;
they are the guessers. You write on the board the name of a well- known
household object: for example, a pencil, a cup, or a box of matches. The rest
of the class help the guessers to find out what the object is by suggesting
things they might (or could) do with it. They should use their imaginations,
and not give away the answer by suggesting the obvious use - at least, not
immediately! For example, if the object is a pencil, they could say things
like: I could pick it up. I might throw it to someone. I might point at
something with it. I could scratch my head with it. Note that in this case
might and could are used interchangeably.
What's the story behind it?
Show the students an object which belongs to you, for n
example, a penknife, a bracelet, your jacket. Tell the class about the object
and encourage the students to ask you questions.
Ask individual students if they would mind telling you the
story behind an object of their own.
Where did it come from?
Write the name of an artefact in the middle of the board.
Ask the students to say what it is made of or other questions designed to
establish what the object or material was like in its previous state. Each time
they suggest something, write it on the board and then repeat the question. For
example, starting with the word 'shoe': (You: Shoe. What's it made of?
Student: Leather. You: Right…where does leather come from? Student: From a
cow. You: And what does a cow live on? etc.
Who, where and what?
Describe an object in the classroom, and at the end of the
description ask, 'What is it?' Follow this with a description of a person who
is known to the students. They must try to identify what or who you have
described. (You: It's got two doors, it's green and I keep books in it.
Student: The cupboard. You: She's wearing a mauve jersey and she's sitting in
the middle of the room. Student: Wendy.) Once the activity has become
understood, individual students describe people, places or objects for the rest
of the class to identify.
Why have you got a monkey in your bag?
Empty a bag -yours or one of the students'. Go up to one
of the students, give him or her the bag and ask: Why have you got a monkey in
your bag? The student has to think of a convincing or original reason why there
is a monkey in his or her bag. After giving the reason and answering any
questions from the rest of the class, he or she then takes the bag and goes up
to another student with the same question, only this time using another object,
for example: Why have you got an axe in your bag? And so on. This is a good
activity for lighthearted relaxation: after exams, for example, or at the end
of term.
Words beginning with
Give a letter, and ask the students to write down as many
words as they can that begin with it in two minutes. They can do this
individually, or in pairs or small groups. Then they tell you what their words
are and you write them up on the board. Encourage students to ask for
explanations of words that any of them did not know.
Words out of…
Write up a selection of about ten disconnected letters
scattered on the board, and ask students to use them to make words. Each letter
may be used only once in each word. Make sure there are two or three vowels
among them! For example: r, a, n, s, e, j, I, b, d, w, y, g. Students might
suggest words like: grain, beg, angry, yes, begin. They can suggest the words
directly to you to be written up immediately, or spend two or three minutes
thinking of suggestions (individually, or in pairs or small groups) before
pooling.
You write next
Each student has a sheet of paper, at the top which he or
she writes a sentence: it can be a simple statement of fact or opinion, or a
question. For example: It's very cold today. This is passed to a neighbor, who
adds an answer, comment or further question and passes it on someone else. The
activity can, of course, be done in pairs rather than by
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