Bits 'n Pieces
SPECULATING
Age groups: Medium to Advanced
The class are divided into groups of 4 or 5 students. Then students have to
speculate on the answers which are likely to be given by their fellow
group members. For example, students are asked to name five objects that a
woman would place on a loudspeaker box.
Then the students take turns to read out their lists. If a student has put
down an object, which does not appear on the other students´ lists, it gets
him 5 points, otherwise it's tree points for him. If the object is on every
student´s list, it's worth one point.
It makes sense to have one student in the group keep records. How do the students get their questions? Either the teacher reads them
out aloud from a list, or they draw paper slips from an envelope, or you
create a pack of cards, from which students have to draw a card, etc. You
may also allow the students to use a monolingual dictionary. Also: it is a MUST to set a time limit.
The following list contains a set of questions that has proved useful:
- List five objects a man would take along with him to a lonely island.
- List five objects a woman may want to put onto a loudspeaker box.
- List five activities the average house wife hates about her housework.
- List five things boys hate about girls.
- List five things girls hate about boys.
- List five things students hate about teachers.
- List five things students like about teachers.
- List five things a good girl should never do.
- List five things that qualify you as being cool.
- What five objects, that are not yet here, would students like to bring
into their classrooms.
- List five things cat lovers love about their pets.
- List five things dog lovers love about their pets.
- List five recurring (immer wiederkehrend) dreams for young people.
- List five things German teenagers wish for their future.
- List five things teenagers are afraid of.
- List five qualities that make for a good teacher.
- List five things bad teachers do.
- List the five hallmarks of a successful man.
- List five things most teenagers hate about themselves.
- List five things most teenagers hate about their parents.
- List five things most teenagers hate about school.
- List five things most teenagers spend their pocket money on.
- List five things most people associate with the USA.
- List five reasons why people become murderers.
- List five reasons why people leave their home countries.
- List five things that a young person MUST try out.
- List five things that a young person should NEVER try out.
- Which five commandments (of the ten) can most people remember?
- Which are the five most attractive cities to teenagers?
WORD FOOTBALL
Target: Improve awareness of correct pronunciation
All age groups (yessir, the bigunes love this one, too)
The class is divided into two teams who compete against each other. Team A
kicks off with the first student reading the first sentence of a text. Then
he passes "the ball" to the student sitting next to him etc. If three
students manage to read three subsequent sentences absulutely correctly,
they score a goal, which means that the other team kicks off. If a student
hesitates, or pronounces a word incorrectly or stutters (you make the
rules) "the ball" immediately goes to the student in the other team whose
turn it is. He will have to read the complete sentence again. If he hesitates
or doesn´t know which sentence to read, "the ball" automatically goes back
to the other team.
Observe how the students enjoy this game and witness how they suddenly become
aware of those voiced plurals and other niceties of the language.
CHECKING HOMEWORK
Target: Get the whole class involved in the checking of the homework
Levels: practically all levels
To me, the way the homework is checked or not checked has always been dissatisfactory, to
say the least. I have NOT found the philosopher´s stone, but I have
discovered a way to get the class involved - at least sometimes.
You need a panel of up to 5 students. These students have to guess how many
students among the class have got the correct solution to any part of the
given homework. An exercise with a limited number of sentences would be ideal for this kind of activity. You can
go through the homework sentence by sentence, or else you can pick the
sentences in random order (makes for a higher level of attention). Before
you have a good student give the correct answer, you give the
class the number of the sentence which comes next and have them
guess how many students got it right. The contestant who is closest to the
correct number gets a point.
If you have a way with the students so that individuals don´t get hurt easily
, you may want to try the following variation. This time it is five
students who have to present their homework sentence by sentence in front
of the class with the class placing bets on each student. Individual
students have a limited fund of money at their disposal. They can then use
some of this money (set a limit!) to bet on their favourite "horse". If
they lose, the money is gone, if they win, they get double the amount they
have placed. I usually have them draw a grid into their notebooks, so that
the whole activity goes off quickly and smoothly. The grid might look as
follows:
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Student A
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Student B
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Student C
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Student D
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Student E
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Nr. 1
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Nr. 2
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ETC.
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The empty fields are for the students the note down the money they want to
bet. The winner is ... the students will figure this out very quickly.
(Credit, where credit is due. The original betting idea is not by yours
truly but by Mario Rinvoluccri. I just
adapted it to my own purposes. Thank you very much Mr. Rinvoluccri!)
SPOT THE LIES
This is an ideal game for substitute lessons. It works great with all
age groups.
Hand out a list of curious facts or events. Have the students decide in
groups which of the information they consider true. The groups then are to
bet money on each item. They can bet 5, 10 or twenty pounds (or nothing at
all on each item. If the item the students have placed a bet on is correct - which turns out later in the lesson - the
students win the money placed. If it is false, however, the group lose double
the amount. When the groups have made their decisions, they note down their
bets on a grid, which I usually draw on the table while the groups are
sweating it out.
The latest material I worked with is a list of curious facts about animals. Did you know, for example,
that you can tell a horse´s sex by looking at its teeth?. You may look at
the latest list here. If
you are interested in the solutions, do not hesitate to mail me. More lists to come. I am a
very busy person, you know.
CREATIVE WORK SHEETS
The number of dull work sheets (mine included) with just questions or
summaries must be infinite. A little twist sometimes adds spice and
diversity to a work sheet and gives the students that extra quantum of
motivation which makes an average lesson a good lesson. Here is a list of
things which have worked great for me.
- Give the students the answers instead of the questions and make them
work out the corresponding questions. Some classes may need the question
words as prompts.
- Give the students a list of prompts. Make them add the necessary
information provided by the text.
- Make a summary of the text. Instead of leaving blanks, give them
anagrams to solve. My students love this.
- Make a list of questions and provide the answers in form of anagrams
or jumbled sentences.
- Make the students write a summary with the help of icons. Either you
provide the icons or the students themselves can do this.
- A mindmap or a graphic chart can often go a long way to
encapsulating the gist of a text.
- Make a list of questions and add a grammatical structure or an
expression that must be used in the answer.
Example: Why did the
chicken fail to cross the road? [avoid, crush] (to me this is a very
efficient way of getting the students to constantly use more
sophisticated structures and vocabulary. )
- Want to make those cloze tests or work sheets with blanks
more efficient? Why not make TWO worksheets on one
text, but with different blanks on each one? Have two partners fill in
the work sheets. Later the students swop their work sheets to check solutions. This makes for a very easy and efficient
way of having the solutions checked. (Idea by Ms K. Friedrich, Leutkirch.
Thanks heaps!).