Here are some ideas for activities which work with large classes – may be of use to those of you teaching in San Felipe or La Salle.
Image credit: ELT pics, Carol Van Hook
Speaking Skills
In the last PDM, Tom, Lucy and Nat worked with small groups thinking about speaking skills with different ages. Here are the questions we discussed:
- What topics work well with this age group? Think about relevance and whether learners have the language to communicate their ideas comfortably.
- What tasks work well with this age group? Think about controlled practice, semi-controlled tasks and freer speaking activities.
- What tools can we give them to improve their interactive (or live listening) skills?
- How can we deal with different learners (more dominant, shyer, etc)?
These are the photos from Nat’s group which were discussing YLs and the notes from Lucy’s group related to teens.
Ideas for Improving Speaking with Teens
Topics:
Music /School/Friends/Personal things/Gossip/TV Shows/Free Time activities/Sport/Computer Games/Internet /Networking sites/Fashion
Types of Activity/Tasks that work well with Teens:
Chris Roland’s Curriculum Questions which Carmen said she’d been using. Different questions on different topics using Stem sentences which students then finish off.
Zombie Apocalypse
Survival Games – one person out of a hot air balloon/ Desert Island uses for everyday objects using Infinitive of Purpose.
Onion Ring/Speed dating/Circle
Mingles
Debates
Pair work
Team work/Competitive Games
Role Plays
Board Games – Dice
Taboo – describe without saying certain taboo words.
Hot spot (1 student with back facing board) – Class describe words on the board for student to guess.
‘Say the line in the style of …’ – students say a given sentence using a tone /style of voice having been given an adverb
Running dictation /Dictation races
‘Talk for a minute’ on a given topic – To encourage spontaneous speech. ‘Whose line is it anyway’ – no repetition/hesitation or deviation allowed.
Describe a picture – everyone say one thing about a picture, no repetition allowed. (PET part 3 style)
Any activity that they can ‘sabotage or lie about’ e.g finishing off Stem sentences.
Tools to improve their interactive skills (live listening)
Role plays
‘Include a line/word/phrase’ – for points .e.g say ‘oh really’ as many times as they can naturally in a dialogue.
Question tags – did he? /were you? Etc
Different types of Learner:
Role plays – shyer pupils can hide behind a role. Dominant can fully express themselves.
Visual prompts – pictures/stem sentences
Give a line/word/phrase – students have to fit it into to a dialogue without others guessing what it is.
Pair work. Combinations of pairs . e.g. Shy+Shy/Dominant+ Dominant. Or Shy + Dominant
Onion ring/Speed dating/ Mingles – where pairs change and whole class isn’t listening to just one person.
Timed interaction – allowed 20 seconds to talk. If students go under or over time they lose points.
Guided Meditation
Claire did a lesson on stress and mindfulness with her C1 group last week. You can find the lesson plan and materials here. Remember, there are more resources and articles available on the Mindfulness and EFL facebook page too.
First lesson ESO and BACH SFN
I think I will put the students in pairs and ask them to interview each other. Then we´ll have a whole class brainstorm about ways they can learn in and out of the classroom and any useful websites they know. I will also note down exams students have done and are preparing for, to get more of an idea of levels within each class. Quite a basic first lesson activity but I think it is worth spending a bit of time on this so students can identify their own strengths and weaknesses and think about where they are and where they want to be regarding their studies in English. 🙂
Dealing with Tiny Teens – ACEIA 2014
This is Tips for teaching the tiny teens, Claire Potter’s talk about tiny teens or the “tweenies” as some of us refer to them (younger teens). Like her handout the talk was clear, well structured with a bit of theory and some ideas. For me Claire’s main point of the talk was personalisation for motivation. Tiny teens are motivated by what they’re interested in or relevant for them (she also said they are actually interested in the teacher although we don’t think so at times). Knowing or being interested in hearing about the latest pop groups or TV programmes for this age group is important, as is getting to know your students’ personal likes and dislikes and interests. A good way of motivating these tiny teens are student-made quizzes and stories. The way she did the story was good, she modelled it by having sentences about an event (the first time she met a celebrity). The students had to guess what the event was. Then she read the story and showed them a picture of her aged 13 meeting a celebrity.
She also showed us other activities she got from teachers at her school. Tok’s future game was a grid of will questions and answers e.g ´Will I have any children?´ ´you will have 10 children´ ´you won´t have any´ etc, and it was based on a dice or spinner random luck format. She also highlighted the ´yes or no´ game used by Tez. This was one of my personal favourites. It was based on the old and popular yes or no game where students are asked questions, but they can’t say yes or no. Tez’s idea had a twist. To motivate a group of football loving tweens he asked them if they thought a Liverpool football player would be good at the game and then he showed a clip of the Liverpool football player playing it. Very funny. This motivated the students to want to play it.
Anyway check out the handout… any questions just ask Nat 🙂
Paper-light lessons
We had a great session with Ceri this morning on how and why we use paper in our lessons – some fabulous chat around the environmental impact as well. At the end of the morning, we talked about why we might choose to use paper in our lessons and, in keeping with the session, here’s a photo of our ideas:
Activities for Routines
Recycling stuff done: Activities.
Reusing stuff we have covered already allows us to practice many times with our students language and structures they have been exposed to. There are many games on the internet that seek to give us ideas on how to present material in different ways. Here are a few things I do as routines.
a) Noughts and Crosses.
Draw grid on the board and insert verbs, adjectives even numbers. Students work in teams to either construct sentences with the verbs, use the verbs in a past tense structure, make questions with the verbs, basically, whatever you have been doing, you can give this one a go!
b) Character Build.
Brilliant for lots of levels and to go over stuff you are doing. Great for S2 and questions like what does he or she look like. Draw up a little character on their suggestions and laugh at the results! Even in B1, with professions, adjectives and quantifiers. Give it a go.
c) Songs.
There are loads of songs online that you can use to help you teach and go over stuff. Past tense stuff with M1 and M2´s, there are loads of raps/chants that are good. If you can´t find anything, write a wee song yourself to a catchy tune. The kids will enjoy it and remember the stuff you want them to!
d) What did …….. do at the weekend.
Instead of ask your partner what did you do, ask them what, more than likely someone famous, did at the weekend. Encourage use of new verbs and responses as your practice the past tense endings.
e) Ed endings.
Another game to tie in nicely with the last one. Practicing the pronunciation of ¨ed¨ with past tense verbs. Listening to answers as the students do the task above and you jot down some good ones and some bad ones. You can write up t, d and id on the board and the students in teams have to decide how the ending is pronounced, with a t, d or id sound.
f) Continuous tenses.
Lots of routines for this one. Students draw little flash cards with someone doing something. They ask people in their group what is he/she or are they doing and then they get an answer. Can be adapted to use past continuous with a time; e.g. what was he doing at 4.30?
Just a few ideas to get you thinking about how you can recycle stuff you teach and incorporate it into your plans for future classes. Have fun.