Job Discussion Forums

[Count_Fathom]

Please offer up a successful activity of your own. I know this is available elsewhere on Dave's. I think we should spend more time discussing and sharing classroom ideas. (No offence, Long time reader, first time poster)

(Perhaps not my most successful, but a good one)

Introduction of two partial periods - for the puspose of preparing the students for the (eventually required) use of independant thought.

First Period - 10min - I prepare a short dialgue and have 10 groups of two read it. (The rest of this period filled out with other lesson planning)

Second Period - 1/2 a class - I build a dialogue together with the students - situation: reserving a table at a restaurant over the phone and pre-ordering the food. I write on the board the information necessary to complete the call, elliciting this info from the students. Have (about) 10 groups of two role-play this situation - the info on the board is for them to fall back on if needed (it's almost always needed). Fill out the class with other lesson planning.

Third Class - The meat of it, all class - (greet the students) Draw a bullseye on the board, I do 15points for the middle, 10, 5, 0. Draw a scoreboard for sections A, B, C,.. (however, defined by their seating arrangment), and make sure they know it. Give a student near the front the class broom (they'll know what to do eventaully)

Warm-up - "The first student who knows the answer must stand, speak clearly and with correct grammatical structure" (or something to that effect). Ask a random question, i.e.: "What time is it?", "Tell me five animals that Chinese people don't eat", "Tell me, in your opinion, what are the 5 most improtant professions", have them sing a simple song you have taught previously (Twinkle Twinkle?), etc.. Give the student that answers correctly a small piece of chalk (I give 2-3 shots for a song). They throw it at the board to earn points for their team. Everybody gets the idea and likes it.

Task - Write a situation on the board, i.e.: (I usually start with reserving a table at a restaurant again, to ease the game along and to reward those who take notes) "Job Interview", "Directions to the Hospital", "You are ill. You must call the school and inform them", etc.. Students have 5-7min to prepare a dialogue in groups of two. Ask group A if anyone will present their dialogue (can be written or off-the-cuff). If it lasts under 1min, one person can throw chalk. More than 1min, both can throw. Group B, Group C, etc.. I do twice through for each situation, sometimes more if they insist. Change the situation and repeat.

Special Difficulties - deduct points for non-interlocuters throwing chalk. 15sec for a group to volunteer to present ,or move on to the next group. Dead time in a dialogue (5-10sec) can result in a point deduction (arbitrary, I'm harder on the good students, I often offer an appropriate sentence to the poor stumbler). Subtlely correct grammer mistakes within a dialogue, have them repeat your correction quickly.

Hope you like it, and look forward to some new ideas..

[baby predator]

Here's a tried and tested one, which I'm sure has done the rounds, but is worth repeating.

Ingredients: minimum four students, whiteboard (does anyone use blackboards anymore?), two working marker pens, two sheets of A4 paper

Prep time: 10 mins

Method: Before class, draw two simple pictures on two sheets of A4 with a black felt tip (examples: an Xmas tree in the corner of a room, an alien spacecraft in the sky, a simple pastoral scene with mountains, a river and some sheep). Make both pictures different, but of similar complexity.

In class, divide the students into two equal teams and choose one member from each team to do the "drawing".

Divide the whiteboard in half and give each Van Gogh a marker pen. Then give each team one picture, with careful instructions not to show the picture to the artist. Their task is to get their teammate to recreate the picture on the whiteboard, with objects and size ratios as close to the original as possible. Points are awarded for speed and accuracy. Points are deducted for cheating and using Chinese.

I find it best not to interfere until both teams are finished (otherwise they start to rely on you to help them out). Instead, I note down any language deficiencies and go over these at the end.

This activity is great for introducing all kinds of vocabulary. You can tailor the pictures to elicit all kinds of language. If you like, you can pre-teach useful stuff like names of shapes, words like line, curve, diagonal etc. Excellent for preposition work. The pictures can be made as simple or as complex as you like and you can share them with all your colleagues.

[arioch36]

Predator..that is one of my favorite activities with my grade one high school students. I use geometry figures, because that is something they are studying in Chinese, and they are motivated and enjoy learning the English names.

First i do a lecture drawing the shapes in different sizes and colors on the board. Great preposition work. Two birds with one stone, new vocabulary, , preposition work, especially spacial. Then they have to either draw based on another's description, or I draw four different versions on the board and they have to describe it to each other.

Always has worked well. I wonder why I don't use it in college.


I am having the students do more plays, adapt a Chinese story, or have them adapt something from one of their readings, or (ugh) Famil Almbum USA.
Pros:

Easy work for the teacher
Fun for the students, especially now with no vacation and they are locked at school.
Peer pressure (or enjoyment) makes them use much better english

Cons" I feel guilty because I am not doing enough.

[baby predator]

Ouch arioch! That's an inconvenient work/guilt ethic you've got going on. If your students are having fun AND using better English, sounds like you can make yourself a cup of tea, put your feet up and take a well earned, guilt free rest.

You reminded me of one other thing that works well with my students. I get them to brainstorm first of all a family (names, ages and personality characteristics of each member), then we move on to family friends, neighbors and associates like school teachers, local policemen, family dog etc. We stop brainstorming once there are as many fictional characters as students.

Next, I assign each person in the class one of the characters (either randomly or calculatingly, depending on my mood), put them in small groups, then have them craft a soap opera around the characters. The only criteria are:

they have 40 mins max to write their script
everyone in the group HAS to take part in the dialogue
there must be plenty of DRAMA (no prob. for my soap opera junkie students)

I was sceptical about this idea at first, but they always get into it with such enthusiasm, and produce such genuinely funny/dramatic/downright unbelievable material that I've used the idea many times. It's also a good way to identify problems with both written and spoken English.

[Brendon]

Big classes
Does anyone have any ideas for activities for big classes. Some of my classes are over 100 students (far too many I know) and my classroom is a lecture theatre with not much room to move around. My rescources are very limited as well. Thanks.

Oh and I still use a blackboard too.

[Count_Fathom]

A cycle for desciption games
Split into three classes with steadily advancing difficulty.

1st Class - 10-15min - What's in the bag? (I'm sure we've all done it) Throw a few things in a bag. Eager students volunteer, approach, reach in the bag (but can't look). Feel an object and describe it to the class.

2nd Class - 1/2 a period - 20 Questions (I've muddled this a few times getting the kids to understand. Think this is the best method) Send a kid out of the room. Write an easily describable noun on the board. Tell the room only to say yes/no, and otherwise stay quiet. Invite the student to return, tell them they don't know what they are, they must ask Q's to figure it out, over 20 Q's, you lose. (Sending multiple kids out for one noun works too). Increase the difficulty accordingly.

3rd Class - Full period
Prep - a box full of words on paper/cue cards - I use 100. (Can have the class quickly write down words on small pieces of paper and collect them to avoid the prep yourself, but you'll eventually want the cue cards if you tend to repeat this lesson to many classes) Bring a timer/watch/cell phone.

I open the class with 20 Q's again for 5min, this time I am something and they ask Q's to find out. Should run smooth after last class.

Seperate the class into groups (A,B,C,D,etc..). Draw the scoreboard. Lay out about 20words on the platform desk. Student from "A" joins you on the platform. The student has 2min to describe as many words as they can, choosing which words s/he wants to describe. 1point for every word guessed. (The whole classes usually guesses, no matter what your instructions are. I let them). Cycle through A-B-C-D twice at 2min, and once more through at 1min.

Next - Two kids from A, two from D. One from each group faces the board, one faces away, the two groups on opposite sides of the platform. The rest of the class must shut up. Write a word on the board, the two kids facing describe to the two facing away. Mark the side that gets to the answer first. Best of 5 words gets the whole 5points. A vs. D, B vs. C, etc.. Class will finish during this, tally-up the scores.

No real glitches in this one, works great. Thanks everyone for the contributions. Sincerely appreciated.

[chinasyndrome]

This is an expanded version of a fun writing/reading/listening game I learned 30 years ago. It works best with small groups (10 to 20) but can also be done with split groups from bigger classes - just not as successfully because people get bored waiting for their turn.

Boy Meets Girl.

Requirements. 1 x A4 paper for each student. They write an answer/finish the sentence, fold the paper so no one can see it (1-2cm) and pass it to the person on their left.

His name is:
Her name is:
They met at:
They went to:
They did: (when they got there) (2-4 descriptive sentences)
He looked like:
She looked like:
He said to her: (2-4 sentences of dialogue)
She said to him: (2-4 sentences of dialogue)
His mother said to the girl: (2-4 sentences of dialogue)
Her father said to the boy: (2-4 sentences of dialogue)
Finally: (conclusion) (2-4 sentences)

This should be a fun game and the students should know it's meant to be that. The paper will look like a folded fan. Each student - one at a time - unfolds and reads the story. Students must write whole sentences, not just answers. This gives it flow. Each student will read at least 18 sentences, giving a chance to those who are generally quiet.

Derivatives are:

Doctor and patient
Lawyer and client
Anything that creates contrast or can be drawn from real life.

Hope this helps!