Korean Job Discussion Forums

[tanklor1]

Anyone know how to make making sentences fun for fifth graders? I'm going to use verbs, pronouns and nouns to try and make simple sentences tomorrow but I haven't come up with a way to make it fun. Any suggestions would be great.

[ttompatz]

[TheUrbanMyth]

You could use simple scrambled sentences like:


"is/your/What/name?

"Where/you/do/live?"

And have the kids try to put them in the right order. Prior to that do some examples with the students so they get the idea.

Or have them in the right order, but hide them in a word search (there are free programs on the 'Net that will make the search for you, all you have to do is supply the words/sentences.)


You could also make it a competition with prizes/candy...but then you run the risk of the slower students giving up...if they are all high level then that's another thing you might consider.

[kimdeal54]

I saw this one activity online ages ago, but I can't remember where I found it. Anyway, the gist is that you split the students into teams, and set a time limit for them to make a sentence for each letter (or as many as they can, or choice letters that you assign) using the following model...

Adam likes angry aliens.
Brian likes big balloons.
Caroline likes cute cats.

...and so on. It works well for nouns and adjectives. You could replace the names with pronouns, adjust it to suit their level, and because it's a team activity, the stronger students can help the weaker ones.

[thegadfly]

Monkeys and spaceships -- dogs and roller skates -- any combination of nouns or verbs that do not seem to "go together." Give them two odd nouns to put into one sentence, or two verbs that do not seem to go together -- cry and eat, sing and sleep, whatever.... Works great for more complex sentences -- if you are working with simple sentences, maybe just one noun and verb -- cry and soup, table and run...then let the students generate their own "challenge pairs" for others in the class to put into a sentence -- first team to get a correct sentence using the pair gets a point, and gets to give the next challenge pair....

Just some ideas....

[Sleepy in Seoul]

Give some simple sentences one by one to the more outgoing of the class and have them act it out to the rest of the students word by word (like charades) and have the class build the sentences using the clues. As they become more used to this, gradually get all of the students to participate in the acting. The more bizarre the sentences the better.

[tomato]

I teach a class of fifth graders.
I noticed today that they were having trouble with negatives.
So I played a non-competitive game in which the students make up sentences with a chance outcome:

I gave one student a sheet of paper with "articles and nouns" written at the top.
I gave another student a sheet of paper with nothing written on it but "is not."
I gave another student a sheet of paper with "adjectives" writen at the top.
After the article-and-noun list and the adjective list were both compiled, we repeated a pattern in which the first child read an article and noun from the list, the second student said "is not," and the third student read an adjective from the list.

If you have musical skills, you can make up a song which any of the sentences can fit into.

[northway]

I have good luck using my kids names in said sentences.

[Man on Street]

In order to make making sentences fun, you have to make fun sentences that make making sentences fun.

[D.D.]

this works: show bugs bunny stop the frame on a good pic, have them write the things they see
thats level 1

if they can do that level 2 is describing the things
such as big ears, big teeth, white fur

level 3 is write what the things are doing

level 4 is try to make sentences

this can be done orally, or on paper or both.

once kids get hang of it when she show a video or pic they yell out all the things. then you ask them to yell out descriptions or actions.

works right up to middle school where they end up making sentences on paper and then speaking them.

bugs bunny, tom and jerry and very popular.

[matthews_world]

I compile vocabulary words that students are studying in each chapter and print them on a sheet of paper. Laminate them if for multiple use. Pass out a single 'card' to each student as they will be in charge of the single word or Brain Card as I name them.

These work well with review. For example, if you're introducing yourself for the first time, print out the relevant Brain Card words for this task - "Where/from/How/many/members/" etc. Color coat the WH- words in order to highlight the beginning of questions.

Ask for volunteers to pose questions to you. Then, the students who are holding the words to the question can stand up or come up to the front and form the question before the class.

Use these also when previewing new vocab or grammar points at the beginning of the chapter. Shuffle the cards between the students every so rounds to check for understanding.

The only downside to Brain Cards is that students need to be able to read and recognize simple vocabulary.

Off-shoot activities for using Brain Cards are for teaching song lyrics and playing Hot Seat.

Hot Seat is where students must describe the card in English and the student in the Hot Seat earns a point for each correct guess.

Listening to a song for the first time, students choose a single word from a list contained in the song lyric. As the song is played, the students stand and hold up their word when they hear it.

[Fishead soup]

Who

did what

With Whom

Where

When

Write these headings on the board and make a funny unusual sentence
Lee Hyeri went skiing with Kim Jung Ill in Iraq a hundren years ago.

Have students do this is rows. Have them fold over the paper so they can't see what the previous person wrote last person in the row reads what was writen

[ddeubel]

Some great ideas here.

I'd really stress that "fun" be combined with "effective". Just writing/making sentences for the act of making sentences, no matter how done in a "fun" way - is not using the time effectively. Communication should be stressed, it should be two way. But it does depend - I've even seen the memory game done effectively with small groups (ie. student A - "I went to the ..... " Student B "I went to the ...... and the ......" etc...

I use http://transl8it.com a lot. Get some of the ppt games using text messaging on EFL Classroom 2.0. They decode and make sentences to finish a dialogue. Also, here's an example using the sentence jumble mentioned above What the Wordle

You can also use these dice to get Ss to reply in sentences and make it communicative. Communicative Question Dice

My few ideas....

DD
http://eflclassroom.com

[Fishead soup]