Looking for a Good Superlative Warmer

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Brix
Posts: 22
Joined: Wed Sep 28, 2005 3:19 pm

Looking for a Good Superlative Warmer

Post by Brix » Thu May 08, 2008 3:32 pm

Hi, quick question for anyone who can answer.

For adults, age early 20s:

I am looking for a superlative adjective warmer. It can be personalized to the local nation/city/singer.

Is there any fun way to do something fun as a warmer with this topic.


I'm stumped. Any help is appreciated.

Brian
Posts: 111
Joined: Tue Oct 18, 2005 9:32 am
Location: Bangkok, Thailand
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Post by Brian » Wed Sep 10, 2008 10:43 am

Just make a trivia quiz - and do it pub quiz style with students in teams of 3 or 4. Give them a minute to discuss after each question. They don't call out their answers ... they write them down.

Highest score wins and if you want to extend it, have more questions or have more than one round.

So your questions can all have superlatives:

What's the largest animal in the world?
What's the tallest building in (the city where you work)?
Which capital city is the furthest north?

etc etc

Even better - give a few sample Qs like this at the end of a lesson and challenge each student to think of 3 superlative Qs for homework. Then next class use their Qs to make the warmer quiz.

Cheers

Brian

COMICS for your students - www.grammarmancomic.com

Sally Olsen
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Location: Canada,France, Brazil, Japan, Mongolia, Greenland, Canada, Mongolia, Ethiopia next

Post by Sally Olsen » Wed Sep 10, 2008 5:43 pm

Have you checked out Dave's ESL Cookbook on this site? It has a number of games for superlatives from paper airplanes to super silly sentences to an Olympics. Great ideas all.

HeatherC
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Teaching Comparatives & Superlatives

Post by HeatherC » Sat Feb 21, 2009 12:15 pm

There's two activities I like to use that can be used at any different point in the lesson.

If I want to incorporate some reading I'll do the following lesson:

Super Kids

Time:
20-30 minutes

Targets
: Read, understand and speak using superlatives

Materials: Printouts of these passages for each student. Print out and show photos from Wikimedia Commons or the Guinness Book of World Records to make the activity more interesting for students.


Level:
Advanced Beginner

Call on different students to read the following texts aloud. Then ask comprehension questions for each short text. Have students answer orally.

Avatar Tulsi[/b]

Avatar is from India, and he is the world's youngest scientist. He was in high school at age nine, and he was an M.Sc at age 12.

Comprehension Questions:

• How old was Avatar when he was in high school?

• Where is he from?

• How old was he when he was an M.Sc?

The lesson continues by showing photos, reading and talking about other young people who claim superlative titles. You can read the whole lesson and get the texts that I use here:

ESL Reading & Speaking Activity: Comparatives & Superlatives
http://www.associatedcontent.com/articl ... html?cat=4

Otherwise, if I'm just introducing comparatives and superlatives I usually start by drawing some stick figures on the board and then move into an interactive group game. The game involves having the students stand in a circle and get in order by height, to find out who is the "tallest" and who is the "shortest." I think I read about this game on the ESL Cafe somewhere. You can come up with three of four things students need to get in order by, although adults may be uncomfortable with doing "oldest to youngest." If you want to get students moving, you could start with the game instead.

For anyone looking on presentation material for comparatives and superlatives you can check out this lesson:

ESL Lesson Plan: Comparatives & Superlatives

Time: 35 minutes

Targets
: Comparative & Superlative Adjectives

Materials: white board & marker, practice worksheets (optionals)

Level: Advanced Beginner, children to adults

Presentation: Comparatives and Superlatives (25 minutes)

Draw two stick figures on the board, one being taller than the other. Label the first one as 5' 10" and the second as 6'. Give the two figures names, such as Adam for the first and Greg for the taller one. Write "tall" under Adam and "taller" under Greg. Say, "Greg is taller than
Adam. He is six feet tall. Adam is five feet and ten inches tall. Adam is tall, but Greg is taller."

Write "comparative adjective" on the board. Explain that comparative adjectives compare two nouns and they are usually formed by adding "-er" to the base adjective. Tall &#8594; taller.

Then draw a third, slightly taller, stick figure. Name him "Bob" and write 6'3" near the figure. Say, "What do we do when we want to compare three people or things? We must use the superlative."

Continue reading the lesson and get the text for the practice worksheet here:
ESL Lesson Plan: Comparatives & Superlatives
http://www.associatedcontent.com/articl ... html?cat=4

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