Lesson for 200 Senior High School students
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Lesson for 200 Senior High School students
I'm currently teaching at a senior high school in Japan. The school is fairly academic so the students have some english language ability (but not much). One of the other teachers approached me today and asked me to come up with an activity for the 200 second years students who will be going to Australia in November. It does not have to be about Australia but it should encourage the students to speak English. And I have about two weeks to prepare. So 200 students in the gym for 50 minutes...I can't think of anything to do so I was hoping that someone on this site knows of an activity that will motivate the students to speak English, it will be difficult because they're pretty shy in class so I can just imagine that they'll be even more shy when surrounded by the rest of the students. Any ideas will be a great help.
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Sally Olsen
- Posts: 1322
- Joined: Thu Apr 08, 2004 2:24 pm
- Location: Canada,France, Brazil, Japan, Mongolia, Greenland, Canada, Mongolia, Ethiopia next
I guess it depends on how much you want to put into it.
We just heard of the Korean English villages where people go on holiday. They get a passport with places to stamp the areas of the village they have visited.
There is a post office, department store, corner store, karioke bar, restaurant, craft activities, games , hospital, fire station, police station, pet store, grocery store, and so on.
There is a clerk in each place who speaks English. In the back of the passport is a small dialogue the person can use if they don't have something to say on their own. In the hospital they tell the doctor about their disease or they can report a lost wallet in the police station, sing a song in the karioke bar so on. All this is printed in the back of the passport and you can vary it so the clerks don't get absolutely out of their minds from the same conversation 200 times.
The holidayers try to visit as many sites as possible to get as many stamps as possible in their passport but they don't get a stamp from the clerk until they participate in a reasonable dialogue. They can talk to each other about the things in the venue in English of course to qualify for the stamp.
If you can get some of the students to bring in artifacts to put in each area to make it more real, it would help the atmosphere.
You can just put up some sort of barrier to outline the areas and a poster to say what it is or go whole hog and get the art department to design store fronts out of large fridge cardboards - do you have something already done in the drama department?
There can be up to 10 or so students in each venue so you would have to have 20 venues and 20 people to stamp. You can use senior students as well as the English teachers or bring in English speaking visitors if you can grab them from the tourists sites.
It should take them about 5 minutes in each venue and then you could sound a gong or something to get them to change.
The last few minutes can be for counting up stamps and giving out prizes for the group that got the most.
I might even mix up the groups so they are not with their friends - perhaps one person of each age and gender or according to last names A to C . D to F and so on or have the passports in different colours and they start out in the venue of their colour. You could mix up the passports colours so they are handed out randomly as they come in the room or hand the coloured passports out randomly in their classrooms and have them write their names on them and draw their pictures. You can have the school crest on the front.
Put up arrows to show direction of movement from one venue to the other.
You could arrange for an emergency so they would have to deal with that language and take them to hospital or arrest someone for walking off the sidewalk and take them to police station, etc, giving them extra points for dealing well with the situation.
Give students extra points as you hear them speaking to their friends in English - be really generous.
We just heard of the Korean English villages where people go on holiday. They get a passport with places to stamp the areas of the village they have visited.
There is a post office, department store, corner store, karioke bar, restaurant, craft activities, games , hospital, fire station, police station, pet store, grocery store, and so on.
There is a clerk in each place who speaks English. In the back of the passport is a small dialogue the person can use if they don't have something to say on their own. In the hospital they tell the doctor about their disease or they can report a lost wallet in the police station, sing a song in the karioke bar so on. All this is printed in the back of the passport and you can vary it so the clerks don't get absolutely out of their minds from the same conversation 200 times.
The holidayers try to visit as many sites as possible to get as many stamps as possible in their passport but they don't get a stamp from the clerk until they participate in a reasonable dialogue. They can talk to each other about the things in the venue in English of course to qualify for the stamp.
If you can get some of the students to bring in artifacts to put in each area to make it more real, it would help the atmosphere.
You can just put up some sort of barrier to outline the areas and a poster to say what it is or go whole hog and get the art department to design store fronts out of large fridge cardboards - do you have something already done in the drama department?
There can be up to 10 or so students in each venue so you would have to have 20 venues and 20 people to stamp. You can use senior students as well as the English teachers or bring in English speaking visitors if you can grab them from the tourists sites.
It should take them about 5 minutes in each venue and then you could sound a gong or something to get them to change.
The last few minutes can be for counting up stamps and giving out prizes for the group that got the most.
I might even mix up the groups so they are not with their friends - perhaps one person of each age and gender or according to last names A to C . D to F and so on or have the passports in different colours and they start out in the venue of their colour. You could mix up the passports colours so they are handed out randomly as they come in the room or hand the coloured passports out randomly in their classrooms and have them write their names on them and draw their pictures. You can have the school crest on the front.
Put up arrows to show direction of movement from one venue to the other.
You could arrange for an emergency so they would have to deal with that language and take them to hospital or arrest someone for walking off the sidewalk and take them to police station, etc, giving them extra points for dealing well with the situation.
Give students extra points as you hear them speaking to their friends in English - be really generous.
Wow - what a brilliant idea!
I think with some careful preparation it would be a real winner. I think students would really enjoy it.
You could give them shopping lists too - like a scavenger hunt. They've got to get a blue t-shirt in medium size, change some currency at the bank, drop off a suit at the dry cleaners, book a ticket for a concert ...
It would be great fun, and it would also be really preparing them for their trip to Australia ... you could even assign some of the tasks to link to Australia (like booking a site-seeing trip at the travel agents).
I'm certain the whole thing would be a great success, and it's not too difficult to make it happen.
Brian
Comics for English students: www.grammarmancomic.com
.
I think with some careful preparation it would be a real winner. I think students would really enjoy it.
You could give them shopping lists too - like a scavenger hunt. They've got to get a blue t-shirt in medium size, change some currency at the bank, drop off a suit at the dry cleaners, book a ticket for a concert ...
It would be great fun, and it would also be really preparing them for their trip to Australia ... you could even assign some of the tasks to link to Australia (like booking a site-seeing trip at the travel agents).
I'm certain the whole thing would be a great success, and it's not too difficult to make it happen.
Brian
Comics for English students: www.grammarmancomic.com
.