Materials Free Lesson Part 1

Would you know what to do if the photocopier broke? And I mean REALLY broke… You’ve unjammed it, kicked it, sworn at it, turn it on and off but it just. won’t. work. What’s your next step? Panic? Scream? Cry?

Fear thee not. Here are some ideas that could help ease those panic-stricken moments when you have to deliver a material free lesson, or when you need a warmer/cooler/filler. No photocopies, not high-tech gadgetry, just a teacher, some students, and a few scraps of paper.

1.

Dictate 8 or so infinitives (regular and irregular) and get the students to write down the past participle of the verbs.

Elicit the answers, and put them in the middle of the board. Then elicit a complement for the verb and write that to the right of the participle.

For example: You say “ride”, and the students write down “ridden” (which you put in the middle of the board). Then get the students to suggest things you can ride (bike, camel, horse, unicycle). Choose the most interesting one and write it next to the verb.

When you’ve finished with all the participles, on the left hand side, write “Have you ever”.

So you should have something that looks like this:

Have you ever             ridden               a camel?

                                          met                      a celebrity?

                                          flown                  in a helicopter?

                                         eaten                    sushi?

                                          swum                  with dolphins?

There you have a “Find someone who” activity which required no photocopying or preparation. It can be adapted for any level and grammar point. Future Perfect (Find someone who will have bought a house/ got married/ had children/ travelled to Australia by 2020).

2.

This next activity works better with higher levels and focusses on speaking and fluency. It can last up to an hour if you collect some errors and do some feedback.

Give each student 3 bits of scrap paper. One each paper, they should write one sentence that describes an important event in their life (that they are happy to talk to the class about). When they have 3 events, they should write the year it happened in the top right corner, and the approximate month in the left, so it should look a bit like this:

Put the students into group of 3 or 4. They put all their papers together, then line them up in a ladder on the table in chronological order. It might be an idea to cellotape the ladder to the table at this point.

Give each group one dice and one counter. They roll the dice and move the counter up the ladder for the correct number. The owner of the paper then has to talk about this event for 2 minutes (less for lower levels) and the other students must be ready to ask one questions each when the time is up.

Fold the paper over when it’s done so it isn’t repeated then continue until they have all been spoken about.

Part 2 to follow! Enjoy and let me know how it goes!

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It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.

A teacher told me about this activity and I thought it would work really well in showing students that it’s not what you say, but how you say it, that the key lies in your intonation! I think she found these ideas on another website.

Give the students simple words and phrases. Start with “Hello“.

Ask the students to think:

How would you say “Hello”

• to a friend
• to a friend you haven’t seen in 4 years
• to a neighbour you don’t like
• to a baby
• to someone you discovered doing something they shouldn’t be doing
• when you answer the phone

Then get them to practice it in pairs. Then get class feedback to demonstrate how the intonation and pronunciation changes.

Some more examples:

“Goodbye”

• to a family member as you’re about to get on a plane
• to someone who has been annoying you
• to someone you’ve just had a fight with
• to a salesman on the phone
• to your boyfriend/girlfriend on the phone
• to a child starting his first day at school

“How are you”

• to someone you haven’t seen in 10 years
• to someone who’s family member had died
• to someone who didn’t sleep in their own bed last night

“I never go to pubs”

• you are a person who disapproves of drinking alcohol and you are speaking to someone who often goes to pubs
• when it is followed by “…but I sometimes go to discos”

“What have you done?”

• to someone who has tried to fix your TV but has made the situation worse
• when you hear a loud noise coming from a different room in the house
• when someone has done something very bad which will have serious consequences

Do you have any more suggestions for phrases or situations?

Like this post? Why not have a look at this other post: https://missfearnley.wordpress.com/2010/09/19/adjectives-of-manner

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Using newspapers and magazines in the classroom

Just to compensate for being so rubbish at posting…. 2 in one day!

I was reminded of this idea when I posted about the magazine activity. It’s a nice little warmer/filler or even use towards the end as a competition to finish on a high.

Buy enough copies of the same magazine/newspaper so each pair of students has a copy in your class. Then create a short quiz about stories in the paper, and the students have to use scan read the article to find the answers.

For example:

If there is a story unemployment, a questions could be “how many people are unemployed?”

If there is a picture of Brad Pitt, you could ask “what is the name of Brad Pitt’s new film?”

Obviously the answer has to be in the story, it’s not a general knowledge quiz!

The students then have to flick through the paper and find where the story is (you could include page numbers if you were feeling generous) using headlines and pictures to guide them, then they have to look for specific information.

I tried a similar exercise with an IELTS class, as they were having trouble with the reading section of their exam as they would laboriously read every single word to find an answer and then ran out of time!

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Dynamic Adjectives of Appearance Activity

I have been terrible at posting regularly! I will endeavour to improve this!

I have just started on a new adventure in my EFL path, I have come to Naples in Italy for a few months. I will be teaching mainly children, which is completely new to me, so any help, advice or tips would be greatly appreciated.

I was watching a lesson today with some very young children (6? 7?) and watched an interesting activity which was great for kids, but I imagine could work for any age level at elementary and possible pre-int.

The teacher had taught adjectives to describe people (old/young, beautiful/ugly, weak/strong, boy/girl etc….). She then handed out some magazines (ie. OK!, Hello – those kind of celebrity and real life ones) and it was a race to “find a boy” “find someone beautiful” in pairs.

It was such a lovely way to reinforce the vocab and totally change the dynamic of the lesson.

It could also be adapted to clothes vocabulary (jeans, dress, tight/loose, spotty, patterned), more appearances (blonde, tall etc.).

With thanks to Judith Kay who let me observe her lesson and steal ideas

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Warmers and Fillers Part II

There is a quiz shoe in Britain called “Countdown” where the contensants have to make words out of 9 letters.

I use this same idea in my class as a warmer, or as an acitivity to fill the last 10 minutes of a lesson.

Choose a 9 letter word: eg, policeman, birthdays, traveller, spiderweb, superhero, tracksuit. Then draw a 3×3 grid on the board and mix the letters up.

In pairs, give the students 5 minutes to find as many words as possible (min 3 letters). Tell them there is a 9 letter word which is worth extra points.

When the time is up, get the students to count their words and see which team has the most, then brainstorm the words on the board and help them find the 9 letter word

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Banana Running Dictation

This is a twist on the running dictation activity you commonly find in the classroom.

For those who don’t use running dictations, here is the cliff notes version:

Have a text stuck to a wall on one side of the classroom (or cut strips up and stick them around the classroom). One student runs to the text, remembers as much as possible, then runs to their partner who is a scribe and dictates the text to them.

This twist was suggested to me today:

In key places, such as obvious verbs or prepositions, take out the word in the text and leave either a —– or the word BANANA. eg. My name BANANA India. I BANANA in England.

Once the student have completed the dication, they then have to go through the text and decide what word goes in place of BANANA.

simples.

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Money money money

There are always money based sections in coursebooks, but I like to find something to pad it out and broaden the lesson around the subject, so I have a few money based speaking and vocabulary activites I’d like to share.

I have previsouly made worksheets for these lessons, which you can download further down the post.

1. Phrasal Verbs

Let’s face it, the majority of students (and teachers) hate phrasal verbs. But when it comes to money, we use a lot of phrasal verbs (splash out, cough up etc.) and they are quite commonly used in colloquial English, so they shouldn’t be ignored.

My first sheet is a verb matching exercise. The phrasal verb is written on one side in the infinitive, with an contextual example underneath. The definitions are mixed up on the right and the students have to match them up.

Have a look: Money phrasal verb1

2. Speaking

This activity can take up to 45 minutes if you allow it to. Download the worksheet and cut up the questions.

Hand out one question to each student. Tell them to mingle and ask as many people as possible their question. Encourage them to ask follow up questions and get a conversation going out of it.

Sit the students back down, and ask a few of them to read out their questions, ask them for their answer, along with a few others. Try to get some debating going on if the question allows it.

There are, of course, loads of ways you could use these cards… Split them up into groups and get small discussion groups going on.

You can download the questions here: money questions

I hope you can use these in your lessons! Let me know hoe it goes and if you have any suggestions. Have fun!

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Adverbs of Manner

Just a quick post about some activities I have come across when teaching adverbs of manner (ie, quickly, loudly, sexily, angrily, gingerly etc…)

1. Short Dialouges

Write on the board:

–Give me the letter

-No

or

-I love you

-Really?

Then brainstorm/revise the adverbs of manner you have done in lessons. Write them on the board,

Put the students in pairs. Choose an adverb. They must now act out the short dialouges in the manner of the adverbs you have written on the board.

This activity will check and reinforce understanding, and will also get them out of the textbooks and having a bit of fun. The better the class know each other, the better the activity will be.

2. Cigarette Smoking

Brainstorm/revise the adverbs as above and write them on small slips of paper and put them in a hat.

Ask a student to come the front. Give him/her a pen and tell them it is a cigarette. They must choose an adverb and smoke the cigarette in that manner. The class must guess which adverb is it.

Silly fun for everyone.

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Mission Impossible

This is a great film that I have used many times in the classroom to introduce the idea of a “spoof” film.

I watch the film once with the students, then give them 10 questions about the man’s job, the accident, the bird etc, and we watch it again. There are no words in the film, so there is no chance that they won’t understand the film, which makes it accessible to everyone… they just have to express their own ideas in English.

Lead In: Write “Who Am I?” on the board. Students can only ask you Yes/No questions to guess who you are (Tom Cruise). When they have finally guessed, then ask them which films has he been in (Mission Impossible). Then introduce the idea of a spoof (a film about a film which makes jokes about it), then show them the film.

Extension: Students could write/perform a spoof of their favourite film, or make a funny film about their school/class.

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Jenny’s Game

First things first: I do not know who Jenny is.

But apparently, this is her game.

I tried it for the first time today and couldn’t believe the great results. The students were bouncing around, being very compeitive and really seemed to enjoy it.

I took a story from the news. It wasn’t a major story (although that would work well). You don’t have to use a news story, although I think it helps when the students realise that it’s authentic English.

I took the first 53 words of the story and made a hand-out with 53 empty boxes. Each box must be numbered.

Divide the class into teams of 3-4. Then tell them to listen very carefully. They must not write anything down.

Read the story twice (even at a good level, you should read it twice), clearly, but with normal intonation.

Once they have listened to it twice, each team has to tell you one word from the text (it doesn’t have to be in the correct order). If they are correct, say the word, and the number of the box (good idea to have a master copy of the boxes with a word in each and cross out each word as they say it).

Points: Points don’t mean prizes. If a student gives you a wrong word, or repeats a word, their team gets a point. The team with the most points, loses.

Hint: If they getstuck, give them 5 minutes to work as a team to figure out more words. Remind them to think about pronouns, prepositions, articles.

I made my class give me the correct tense of the verb… if it was wrong, they got a point. The words “a” and “the” were repeated, butthey had to tell me each time they thought there was one. If they told me too many times…points!

I hope my instructions were clear. Let me know how it goes!

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