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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English is crazy isn’t it?

Someone sent me this poem.. Thought it was good fun. 

 

We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.

You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?
Then one may be that, and there would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!
Let’s face it – English  is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;
Neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren’t invented in England.
We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes,
We find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square,
And a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write, but fingers don’t fing,
Grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham?
Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend?
If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them,
What do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
 
Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English
Should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
We ship by truck but send cargo by ship…
We have noses that run and feet that smell.
We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.
And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,
While a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language
In which your house can burn up as it burns down,
In which you fill in a form by filling it out,
And in which an alarm goes off by going on.
And in closing……….
If Father is Pop, how come Mother’s not Mop

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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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Dying Language

I saw this article online about the Indonesian tribal language Dusner being on the verge on extinction. There are only 3 people left in the world who speak the language who are all in their 60s and 70s. They were all recently injured in a natural disaster but thankfully survivied. Linguists at Oxford Uni are now trying to protect the language.

Have a look at one version of the story here: http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/TechandScience/Story/STIStory_661278.html

This might make a good topic for a lesson. You could use the text as an authentic reading exercise. Extention tasks could range from an interview with the survivors, a diary of one of the speakers, or a debate on languages. Eg, Will English ever be the world’s only language? Is there a link between language and culture? English is the most important language in the world. It is important to learn several languages etc….

Just thought this text would make for a nice lead in to a discussion. Please let me know what you think and how it went if you use this in your lessons.

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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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