It is not very often that I feel depleted of energy. I try to prepare my classes in such a way that they do not only engage students, but also me. I really need this spark in my lessons to keep me motivated. But some Mondays ago, I was just not feeling it and the way the lesson was laid out in the textbook was not helping either. It was mind-numbingly boring, and I was so tired that I could think of nothing to engage me or my students. But thankfully, my colleagues Paula and Alba were there to save the day, and they rushed to help with some ideas. Want to know what came out?
First Step. Always. Revision.
We were working with these useful phrases to use in arguments. So, first and foremost, revision. This is key.
These are some of the sentences we studied:
Using “point”
What’s the point you are trying to make?
That proves my point
You are missing the point
I take your point.
Please, get to the point.
There is no point crying over spilt milk
You’ve made your point
Some other useful phrases:
You are twisting my words
That’s not what I meant at all
We’ve got our wires crossed
We should clear the air
That came out all wrong
We are going round in circles
Can we just agree to disagree?
There is no need to raise your voice
Second step:Paper
I gave my students a small piece of paper and asked them to write one of the sentences above on the slip of paper, encouraging them to use their best handwriting, as this sentence was meant to be read and used by other students working with them.
To hold the pieces of paper, I gave them these tiny blue holders I bought here. (I love props, what can I say? Does the activity work without them? Sure thing!)
One might think that after 31 years teaching, I wouldn’t need to spend time preparing for classes. After accumulating so much content over the years, it would seem logical to just retrieve what I need from my files. However, for some reason, that’s not how it works for me. As a result, I find myself once again in the process of creating content, this time on the subject of travelling.
This post revolves around the topic of Travelling and Tourism and considering what I have written above, I have come up with this brilliant 🙄 idea. Use a board from Canva and replace specific questions with numbers, making it applicable to any topic. Alongside this, we can create cards that include the relevant questions and reference their corresponding numbers. What do you think?
Hold on, Cristina! Did you read the title of the post? It says “Two decks of cards”. So, we have one deck for questions, but what about the other one? I haven’t forgotten! The other deck contains useful phrases to help students express themselves more effectively. 😆
What do we need?
Print the board multiple times. Print as many copies as groups of students. What works best for me is groups of 3 students. Get the PDF here
Reusable cards with useful phrases. One deck per group. PDF here.
Ready to play?
Create groups of 3–4 students and give each group a board game, the two decks of cards, counters and a die. Students decide who starts the game. Student A throws the die and places his/her counter on the corresponding square, which contains a number. On the deck of cards with the conversation questions, he/she finds the card that matches the number of his/her square, reads it aloud and then takes a card from the Useful Language deck. These cards are placed face down on the table. The student will need to talk for at least two minutes, trying to use the expression on the card. Then, it is student B’s turn.
A digital or analogue board game? Which do you fancy? For me, variety is key. So I tend to alternate between both types of exercises to keep things interesting. In this post, you will find both versions. Cheers to diversity! But just so that you know, I am going to focus more on the analogue version where I can use props.
Who doesn’t love props? Using props in the classroom can be an effective tool for teaching. Props can help to engage students and bring an element of fun and creativity to a lesson. And right in the middle of winter ,when days are short and dark, I feel the need to add some extra spark to my lessons. Don’t you?
Board games have been around for a long, long time but, have you tried to design one? It is not easy. I have tried and failed. They looked awful. This time I have not wasted any time, and used Genial.ly’s Monopoly board game, which I have adapted to suit my content.
First, I made an online version (reusable in case you want to change something), which turned out great, but I decided to go old–school and print out the board, get a huge foam dice, and use some coloured counters. Not surprisingly, rolling a big red foam dice and having students use little markers to claim their spots really made a difference.
Here’s the downloadable version if I have managed to persuade you to use the printed version of the board game.
TEACHER-GUIDED: HOW TO PLAY
Arrange students into groups of 3–4 students and give each group a board.
Each player in the group must choose a colour: blue, green, yellow, or red. They will then receive a token to mark their position and 10 coloured counters (preferably, the same colour as their token) to indicate the questions they have answered correctly throughout the game.
Each player should take their token and place it on the starting square. Write down the starting order of the students on the board, like this: blue first, then green, then yellow, and lastly red. To start playing, the teacher rolls the huge die and Blues move their token to the corresponding square.
If Blues can talk about the question non-stop for 2 minutes, they earn the right to place one of their blue counters on that square. That square is now officially theirs!
If another player lands on a square that is already occupied by a coloured counter, they will have to answer the question, but they will not claim the square.
Special squares: squares with icons contain penalties, such as “The player pays light taxes: loses 2 of his coloured counters.” (you can read the penalties in the digital version)
The player with the most coloured counters on the board, once all squares are occupied, will win the game.
I can’t. I couldn’t resist the temptation of using this song in class. I know you have heard it everywhere, as it has become a global hit in just a few days. And as it turns out, it is also in my English class.
How can I incorporate the song into my lesson plan in a way that goes beyond just a fill-in-the-blank exercise? Easy. We are going to do an activity that combines some of my favourite ingredients:
A touch of technology
A game-like speaking activity
Singing? if not singing, lip-syncing.
STEP 1. Before the game: working on form
Show students the lyrics with the gaps and ask them to predict the lexical category or part of speech that could fit each of the 10 gaps in the song: is it a noun, an adjective, a preposition or maybe an article? Allow a couple of minutes for this task. You might want to show an example.
For example, I wrote a letter___ my mother (students will most likely agree, they’ll need a preposition to fill in this gap)
STEP 2: Defining and Guessing
Hide the gapped text. To begin the activity, the text will be hidden from the students’ view.
Students will work in pairs. Student A will face the board. Student B will face away and write on his/her notebook numbers 1 -10 (there are 10 gaps/words to be guessed)
Tell students you’ll write the missing words on the board in random order, but each of the words will be identified with a number.
Write the first of the missing words in the cloze on the board, and ask student A to define the word, or give a synonym or antonym for student B to guess and write down. For example, if the word on the board is “1. wrote”, Student A might say, “number 1 is a verb in the past, and you use a pen or a pencil to do it”. If Student B guesses the word, he will write in his notebook, next to number 1 wrote. If he cannot guess the word in the allotted time, he will write 1-___.
Tell students you’ll write a new word every 30 seconds.
Continue in the same way until you have written all the missing words on the board. Remember that the words should be written in random order.
STEP 3: Fill-in the Gaps Race.
Once they have all the words, Students A and B will work together to complete the gapped test.
Place a bell on your table. The first pair to complete the task ( i.e. putting the words in the right order to complete the lyrics of the song) rushes to the teacher’s desk. The teacher checks that the exercise is correct and if it is, they ring the bell on your table (well, if you have a bell to ring). From that moment, the rest of the class will have one minute to finish the exercise.
STEP 3: Singing or lip-syncing
Yes. If some students need a pit of persuading, tell them it is a very good exercise to improve pronunciation.
STEP 4: Conversation questions. We talk a bit now.
Can you describe a time when you experienced a heartbreak?
How did you cope with the feelings of heartbreak?
Have you ever helped a friend through a heartbreak? How did you support them?
I find it really hard to stick to the textbook every time the lesson is about Relationships. With any other lessons, about any other topics, it might be easier to be content with following the dictates of the textbook. But I think Relationships, and all sorts of ideas spring up. Not all of them are good, to be honest. But these, I have tried and tested in class. They work.
This lesson is divided into two chunks:
The first part is dedicated to revising, reinforcing, and introducing new vocabulary.
The second part is dedicated to honing students’ listening and speaking skills using different visual inputs: images, audio, video, and cards.
VOCABULARY
GUESSING THE TOPIC WITH A FRIENDLIER VERSION OF THE GAME HANGMAN
Students will need to guess what topic we will cover in class next, But…. There are rules to follow:
The class is divided into 2 teams. Each team names a spokesperson.
Let’s say Team 1 starts. Now, to get the chance to say a letter to solve the puzzle, they’ll have to answer a content review question. For example: “what preposition collocates with the verb “depend”?”. After a quick discussion with the members of their group, the spokesperson will give an answer. If correct, they can suggest a letter. Whether it is a correct or incorrect guess, the turn will pass to Team B, who will get another content review question and the chance to guess a letter if the answer to the review question is correct.
Important: Teams can’t try to solve the puzzle until half the letters have been guessed(i.e. if the word has 14 letters, 7 must have been guessed) and only the Team playing will have this chance.
If they guess and fail, their turn will be skipped.
GAME: THE 15 SECONDS CROSSWORD GAME TO REVISE VOCABULARY
Divide the class into 2 teams.
Team A chooses a representative who chooses a number from the crossword puzzle, reads the description, and has 15 seconds to guess the answer with the help of their team.
If they guess the answer, they can continue playing until
they can’t guess the word,
they run out of time (remember 15 seconds) or
they guess three answers in a row.
If this happens, it is Team B’s turn.
The winner is the team that solves the last clue.
In this case, the terms in the crossword were related to the “relationships”
NOTE: (click on the top right-hand corner to enlarge the crossword)
INTRODUCING NEW VOCABULARY: PEER TEACHING AND PARTNER DISCUSSION.
More Vocabulary here. Give students some individual time to read through the vocabulary, underlining any new terms.
Building on the belief that ” to teach is to learn twice” (Whitman, 1998), ask students to get into groups of 4 and help each other with any vocabulary they haven’t been able to guess on their own.
Whole class: ask students in Group 1 which vocabulary items are still unfamiliar to them. Ask the other groups in the class to volunteer an explanation if they know. If nobody in the class knows, clarify the meaning. Continue in the same fashion with all the groups until all the vocabulary has been clarified.
Work on pronunciation and then test students by giving a definition and asking them to quickly give you the term.
SPEAKING and LISTENING
MARRIAGE
SPEAKING.
Display this picture and ask students to comment on this picture. Ask:
Who do you feel more sorry for? The bride, the groom, or the mother-in-law?
LISTENING. Why bother with marriage? Watch from 0:00- 0:34
Play the beginning of the video (0:00- 0:34) In pairs or small groups, comment on the following:
What is the speaker’s view on marriage? Do you agree with his view?
Are there more benefits or drawbacks to getting married in your country nowadays?
What is the right age to get married in your country? And to have children?
FAMILIES: LISTENING and SPEAKING
Write NUCLEAR FAMILY on the board and ask students to explain what type of family a nuclear family is and what other different family types they know. Write them on the board. Ideally, they will come up with stepfamilies (also called blended families), cohabitation, extended family, lone parenting, DINKS (I know, unlikely!) and some others.
Time for listening.First Listening:Play the audio once and ask students to jot down the different types of families that are mentioned (stepfamilies. Cohabitation, DINKS, lone parenting and people living alone). Write them on the board. You will probably need to add People living alone. Second Listening: Note-taking. Form groups of 4 students and assign a different kind of family to each of them. Ask them to take notes, as their final task would be to retell the information they hear about their assigned family structure. NOTE: I have assigned cohabitation and DINKS to the same person.
Follow-up: ask students in their groups to comment on the strengths and weaknesses of each type of family structure
PARENTS AND THEIR OFFSPRING: SPEAKING AND LISTENING
1. LYING. Play this video where children confess the biggest lie they have told their mums, in front of their mums. Ask students to confess theirs.
2. OVERPROTECTING PARENTS.
Ask these questions
Are parents today too overprotective?
What is considered overprotective parenting?
What can overparenting do to a child?
FAMILY TRACKING APPS. Display with the OHP this article from the BBC about family tracking apps and ask them to read the first 3 paragraphs. Ask students to talk about the advantages and drawbacks for both parents and children.
SPEAKING CARDS: FINDING THE MATCHING PAIR.
Put students into groups of 3 or 4. Give each group a set of cards and ask them to place them face upon the table. Student A begins by taking the beginning of the question (in blue) and finding the matching pair (in orange).
Student A has two minutes to express his/her opinion. Then, it is Student B’s turn.
