Tag Archives: first day activities

Back to School ! Part II : Icebreakers to get to know my students

Games, Speaking, , , ,

So much for writing about going back to school but… my classes haven’t started yet.The big day is going to be Monday and I am still deciding which ice-breakers will work better  with my new students.

Let me show you some of the ones I’m considering and you might want to drop a line if you know of any others that work well. The good things about these ones is that they require “No Preparation“.

♣The one I like best is Personal Star for many reasons, but mainly because it requires no preparation  and students always  enjoy a bit of gossip  about their new teacher.

I draw a star on the board and inside it  6  answers to questions about me. (My answers are black , London, December 9, tennis, Terry, English , and meat.)

Tell students that the star contains information about you. Ask them to try to guess the information behind the words by asking questions.If they don’t get the idea give an example. Tell them “My favourite colour is black. What question do you need to ask to find out this information?” Elicit from them, “What’s your favourite colour?” and cross out the word ‘black’ from the star.

Then, put the students in pairs. Ask them to draw their own personal star and put 6 pieces of information about themselves inside. In pairs they can ask each other questions to find out about their partner. When they have all finished, ask them as a group to tell the others what they have found out about their partner.

♣ Who has never told a white lie?? This is another very traditional way of getting to know your students. The Game could be called True or False? or any other name you fancy.

Write on the board  3 statements about yourself :, 2 must be  true ones and 1 must be false.  Grade the statements depending on the level of the class. For beginners, use the present simple.

 

♥I go to the gym four times a week
♥I like football
♥My favourite singer is Justin Bieber

For a more advanced level, a mixture of tenses would be great:
♥I have been to Israel in July
♥I once did a bungee jump
♥I don’t like hoovering

Students will have to  guess which one is false. Then, ask the students to do the same and write 3 sentences about themselves. In small groups they read out their sentences and the others guess the false one.

♣Add an adjective
The aim of this activity is to try to learn their names. Introduce yourself by saying, “my name’s Cristina and I’m calm”. (Replace Cristina with your name and “calm” with an adjective which has the same first letter) Emphasise the fact that your adjective starts with same letter as your name. Invite the students to introduce themselves in the same way.

♣Hot Seat: Preparation: some vocabulary for revision. Split the  class into two teams. Take two chairs and place them at the front of the class. One member from each team sit in the chairs so they are facing their teams and with their backs to the board.
Now, write one of the words you want to revise and write it on the board. The aim of the game is for the students in the teams to describe that word, using synonyms, antonyms, definitions etc. to their team mate who is in the hot seat – that person can’t see the word! The student in the hot seat listens to their team mates and tries to guess the word.
The first hot seat student to say the word wins a point for their team.
Then change the students over, with a new member of each team taking their place in their team’s hot seat.
Then write the next word…

Source: straight from http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/language-assistant

Back to School! :)Part 1

General, Pictures, Speaking, , , ,

Here I am again!!!! Summer has slipped  by and I can hardly believe that I am about to start a new school year. This year I’ll be teaching in a different high school and yeeesss,  there are some butterflies in my stomach!! I don’t know the teachers , I don’t know the students… and they don’t know me. It’s hard to start all over again. This year I’ll be teaching lots of different levels (OMG!) mainly due to cutbacks so , sadly, I don’t think I’ll have much time to research new tools or create new materials .

Anyway, these are some of the pictures I’ll be using on the first day to try to make my new students relax and  have a healthy laugh and, then, there also follows some other pictures to get them into more serious thinking. My aim: to make students talk. Is there ever any other?

Warmers , Fillers and Coolers

Funny Stuff, Games, , , , , ,

Welcome back to my blog! How quickly time flies! Tomorrow I’ll be heading back  to the classroom and I’m sure you will be too.

On the first day, it is not always easy to get started. I’m never in the mood to start teaching straight away as some students have not bought their textbooks yet, you have some information to give, some forms to be filled ..etc, so I usually end up having less than half an hour to  get  them  into the right mood for learning. That’s why I am considering using some of these activities  from Online ESL Activities to help my students get rid of the dust accumulated during the summer holidays  and give their English some brushing up.

For elementary students:

3-6-9
This is a very popular Korean game. Students take turns to say numbers in order. The first student says, “1”, the second student says “2”, etc. Every time the digits 3, 6, or 9 appear, the student must clap once for each digit, not say the number.
So with the number “3”, the student must clap , not say “three!”. With the number “30”, the students must also clap once, and with the number “39” students must clap twice, because there are two instances of the digits 3, 6, and 9.
If a student says a wrong number, claps at the wrong time, or says a number instead of clapping, they are out. Last person in the game wins.

As a variation, you can also include other rules for different numbers. For example, with multiples of 5, eg. 5, 10, 15, 20, etc. students must shout “A-Ja!”.

Alphabet Tic-Tac-Toe
Draw a 3×3 grid on the board. In each square of the grid, write a letter. Put the students into 2-4 teams. Each team selects a square, and must think of ten words beginning with the letter in the sqaure. Give them a time limit, for example 1 minute. If they get 10 correct words, that team gets the square. The first with 3 in a row wins the game. With more teams use a 4×4 grid, teams have to get 3 or 4-in-a-row. Good for younger learners.

For intermediate classes:

Family Fortunes
Based on a popular British TV show. Put the students into two teams. The teacher should then think of a topic, and secretly write down 5 words connected with that topic. Teams take turns to guess the five words the teacher thought of.

For example, give the students the topic “Things you make spaghetti with”. Then jot down 5 connected words, eg. pasta, tomato, sauce, meat, herbs. The students in the first team take turns to guess the 5 words. If they guess them all correctly, they win. Otherwise the next team gets a chance. If both teams can’ t guess all 5 items, the team with the most correct guesses wins



Password
Split the class into teams. One student from each team comes to the front and faces away from the board. The teacher writes a word on the board. The teams must give definitions to the team member at the front of the class. The first student to guess the word wins a point for their team.
As a variation, students can also be given three words which they cannot use in their definitions. For example, to define the word “rabbit”, you could disallow the words “ears”, “jump” and “carrot”.

Scattegories
Write a few categories on the board, eg. clothing, food, country, etc. Put the students into teams. The teacher gives a letter to a team and the students have to think of a word (or several words) starting with the given letter for each category. For example, imagine a class is using the example categories above and the letter “s”. Correct answers would include “shirt”, “salad”, and “Spain”. If a team gives a word for each category in under a minute, they get a point. The team with the most points wins

 

Spelling Bee
A student must start by saying a letter, eg. “d”. The next student must say another letter, eg. “a”. This student should know a word that starts with “da”. The next student says another letter, eg. “t”, and this student must know of a word that starts with “dat”. The next student says another letter, and so on.
Students may add letters even if they can’t think of a word, but this is dangerous. Every student, on their turn, can challenge the previous student about their spelling. If the previous student knows a word that uses all the letters given, the challenging student is out. If the previous student does not know a word, then the challenged student is out. Game continues until there is just one student left.