Tag Archives: writing

Some nice activities to practise Reported Speech

Games, Lesson Plan: Intermediate, Lesson Plan: Pre-Intermediate, , , , , ,

I love teaching reported speech. I don’t know if students can feel when a teacher enjoys teaching something though I have the impression that somehow it shows. Here are some ideas to get my students “love” (well, maybe I’m getting a bit carried away) reported speech. Hopefully, some of them will do the trick.

♥Video: How to tell  if your boyfriend is a slob from the British Council

How to tell if your boyfrid is a slob

This video is great to practise statements, questions, orders and suggestions!

Setting the context: tell students they have had a big argument with their boyfriend or girlfriend and they are going to meet their closest friend to tell them all about it. Divide the class into “girls” and “boys” and ask each group to focus on what the girl or the boy says in the video. Ask them to write down as much as they can using the exact words said in the video. Working together within their groups, they’ll need to report in as much detail as possible the conversation to their closest friend (the teacher).

For weaker students I would  do the whole lesson plan as presented by the British Council. Click here

♥ Song: My name is Luka by Suzanne Vega. A song about child abuse. It tells the story of a frightened boy who is forbidden to talk about what he’s going through.

The idea is the same as above. I´ll let the students do all the work (we, teachers, need a break from time to time, don’t we?). The song is quite easy to understand and though they might not pick up everything, they will still be able to come up with some good reported statements. The idea is:

  • Students listen to the song once and write down whole sentences. (ex. My name is Luka, I live on the second floor…)
  • Students in pairs share with their partners.
  • Students listen a second time and pair again one last time.
  • Correct using the video+lyrics and ask students as a class to report the sentences one by one. (For ex. He said his name was Luka)

 

 

♥ Gossiping about the teacher (from Begem Tonyali -original post here)

Students think about 10 things they want to know about their teacher and ask the questions, which are written on the board. The class is divided into 2 groups. The first group leave the class and wait outside. The first group members take turns in asking the teacher the questions and write down the answers. Now, they leave and the second group does the same thing. However, what they do not know is that the teacher is honest and gives correct answers to only one group, but lies to the other. It’s a good idea not to tell them beforehand. Then, students pair off as 1st and 2nd group partners. The activity goes like this and one of the students tells his partner “I asked the teacher how old she was and she told me she was 16.” Then the other partner goes “I asked the same question, but she told me she was 36.” etc…until all the questions are reported. Here they have to pay attention to the usage of the reporting verbs and have fun in finding which group the teacher lied to.

♥ A funny idea from A Journey in TEFL. Kids will adore me! 😉

Preparation: before the game, students have been taught the following reporting verbs: ask, tell, warn, advise, suggest and offer.
Students are given some scrap paper and asked to write a yes/no question, a Wh-question, a request, a warning, a suggestion, a piece of advice and an offer .

When they finish, they are asked to make balls from the papers. And the fun begins….Time to play snowballs!! Allow them to play snowballs for some time and play some music. Tell them they can play snowball for as long as there is music. Stop the music and ask students to open the ball of paper and report the things written on it. Remember, the bigger the ball, the easier it will be to catch it! You don’t want to be looking for missing balls!

♥ Indirect into Direct Speech Cards.

Not so funny, maybe, but still worth doing! Students love competitions- me too, if you want to know the truth- so I’m planning to disguise this exercise as a competition with the students  getting the card and scoring points for each correct answer. Now, this activity requires some preparation on my part, namely writing on one side of a card reported speech and, on the other side, direct speech of the same sentence. I’m planning to include statements, questions, commands, suggestions, offers…etc. Show the students the reported speech side of the card. The student who guesses the direct speech sentence, gets the card and the point.

Have a nice week!

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Nice stuff to use for evaluating compulsory reading

Reading, Writing, ,

I am a bookworm and have been so for a long, long time. Not a single day in my life goes by without reading. I like to discover my own books. I don’t want to be talked about endlessly about how good a book is, I’ll for sure end up not reading it ( this has just happened to me with the Grey’s series).  I like books that lure me in immediately.  Books that enable me to forget I have to cook my children’s dinner. Books I can’t put down. Books that even when I turn over the last page, its characters stay with me for a while, characters that have lunch with me and make me wish they had been real.

I feel that everyone has to choose their own books. That’s maybe why I keep putting off asking my students to read their compulsory reading books, normally adaptations from the classics which never come up to anybody’s expectations. I’d rather go to the school library with my students and ask them to select a book of their liking.

This term I have decided to use these cards to work with their compulsory readings. If you go through them, you’ll realize that most of the cards encourage creative thinking or reading with a purpose.  I don’t know who created them as I found them on Pinterest and the link leads to a google docs account with no name. So, I apologize for not giving you credit if you are the owner and I thank you for this wonderful material.

Writing lesson: Stretching a Sentence and the Verb Shaker

Games, Vocabulary, Vocabulary Games, Writing, Writing skill, , , , , , , ,

Writing is probably one of the most difficult tasks students have to tackle but it is also true that we never dedicate enough time to improving this skill; there never seems to be enough time during lessons. Added to this is the fact that we are not used to writing in our own language, let alone in a foreign one. Therefore, what we normally get from our students are short sentences which usually fall short of our expectations.
In this session I have used two activities, slightly modified, from two different blogs; Stretching a Sentence (original source here) and the Verb Shaker (original post here )

♥STETCHING A SENTENCE
I have created a PPT presentation (see below) to heighten the idea of a telescopic sentence.
The main idea is starting with a verb or a noun and stretching the sentence by giving the students some hints in the form of questions (who, when, where, what, why). In the end, they easily and effortlessly come up with a sentence that has some consistency and that I hope will help  them get rid of their fear of writing. This exercise does not focus on complex sentences as it is aimed at elementary and pre-intermediate students. It might also be necessary to point out that previous to this exercise, we have worked on the order of adjectives before the noun (basically Opinion+Size+Age+Colour) so you can imagine how colourful their sentences were.

♥VERB SHAKER

This funny idea came form the wonderful blog Crazy Speech World and though dyeing the rice and laminating the cards is an awesome idea I have to confess that I don’t have the time, so my students will have to make up do with just the box and the paper cards.
My idea is using this game with elementary and pre-intermediate students. I have written the verbs in two different colours:  in green, the easiest verbs to use in a sentence  and in blue, verbs which could be a bit more difficult to use. Using two colours, they can be easily separated. I have also included some blank cards in the box.

The game: one student picks up a verb (eyes closed) from the box and students, in pairs, have about 90 seconds to write a sentence including the verb. The longer the sentence, the more possibilities they have of getting the point, which will be awarded to the pair with the best sentence. (Remind students of the Who, What, When, Where, Why from the previous exercise). If a student draws a blank card, he can choose the verb he fancies.

To make things easier for me, I’ll provide them with slips of paper  to write their sentence so that when the time’s up they can raise it up and I can have a quick check. Sentences with mistakes will be automatically discarded and the remaining sentences will be read aloud and voted. The pair with the best sentence gets the point.

Edited: Intermediate 1 and Intermediate 2 verbs

To Dream or Not to Dream…

Students' Corner,

Unfortunately , it is not very often that I get students to contribute to the blog with an article , but this does not apply to Patrick M. Hyyryläinen , who I didn’t have to ask twice and readily accepted the challenge. Sorry it took me so long to publish and many thanks!

Now , aren’t you dying to read his story? It starts right below

I was sitting in the train.
It was like any other day; I took the train to school at 5:45 AM.
The winter had started and it was completely dark outside.
The trip takes 55 minutes. I decided to spend the time usefully so I took a nap.
Suddenly I woke up because my phone was ringing. I answered it and it was my mother. She told me that I needed to run, as fast as I could, and then she hung up.
I was stunned, of course, because my mom had sounded like she was trying to get away from something, but also because it happened so fast, I didn’t even have a chance to ask her what had happened before she hung up.
I was trying to figure out what had made my mother so afraid, when I noticed that a man was looking at me from the other side of the train. I could see that he was talking to a device that looked like the ones secret agents use in films.
Then it came to me like a lightning from a blue sky, that it could be why my mother was so afraid; perhaps the government had found out some dark secret about my mother or our family, and now they were catching us, one by one.
That last part made me realize a very important thing, I was a part of that family, so if my theory was correct, then they will be trying to catch me as well. I had to think fast so I pulled the emergency break in the train and as soon as the train began to stop, I got up from my seat Continue reading To Dream or Not to Dream… →