Tag Archives: personality

Tic Tac TALK with a Fun Twist

Today, I am sharing  with you an activity that’s as fun, as it is effective. Drumroll, please… introducing Tic Tac Talk with a Fun Twist!

Picture this: the traditional Tic Tac Toe grid is on the board and each square contains a conversation question related to the lesson or topic at hand; in my case, it was questions related to personal identity. If you pay attention to the picture  of my board, you will see another difference; instead of the traditional 9-square grid, I designed a 12-square grid. More questions. More talk. More fun.

Another difference? They play in teams. Two teams: Xs and Os. And everybody talks here.

 

How to go about it. Let’s pretend Os start.
  • Pair up students; let’s say Student A chooses O and Student B,  X. From now on, they will be called Os and Xs
  • Display the grid with the overhead projector. Less paper, more trees.
  • Ask a representative of Os to choose a square and read the question aloud.
  • Tell Os they have 90 seconds to talk to their buddy X answering the question. Encourage students to use target vocabulary. What do Xs do? They listen. Not for long. Soon, it will be their turn to speak.
  • Monitor the time and signal when the time’s up.
How  Os win the Square

  • The teacher chooses a random O as representative of their team. (a different one each time, of course)
  • To win the square containing the question they have just answered, this representative will have to speak for 45 seconds, trying to deliver a continuous articulate monologue without repeating himself. If they manage to do so, their team, ie, Os, will have their icon written on the square but if they make pauses, repeat information or talk nonsense then the teacher, will a lot of drama and an apologetic face, will not grant them the desired square.
Now, it is Xs’ turn.
Who wins?

The rules for the traditional Tic Tac Toe apply here, too.  Players take turns placing their “X” or “O”. The goal is to be the first to make a row of three of your marks, either vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. If all the boxes are filled up and no one has three in a row, it’s a tie. Needless to say, players can strategize to prevent the other players from getting three in a row, which adds to the fun.

How did I mark the Xs and the Os?

Remember that the grid is displayed on the board. I played the game with two different classes. In one of them, I had a digital board, so it was fun to draw the Os and Xs in different colours. In the other one, I used different coloured sticky notes. It was a colourful display and brightened up the whole board.

Here’s the grid with the questions I displayed in class

Tic Tac Talk by cristina.cabal

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Guess Who!

Good morning folks!! I hope you are having a great week!!! Me?? So far, I can’t complain!!

Here we go once again with an activity where you ‘ll need to use your writing abilities in a game . Have a look at the mosaic below; I guess you’ll recognise most of our celebrities but if you don’t , don’t hassle , for this game you’ll need to write about one of them .

TASK.

Aim: to describe both, physical  appearance and personality, of one of the celebritities in the mosaic  without mentioning their name.

Steps

♥ Choose one of the celebrities  and without mentioning who he/she is ,write a description of both physical appearance and personality.

♥ Don’t forget to use adverbs of degree  : quite, slightly, a bit, a little

♥ Show off, I guess you can see the difference between these two sentences: I think she is 70 years old  and I think she’s a 70-year-old woman. You are an Intermediate student, let the whole world know!

♥ Write a maximum of eight lines. See what other students have done here

♥You think you have finished? Right, you haven’t !! Now,  read what you have written several times to correct grammatical and spelling errors .

♥Now that you are confident everything is Ok, click on the “leave a comment” section and write your description.

♥In class, all descriptions will be read and the celebrities guessed. Enjoy! 😉