The purpose of this blog is to host a compilation of different texts and activities which can be used for an EFL class, as well as general resources. During the following weeks I'll post regularly different resources learnt at uni as well as other things I’ve seen as a student or within less formal environments, and hopefully I’ll do it both in Spanish and in English. In addition there will be useful links to other blogs and compilations.
This
is a good pre/post-activity that can be easily adapted to nearly any story you
can think of. First of all, you have to divide your class in groups, 2
to 4 depending on the amount of pupils and the way you normally work
with your group. Here you have some tips for that. Once
it is done, choose a phrase which has something to do with the story,
e.g. "Goldilocks was very hungry and she walked into the kitchen". Tell
the phrase to the first person of each group so they can whisper it to
the next. The last student has to say it aloud. If he or she is right,
they would have won the round. After every round, the students who had
received the phrase from the teacher will have to go to the back of
their group, ensuring a proper rotation.
Its
main advantage is that, besides being an amusing game enjoyed both by
children and adults, it can be adapted to any level and background and
therefore it should be challenging and motivating without being
frustrating.
Tongue twisters are another excellent activity to for a lively English class. They are an enjoyable way of improving phonetic awareness while having fun. This was the very first activity I created for this class based on the fairly well known tongue twister: She sells seashells on/by/at the seashore.
Firstly, we started forming a train and imitating its sound using the sounds we produce in English for S and SH. S-SH-SH-SH-SH S-SH-SH-SH-SH S-SH-SH-SH-SH S-SH-SH-SH-SH S-SH-SH-SH-SH
Once we gain familiarity with the sound we change to a different pattern, that of the tongue twister itself
SH-S-S-SH-S-SH SH-S-S-SH-S-SH SH-S-S-SH-S-SH SH-S-S-SH-S-SH.
After playing for a while with the sequence we are ready to attempt the tongue twister.
The following pictures can be used if we want to paint a few shells as a post-activity.
As a general consideration when using tongue twisters, we must try to make them challenging, but not frustrating. For instance, in the picture you have an extended version which is slightly more difficult and can be used once the children domain the previous one.
An example of progressive level in a tongue twister: Easy
Three Swedish witches
watch three Swiss watches.
Which Swedish witch
watch which Swiss watch?
Medium
Three Swedish switched witches
watch three Swiss Swatch watches.
Which Swedish switched witch
watch which Swiss Swatch watch?
Hard
Three Swedish switched witches
watch three Swiss Swatch watch switches
Which Swedish switched witch
watch which Swiss Swatch watch switch?
And as a final thought: is this or or is this not a much nicer way of learning English phonetics?
Quite often we are able to use special days,
celebrations, the change of the season, etc. as a topic to link a sequence of
activities. The fact that we are talking about something that is happening here
and now makes it motivating and relevant to the children.
In our class we did several activities related to autumn such as:
Autumn rhymes
Autumn acrostic
poems
I must say I've never particularly enjoy this kind of activity. I find them as boring as I did as a child. However, there are several authors, such as Gianni Rodari, that recommend this kind of activity to promote creativity. This is a selection of what was written in class.
This kind of elements help you to create expectation. Use them for introduction and motivation and use them to link with the next activity by means of lighting them and asking for a spell.
You can create other elements to provide background such as magic potions (with soda powder, vinegar, a bit of soap and cupcakes colourant) which as you will see later on in the video can be used for amazing tricks that can be related with your science class.
2-Writing spells
Children have to write their
spells and hung them on a Poplet wall, for example:
Frog leg and owl feathers or
Wolf fang and skin of snakes
Cast a spell over this `potion
That will charm you anyway.
Later on you can put them all together like we did here.
3-Reading the spells aloud around the candles
while we watch the potions.
This is a good way to work things as stress, rhythm and other phonetic aspects of the language while doing something fun. The teacher might start reading aloud so the children are presented with a quality input to replicate and later on different groups or individual students will recite their own spells as well as their mates.
At the same time this works really well as a context for the following activities.
4- We finish up with the first chapter of Meg and Mog which is available as a normal video or with
texts to read.
There are many pre and post activities related to Meg and Mog available. Here it is what we prepared for the 4th grade children of La Salle.
MEG AND MOG
ØActivity
1: Brainstorming.
What do you know about witches?
1.We
ask the children to say aloud words that they know about witches.
2.We
draw a table on the blackboard and we organize the words in groups.
WITCH’S THINGS
WITCH’S PETS
WITCH’S BODY
WITCH’S CLOTHES
Cauldron
Frog
Wart
Hat
Broom
bat
3.We
teach them to build a mind map with it by using a popplet.
We show the children the following flashcards and we ask them questions
about them.
JESS
TESS
CRESS
OWL
BESS
MEG
CAT
~What is this? Is
it an animal? Is it a witch?
~Is it a cat? Is
it an owl?
~Is she Jess,
Tess, Cress, Bess or Meg?
~Has she got a
frog? Has she got a spider? Has she got…?
Activity 3: Guess who.
1.With
the questions we organize a ‘Guess who’ game in groups with the information
about the witches. It has the only purpose of teaching them how to play. To do
that we ask one group to leave the class. We choose one of the flashcards. When
the pupils come back into the class they have to make questions to guess the
flashcard that we are talking about.
2.Once
they’ve learned how to play we start a new game using new questions and with
the pupils in the class
In a circle,
each student will have to say what she/ he is going to put in into the
cauldron.
‘As I’ve been
invited to this cauldron party, I’ve brought this_____ in case we get hungry
hahaha’ (flashcards with strange animals)
Activity 6: Role play.
There is a witch
in the village and she’s putting spells on the village people. We need to catch
the witch together before she puts everybody under her spell.
Characters: A director (the teacher), a witch and the rest are
the villagers.
Rules of
the game: We sit on a
circle and we deal a card to each player, one of the cards is the witch and the
rest are the villagers.
This is an amazing dynamic to practice
conversation. It allows children to speak to each other, as they have to decide
who the witch is in order to try and execute it.
Some of the structures they can practise
are:
‘I think that she is the witch because’... ‘She
spoke first’... ‘she didn’t speak...
‘She is the witch because’... ‘she moved’... ‘she
is silent’..
Once everyone has their card the
director (or teacher) will ask everybody to go to sleep, so everyone will look
down. Subsequently, the director will call the witch to wake up, put a spell on
a villager (by means of pointing or looking to its victim), and get back to
sleep. Then the villagers will wake up and the director will inform the victim
of his or her condition. Immediately after, people will speak against each
other for a few minutes- For instance Pedro may say: ‘I think that Manolo is
the witch because I saw him moving a little when the witch was cursing’. And
Pedro might reply: ‘I think the wolf is Pedro because he accused me first’.
After a while there will be a poll. Whoever is voted witch will be executed
(loses the game), and therefore will turn his or her card facing up. If it is
the witch (the real one,) the round is over and we shall assign new roles. If
the person chosen is a villager, the whole process will start again.
We can adapt the background of the
dynamic to whatever text we are working with. The characters could be animals,
villagers, courtier, or whatever suits us; in the same manner the witch could
be any antagonist that appears in our story.
And this is the video of what we finally did.
Many of my classmates did their activities base on Meg and Mog for different grades within the same school. Here there are a few videos on what they did.
I particularly like the one my mates did for nursery school children because despite having too far too many children for the activity they are performing, they successfully maintain their attention at all times while they manage to make them say the names of many ingredients.
On the other hand I must say I didn't like that much the final activity they did based on this one as I did not really grasped what the whole point was, besides making a brownie. In this sense, I have observed that too often (not this particular group, I'm talking in general) the input that we are offering the children is wrong (e.g. talking about a cooking receipt instead of a recipe) and that makes me wonder what is the use then. I mean that I might be doing and amusing activity in which the children are going to relate certain concepts with its representation in English verbal language through and input that we are providing. But if the input is not correct, the children are learning something wrong and we might be creating problems for the future.
Among other ICT resources, we have been using glogster. This is a really interesting tool which allows you to create interactive posters. In this case our aim was to introduce The Beatles to the children and hopefully have them singing along with their families later on at home. As a pre-activity we have created this introductory play in which the musicians and their story are told.
The Beatles
(primer ciclo EPO)
John is sixteen years old and he loves music. He goes to Quarry Bank High School every morning and listens to music in the evening.
Paul is fifteen years old and he loves music too. In the morning, he goes to Quarry Bank High School too.
One day, John starts playing music with his classmates, because they love music too. They start a band. Do you know what the name of the band is? Its name is the quarrymen because they all go to Quarry Bank High School and they are men.
One day, John goes to a party after school and Paul goes there too.
The Beatles
(primer ciclo EPO)
John is sixteen years old and he loves music. He goes
to Quarry Bank High School
every morning and listens to music in the evening.
Paul is fifteen years old and he loves music too. In the morning, he goes to Quarry Bank High School too.
One day, John starts
playing music with his classmates,
because they love music too. They
start a band. Do you know what the
name of the band is? Its name is the
quarrymen because they all go to Quarry Bank High School and they are men.
One day, John goes to a
party after school and Paul goes there too.
John
says: Hello, my name is John, John Lennon. I love music and I have a band: the
quarrymen.
Paul says: nice to meet you, John. My name is
Paul, Paul McCartney and I love music too. Can I be on your band? I love
playing the guitar.
John
says: Of course you can be on my band! Welcome to my band!!
Ringo and George love
music too. Ringo loves playing drums
and George loves playing the guitar, but they don’t know John and Paul.
One day, they start a new
bandtogether. The name of the new band is the beatles (explicar juego de palabras: sounds like beetles but you spell it like beat).
Do you know what the beat
is? The beat is what you do when you clap your hands for a song.
In the new band, John
plays the guitar and George plays the guitar too. Ringo plays the drums and
Paul plays the bass.
Do you know what a bass
is?
The bass is a big guitar
with four strings that plays the rhythm of the song (pictures of guitar and
bass).
And, do you know who
sings in the band? Well, they all sing because they all like singing.
Do you want to listen to one
of their songs? No? Nevermind, you’re gonna do it anyway!!!
(just kidding) Let’s see
the wonderful poster we have for you!!! Later on we will explore the different features of our poster and we will sing altogether!!
As you can see, we have use the song Hello, goodbye to work the concept of opposite. However, its importance within the whole activity is really small and our main aim is to have our pupils singing and enjoying a real text.
In addition we can ask our students to create a Glogster about a story or a topic that we have been working on.
We used this technique as a way of forming groups during the 09/09
class. The way we did it was by picking the colour of sheet that we
wanted to make our name posters. Later on we formed groups according
to the chosen colours. It is an interesting technique, specially for
very young children, however, I think it might present a few problems
and disadvantages: First and foremost, the groups are likely to lack
balance (e.g. too many children choose red and nearly any of them
brown); secondly, in case we give an equal number of sheets (or
tokens, or balloons, or whatever) there might be problems because two
or more of them want to pick the same one; finally, children learn
very fast how does it work, so in subsequent occasions they might
choose the colour thinking of who they want to team up with and
discourages the socialization of the group as a whole. On the other
hand, it is still and interesting technique as long as we use it with
young children and we embed it within a different activity (for
instance taking a token from the magic bag when the main character of
the story is receiving something), using it to create atmosphere.
Picking the colour blindly might be a good idea, specially once they
know it might be use to create the groups.
It is a good dynamic that my English teacher usually
uses with new students, specially those who come for conversational
classes. It provides with a topic that can be used for an hour or
even longer, both in one-to-one classes and small groups. It has all
the advantages of other first week/first contacts techniques as it provides the teacher with a valuable information on his or her students interests. In addition, it is very easy to adapt it to different ages and levels.
How does it work: Ask each student to think of the three films, books and records that they will be carrying with them in the event of going to a desert island. For advanced students it will offer you a framework for conversation (either one-to-one with the teacher or working in pairs). If you have a beginners class it is a good chance to practice real communication in pairs. Just adapt the amount of information they have to transfer to their level and provide them with a little scaffolding for the beginning.
