Aim of the blog

The purpose of the blog is to post your favourite first day activities and pick up other ideas from other teachers on the blog. Hopefully, we can use this blog to keep on sharing ideas throughout the year.


Any good activities?

Any good activities?

martes, 30 de septiembre de 2008

from another direction...discussion?

Can I be boring and ask this to broaden out a bit? When you look at this from another direction, not all 15 min activities are equal. This is a bit of an e-mail correspondence I had with MarkMc that I hoped might lead to a brief open discussion at Friday's session, but maybe blogging it makes more sense....


I know you realise this already, but I've got to say it anyway. EFL introductory activities when performed by EFL teachers don't on their own convey so much about their function in the class with non-native speakers. They're usually just a laugh, or an embarrassment. The ice-breaker approach. But if you're going this way though, seriously, I would be interested to know what others think about how much in class preparation,for example, pre-teaching or revision should be done for introductory activities, if any? Do you need any special materials/props? What skills should they involve? Pair work/group/whole class? Are there possible pitfalls/types of activity to avoid, eg, do you start the class, before anything else, with the activity? do you wait for any stragglers to appear? Do you do all the admin side first, check the register, give out folders and guides? Do you do the classroom management, get Ss to put their names in front of them, find the best seating arrangement...?

1 comentario:

Anónimo dijo...

Perhaps a way to start a new class is with a grammar auction/10 incorrect sentences with errors based on new and old grammar they will encounter during the course (based on the course book content). This is a pair work activity as well as an introduction to the course, as you can then indicate what you will be covering and what they should already know. I did this last year and it worked although it did freak them out a little.