Hallowe'en

Does anyone have any good Hallowe'en activities? Or Guy Fawkes ones for that matter? Something apart from going to the pub with the class?

Play station 2

Here you have the students' instructions which you need to cut up and place at each "play station":

INSTRUCTIONS FOR TABOO…

Work with a partner.
In turns take a card from the pile.
You will be defining words to each other while a member of the other team makes sure that you aren’t using any of the “forbidden words” in your definition.
If your partner guesses the word at the top of the card, you keep the card, which will count as a point; if not, you will have to put the card back at the bottom of the pile.
Continue playing until your teacher says STOP.


INSTRUCTIONS FOR PICTIONARY…

In turns take a card from the pile.
On each card there is a word which you’ll be representing on a picture.
While you are drawing, all the rest of the group will have to guess what the right word is.
You CAN’T use gestures or make a noise, only DRAW!
The person who guesses the word on the card will keep it. Each card will count as a point.
Continue until your teacher says STOP.


INSTRUCTIONS FOR DO YOU?…

In turns take a card from the pile.
On each card there are two questions. Ask the first one to the whole group and, if there’s someone who gives a “Yes, I do” as an answer, ask him/her the second question.
You should try to ask some extra questions to your group, so that you keep the conversation going for at least a minute.
Continue until your teacher says STOP.


INSTRUCTIONS FOR TELL YOUR GROUP ABOUT....

1. There is a counter and a coin.
2. Put the counter on START.
3. The first player throws the coin.
4. If the coin lands on “heads” you move the counter 1 space, if it lands on
“tails” you move the counter two spaces.
5. You have to talk about the subject on the square for one minute.
6. The next player throws the coin and moves the counter forward.
7. Continue until you arrive at FINISH.



INSTRUCTIONS FOR TWENTY QUESTIONS…..

In turns take a card from the pile.
On each card there is a picture which represents a job.
The other players have to ask you YES/NO questions to find out what the job is. For example, you can ask: “Do you work in an office?”
You can ask a maximum of 20 questions.
4. Continue playing until your teacher says STOP.



INSTRUCTIONS FOR CROSSWORDS…..

Work with a partner.
Each pair has half of a crossword – A or B.
With your partner give clues to the other couple to help them fill in the words that are missing in their version of the crossword. For example, if you have the word “WEEK” in your crossword, you can say: “It’s a period of seven days.”
To refer to the squares, you should say “1 Across” or “1 Down” etc.

Play stations

PLAY STATIONS

This is an idea for the first day of class or just to have fun from time to time.
Students will play different games in small groups recycling vocab. and practising oral skills.

First of all you need to decide which games you want to use – below you have some suggestions and depending on the size of your group you’ll need to use more or less.

1) Taboo. Here you’ll need to prepare some cards with target words and 4 or 5 forbidden words. (There’s a template for this.)

2) Pictionary. Here you can use cards with words or sentences written on them. You’ll need to supply rough paper and a pencil.

3) 20 questions. I’ve used pictures of different jobs. Students have to ask a maximum of 20 yes/no questions to try and guess the job. You could also use famous people or objects.

4) Half crosswords. You’ll need two half crosswords for students to work in pairs to write clues to the words filled in on their half of the crossword. There are some of these in the English File Resource books.

5) Tell your group about… This is a board game which I think comes from one of the Reward resource books. You’ll need to supply one counter and a coin for students to throw as a dice.

6) Do you….? These are question cards which students use to take it in turns to ask each other personal questions – I think these came from English File intermediate resource book.


Setting up the class:
The idea is to set up “play stations” around the room – you’ll need to put the instructions and the items necessary for each game – in different corners / areas of the classroom.
The ideal number of students per group is 4, but this obviously depends on the size of your group.
Allot each group to a play station and tell them to read the instructions carefully – if they have any questions they can ask you for clarification and you’ll need to monitor to check that they are playing correctly! Give them about 8-10 minutes on the first activity. When the time’s up tell them to stop and move clockwise around the room to the next play station and continue the process until all play stations have been visited.

Students' instructions will follow in the next entry as they don't fit here! BTW there's no way of attaching word documents here is there?

We already know each other!!!

After working down at the port for 5 years it got a bit like; "We know you, you know us... so, let's not go through all this again." They had a point.

So, my objective in my first classes was always to get them to start speaking and thinking in English again after the long break. I also wanted to get to know them as students. I discovered this activity which can be used in the first lesson and periodically throughout the whole year.

This activity is called "four-line dialogue" and is suitable from level B upwards. It's an activity for students who know each other but it can be used with groups of students who don't know each other as well. It's a first day activity, but it can also be continued throughout the school year. I do this with my business groups every 2 or three weeks.

The activity is what it says - a dialogue with four lines for pairs of students (two lines for each student). If you have an odd number, which is always likely, it simply becomes a "six-line dialogue".

Materials: OHP (+OHT) or PC with projector (powerpoint)

Stage one: Tell the Ss that they are going to act out a dialogue and ask them to decide who is A and who is B. Explain that they are not going to carry it out in real time but in slow motion.

Stage two: Put the following dialogue on an OHT and cover it up.

4 line dialogues


You have come to a meeting. You don’t know anyone.



A. Make a comment about the room.

B. Respond. Then ask a question.


A. Reply. Then ask a question about this city.

B. Respond. Then make a comment or ask a question about another person.

Explain to them again that they are going to have a conversation in which they will each speak twice but the conversation will be in slow motion. They only do what you instruct them to do, i.e. they can’t respond to their partner until you tell them.

Stage three: Uncover the first line of the dialogue and ask A to follow the instructions. Tell B he can’t answer at the moment.

Stage four: Now, B can answer. Uncover the second line of the dialogue and ask B to follow the instructions. Tell A he can’t answer at the moment.

Stage five: Continue like this until all four lines of the dialogue have been covered.

Stage six: Now ask the students to repeat the same dialogue again in real time.

Stage seven: This activity can be adapted in many ways but I like to ask them to sit in pairs and write out the dialogue together. This gives me a chance to work with them and correct their English and try to get them to improve their dialogues (make it more formal, more informal, more appropriate for higher levels etc.)

Stage eight: Pairs perform their new improved dialogue for the class. This is motivating because they all want to hear what the others have done. They may want to keep it going for a few more lines.

My students find this activity useful for business small talk that they have to do at coffee breaks, dinners and pubs. Possible topics could be: family, sport, prices, leisure activities etc.


Here’s another one:

You are at a party. Your friend has left you alone. There is someone next to you who is also alone.

A. Make a comment about the party to open the conversation.

B. Respond. Then ask a question.


A. Reply. Then ask a question to try to find something in common with your new friend.

B. Respond. Make an excuse to leave the conversation.

Grammar Auction

This was posted by Pascal as a comment on my request for a discussion based section for the (very good) Activities session today (3/10/08). Last year's session included a group materials evaluation that just happens to be a type of activity I prefer. It's one thing to know that an activity is good - it's another to know how to be sure it's right for your students! Just a bee I have in my bonnet.

Anyway, I think it should really be posted as a distinct activity. Normally I do a grammar auction at almost all levels at some point in each course. Pascal outlines below it's value as an activity early in the course. Also good for exam revision.

This was the comment-

Pascal Shaw 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.

I'll certainly be using this or a version of it, but if you're unsure exactly what a grammar auction is or want more info on how best to present it, Pascal's the one to contact.

The Rizla Game (a prehistoric EFL activity)

Rizla/post-it Game

So-called because the original activities were supposedly the brainchild of a poverty-stricken-EFL teacher whose only resources were a pen and a packet of cigarette papers. The cigarette papers later being supplanted by post-its as economic conditions improved.

If you have a class who already know one another so well that normal getting-to-know you activities are worthless, but you are in a position where you want to revise associated grammar and vocabulary, you might try this-

You devise a list of the names of people so famous that you might reasonalbly expect everyone in the class to recognise them and know something about them. The only/biggest limitation here is bad taste. They can be dead or alive, real or fictional, and they don't have to be Anglocentric. It's normally a better/happier activity if the personalities you choose are uncontroversial characters the students are happy to associate themselves with. So be careful with the Hitlers, Stalins, Beckhams, Gibsons, Bizbals...etc, unless you have good reasons. On the other hand fictional villains, Darth Vader for example, sometimes go down well.

The biggest rule is that for the duration of the activity NOBODY IS ALLOWED TO MENTION ANY OF THE NAMES BEING USED!

The teacher writes one name very clearly on each Rizla/post-it. @@@@
Students form a line in front of the teacher, who places a post-it on each student's forehead so that no-one knows the name on their own forehead but can clearly see the other names. The obvious next step is that the students try to discover who they are, but you might want to avoid this because sometimes they just try to guess and the game never takes off. The best variation I know is that the students have to find out how much their colleagues know about their new identity. But information is only to be given in response to a direct question and they can only ask one question per student at a time, but if a particular student seems to know a lot about their new personality they can return to that student again and again, as long as they intersperse their questions with questions to at least one other student. i.e. they can't ask the same student consecutive questions. And the question “Who am I?” and any variations are not to be used.

A quick demonstration usually gets the idea across clearly – the Teacher puts a post-it on their own forehead then asks a series of questions. To an extent it doesn't matter if the questions are open or closed. The demonstration should be done at the @@@@ point above using models like:
Am I dead (or alive)?
Am/Was I European/African/ Asian...etc.?
Am/Was I a politician/actor/author...?

or

Where am/was I from?
What do/did I do?...

Duration of the activity is flexible. Students may or may not be allowed to write things down. Students are not allowed to guess their identity until they've gathered as much information as possible within the time limit and if you are using the activity for language purposes they should present the information first before making a guess.

-I was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1929.
-I moved to another country with my family in 1933.
-I lived for years in a very crowded house.
-I was very young when I died.
-I only became famous years after my death.
-I became famousfor a book I wrote.
-My name is...

Otherwise the teacher might wind up the activity just by finding out which personality was best/least known, how many questions did it take for each student to identify themselves, general feedback. For language purposes – Pre-Int to Upper -Int. Can be used with higher level classes just for fun.

VARIATION.
A common variation of this is used to practice/consolidate adverbs/adverbials of manner.
Students write a generic introductory piece. My name is .... I'm from ..... I'm a .... I'm .... years old. My hobbies are... I have a pet dog/cat/mouse/lion/donkey ... My favourite film is ...
The teacher puts post-it with adverb/adverbial of manner one each student's forehead, each different of course. There's a limited choice realistically, but a common list would include something like-

HAPPILY/SADLY/IN A HIGH VOICE/IN A DEEP VOICE/QUICKLY/SLOWLY/IN AN AMERICAN ACCENT/LIKE A FOOTBALL COMMENTATOR/LIKE AN ENGLISH TEACHER/RELUCTANTLY/AGGRESSIVELY/SHYLY/SLEEPILY/NERVOUSLY/HESITANTLY/LIKE A ROCK STAR/LIKE A POLICEMAN/LIKE A GANGSTER...

Students mingle – they must talk to every other student- and they deliver their introduction in the manner of the adverb(ial) they read on their fellow student's post-it. At the end of the activity Ss must guess what is written on their post-it/forehead.

Mostly a fun activity but though very simple and straightforward usually better with Upper-Int upwards. Apart from vocab it's good for reinforcing just what “manner” means, as opposed to other types of adverbial.

To do them or not to do them...that's the question!

I've always found it difficult to come up with great ideas for first-day activities, especially the getting-to-know-each-other ones...! But it's been actually after my July08 students' "oh-no-here-we-go-again faces" that I've finally realised how boring or monotonous this kind of activity can get for them...! This is why from now on I think that I'm going to try to avoid using ask-each-other-questions activities on the very first day.

As Elaine has already said, this year here at Tourism we've sort of innovated a bit by using several "play stations" in the classroom, and it's worked out to be a very successful first-day activity. Some of the games were aimed at revising vocabulary and some others at getting to know each other (but it wasn't explicitly said...!).
This is the sort of thing I'll carry on doing, combined with some of the activities that you've suggested in this blog. I might try out Mark's video next time...!

First day fun

Teaching young adults at Tourism has given me a different slant on first-day activities. Firstly, the first day of English for our first year students can be a daunting experience for some - their first day at uni. and speaking in English! What we decided to do this year is divide our group (about 25 students) into sub-groups of 5-6 students. We had prepared different fun activities for each group to do: taboo, pictionary, half-crosswords, question cue cards, "tell me about you" boardgames etc. The activities were placed on different desks in the classroom and each group had about 5 minutes on each activity. When the teacher shouts "change" they move on to the next activity (which we could call "play stations"!). We've found that this type of activity really motivates students, they speak freely and enjoy themselves. This get them in a good frame of mind for continuing the course and not playing truant in future classes!

First day activity - new level A1.2 (ex A2) or new A2 (ex B1)

Here's an activity to start your class with. It doesn't require material, is easy to set and normally enjoyable for both students and teacher.

All you need to prepare is a list of leisure or daily activities (smoke, watch tv in the morning, sing in the shower, play sport, etc ... serious and more informal stuff). the number of items is up to you (15 is enough).

Have students stand in a group in the center of the classroom. Tell them they have to listen to you carefully and observe their mates' position in the class.
Then say "those who play sport, stand here, and those who don't, stand over there" (showing different spots in the room) or "people who smoke, you stand by the door, and people who don't, stand by the window" etc ... Students have to go from one spot to the other, according to what they do or don't, until you've enumerated all the activities in your list. Students don't have to say anything but they need to observe the rest of the class.
When the activity's over, have them sit down in pairs or in groups of three, and the language part can start: they have to remember what their partner does or doesn't ("so, you listen to the radio in the morning but you don't smoke and I think you ...). After this, you can ask them to talk about another student from another group (Antonio, he smokes and he listens ... but he doesn´t ... ). A good way of revising questions and negative statements with present simple, vocabulary and getting to know your classmates. Plus they have to move around the classroom and work in pairs, so it's also a way of showing how you're going to work during the course.
You might want to have a quick revision of present simple (+, - and ?) before starting the activity to make sure students use it correctly and write the verbs you're going to use to make sure they understand them all and remember vocabulary for the second part of the activity.
This activity lasts about half an hour (depending on your students ...).