May
18
What was Shakespeare like as a boy?
I recently watched a fascinating talk by Sir Ken Robinson in which he asked a question which quite astounded me – What was Shakespeare like as a boy? It’s amazing because the fact is that we generally don’t think about such things, but questions like this can be a great resource in the classroom.
For example, the other week I was doing the causative with a group of teens and so to practise I found some pictures of celebrities they would know and asked them to think of what these people have done for them:
Miley Cyrus – “I’m so beautiful because I have my hair done by a professional everyday.”
Yao Ming – “My legs are so long, when I have them waxed it takes hours.”
Or with another group, we had read a text about what some celebrities did before they were famous, so I asked the class to invent some stories for other stars. We had Antonio Banderas bungee-jumping and Indiana Jones working as a missionary.Students love to use their imagination and activities like this provide great opportunities to practise specific grammar points or vocab without being tedious.