February 12

Vocabulary Battleships

What do we do with emergent language?

At the end of every lesson, my teenagers write new vocab on slips of paper and put them into an envelope…but then I wanted to find ways of encouraging them to use and review the vocabulary.  So, yesterday I played “Vocabulary Battleships” with my students.  It’s easy to prepare, provides lots of communicative practice and is an engaging way to review vocabulary.

In preparation, you’ll need to provide two boards – A and B – with the vocabulary you want to focus on.  You can use some of the same vocabulary on both boards or make them completely different.  Then divide the class into As and Bs and instruct everyone to draw 6 ships on their board, keeping it a secret from their partner.

To play, A describes a word on B’s board, hoping there’s a battleship in that square; and vice versa.   I’m going to try it with my adult C1 group in the future as well as they enjoy review activities and we have an abundance of new language coming out of each lesson.Battleships

Category: Vocabulary Activities | 2 Comments on Vocabulary Battleships
March 12

One-Board Games…extra ideas

Thanks to everyone who came to my talk on Sunday.  Some of the materials are available here and below are the extra ideas which people shared during feedback…
 
* If you’re worried about class control (use of L1, students focussing on the game rather than the linguistic element), why not project the board and play in teams?
 
* You could use two dice and revise a specific grammar or vocab point for each number rolled (from 2 to 12)
 
* Students can create the material – they could think of ten questions each for homework.  Next lesson, correct the questions and divide the class into groups, giving each a different set of questions from their own.  Adds a personal element whilst practising question formation and answers
 
* Super-size your board!  Either draw the board out on the floor (using chalk or masking tape) or create a board on a big piece of fabric.  You could use human counters or objects which also help revise vocabulary…one day you could play with plastic fruit, another day with different toys or classroom objects
 
* Another idea is to have topics on the board or on cards and students have to speak for a set time on that topic
 
* Why not have forfeit squares?  If a student lands on a forfeit square and can’t answer the question correctly, they have to sit with their finger on their nose until their next turn (or something equally silly!)
 
* One problem with board games is time…some students rush through and have finished whilst others are still near the start.  Why don’t you make the board circular?  That way there’s no start or finish.  If students need to know who won, ask how many times they each went round the board
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March 3

One-Board Games

This term is great for professional development, with something happening every month.  In January, there was the TEFL del Sur  Swap Shop, last month was FECEI‘s annual event in Madrid and now I’m getting ready for TESOL-SPAIN‘s annual conference, which this year is being held in Sevilla.

My theme for this workshop is one-board games, as I’m a huge fan of reusing materials and adapting basic things to suit as many different ages, levels and activities as possible.  So my talk demonstrates 10 activities you can do using this board with any age or level – from VYLs to FCE students (and beyond).  Find out more about the activities here and download some of the sample activities from the Activities for your Classroom page.

 

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November 27

Phonetic WipeOut!

Going phonetically crazy at the most with a couple of my classes and here’s an idea for students to practise their pronunciation and vocabulary at the same time.

Tomorrow my B1 students are going to be looking at vocabulary to describe people.  I’m going to give them a lot of new vocabulary written on slips of paper and after dividing the language into lexical sets (appearance, positive and negative adjectives for personality), I’m going to put them into three groups and give each a lexical set to play for.  Then they’ll have to look at the Phonetic WipeOut board and correctly identify and pronounce a word for their group in order to win the square.  The first team to get their five words, wins.  There’s also a “red herring” square, child.

I’ve chosen phonemes which I know my students have problems with, as the activity is not only to familiarise them with the phonetic alphabet, but also to encourage them to use it in order to pronounce words correctly.

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November 14

4 corners or 2 ends

This post is inspired by an activity which my friend Steve O does with his students.  I’ve been doing the same type of activity in different ways with my class of nine-year-olds, who are full of energy and love an excuse to run around the classroom.

 

Phonetically

We’ve been working a lot with vowel phonemes so I’ll sometimes stick two or three phonemes up around the room and have students run to the sound of the word I say.  This is good for receptive skills, but doesn’t really encourage students to use the word, let alone chunks of language.

 

Topics

We’ve just finished the first unit and the topics covered were school subjects and time.  I wrote the two topic titles on pieces of paper and stuck them on the wall.  Then I started a sentence and students had to run to the correct topic, then repeat and complete the sentence.  Sentences included: I’m good at…, I get up at …, My favourite subject is…

Though I did this as a revision activity, it could work well to introduce students to structures, as they have to repeat and complete the sentence.

 

True/False

Another option (which I posted about recently!) is to make one end of the room true and the other false.  A student makes a statement and their classmates have to run to the end which is correct for them.  This works well as a five-minute filler.

Category: Miscellaneous | 1 Comment on 4 corners or 2 ends