LESSON BREAK ACTIVITIES - LANGUAGE
CONTENTS
Making Faces
Early Stage 1 & Stage 1 ……………………………………………………………1
Sorry I’m late but…
Stage 1 & 2 ………………………………………………………………………….2
Enhancing News Time
All Stages ……………………………………………………………………………3
Getting to Know You
Stage 2 ………………………………………………………………………………4
Story Challenge
Stage 3 ………………………………………………………………………………5
What if…?
Stage 2 & 3 ………………………………………………………………………….6
What am I?
Early Stage 1 & Stage 1 ……………………………………………………………7
Opposites
Stage 2 ……………………………………………………………………………….8
Tiggy
Stage 1 & 2 ………………………………………………………………………….9
Whose name has..?
Early Stage 1 & Stage 1 ………………………………………………………….10
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
MAKING FACES
EARLY STAGE 1 & STAGE 1
GOALS
Students will:
 Brainstorm descriptive vocabulary
 Respond through drawing specific descriptions of facial features
 Use descriptive phrases
 Follow instructions
 Use metaphors
 Develop active listening skills
Activity 1
Brainstorm descriptive vocabulary. For example ‘Sam has short red hair. Kelly
has straight brown hair. Elliott has curly blonde hair. Sara has pierced ears.’
Prepare the children for a drawing task by highlighting descriptive language.
Select five students who have some features in common, such as hair or eye
colour, and give an accurate description of one of them. The class identifies
the student from the description. Alternatively, use magazine pictures or
books, and ask the students to take turns giving accurate physical
descriptions of the people in the picture.
Activity 2
Ask students to draw a large oval shape on their page. Model accurate
descriptions so that the class can draw a distinctive face. For example spiky
hair, round eyes, puffy or thin lips, wrinkled forehead, pimply nose, bushy
eyebrows, bald head, moustache, dreadlocks, round glasses.
Compare and discuss class results.
Students can also take turns providing the information for this activity.
Activity 3
Use metaphorical language to the features of a face. The students must listen
to the description you give and draw these features to complete the face on
their sheet. Lead a discussion around the characters that the students have
created. For example ‘What kind of person have you created? What makes
you think so? Can we interpret feelings from these facial features?’
Some suggested similes:
Pointy like a spear, long like Pinnocchio
Puffy like a balloon, red like apples
Floppy like Dumbo, like a pixie
Thick like a forest, bushy like a shrub
Small and round like buttons
Heart shaped, wide open like a cave
Like pearls, sharp like a knife
NOSE
CHEEKS
EARS
EYEBROWS
EYES
LIPS
TEETH
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
-1SORRY I’M LATE BUT….
STAGE 1 & 2
GOALS
Students will learn how to:
 Formulate their excuse/reason based on a given stimulus word
 Express concepts of time and consequence of behaviour
 Maintain appropriate verb tenses
Give each student or a group of students a stimulus word which must be used
as the bases of an excuse for being late for school. Words which express time
and consequence should be highlighted to the students as these help them to
express the causal relationship between events (so, because, and then, after,
when, but, etc). A students response may be reality of fantasy based.
For example: ‘I’m sorry I’m late but I’ve just got a pet elephant for my birthday
and after I’d taken him for a walk, he drank lots of water and sprayed it all
over my school clothes, so I had to go back and change my clothes.’
Suggestions for stimulus words:
Socks
Ambulance
Keys
Band-aids
Monster
Dog
Lunch
Brother
Milk
Car
Telephone
Party
Visitors
Dream
Dad
Money
Shoe
Alarm
Homework
House
Witch
Grandma
Extension of the activity:
 Once the children have given their excuses orally they could use their
excuse as the basis for writing a recount of the event
 Ask specific children to provide an explanation of why the character in
a book behaved in a certain way
 Brainstorm with the class reasons/excuses for not doing your
homework, forgetting to bring your lunch, not having a tidy bedroom
and so on. Ask the children to decide if the excuse is acceptable? Why
or why not?
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
-2ENHANCING NEWS TIME
STAGE 1,2 & 3
GOALS
In these activities children learn to:
 Provide news reports about their own personal activities
 Sequence ideas into speech
 Adjust speech rate, volume and information for presentation to an
audience
News time or show and tell is a very important it is still one of the few
opportunities for children to have an extended turn in oral language rather
than the short exchanges typical of conversation and question and answer
routines.
Following are some variations you can use at news time:
 Partner news or group news, allows more children to present their
news. On occasions, when time permits, the small groups could
choose one person from their group to present the news to the whole
class.

The teacher can direct the news time by asking for news according to
different criteria for example, Who has some news on something that
happened on Saturday…? Other subject choices could be wet, early in
the morning, lost, excitement, sad, loud noises.

At the end of each week ask one class member to recap his or her
news of the classroom for the week. Students may comment on class
themes, special activities or visitors, excursions or unexpected
happenings that were important to them during their school week.

Select a child to give a class report at school assembly.

Use a show and tell plan which helps children understand the four
stages of the show and tell genre (see appendix)

Stimulate discussion around news time by using who, what, where
questions regarding the news item presented.
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
-3GETTING TO KNOW YOU
Stage 2
GOALS
This activity helps children to:
 Ask questions and obtain information from another person
 Recall information heard
 Summarise and present information to the class
 Practice the formal language of introductions
Each student is paired with another student who is not their friend. Instruct
them that it will be their job to find out about their partner by asking
appropriate questions. Spend a little time discussing which types of questions
will lead to interesting information.
Each student will be asked to draw a picture of the person they are
interviewing and write down five important things about them. These notes are
then helpful for the students as a reminder when they ‘introduce’ their partner
to the class.
Ideas for questions:
 What do you want to be when you grow up?
 How many brothers and sisters do you have?
 When is your birthday?
 Do you play any sports?
 Have you ever been on television?
 What is your favourite food?
 Can you do something nobody else can do?
 If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go?
Example:
Good morning everybody, I’d like to introduce you to Molly Smith. Molly is 6
years old and has two brothers Jake and Sam. Molly also has a pet dog called
Rex. Molly likes to collect shells and wants to be a Scientist when she grows
up.
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
-4STORY CHALLENGE
Stage 3
GOALS
In this activity students will:
 Be introduced to a simple story framework
 Create a simple story sequence
 Build awareness of sentence structure
 Understand a model of imaginative story making
Students are placed in groups of 4-5, they are given one word from the
following categories setting, character and a problem. Each group is asked to
make up a short story including their three words. In a clockwise direction
each group passes on their story to the next group, this group must then add
to the story with their three words. Get the students to give a title to the final
story and ask one person from each group to read aloud the final story to the
class.
Ideas for settings:
 A cold windy day at the beach
 A rocket trip to the moon
 In my stomach
 Up a tree
 In the outback
 Inside the fridge
Ideas for characters:
 A little mouse
 A naughty little girl
 A bird that talks
 An astronaut
 The tallest man in the world
 A wicked witch
 A funny little gnome
Ideas for problems:
 Run out of lollies
 Doesn’t want to eat bananas
 Lost homework
 Fallen down a well
 Trapped in the supermarket
 Sucked into the television
 Shrunk in the microwave
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
-5WHAT IF…?
Stage 2 & 3
GOALS
In this activity students will:
 Understand a model of imaginative story making
 Provide alternative resolutions to problems
 Brainstorm descriptive vocabulary
 Look at topics from another perspective
Divide the class into groups or brainstorm as a whole group what life would be
like if something was different in the world. Some topics you could use for
discussion include:
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What if cars had square wheels……….?
What if the sun shone all day and all night……….?
What if fizzy drink came out of the taps instead of water………..?
What if chocolate tasted like broccoli…………?
What if animals lived in houses and people lived outside……….?
What if we could touch the moon………?
What if we had scales instead of skin…………?
What if gravity did not exist…………?
What if we could fly………..?
What if we lived on Pluto instead of Earth…………?
What if the world was flat…………?
What if children were the boss of their parents…………?
What if you didn’t have to go to school………….?
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
-6WHAT AM I?
Early Stage 1 & 2
GOALS
In this class activity students will:
 Integrate auditory language cues
 Access semantic knowledge for making appropriate matches for
meaning
 Practice providing semantic cues
Read out clues to the class, pausing after each one to encourage students to
reflect on the information. If they select an inappropriate solution, provide
feedback as to why their suggestion was incorrect. Young children find this
task easier if the semantic class has already been selected, for example, ‘This
is an animal’.
Suggested Ideas:
I have saggy skin
I am very large
I can squirt water
I am long
I have no legs
I can be poisonous
I live on a farm
My tail is not straight
I like to play in the mud
I am small
I have wings
I like to make honey
I open and shut
You can see through me
I have a frame
You wear me on your
feet
I have laces
I can get smelly
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
-7OPPOSITES
Stage 2
GOALS
Students will:
 Gain skills in comparing and contrasting
 Become familiar with antonyms
 Gain skills in processing information rapidly
Get the class to line up in two teams, one beside the other. The teacher
stands at the front of the two teams and says a word eg hot. The child who
replies first with the opposite of this word (cold) goes to the back of the teams
line, the person on the other team steps out of the game. The team with the
most people at the end wins.
Suggestions for topics:
Hot
Skinny
Wet
Closed
Clean
Light
On
Day
Messy
Long
Empty
Sharp
Happy
Bald
Black
Hard
Cold
Fat
Dry
Open
Dirty
Dark
Off
Night
Tidy
Short
Full
Blunt
Sad
Hairy
White
Soft
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
-8TIGGY
Stage 1 & 2
GOALS
Students will develop skills in:
 Integrating auditory listening skills
 Letter and word recognition skills
 Develop semantic category skills
All the children stand in different spots around the classroom. The teacher
announces a category and the first child to put up their hand to answer gets
take a step in any direction (only if the answer was correct). The game
continues with the teacher changing the topic or asking children with certain
letters in their name to take steps. If a child is close enough to another child
they are allowed to tap them on the shoulder and that child must sit down, the
last person standing is the winner.
Suggestions for topics:
Chocolate bars
Sports that you play with a bat
If your name starts with ‘b’
Name a feature on your face
Something you eat
A type of dog
Something you find outside
Something you wear when its cold
Animals beginning with ‘s’
Countries beginning with ‘t’
Something you use to write with
A girls name starting with ‘m’
Something you can use in the water
Something you put on a sandwich
Types of birds
Something you take on a picnic
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
-9WHOSE NAME HAS...?
Early Stage 1 & Stage 1
GOALS
Students will develop:
 Word letter recognition
 Increased auditory listening skills
 Respond to instructions
Get the students to line up in a straight line across a wall. A ‘black letter’ is
selected at the start of the game, and if this letter is called out you must take
as many steps back as that letter appears in your name. The teacher calls out
random letters and if that letter appears within your name you must take as
many steps as it appears.
The first person to reach the teacher is the winner, and is the person who
must select the next ‘black letter’ of the game.
NOTE
To make this task suitable for early stage 1 children, have their name written
on a piece of paper as a written reminder of the letter within their name.
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.