LESSON BREAK ACTIVITIES - LANGUAGE
CONTENTS
Spelling Buzz
Stage 2 ……………………………………………………………………………….1
Chinese Whispers
Early Stage 1 & Stage 1 ……………………………………………………………2
Special Talking Time
Stage 1 & 2 ………………………………………………………………………….3
Special Visitor
Stage 1 & 2 ………………………………………………………………………….4
Category Challenge
Stage 2 ……………………………………………………………………………….5
Different Yet Similar
Stage 2 & 3 ………………………………………………………………………….6
Tell the Alien
Stage 1 ……………………………………………………………………………….7
The Budding Scientist
Stage 3 ……………………………………………………………………………….8
Yes or No?
Early Stage 1 & Stage 1 ……………………………………………………………9
Word Chain
Stage 2 ……………………………………………………………………….........10
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
SPELLING BUZZ
Stage 2
GOALS
Student will:
 Develop phonological awareness
 Develop awareness of letter and word structure
 Increases skills in auditory listening and memory
Students can be split into groups or kept as one class for this activity. The
teacher nominates a word that the children have to spell. The children take
turns going around the circle each saying a letter. However, at the start of the
game the teacher nominates a letter or letters that are the ‘buzz letters’;
meaning the children are not allowed to say the letter in the word, they have
to say ‘BUZZ’.
For example, if the word was ‘chocolate’ and the teacher nominated the letter
‘o’ as the ‘buzz letter’, the children would go around the circle saying ‘c-hBUZZ-c-BUZZ-l-a-t-e.
If the child accidentally says the ‘buzz letter’ they are out of the game. To
make the game really tricky, the teacher could nominate more than one letter
to be ‘buzz letter’ within word.
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
-1CHINESE WHISPERS
Early Stage 1 Stage 1
GOALS
Students will develop skills in:
 Recalling sequences of information
 Retention of information
 Hearing and focusing attention on the verbal message
The teacher or student comes up with a sentence and whispers it to their
classmate, the story must travel around the circle until the last person must
say what was said to him/her. The story should be the same from when the
whisper began to the end. If the story is different, discuss where in the circle
the story got muddled up.
To make this more difficult for older children, increase the length and
complexity of the story. This way, more information must retained and focused
upon.
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
-2SPECIAL TALKING TIME
Stage 1 & 2
GOALS
Students will develop:
 Listening skills
 Understand which type of questions lead to the most interesting replies
 The ability to maintain a topic within a conversation
 Formulate questions appropriate to a person or situation
Pair the students up with someone who they are not familiar with. Get the pair
to discuss for 5 minutes things that are important or special to them as well as
favourite things. The students need to take notes on each other and report
back to the class about what they have learnt about their partner.
Ideas for topics could include:
 Favourite holiday spot
 Favourite toy
 Favourite person
 Favourite food
 Special memory
 Favourite thing to do on the weekend
 Special song/music
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
-3SPECIAL VISITOR
Stage 1 & 2
GOALS
In this activity students will:
 Recount events by using a familiar toy as a prop
 Present information to an audience
 Demonstrate how events and feelings can be recorded for others to
share
 Take another person’s perspective
Invent a character within the class that has come to share a year with the
students. Every weekend this character gets to take his bag, diary and
scrapbook and spend the weekend with a student. He stays for the weekend
joining in with family activities. At the end of the weekend the student writes in
the characters diary and may paste a momento of the visit in the scrapbook.
When the student returns to school on Monday he tells the class about the
adventures that they have gotten up to over the weekend.
Ideas for characters names could include:
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Boris from Russia
Marcus from Brazil
Nicolette from France
Paddy from Scotland
Ricky from South Africa
Ping from China
It is useful if the first entry in the diary is written by the teacher to give
students and their parents some guidance as to what to include. A letter can
be pasted inside the front cover of the diary explaining to parents the
concepts behind the activity.
The visitor could be from any culture. In discussion within the classroom, the
teacher can make observations about how the visitor is adjusting to his new
experiences and encourage students to reflect on, accept and value individual
differences. Furthermore, students can learn about the country or origin,
location, climate, language and culture of the visitor.
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
-4CATEGORY CHALLENGE
Stage 1 & 2
GOALS
This brainstorming activity provides opportunities for students to:
 Explore their vocabulary repertoire within a given category
 Discover strategies for rapid word retrieval
 Classify words into categories and sub-categories
This activity provides practice in word exploration and retrieval. Split the class
into groups of 4-5 students. Write a category on the board that each group
must think about. Within 5 minutes each group must come up with as many
things relating to that category as possible. After 5 minutes the groups read
out the words they have come up with. The group with the most words wins
the challenge.
Suggestions for categories:
 Kitchen utensils
 Furniture
 Stationery
 Ball sports
 Girls names
 Flowers
 Toppings for a pizza
 Things found in a fridge
 Feelings
 Things you take camping
 Body parts
 Wild animals
Make the categories more specific:
Things which are:
 Pointy
 Curly
 Soft
 Shiny
 Juicy
 Dangerous
 Slippery
Things which:
 Have a switch
 Have a button
 Have a handle
 You sit on
 Need a battery
for
 Run on electricity
 You push
 You drive
 You eat
Things made of:
 Glass
 Wood
 Plastic
 Metal
 Fabric
 Leather
 Paper
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
-5DIFFERENT YET SIMILAR
Stage 2 & 3
GOALS
In order to perform this task, students will have to:
 Consider physical features of both objects such as size, colour, shape
etc
 Think about what each of the objects is used for
 Compare and contrast
 Use specific vocabulary to express the differences
Write a pair of words on the blackboard that are different yet similar. Split the
class into small groups for discussion as to what are the similarities and
differences of the two items. Bring the class back together and get the groups
to discuss their opinions.
Suggested ideas for word pairs:
Jumper/Shirt
Kite/Parachute
Tent/Caravan
Sandal/Jogger
Doll/Puppet
Beach/Swimming Pool
Door/Window
Handkerchief/Tissue
Gate/Fence
Knife/Fork
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
-6TELL THE ALIEN
Stage 1 & 2
GOALS
This explanation task requires students to:
 Give explicit information
 Master specific vocabulary
 Appreciate relevant versus irrelevant information
 Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructions
Ask the students to imagine that an alien has arrived in their class and that
they must explain to the alien how to perform an everyday task. Engage the
class in discussion around the topic. Nothing can be assumed and
instructions need to be a concise and as relevant as possible. One student
becomes the spokesperson for the group and instructs the alien (teacher) to
perform the task. At the completion of the task the class can discuss the
effectiveness of the instructions.
Suggested tasks for the alien to be taught….
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Putting on a t-shirt
Reading a book
Making a phone call
Putting on a watch
Sharpening a pencil
Writing a specific letter eg m, b, s
Making a milkshake
Washing hands
Wrapping a present
Making a sandwich
Riding a bicycle
Having a shower
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
-7THE BUDDING SCIENTIST
Stage 3
GOALS
Students will need to:
 Think about materials needed to perform an action
 Identify steps to achieve a task
 Practice specific language features
Choose an experiment or task and get the students in small groups to
brainstorm about what they would need, and what are the steps involved, in
performing the experiment or task. Students then play the role of the scientist
and explain to the class the steps they think are involved in discovering the
answer.
Ideas:
 Test if a cork will float
 Test to see if seeds will grow in the dark
 Find out the most common coloured jelly bean in the pack
 Find out what things are heavier than a bag of feathers
 Find out how much milk a weet-bix will absorb
 How to make pancakes
 How to boil and egg

How to make a sandwich
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
-8YES or NO?
Early Stage 1 & Stage 1
GOALS
While thinking about the questions and the possible ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response the
students will have to:
 Understand words for specific concepts such as colour, number, size,
comparison, time
 Consider the features of use, function and parts
 Understand collective nouns
Tell the students to think carefully about the questions you are going to ask.
The answer to the question must be ‘yes’ or ‘no’. If some students wish to
argue a point, facilitate the discussion and listen to the students reasoning
behind these however, explain that the focus is on listening to the question
and giving the generally accepted answer.
Suggested questions:
Does a hand have 6 fingers?
Does a chair have 4 legs?
Does 6 come before 7?
Is 5 more than 3?
Is 8 less than 10?
Is walking faster than crawling?
Would a care weight more than a
horse?
Can a boy run faster than a rabbit?
Are apples and oranges vegetables?
Is a stop light green?
Is paper always white?
Is blood red?
Is hair sometimes purple?
Are spots always red?
Can a baby be bigger than a dog?
Does a chair have a seat?
Does a clock have hands?
Do gloves go on feet?
Can a pig be made of glass?
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.
-9WORD CHAIN
Stage 1 & 2
GOALS
This activity assists students to develop skills in:
 Selecting a word which is connected through meaning to a previous
word
 Explaining the association between words
 Understanding the associations made by others
Divide the class into small groups or do the activity as a whole class. One of
the students selects a word or can be given a word by the teacher. The next
student supplies the first word which he or she thinks of, on hearing this word.
That word is then passed to the next student who supplies another
association.
The chain of words is recorded and compared with the chain formed by
another group of students. If some students are unsure of the connection
between a supplied word given, they should indicate this by putting their hand
on their heads and then the speaker must explain the association.
Some suggestions for starter words:
Bridge
Level
Chocolate
Rain
Ruler
Life
Cost
Hard
Soccer
Table
River
Dog
Pocket
Room
Rain
Cage
Heavy
Effort
Knees
Funny
Smoke
Mouse
Fall
Volcano
Dollar
Smell
Drink
Extension of the activity:
Get children in turns to give the first word that they think of when they hear the
starter word and get them to explain the connection. For example:
 FALL – ‘water’ because water comes down in a water fall
‘drink’ because you drink water when you are thirsty
-10-
Produced by the Riverina Schools Project Partnership, 2006.