Shakers
Justyna Mądry
Hidden words / pictures / texts
ANY LEVEL
(all-class )
1. Hide the words or pictures under randomly chosen chairs in the classroom.
2. Ask the students to check if there is anything under the chairs without taking it
out.
3. Ask them to guess what it can be - a picture or a word? If it is a picture, ask what is
in the picture, if it is a text, what it is about? Guessing time.
4. Then the students take the sheets out and make a sentence, discuss the pictures,
read the text. It all depends on what we hide under the chairs and what the
purpose of a lesson is (perfect as a pre-reading/pre-listening exercise).
Make use of mobile devices
ANY LEVEL
(all–class)
1. Ask your students to come up with their own examples of whatever it is your class
is devoted to. If you discuss money, get the students to find quotes connected
with it.
2. You can ask your students to find quotes, proverbs, saying, pictures, info etc.
Images
ANY LEVEL
(all-class/pair work )
1. Show your students pictures of “hybrid” animals.
2. Next show the word for each picture, asking the students what two animal words
the “hybrid” word is made of. If your students don’t know the English equivalents,
ask them to use their mobile devices and find them.
3. If you revise the animal vocabulary, get the students to work in pairs and come up
with their own “hybrid” words. Next the students draw the creature on the board,
write the „hybrid” word next to it and ask the other students to decipher it.
© DOS-ELTea 2015
Think Fresh – Shakers
page 1
Paper ball fight
ANY LEVEL
(all-class work)
1. Ask your students to write the grammatical or lexical structure in question on a
piece of paper.
2. Students make a paper ball out of the paper and they throw it at each other.
3. Students pick up the paper ball that is somewhere next to them, they unfold it and
complete a task set by you e.g. complete the collocation, add a question tag, form
the negative form etc. This activity can be used virtually for all grammatical or
lexical problems.
Wreck this journal
ANY LEVEL
(individual / pair / group work)
Make a mess and clean it up:
1. Ask your students to make a mess out of the words they are learning, practising or
revising.
2. Next they give the copies to their partners whose task it is to clean the vocabulary
items up in whatever way they please. They may categorise them or shape them,
for example.
Write one word over and over again:
1. Students choose the word/ language chunk that they struggle to memorize.
2. They write it over and over on one page either following a pattern or creating their own
one.
Four / Five / Six … - letter words:
1. Students look through their notebooks, course books, workbooks, wordlists or
any other materials they have been working on or with and group vocabulary
items by their length.
2. This task works best when it is set as a revision activity.
Write or draw with your left hand:
1. When your students are reluctant to copy a few vocabulary items from the board/
write something you find relevant, let them write it or draw with their left hand
(right if they are left-handed).
© DOS-ELTea 2015
Think Fresh – Shakers
page 2
2. They can also write the words upside down, from right to left or from bottom to
top. You will be surprised how engaging they will find such a task.
Let the lines overlap:
1. Ask your students to trace things you want them to practise/revise e.g. things they
have in their bag/ pockets. They should let the lines overlap.
2. Then other students guess what the picture shows.
Fingerprint art:
Bring some ink to the class and let the students practise English by making fingerprint art
e.g.:
1. Memorize difficult words by ‘writing’ them by means of fingerprints.
2. Let students leave fingerprints randomly on a piece of paper, add some lines,
dots to make e.g. animals. Other students guess what the fingerprint art presents.
3. Students leave fingerprints and draw faces on them with various expressions e.g.
excited, scared, confused. Students compare their work and guess the
expressions.
Mystifying the alphabet
ANY LEVEL
(all-class & pair work)
1. Before the class: make up a story containing well-known abbreviations.
2. Give out slips of paper which comprise the letters appearing in the story and those
which will form the mystery word. Tell the Ss to cross out the letters which come
up along the way.
3. Present the story to the class displaying the abbreviations on the screen or writing
them on the board. You can ask the Ss to tell you what the abbreviation stand for
and reward those who know the correct answer with a plus, a note or a token
4. Ask the Ss what the mystery word is.
5. As a follow-up, get the Ss to continue the story. Working in pairs, they come up
with two widely-used English abbreviations and a did-he question that the rest of
the class will have to answer.
6. Homework: Ss search the internet to find out:
- what the undeciphered abbreviations stand for;
- what the stories behind them are;
© DOS-ELTea 2015
Think Fresh – Shakers
page 3
Kill two birds with one stone
ANY LEVEL
(all-class work)
1. Apart from rooting the alphabet letters in students’ memory, the aim of the
exercise is to either teach or revise the did-simple past questions.
2. Prepare two-sided flashcards containing the words from the questions you asked
while telling the story (sample below).
3. Ask some students to come to the fore and give the flashcards out to them.
4. Say the question slowly. Students consult their flashcards and form a line, according
to the words they’ve got. When they have finished, repeat the sentence at normal
speed.
5. Repeat the procedure with the second question.
6. Display the story slides once more, this time not saying anything, and wait for the
students to form the question. When the students have lined up in the correct
order, they read out their words on their flashcards.
Enciphering the alphabet
ANY LEVEL
(all-class work)
1. Get the Ss to stand up.
2. Display or show a picture of a gesture. The Ss imitate the gesture naming the
action or the idea it represents. At the same time, display the letter whose
pronunciation corresponds with the gesture.
3. Further practice: show the pictures only and get the Ss to write down the
corresponding letters.
4. Homework: ask the Ss to think how they can express other letters of the alphabet
with gestures.
Deciphering the alphabet
ANY LEVEL
(individual & pair work)
1. Ask the Ss to make at least two words out of the letters which they have learnt to
encipher with gestures.
2. Show them how to do it, using your own example.
© DOS-ELTea 2015
Think Fresh – Shakers
page 4
3. Next the Ss work in pairs. Student A shows the letters of their words with gestures
and Student B deciphers the letters voicing and writing them down. Finally, they
read out the deciphered word and give its Polish equivalent. If they don’t know its
meaning, they look it up in a paper or internet dictionary. Student A verifies the
correct answer.
Puzzling out words
PRE-INT
(all-class work)
1. Display or show three pictures. Basing on associations, the Ss tell you what the
pictures have in common by way of one word.
2. Next, show another three pictures and continue in the same way. Each time,
display or write the word in question.
3. Finally, show the picture exemplifying the meaning of the formed compound.
4. Homework: assign the Ss with the compounds you want them to learn. Ask them
to find the right pictures and prepare a riddle for the class to puzzle out.
© DOS-ELTea 2015
Think Fresh – Shakers
page 5