TPR (Total Physical Response) - stand up, walk, stop, turn around, catch the
ball, throw the ball, Who has the ball? _____ has the ball
Introduce vocab - This is a comb. What’s this? Pick up the comb. Put down the
comb. Pass the comb to Najma. Give the comb to me. Who has the comb?
Touch the comb. Point to the comb.
Directional words and/or prepositions - Place objects on a shelf. The ___ is on
the left. Move the ___ to the right of the ___. Where’s the ___? above, below,
next to, on top of, in front of
Review vocab - Draw an arrangement of objects. Give directions for
your partner to set up objects just the same as your drawing. ex.
Put the plate… Put the bowl on top of the plate. Put the knife on
the right of…
Line Dialogues - students form 2 lines facing each other. Students in line A are
stationary. They hold a flashcard, question, vocab word, or other prompt and ask
the same questions to partner from line B. Line B moves down the line to answer
all the questions in Line A. Hand the cue card to Line B and switch roles.
ex. job flashcards - What is his job? What does he do at work? What are
some responsibilities at this job? Where does he work? What tool/instrument
might he use at work? 2 job flashcards - (to practice past tense) What is his
job? What was his last job? illness flashcards - What is the matter with this
person? What should he do to get better? Clothing and prices - What is this?
How much does it cost? Clothing - What is this? Where might you wear it?
What season would you wear it? world map - Where are you from? City?
Country? Continent? rooms in a house - What room is this? What furniture
would you find here? traffic signs - You must/must not… You should/should
not… Time - What time is it? What do you usually do at this time in the am/pm?
English is Spoken Here - Ask the students where they speak the most English,
bank, grocery store, post office, Target, with grandchildren, etc. Write dialogues
accordingly.
Dialogues - Elicit dialogue from the learners. ex. directions, restaurant, lost and
found, clinic, doctor and patient, accident scene calling 911, post office, grocery
store… Dialogues recite exact lines; role plays set the scene and ad lib. Most
effective role plays use groups of three. An observer would note if the scene 1.)
stated the problem, 2.) made a request, and 3.) found the solution. Sample
dialogues:
Excuse me. Where’s the post office? Go one block and turn left. It will be
across the street from you. Thank you.
Excuse me. This is too big. Do you have a receipt? Yes, here it is. Do you
want to exchange it or return it? I’d like to exchange it for a size medium. Sure.
Here it is.
Call 1-800 Listen to recordings and answer questions. ex. What movie starts at
1:20? When does the restaurant start delivery? When does the museum open?
Teach Idioms - call off (cancel), get across an idea, think up (invent) make up
and idea or make up a class, in the long run, push over the edge, through thick
and thin (use the saved conversation “Idioms”)
Modal Auxiliaries - could, should, would, must, might, can, may, shall. Show
pictures.
gift → It could be a ___.
boy entering house with muddy shoes → He should ___.
person waiting in line → He might be ___.
Statue of Liberty → This must be NYC. (Here must expresses probability.
The other meaning of must expresses necessity.)
What’s Missing? Jigsaw - Sets of pictures must be arranged ahead of time.
The basic picture is the same for each student, but one or two items are missing
from each picture. Students must only look at their own picture. Through
discussion, students must discover what is missing from their own picture and
then draw in the missing items correctly. The goal is for all the learners to end up
with the same, complete picture.
Use simple line drawings. Children’s coloring books are excellent for this.
Determine which items can be eliminated in each version. Use correction fluid to
blank out those items before xeroxing each of the version.
For a simpler version, another suggestion for pictures is to compile
pictures of all one category, ex. fruits, animals, office supplies, etc. Remove a
different item from each picture.
Also, remove a flashcard or two from a set and discover what’s missing.
Sets might include days of the week, months of the year, ordinal numbers,
cardinal numbers, multiples of 10, seasons, etc.
Liars - Define the word liar. Then tell the class four activities that you have done
in your life. Explain that three will be true and one will be a lie. Choose true
statements that might seem hard for the students to believe and a lie that seems
plausible, thus making your lie more difficult to guess. The students should then
ask questions that will help them to identify the lie. Then ask them to guess
which statement is a lie.
Then the students will have a chance to be liars. Have them write down
their four activities. One must be a lie. Decide whether this next part would be
best as a whole group activity or in groups of two, three, or four. Spend time
discovering all of the lies in the class. If the activity was done in small groups,
finish the class by asking each group to choose the person that they think did the
best job of fooling the other members of the group. Then have these people try
to fool the rest of the class.
Teaching with One Picture - Choose one picture. (large? several people?
complex?)
Level One Questions - point to a cup, point to the woman’s hand, point to the
man’s tie
Level Two Questions - is the woman standing, are there two men, is the woman
wearing glasses (yes or no questions)
Level Three Questions - what’s in the woman’s hand, how many people, who is
wearing the white shirt (one word or short answers)
Level Four Questions - how is the woman feeling, who is the older man, what are
they talking about (open ended questions) be creative and develop conversation
If the picture happens to be three people sitting at a restaurant, follow up with
role playing in groups of three. If the picture happens to be a person checking
out her food at a grocery store, follow up role playing in pairs.
Information Gap - Students have different sets of information. They have to
communicate with each other through questioning to find the complete set of
information. Handouts could be menu that have been prepared with different
prices deleted from each. Pictures, maps, diagrams, information grids, or charts
could be used. When teaching furniture or rooms of a house, diagrams or floor
plans of apartments or houses could be labeled. Schedules of workers’ tasks
could be used, deleting tasks at different times/days. Family trees with different
relationships/ages not filled in could be used when teaching family relationships.
A map of a mall could have different store names deleted.
20 Questions - Leader states whether their secret object is animal, vegetable, or
mineral. The group has 20 yes/no questions to discover the object.
Karuta is a sweet, high-energy vocabulary builder played by school kids in Japan
(and probably other countries as well- it’s a simple concept). Write vocabulary
words (I combined some words from my Level 2/3 class with words the Level 1
teacher had given me) on cut-up notecards, or just cut up pieces of paper.
Spread them all out in front of the students, then say one of the words. The first
one to grab that paper gets to keep it, and whoever has the most cards at the
end wins! Adaptation: have a Level 3 student ‘emcee’ the games by either saying
the words, or even saying the words embedded in sentences s/he must come up
with spontaneously- extra challenge! Other adaptation (the students themselves
came up with this one): once a student has grabbed a card, s/he must say a
sentence with that word. They are practicing vocabulary, as well as sentencebuilding, and negotiation of meaning, as the upper-level students try to explain to
the lower-level folks what some of the more complex words mean.
Scrabble: I turned all of the tiles up, so students could simply see and select
whichever letters they wanted to make whatever words they could think of. They
made it a cooperative effort, taking turns, with upper-level people helping out
their lower-level partners. I did require them to connect the words like a
crossword puzzle, as in the original game, thereby creating a slight challenge;
but allowing them to choose any tile made it easier and more relaxed. One could
easily challenge an upper-level group by introducing scoring (I nixed it for the
day), or by turning the tiles face-down. Students practice spelling and vocabulary
improvement while engaging in discussion with each other.
Ball Toss
Bring a ball with all sorts of simple questions written on it. Questions such as
“What is your favorite color?” and “Where are you from?” work well. Have the
students stand in a circle and toss the ball around. When a student receives the
ball they should say their name and then read and answer the question that their
right thumb lands on. This works well in a mixed level classroom because if one
student has difficulty reading or understanding a question, his or her classmates
can help.
Toss The Ball
During this activity, you and your students take turns passing a ball to one
another. After someone catches the ball, you practice asking each other, “What
is your name?” and “Where are you from?”. The person holding the ball answers.
In this way, everyone gets a chance to practice basic introductions and
responses. After someone catches the ball, they can sit down so as to avoid
repetition.
A variation on “Toss the Ball” has students, after catching the ball, going to a
map and not only saying their name and country but pointing to their country on
the map as well. This is great for putting the diversity of your students in
perspective!
Alphabet Soup
Reviewing the alphabet is always a good first week activity. As you review each
letter have the students point out something in the room that begins with that
letter. If there are not many items in your classroom you can modify the game.
My students enjoyed working together to brainstorm words that began with the
letter we were reviewing. For an added challenge create two teams and have
them compete to see who can come up with the most words within a specified
time limit.
Spelling Bee
Bring magnetic letters and have each student take a turn going up to the board
and spelling their name with the letters. The student says each letter and the
class repeats it. This is an excellent way to learn each others’ names, practice
pronunciation, and put students at ease about speaking in front of the class.
Find Someone Who…
In this activity, students are given a list of common descriptors: this could be
countries you know your students are from, number of children, married or not
married, only child, number of brothers and sisters, has a car, etc. The level of
categories should reflect the level of your students’ abilities, of course. If it is a
low beginning level, pictures might be helpful! The students then go around the
room and get as many of their classmates’ names as they can. You can then
have them present some of their findings in front of the class!
Classmate Bingo
This is a variation on the Find Someone Who activity. Instead of just having a list,
turn your classmate finding activity into a game of Bingo! This gives a sense of
competition to the activity which might get students’ a bit more invested in the
process.
List Writing
In this activity, you can put students into pairs or groups and have them write a
list of the English they already know. For a very low level course, this could be
the ABC’s or you could have them write an English word for every letter of the
ABC”s. For an upper level course, you could have them write all of the fruits or
vegetables they know. You can vary the topics and difficulty as much as you’d
like.
Keep a Dictionary
At the beginning of each session, have each student make their own dictionary,
using a title page and 26 additional pages, labeling each page with a letter of the
alphabet. Throughout the classes, remind students to enter all the words they
want to learn into their dictionary. (Students may cut pictures out of magazines
and make flashcards of words they want to learn and then teach to other
classmates.)