Well, it's that time of year again when
we are all returning for the new semester, refreshed and eager after
our spring break. (Or possibly depressed and hung-over but let's not
dwell on the negatives.) The new teachers have completed orientation
and are scattering to their new lives in China, the old teachers are
renewing their familiarity with the Chinese way of life and teaching
and one teacher (Hi, James) is managing the neat trick of being both
an old teacher and a new teacher at the same time.
So a warm welcome or welcome back to
all of you.
I thought I'd start this term's
blogging by going back to basics for a while and talking about types
of activities. There's nothing in here that experienced teachers
won't already know so if you wish to skip it and do something more
interesting instead, that's OK with me.
Still here?
OK. I want to start with warm-up
activities. We'll cover a number of different ones over the weeks but
I want to start with the easiest and most well-known – hangman.
Everybody knows how to play _ _ _ _ _ _
_.
You start with the blanks and as the
students guess the letters you either fill them in if they are right
or add lines to the drawing of a hanged man until it's completed and
they lose.
Of course it doesn't need to be a
hanged man that you draw. It can be anything that is relevant to your
topic. If you are doing a topic about houses and homes you can, line
by line, draw a house.
Altermatively you can start with the
completed picture and remove pieces until it has gone, as in this very simple "flower pot" diagram from a lesson about flowers and gardens. (And, as you
have doubtless already worked out, you don't need to be a great
artist to do it.)
One of my favourites is from my lesson
about being castaway on a desert island, where the last two pictures
are substantially different from the ones that go before.
There are other things you can do. For
example you can give different teams a different word (with the same
number of letters, of course) and have a race as in this example
where each correct guess will move one of the cars towards the finish
line. In this variant, as in others, you can use cut out racing cars
to move along the board.
You can make a different game of it too
as in the example on the left below from my Aliens Stole My
Grandmother lesson where each wrong guess moves the spaceship closer
to my grandmother and if it gets to her they will take her away. I
use a picture of my real grandmother. And then I follow it up with my
grandfather and my parents.
The other picture below is another race
variant where superman is trying to catch Lois before she falls to
the ground. Wrong guesses move Lois and right guesses move Superman.
Again you can work with cutouts for this.
You are limited only by your
imagination.
This kind of game is a great way to
generate the vocabulary you are going to use in the later parts of
the lesson. It's quick to set up, easy to play and fun. It looks as
if it's only suitable for younger students but I've played variations
with older students too and they usually get into it with just as
much enthusiasm as the younger ones.
There are a couple of tips for the
organisation. I find it useful to choose the student to give me the
next letter by throwing a sponge ball around the class. It's lively
and it gets the students interested. Also, when getting started use
very simple language and write on the board. I usually pick one
student and say “Choose a letter. Which letter do you want A, B, C,
D.” Sometimes, if you say things like “I'd like you to give me a
letter.” some students don't really know what you mean. Keep it
simple.
And have fun.
