Activity 16- The Balloons Sentences

picture credits: daily.com.sg

In this activity students will have an opportunity to exercise their creativity and fluency skills. 

Level: Basic and Intermediate 

Grammar Point: Simple Past and Past Continuous

Skill: speaking

Materials Needed: balloons and a pen

Instructions:

• Give each student a balloon and ask him/her to blow it and use a marker to write an action verb on it. You can assign individuals a specific verb, let them choose from a list or let them free to choose any action verb they think of.

• While they’re getting the balloons ready, write on the board: WHEN WHILE. Set the scene (orally): Last weekend you visited a family member who lived in a very small town. In the afternoon you decided to go to the town’s square, sat on a bench and just observed what was going on.  Explain that they have to pair up with a student and make up a sentence using the simple past and/or the past continuous and one of the connectors (WHEN or WHILE).

•  Ask students to stand in a circle. Let some music playing and ask the to play freely with the balloons.

•  Stop the music and ask them to pick any balloon. Tell them to pair up and come up with the sentence.

Tip: When you ask the students to pair up, you can take advantage of different strategies, so they can have an opportunity to interact with different people all the time. So, right after they get one balloon, ask them to line up according to: their height, the first letter of their names, their age, the month they were born in, etc.

                                                                             

  Variation: Instead of working with verbs, use vocabulary previously taught. Students make sentences using specific words. Here, students are free to choose any verb tense.

Source: Vinicius Lemos