Activity 87- Intonation Fun

Use this activity to highlight the importance of intonation when your students, as they often do, talk like robots. 

Level : any
Skill: speaking (focus on intonation)
Material needed: mini-posters with the phrases and situations

Instructions:

Basically, get them to say the words in quotation marks in the contexts that follow. You can either tell them the situations orally or you can display the information on mini-posters around the classroom and invite them to visit the different stations and practice saying the sentences. 

"Hello" 
to a friend
to a friend you haven`t seen for 3 years
to a neighbor that you don`t like
to a 6-month old baby
to someone you have just found doing something they should`t 
to someone on the phone when you`re not sure if they are still on the other end

" goodbye"
to a member of your family as they are going through the boarding gate at the airport
to someone who has been annoying you
to a child starting his/her very first day at school

"How are you?"
to someone you haven`t seen for 20 years 
to someone who has recently lost a member of the family
to someone who didn`t sleep in their own bed last night

" I never go to bars" 
by a person that totally disapproves of drinking alcohol to someone who often goes to bars
as a response to someone who has told you they sometimes go to bars
said before: ' ...but I quite like discos.' 

" What have you done?" 
to someone who claims to have fixed your television only that now it`s worse than before
to someone who is scolding you for not doing anything when you suspect the same about them
to someone who has just done something very bad and which has serious consequences

Source: iteslj.org
Picture Credits: Flickr (Phil Dragash)

Activity 86- Ping Pong Talk

This idea is a warmer that works nicely with students who have good fluency skills and can have more sophisticated conversations in English. Great for adult learners! 

Levels: intermediate, advanced

Skill: speaking

Material needed: topics pre-selected by the teacher

Instructions:

Pair up students and tell them to decide who will start talking. On cue, announce the topic and student A in each pair starts talking about it. Then, clap your hands once to signal that student A should stop talking and student B should immediately pick up from there and start developing his/her ideas on the same topic. This step is repeated 3-4 times, each time giving each student about 30-45 seconds to talk. Simple and very broad topics should be chosen, such as: chocolate, family, work, etc. However, more challenging topics can be chosen, such as: love, pencil, rivers, doctors, freedom, etc.

Tip: Vary the length of time each student speaks.

Source: Unknown
Picture Credits: Flickr (ah_blake)

Activity 85- Me Against Me

This game is a great way to review and practice parts of the body. Young learners will definitely have a blast playing it! 

Level: basic

Skill: speaking, listening

Vocabulary: parts of the body

Material needed: none

Instructions:

Ask students to stand up and pair up with a classmate. Tell them they are going to take orders from the teacher and must follow them. Here is an example of what could be said: " head against arm". Then, one child of the couple must put his head against the arm of the other kid. Check if everyone is doing it correctly. After giving some orders, say the line : " me against me! " Then, in this case, students must pair up with someone else and you have to find a child to pair up with you as well. The child who has no pair has to give the orders until he/she says "me against me!" and students find other partners. 

Source: Unknown
picture credits: Flickr (egonwegh)

Happy 2013!

Hi everyone! After a 3-month break, we are ready to start the year with more fun, simple and effective activities for your English classes! Stay connected because new posts are on their way! We are very happy to know that the traffic in our blog is still consistent, even though new material hash`t been added recently. That makes us even more motivated to continue blogging and sharing the best activities with you all!
This year we want to hear from you, we want to know which activities you have developed and have been using that are winners among your students. How about sharing them with us and all of the blog`s visitors?  In 2013 we don`t want to post only our own ideas, but rather make it a collective space where we can share and spread effective and simple activities that everyone can use. Here is your chance to share your material with teachers worldwide! Check out what you have to do:
Write your post and send it to Vinicius Lemos (teachervinicius@hotmail.com). All we ask is that you try to follow the standard of our blog posts. Remember to inform the proper accreditation if you are using any images or ideas from other sources (you don`t need to have created the activity, you can simply share what you like and have been using successfully!). If you wish, send a personal picture, professional biodata and links to your webpages; they will accompany your post. Simple as that! We will inform you when your entry will be posted and we will let you know beforehand if any text editing had to take place. Once your entry has been posted, you can share it with your colleagues, your school and post a link in your personal/professional pages and let everyone know you are contributing to the teaching community around the world! Isn`t that great?! We hope to hear from you soon! We wish you all a great year of inspiring and great lessons!
Cheers,
Vânia Rodrigues & Vinicius Lemos

Activity 84- The Life Soundtrack

Short of creative ideas to make your students talk? How about trying this simple warmer? All you need is a CD with songs and a picture! 

Level: Intermediate/Advanced

Skill: Speaking

Material needed: pre-selected song snippets and a picture of someone (ex: taken from a magazine)

Instructions: 

Explain the situation: the person in the picture loves listening to music and for every moment in life he/she has a special soundtrack that relates closely to what he/she is going through.Pair up students and play the selected tracks. Then, they should come up with a very short anecdote explaining what happened in that person's life that made him/her listen to that specific song. Play each song for about 1 minute. 

*Tip: You may wish to play only one song and have pairs work on a more elaborate anecdote or play several songs and have them come up with short explanations/descriptions. 

Picture credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/naturegeak/5819184201/

Source: Vinicius Lemos

Activity 83- Describe the Scene

Level: Intermediate/Advanced

Skill: Speaking

Grammar point: Simple Past

Material needed: pre-selected (Youtube) video snippets 

Instructions:

Pair up students and explain that one of them is going to watch a video containing a short scene with a lot of action. The student who is watching the video should narrate (with as many details as possible)  the scene using the Simple Past. Then, students swap roles and do it again but with a different video. As a wrap up, invite volunteers to narrate the video for the whole class again and take advantage of the activity to discuss a little bit about:

-fluency skills

-vocabulary range

-accuracy

-spontaneity

-rate of speech

Picture credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/liewcf/2427204350/

Source: Vinicius Lemos, inspired by Nicky Hockly (Digital Literacies- 13th Braz Tesol National Convention , Rio 2012)

Activity 82- Odd One Out

Here is a nice idea to put critical thinking into practice!

Level: Intermediate/Advanced
Skill: speaking
Material Needed: list of things to be compared

Instructions:

Tell students that they are going to see on the board a list of words and,in groups of 3, they should choose the odd one out. Remind them that there is no single correct answer, anything is possible as long as it makes sense. Give them enough time to discuss and elicit their ideas. 

Some suggestions:
safari - club- airplane
watch- car- pencil
apple- hospital - yellow
book - glasses - cat
English - salad - work
brother- chocolate - laptop
homework - love- water
music - money - internet
gun- tree- hot
giraffe - sandals - oasis

Picture Credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ruthiruth/2651763269/
Source: Vinicius Lemos, inspired by a session given by Lindsay Clandfield at the 13th Braz-Tesol National Convention in Rio de Janeiro, July 2012.

Activity 81- With or Without It

Here is a simple idea to be used as a warmer!

Level: Intermediate/Advanced
Skill: speaking
Material Needed: 5 different objects (realia or pictures)

Instructions: 
Display 5 objects on the table (or 5 pictures) and ask students : " Which object would you live without? Which object wouldn't you live without?" . Then, ask students to pair up and explain their choices. Remind them that only one object should be chosen for each question. To wrap up the activity, have some volunteers share their picks with the whole group. If time allows, the activity can be expanded by having students discuss why they think a certain object was the most picked or why a certain object was not picked by anybody. 

Suggestions of what could be used: a tablet, a credit card, a car, nail polish, a cellphone, a notebook, newspaper, meat, chocolate, tv, a diary, a dog, an iPod, a microwave oven, socks, a remote control, sunglasses, books, , candies, CDs, etc

Source: Vinicius Lemos
Picture credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shoppingdiva/181269963/

Activity 80- Unusual Uses

Level: Intermediate/Advanced
Skill: writing
Material needed: ordinary objects or pictures of ordinary objects

Instructions:
Divide students into pairs or groups of 3. Show them an ordinary object or a picture of it (ex: chair, pen, ball, ring,etc). Give them 2 minutes to list down as many unusual uses for it as possible. The champion is the group with the largest list.

Source: Marisa Constantinides
Picture credits:http://www.flickr.com/photos/49889874@N05/6282910242/

Activity 79- 3 Differences and 3 Similarities

Here is a simple idea for an engaging and meaningful ice-breaker 

Level: any
Skill: speaking and writing
Material needed: none

Instructions:

Pair up students and tell them to have a conversation and ask each other questions so as to identify 3 ways in which they are different and 3 ways in which they are different (tastes, likes, dislikes, habits, routine, experiences, etc). While they are talking, they should take notes. Later, students should report their findings to the whole class. 

Tip: Tell students that in this activity they should not talk about differences or similarities regarding physical appearance, otherwise they might end up not talking to each other and just listing down obvious traits.

Source: Vinicius Lemos
Picture Credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/luanacreativa/236039273/