Activity 90- How Much Do You Know Me?

Here is a nice idea for groups who have studied together for a while!

Level: Intermediate/ Advanced

Skill: Writing

Material Needed: None

Instructions:

Prepare a set of 10 personal questions such as “What’s your friend’s address?”/ “what’s his/her favorite food?”/ “what’s his/her favorite school subject?”/”how many people live in his/her house/apartment” Ask students to sit in pairs. They can (and should) choose to sit with their closest friend in class. Have pairs sit back-to-back. Give students a piece of paper (or they can also use their notebooks) and tell them to number this paper from 1 to 10. Ask the questions and have students’ write down the answer that is true for his/her pair. Then have students check what they wrote and, if they have the same answer, they score a point. At the end, the pair that has more points wins. 

Source: Vânia, adapted from The Monster Book of Language Teaching Activities

Picture credits: Alexander Henning Drachmann / Flickr

Activity 89- Playing with Children- Prepositions

Practicing prepositions of place has never been that fun for young learners! 

Level: Beginner

Skills: Listening and Speaking

Material Needed: Colored balloons

Instructions:

Give each child a colorful balloon. Give instructions about where the balloon should be placed according to the prepositions they have learned. Also add different colors to the commands.

Examples: “If you have a red balloon, put it on the table.”

                  “If you have a yellow balloon, put it under the teacher’s table.”

                  “Put the green balloons behind our classroom door.”

Tip: remember that it’s always important to model the activities before you actually ask students to perform the.

Variation 1: The teacher can also put students in charge of the activity by inviting a student to say the commands. They will love it!

Variation 2: For prepositions, you can also have different colors of Hula Hoops, for they practice “in”, “out”, “through”, “over” and so on in a fun and different way.

Source: Vânia Rodrigues

Picture credits: Mads Danquah/ Flickr

Activity 88- News Picture

Here is an idea that involves art and a lot of creativity! Great warmer for learners with higher fluency skills.

Levels: intermediate, advanced

Skill: reading, writing, listening and speaking

Material needed: pre-selected piece of news

Instructions:

Divide class into two different groups, A and B. Group B leaves the room and Group A reads a short piece of news. Then, ask students in Group A to produce a drawing representing the story they have just read. When everyone is done, students from Group B come in, pair up with someone from Group A and look at their partner`s drawing. Then, explain that students from Group B should write what they think the story is about based on the drawing. In the end, pairs get together and compare the real story with the invented one. As a wrap-up, have some volunteers read their made up stories. 

Source: Marisa Constantinides
Picture Credits: Flickr (NS Newsflash)