games

Lesson idea: Kahoot! for capitalisation and punctuation

A few months ago I mentioned word stress games using Kahoot! This app has also come in handy recently for practising punctuation/capitalisation. I just display a sentence with various errors in it– learners judge how many mistakes there are in the sentence. That’s it really. (more…)

Present perfect game

I’m on good form! It’s been a fun weekend of classes.

Today I tried out a new task for practising the present perfect (life experiences). Well, it wasn’t exactly new, just a variation on a few well-known tasks. Still, it worked well – lots of practice and lots of smiles!

Preparation

  • Put a few topics on the board:

Travel, sport, studying English, animals, food

  • Elicit a few verbs (past participle form) related to each topic:

Travel: been, seen, travelled…

Studying English: studied, passed…

Animals: owned, fed…

Etc.

These will help students with ideas.

  • Give students 5 slips of card each. They write one sentence on each card (one for each of the topics). The sentence should be about their life experiences. Rules are…
  1. The sentences must be true (that narrows things down a bit!)
  2. They can’t be too easy to guess
  3. You must keep your sentences a secret

Easy to guess for Thai students: I’ve been to Chiang Mai (most of the students have)

Harder to guess: I’ve walked along the Great Wall of China (quite specific)

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Making it up as you go along…

I had a brief chat with TalkTEFL after class about how some activities we make up during class work better than the things we plan! Today was a prime example.

My teen class were really lacking a bit of get up and go. We were doing a few activities based on this vocabulary (Beyond A2+, page 80):

makeitup

They had to underline the words (in bold) related to study and circle those related to work. Then they listened to definitions and matched these to the words. We did a bit of group work (backs to the board-esque) to practise these words/meanings, but they just weren’t buying into it. Energy levels were really low. I needed a stirrer and FAST. Come on, Pete – think like a student! What might be fun? (more…)