Thursday, December 22, 2011

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

GRAMMAR TIC TAC TOE

This game is my all time favorite. I've picked it up from a seminar and used it with my students for practicing asking YES/ NO questions. It can be used as an ice breaker, time filler, warm up activity, follow up activity. And the best thing is- you don't need any preparation. So, whenever the students ask for a game, I pull up this out my sleeve.
The procedure:
-Draw a tic tac toe grid on the board and ask the students to provide activities that you write randomly in the grid.(read a book, watch TV, do the dishes...)
- Tell the students they are playing against you. (They'll love it!)
- Depending on what you want to practice, you explain to your students that they are going ask you YES/NO questions about the activities in the grid(Can you...?, Did you...? Do you...?) and promise them you'll be honest.
- As in each tic tac toe game the signs are dots and crosses. Let the students decide if they get a point (cross) whenever your answer is "yes" or "no". So they should do some thinking connecting the activities in the grid and yourself- how will they win .(Can the teacher do all this things on the board- if you practice CAN; Did the teacher do this things last weekend- for past simple etc.)
- When you set up this, you start the game. Random students ask you a question usig the activity in the grid, you answer honestly and either they get their mark in the grid or you get yours.
-The winner is the first that makes a line or has more fields with their sign.
HAPPY TEACHING!

Saturday, December 10, 2011

IT'S COLD- YOU SHOULD PUT ON A T- SHIRT (-:)

I used the weather and clothes vocabulary for this communicative game to practice SHOULD. I made two dice with the help of the great site for teachers- MES English.

 The rules:
- Students work in pairs.
-Each student throws both dice trying to get suitable combinations of weather and clothing.
-The student makes sentences with the pictures on the sides of the dice he gets. (If they have sun and sandals- It's sunny. You should put on your sandals).
- For each funny combination and a correct sentence ( It's cold. You should put on your T-shirt.)- they score one point.For each suitable combination and a correct sentence, -two points. For each incorrect sentence- zero points.

At the end, ask the students to write three of their best pairs of sentences in their notebooks.