T E A C H I N G —

LANGUAGES
— Nia Griffith

continuum
 100 IDEAS
FOR TEACHING LANGUAGES
CONTINUUM ONE HUNDREDS SERIES

100 Ideas for Managing Behaviour — Johnnie Young

100 Ideas for Teaching Citizenship — Jan Davies
100 Ideas for Teaching Creativity — Stephen Bowkett
100 Ideas for Teaching History — Julia Murphy
100 Ideas for Teaching Mathematics — Mike Ollerton

OTHER LANGUAGE TITLES

Getting the Buggers into Languages — Amanda Barton

 100 IDEAS
FOR TEACHING
LANGUAGES

Nia Griffith

NEW YORK
Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane
11 York Road Suite 704, New York
London NY 10038, USA
SE1 7NX
First published 2005
Reprinted 2006

www.continuumbooks.com

© Nia Griffith 2005

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from
the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library.

ISBN: 0-8264—-8549-9 (paperback)

Designed and typeset by Ben Cracknell Studios | Janice Mather
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd,
Bodmin, Corwall
 CONTENTS

SECTION | Ideas to use with many topics

PICTURE NOUGHTS AND CROSSES
Great for practising vocabulary

MAKING CHORUSING FUN

USING MIME
Enhancing chorusing
SONGS
Learning vocabulary
FLASHCARDS 1
Vocabulary
FLASHCARDS 2
Vocabulary

USING SMALL OBJECTS

COUNTING GAMES
Learning numbers
BINGO
Learning numbers and other vocabulary
A CLOCK EACH
Practising the time
HAPPY FAMILIES
Rules of the game
CARD GAMES
How to set them up (including topics this is great for)

USING OVERLAYS

USING ACETATE AS FLASHCARDS ld,

FOOTBALL 18

USING TEENAGE MAGAZINES 1)

Choosing your material

otN DEVELOPING QUESTIONS ON MAGAZINE ARTICLES 21

HAE
ENA
AR
AAR
ERAS DISPLAY WORK 7A
WN ECTION 2 Presenting or revising vocabulary
STAFF JACKETS 26
To practise possession

MATCHING SENTENCES TO FASHION PICTURES 27

HALF-EATEN FOOD IN A LUNCHBOX 28

Food, drink and past tense
HEALTHY EATING 29
Food and drink vocabulary
WHAT DID THE WHALE HAVE FOR BREAKFAST? 30
Past tense

THEME TUNES 31
N Types of programme
CELEBRITY QUIZ 32
Revising members of the family
CELEBRITY HOTEL BEDROOMS 33
Lost property, clothes, toilet articles
CARDS 34
NO| Matching pictures and words

“WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE?’ 35

ROBOTS FOR HOUSEWORK 36

Household chores

ELEPHANTS DRINKING WINE 37

About to do/in the middle of/just done.
CREATURES FROM DIFFERENT PLANETS 38
Hobbies or lifestyle
VOLCANO —- WHAT WERE YOU DOING WHEN . .? 39
Past tense

AT THE TIME OF THE CRIME! WAS... 40

Past tense

GHOSTS 42
Past tense

WHO USES THIS? 43

Jobs

CLASSROOM QUIZ 44
Vocabulary game
FIND THE PERSON 45
UJ |

el
ee
Fee
Ee
se
SBS
Bs
Interview questions
WEATHER ACTIVITIES 47
Vocabulary and tenses
"Nn ECTION 3 Great games
TREASURE ISLAND 50
Geographical vocabulary, directions and locations
ABANDONED CITY 51
Town buildings vocabulary, directions and locations
LIVING IN A CARDBOARD BOX 52
Rooms in the house

CLUEDO 54
Rooms in the house, colours and weapons!
FORTUNE TELLERS 55
‘You are... .’ and adjectives
CONSEQUENCES 3yf/
3rd person past tense
ASSASSIN 58
1st & 2nd person past tense
ASSASSIN: THE PUPILS’ VERSION 60
1st & 2nd person past tense
WHOSE BAG IS IT? 61
a=| Lost property vocabulary, opinions and suggestions
HOLIDAY SNAPS 63
Describing a holiday (past, present and future tense)
HOLIDAY SNAPS: DIFFICULT VERSION 64
Past, present and future tense

WN ECTION 4 Active listening

MONSTERS 66
Parts of the body and adjectives

DRAWING A HOUSE 67

WHO IN THE CLASS HAS . .? 68

Description
ACTION LISTENING GAMES 69
True or false
SIMON SAYS... 70
Numbers, directions and touch
POINT TO THE PICTURE lil
A game for any topic

GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT 72

GUESS WHO 73
UIN

es
ee
Jee
Descriptions

REVISION LISTENING ACTIVITY 74

SECTION 5 Creative writing
Uiwo MY IDEAL TOWN

fo)oO IDEAL SCHOOL, HOUSE, BEDROOM, HOLIDAY

(o>)—_ COMPARING MONSTERS

(o>)NO PORTRAIT OF A CELEBRITY

f°)W HOROSCOPES
Future tense

(o>)=) WHAT WILL THE PLANET EARTH BE LIKE

IN 50 YEARS’ TIME?
Future tense

5 CURRENT AFFAIRS
Future tense

66 | WHAT WILL YOU BE DOING IN 10 YEARS’ TIME?

Prediction

67 | SETTING UP A STUDENT MAGAZINE

op)ie.e) SCRIPT WRITING AND TOPIC IDEAS

Writing and acting
ACTING

ees
gee
jezeeas
Participation, judging and videoing

So FASHION PARADE

ie) ECTION 6 Using ICT

ead CLASSROOM DISPLAY WORK

ON
™SN POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS
73 | USING A DIGITAL CAMERA
74 | USING ICT TO PRODUCE SURVEYS
75 | USING EMAIL

76 | EMAIL AS COURSEWORK
 NEWSROOM 100
77 An exciting simulation game

78 MOBILE PHONES 101

| RADIO INTERVIEW 102

TV INTERVIEW 103

”n ASA fiION 7 The more advanced pupil

SNAKE ON THE BUS 106
Prohibition, permission and obligation
I WAS JUST ; .. 108
Pleading and excuses
RADIO PHONE-IN 109
Opinions
DESERT ISLAND 110
Current affairs
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 112
The world of work

NEWSPAPER HEADLINES 13

ioe)~N EXPLOITING ADVERTS 114

ie.e) GETTING THE MOST OUT OF NEWSPAPERS Vals

SATELLITE TV

HELPING PUPILS USE THE INTERNET TO LEARN 118

SECTION 8 Involving native speakers

COLLABORATION WITH NATIVE SPEAKERS 120

INTERVIEWS 125

CLASSROOM SURVEYS 122

STREET SURVEYS 123

A TREASURE HUNT 124

MAKE A CAKE, A HAT OR A MOSAIC 125

Xe)~“ MAKING A WALL MURAL FOR THE CLASSROOM 126

MAKING SCULPTURES 127

A 6-PHOTO DISPLAY 128

MORE IDEAS FOR WORKING WITH ZS

NATIVE SPEAKERS

APPENDIX

OVERHEAD PROJECTOR HINTS AND IDEAS 130

REWARD SYSTEMS 131

 SECTION

Ideas to use with

many topics
 PREPARATION
Many language teachers use picture cards (or flashcards)
to practise the vocabulary that they want to present.
Commercial courses often used to come with expensive
flashcards, but many now provide pictures on CD which
you can print out to make your own flashcards. It is
important to make sure that the pictures are large
enough to be seen clearly by the whole class.
This game can be played with any picture flashcards,
such as those of food, clothes or furniture. You need at
least nine flashcards and some Blu-Tack. Or you can use
a pre-prepared overhead transparency (OHT).

ACTIVITY
Draw a noughts and crosses grid on the board
(9 squares, 3 by 3). Make the squares in your grid big
enough for your flashcards to fit, together with enough
space for you to write a visible number in each. Number
the squares 1 to 9 in the same corner of each square
(for example top left). Introduce or revise the vocabulary
by holding up each flashcard and then sticking it with
Blu-Tack onto one square on the board. Continue until
you have one picture stuck in each square on the board.
Then divide class into two teams and play noughts
and crosses.

HOW TO PLAY NOUGHTS AND CROSSES

Turn to team A and ask a pupil to give the number of a
square using the target language and say the correct
word, for example 5, a cat. If the pupil answers correctly,
.
wom
CROSSES
AND
NOUGHTS
PICTURE
put a small cross by the side of the picture. Then ask the
same of a pupil from the opposing team and put a 0 by
the picture for a correct answer. The winning team is the
first team to make a line of three (horizontal, vertical or
diagonal). If a pupil answers incorrectly, they do not get
their 0 or X and the other team gets the chance to ask
for their next choice of square. Pupils are much more
motivated than when just responding to flashcards. You
can use this activity simply for single words or you can
demand a completely correct sentence which makes it
much harder to win. You can be ‘mean’ by putting the
most difficult words in the most useful squares, namely
the centre square and the corners.
IDEA Chorusing is a very valuable way of giving pupils the
practice they need in pronunciation and of drilling the
language into them. Inevitably however some pupils may
tend to daydream, so any techniques which help to keep
pupils’ attention and make the words or phrases more
memorable are useful tools.
Pr USING DIFFERENT VOICES
ee) oO using loud and soft voices;
LL
oO using different mood, for example an angry or sad
U mood;
PLES oO using different mannerisms, for example granddad,
hippy, a celebrity, little child, disaffected teenager,
VY) angry parent or teacher, drunken football supporter.
=
oc ORCHESTRATING THE CLASS

O Oo have one half of the class say the word, then the other
ale half;
U oO say the words row by row or table by table;
O point to individual pupils or pairs of pupils to say the
U words;
= oO all the girls, all the boys.
¥
You can use wildly exaggerated actions to keep pupils’
attention. You may find that younger pupils will enjoy
doing these actions with you but teenagers will probably
just think you are eccentric. Never mind if it helps keep
their attention and keeps them chorusing.

ANIMALS
Wiggle your hand vertically for a fish, dart your hand
forward horizontally for a snake, do a rabbit’s ears with
your hands, stroke the cat, fill your cheeks out for a
hamster, flap your arms for a bird, clip on the lead and
walk the dog.

HOUSEHOLD TASKS
Zoom the vacuum cleaner/mop/brush vigorously around
pupils’ desks, wash and dry dishes, pretend to drop a
plate, iron everything in sight, hold your nose as you take
out the rubbish. A few props can help such as an empty
box of washing powder or a washing-up liquid bottle.

MONTHS OF THE YEAR

As you chorus these in order, pupils have to put up their
hands when you say the month in which they have a
birthday. As a variation, the teacher can say the months
in random order and the pupils who have a birthday in
that month must put up their hands. You can get pupils
to police each other and point out if a fellow pupil does
not participate correctly.

GUESSING THE ACTION

One pupil does an action and the others have to guess
what it is. The pupil who guesses correctly scores a point
and does the next action (or they can pick the next pupil
who has to do an action). Topics which work particularly
well include sports, free-time activities, household tasks
and daily routine. Pupils guessing can either practise the
second person of the verb ‘Are you playing tennis?’ or
the third person ‘Is he/she playing tennis?’ The person
doing the action can just say yes/no or can be required to
say the whole sentence ‘Yes I am playing tennis’ or ‘No,
I’m not playing tennis’.
IDEA Sources of songs can include

1 children’s nursery rhymes and action songs such as

‘head, shoulders, knees and toes’ that exist in the
target language;
2 familiar songs from pupils’ mother tongue of which
you can write a target language version;
Wn 3 songs which already have versions in the target
U language and the pupils’ mother tongue, for example
= ‘Happy Birthday’, Christmas carols such as ‘Silent
O Night’;
W 4 songs produced with coursebooks. These have the
advantage of using the exact vocabulary that you want
to teach but they vary somewhat in their singability!
5 songs currently in the target language charts that have
appropriate language, even if you only do a few lines
with pupils;
6 disco action songs that you can sing along to in the
target language with the actions, such as ‘Going to
the Party’ by Black Lace.

Point out to your cynical teenage classes that these songs

are not necessarily the latest chart favourites of the target
language country but rather songs that are useful to help
them remember certain words.

USING SONGS AS LISTENING EXERCISES

Write out the words of a song but leave some gaps. The
pupils can then listen to the song and write down the words
that go in the gaps. You can target key items of vocabulary
that they need to know or pick the second of two rhyming
words. Where the song is very clearly linked to the
vocabulary of the unit, you can actually stop the tape before
the second of the rhyming words and see if any pupils can
predict the word before you let them hear it.
Those of you who are super organized can have a
song playing as pupils enter the classroom and settle
down so that their brains are subconsciously tuning into
the subject!
Remember that, although a lot of flashcards simply
depict nouns, it is much more useful for pupils to have to
practise phrases or whole sentences with them. For
example, if using pictures of food, then pupils can be
required to preface each noun with phrases such as
‘I would like . . ”, ‘Have you any . .?’, ‘I like/don’t
like. 2, ‘usually eat. 3y
Flashcards depicting verbs can be used to practise
5
verbs in a range of tenses.

SAY THE WORD

Hold up the flashcards and pupils chorus the word, or
pupils put up their hands and you ask one pupil to say
the word.

TRUE/FALSE
If, for example, the teacher holds up a flashcard of a
FLASH
1
mouse and says ‘It’s a mouse’, then pupils indicate ‘true’
by pointing their thumbs upwards. If the teacher says
‘It’s a cat’, pupils indicate ‘false’ by pointing their
thumbs downwards.
Speed up and play as a game, eliminating pupils who
point their thumbs the wrong way or who are the slowest
to react.

WHICH CARD?
This is a variation of the above in which the teacher
holds one card out to the right and one card out to the
left and says one of the words. Pupils then have to point
to the correct card. If the teacher says a word which is on
neither card, then pupils must keep their hands by their
sides. Add pace by picking up different cards and by
swapping cards from one hand to the other.
 POINT TO THE CARD
As you teach/revise the cards, pin them up around the
room so that they will be visible to pupils when they are
standing up. Pupils all stand up and have to point to the
correct card, according to which word the teacher says.
Eliminate pupils who point to the wrong card or who are
the slowest to get there. Pupils sit down when they are
N eliminated so that it is easy to see who is still in.
W
GUESS WHICH CARD
a
Shuffle the cards and carefully select one card and put it ’
co
somewhere safe (e.g. face down on the table) without
< letting anyone see which one it is. Pupils have to guess
U
the card and the pupil who guesses correctly can then
ae
W come out and hide another card.
<
sf HIDE THE CARD

Le Send one pupil out of the room and hide a flashcard.

When the pupil comes back into the room, the class has
to chorus the word on the flashcard repeatedly, getting
louder as the pupil approaches the flashcard and getting
quieter as the pupil moves away from the card until the
pupil finds it.

HOLD UP THE CARD

Use three or four sets of the same flashcards (for
example four sets of seven animals for a class of 28).
Give one card to each pupil and, when you say a word,
all the pupils who have that card must hold up their
card. Award a point for the first pupil to raise their hand.
 These ideas are suitable for using with small items that can
easily be brought into the classroom, such as classroom
objects, cutlery and crockery, toilet articles such as
toothpaste or soap, food packets, real fruit and vegetables,
clothes and, if you have access to children’s small toys, then
you can use all manner of amazing things these days, from
vehicles (car, lorry, fire engine) to dolls’ house furniture.
Just make sure that the object is big enough to see.
Most of the flashcard activities can also be used with
small objects. In addition, the following can add variety.

WHAT'S IN THE BAG/ENVELOPE?

Put a number of objects into a bag or a large envelope
before pupils arrive for the lesson. Introduce or recap the
vocabulary using other means such as an OHT or a
textbook. Then ask the pupils to guess what is in the bag.
Each time a pupil makes a correct guess, take the
appropriate item out of the bag and show it to the pupils.

WHAT'S IN THE BAGS/ENVELOPES?

As above but one put item in each bag/envelope. For added
novelty, you can let pupils feel the bag before they guess.

GUESS WHICH ITEM

If you want pupils to play this game with objects instead
:“pj
USING
SMALL
OBJEC
of cards (see Idea 6) use a very large cardboard box
(which pupils cannot see into) in which you keep all the
objects. Then put a bag into the box and slide one object
into it, to be the hidden object.

PASS ME THE SALT PLEASE

Point to a pupil who has to ask for one of the objects, by
saying a phrase such as ‘Pass me the bread please’.
Continue asking a different pupil each time until all the
objects have been given out. Then ask a pupil who is not
holding any object to ask for an object. The pupil who is
holding the object requested has to bring it over. There is
no scoring or winning in this activity but it is appropriate
for teaching phrases such as ‘please may I have a...’ and
it works particularly well if there is something about the
item that makes the pupils want to see it more closely
(for example a mug with a cartoon character on it).
 Games can include:

1 chorus numbers forwards;

2 chorus numbers backwards;
3 count around the class — point to pupils who, in turn,
have to say the next number;
4 count around the class in intervals of two (2, 4, 6, 8),
Wn five (5, 10, 15, 20), ten (10, 20, 30), etc.;
Lu
5 count around the class but change direction every so
= often.
<
U FINGER NUMBERS
When you say a number, pupils have to put up that
U
number of fingers. Can be used for numbers 1-10 or can
a
Fe
be adapted for 10, 20, 30. Play as a game, starting with
pupils standing up and making them sit down when they
a are eliminated, after holding up the wrong number of
= fingers or being the slowest to get there.
O FIZZ BUZZ FOR BUDDING MATHEMATICIANS
U Count around the class but every time you get to a
number that is divisible by three, the pupil must say ‘fizz’
instead of the number, and every time a number is
divisible by five they must say ‘buzz’. For a number like
15 which is divisible both by three and five, they must
say ‘fizz buzz’. So the game might start like this: one,
two, fizz, four, buzz, fizz, seven, eight, fizz, buzz.
 This can be used not just for numbers but for any IDEA
defined list of vocabulary, and can be a useful filler if 9
you have a couple of minutes left at the end of a lesson.

QUICK NUMBER BINGO

At its simplest, ask pupils to write down in figures any
three numbers within a specified range (for example three
numbers between 60 and 80) and get the person sitting O
next to them to check which numbers they have written U
down so that they do not change them part way through =
the game. When you say the numbers in that range, pupils
faa)
must cross out the ones they have and the first to cross all
their numbers out and shout bingo (or preferably the target
language equivalent) and is the winner.

A LONGER VERSION
Can consist of a grid of nine squares, three by three,
and the first pupil to get a line vertically, horizontally or
diagonally shouts bingo and is the first winner. You can
then go on until a pupil has a complete ‘house’, i.e. all
nine numbers crossed out. You can also make a
rectangle, four x three, but then you need to clarify what
you mean by a diagonal line, if you allow one at all.

USING VOCABULARY OTHER THAN NUMBERS

This game can also be used for any clearly specified
vocabulary list, for example, draw pictures/write the
words for any three of the subjects to be learnt that day.
This is a useful way of recapping the lesson.

MAKING CARDS
Give each pupil a card on which they have to draw a
nine-square grid and draw a picture in each square.
Make sure that pupils have a closed list of the vocabulary
they can choose from (e.g. a list of animals, furniture).
You can actually make a series of cards yourself quite
quickly on a computer, making each one just a bit
different from the last one, by moving pictures about. To
be able to reuse these cards, you will not want pupils to
write on them so think what you will use as counters to
cover the squares that have been called. One way is to
give pupils a piece of scrap paper and let them tear off a
bit of paper each time they need a counter. |
 This is time-consuming the first time but it is well worth
it if you keep the clocks you make and use them again
and again with different classes. The activity encourages
every pupil in the class to concentrate, rather than day-
dreaming and leaving a few pupils to answer all the
questions. Pupils enjoy the novelty of handling the clocks
and they can be used as a five-minute revision activity at
any time.

Make a cardboard clock for each pupil by cutting out a

circle of card, for example the largest circle that you can
fit onto an A4 piece of card. Write the numbers of the
clock in thick felt-tip pen, making them as large as you
can. You may wish to include the 24-hour clock times
underneath the 12-hour clock. I prefer not to, putting
up support for the 24-hour clock on the board when it
CLOCK
A
EACH is needed (for example 13 = 1, 14 = 2). Make the hands
out of a different colour card and fix them to the centre
of the clock using a paper fastener.

Give each pupil a clock and ask them to place it face up

on the table. When you say the time, pupils have to move
the hands of the clock to the correct time. It is advisable
to keep the minute hand (the long hand) still to start
with, for example pointing to the 12 and just require
pupils to move the hour hand, by saying times such as
6pm, 8pm, 9pm. Then do times such as 4.30pm,
7.30pm, 10.30pm then 3.15am, 5.15am, etc. Then you
can do times in which the pupils keep the hour hand still
and move the minute hand. When pupils are thoroughly
familiar with the 12-hour clock, you can introduce the
24-hour clock. Pupils often find this very difficult and
you may decide to put up number support on the board
as mentioned above.
Although it can take a little while to teach pupils how
to play this game, it is an excellent way of motivating
pupils to speak. Once you have taught pupils how to
play the game with one set of cards, you will find
that you can easily repeat the same game with them,
using different sets of cards. Be very clear about
what language you want pupils to practise — see topic
ideas below.
I used to think that you should not give pupils too
much linguistic help on the cards but, in fact, if you
do that, you are effectively only practising what pupils
already know. The cards can actually be used to
reinforce language that the pupils have only just met.
This way they hear and say the same phrases over and
over again, so that they know them much better by the
end of the game. For this use, I find that writing the
words they need to say on the cards works well.

INSTRUCTIONS
zFAMILI
HAPPY
%
The object of the game is to collect sets of four of
the same card or belonging to the same family. The
player who collects the most sets of cards by the end of
the game is the winner. (If you operate a reward
system, you can award a point for each set of four cards
so that most pupils will get something.)

1 Three or four players required.

2 Shuffle and deal out five cards to each player.
3 Put the remainder of the cards in a pile face down in
the centre.
4 The first player (Fred) decides which set of cards he
wants to collect (you can only ask for a card if you
have one of that set in your hand). Fred then chooses
one of the other players and asks him/her if he/she has
that card, e.g.:
‘John, have you got a rabbit?’
5 If John has any rabbits, he must hand them all over
and then Fred can ask again, either asking another
player or asking John for a different card.
If John has not got any rabbits, then Fred picks
up the top card from the pile on the table and it is the
next person’s go.
6 Ifa person runs out of cards, they can take the top
card from the pile on the table to carry on.

aaa
MAKING THE SETS OF CARDS
Sets of 32 cards, that is eight sets of four, are easy to
create and make the game last a reasonable amount
of time. To make, divide a sheet of A4 into eight little
rectangles and draw/paste a different picture into each
one. Photocopy onto card. You will need to make four
copies of this for each set of cards you want, so, if you
want nine sets of cards, you will need 36 copies.

SOME TOPICS THAT CAN BE EXPLOITED WITH THE

HAPPY FAMILIES/FISH CARD GAME
1 Familiar questions for example ‘Have you got . .?’,
>

and pets.
Formal questions such as shopping, ‘Have you
got. . .?’, and food, clothes, souvenirs, lost property
items. Equally ‘I would like. . ’
Better motivated pupils who can manipulate language GAMES
CARD
can use this game for practising verbs:
Pupil A: ‘Do you play tennis?’
Pupil B: ‘Yes, I do play tennis.’ or ‘No, I don’t play
tennis.’
Role-play or letter-writing language can also be
practised. One set of cards I made had an appropriate
picture and one of the sentences below on each card
and I have found it to be one of the few successful
ways of getting lower-ability pupils to practise role-
play sentences repeatedly. Likewise, with other topics
such as campsite, train tickets, etc.

a I’d like a single

room.
b I’d like a room
with a shower.
c I’d like a room
with a bath.
d Id like a hotel
with a swimming pool.
f I’d like to pay a maximum of...
g I’d like breakfast included.
h I’d like to stay for three nights.
IDEA One of the advantages of the overhead projector (OHP)
is that you can make the overhead transparencies
(OHTs) using the best pictures that you can find. One
way in which the overhead projector is particularly
flexible is the fact that you can place one OHT over
another. This means that you can make one OHT with
pictures representing the vocabulary that you want to
teach. If you then place this OHT on the OHP and place
a blank OHT on top of it, you can make what we call an
overlay. On the overlay you might choose, for example,
to write the vocabulary that goes with the pictures. You
would then have what we could call a ‘base’ OHT with
pictures on it and an overlay with vocabulary. You can
then present the language by using the base OHT and
the overlay together, so that pupils can see the pictures
and the vocabulary. Then, as pupils become more
confident about the language, remove the overlay with
the vocabulary and drill the language using the picture
USING
OVERLAYS
overlay without the written support. You can make
several overlays for the same set of pictures for example
past/present/future versions for verb pictures or weather
symbols.

USE OF OVERLAYS AS ANSWER SHEETS

On your base sheet write the exercise, for example, a
gap-filling exercise or a multiple choice question and
then make an overlay with the answers on, preferably in a
different colour.

CREATING MOVEMENT ON THE OHP

For example, a bus or train arriving/departing. You can
use bits of OHT acetate with a long strip of acetate
attached to them. For example a picture of a train or bus
could have a long strip attached to the front of it and as
you pull the strip, holding your hand off the OHP, the
train or bus moves along. Make a base OHT with a
railway platform or bus stop to practise
arriving/departing.
You can make mini acetates by using small bits of
acetate, each with one picture on it. You can often make
these by photocopying a pageful of pictures onto acetate
and cutting it up.

Ways of using mini acetates

1 Use as though they are flashcards by placing one

small bit of acetate with a picture on it on the OHP at
a time. You can then adapt many of the flashcard
ideas for use with these mini acetates.
2 Place several of these mini acetates on the OHP and
practise the vocabulary with pupils. Then cover the
OHP with a sheet of paper to remove one of the mini
acetates. Pupils have to guess which picture is
missing.
3 Younger pupils enjoy coming out to put a mini
acetate on the correct place on the OHP according
to your instructions, for example on a base OHT
showing Ist, 2nd, 3rd road to the left/right they can
place small pictures of buildings when you say for
example ‘The church is in the 3rd road on the left’
or “To get to the church, take the 3rd road on the
left.’ Other pupils in the class can volunteer
instructions and, as the pieces are movable, there
is plenty of scope for repetition and variety. As a
follow-up activity, pupils can draw’a similar diagram
in response to written or spoken instructions and you
can use the OHP for them to check their answers.
:J
FLASH
AS
ACETA
USING
 Using football is a good way of motivating pupils,
especially boys. It is even better if you can relate what
you are doing to recent or imminent events. If you are
not much of a fan yourself, then get colleagues or older
pupils to help you.

1 At the simplest level, practise numbers by reading out

football scores.
Nationalities: make a quiz with clues such as the
following:
A Frenchman who plays for Arsenal
Make sure you know what the answers are and if
there are alternative answers. Don’t forget to update
FOOTBALL
the quiz if you use it again later on. When you use it
in class, be aware that some pupils may not know
much about football, but they may be happy to
interpret the sentence and then others guess the
answer.
Use colour pictures of footballers in their team
colours to practise colours.
Use international events like the World Cup to
practise the names of countries.
Use fixtures lists for the coming weekend to practise
predictions: ‘I think that X will beat Y’
Use well-known players for any of the activities in this
book involving celebrities, such as the quiz on family
members.
SELECTING AND ORGANIZING YOUR MATERIALS
You will need quite a lot of time to prepare these
exercises and many items will have a limited shelf life as
the thrill of using such materials for pupils is the fact
that they are relevant and up-to-date. Share work as
much as possible with colleagues who have parallel
classes.

CLASS SET OF MAGAZINES

Buying enough copies of a foreign language magazine to
be shared one between two pupils can be expensive, but
pupils really enjoy actually handling the magazines. It
also means all pupils can work through the same
exercises at the same time. It can take some organization
when you are purchasing the magazines. After choosing a
magazine that will offer you the best possibilities for
exploitation, you will probably need to go around to
several shops and count the number of copies available
in each shop before you buy them, as, if there are not
enough copies of your first choice available in the local
area, you may have to buy a different magazine!

USE A MINI-LIBRARY OF DIFFERENT MAGAZINES

You can buy different magazines, again with enough
copies overall for the whole class, but different pupils will
be working on different magazines. This means that you
can cater for different interest groups by using magazines
such as football magazines and music magazines. Pupils MAGAZ
TEENA
USING
still have the joy of handling them but you will have to
prepare different exercises for the different magazines.

PAGES CUT OUT OF ONE MAGAZINE

This means that you only need to purchase one or two
magazines. You can cut out a number of pages and put
these into separate polypockets together with a worksheet
with questions about the page. Make sure that each one
is numbered so that pupils can keep a record of which
pages they have done. You always need more pages than
the number of pupils, to allow for the fact that some
pupils finish sooner than others. This requires a lot of
initial preparation but you then have a number of
different exercises that pupils can work through.
 PHOTOCOPIES OF ONE PAGE
This is the simplest for preparation and classroom
management and can be a good way of finding out how
well the activity works. The disadvantage is that the
photocopies do not have the same appeal as the
magazine itself.

20
Reading and understanding articles in the target
language is very important in helping to build up pupils’
vocabulary and their ability to cope with the unknown.
This is a frequent component of examinations. Pupils
can be encouraged simply to read for gist or for a much
more detailed understanding of the language. While
many textbooks provide reading comprehension
exercises, the advantage of using target language
magazines is that the materials you choose can be of
particular interest or relevance to your pupils. The
disadvantage is that you have to write the comprehension
exercises yourself! Below you will find some ideas you
can use to vary the type of exercises that you write.

WHICH PAGES TO USE?

Short articles on new film or music releases, or on details
of celebrities’ personal lives are often of interest to
pupils, but all sorts of things can be exploited, even the
advertisements.

TYPES OF QUESTION THAT CAN BE USED

1 Questions in the mother tongue — this can be

particularly useful when the articles are a bit difficult
for pupils and you need to provide some help through
the question. =.
QUESTIO
DEVELO
ARTIC
MAGA
ON
2 Questions in the target language.
3 True/false statements in the target language or
mother tongue.
4 Multiple-choice questions.
5 Table to fill in, perhaps with personal and
professional details for someone famous, for example
favourite colour, films made.
6 Asummary (or sentences) about the article with gaps
in it. For less advanced pupils, provide a list of words
that can go into the gaps.
7 Who says? This is particularly appropriate where a
number of people are giving their opinion on an
issue.
8 Writing a summary of the news item or article in the
target language or in their mother tongue.

I
 9 Rewriting as full sentences information which has
been given in note form, such as a portrait of a star
giving details such as age and place of birth.
10 Matching two halves of a sentence to reflect the sense
of the article for example
He was born in . . . New York.
His mother was... a cleaner.
You can put in more second halves of the sentence
than you actually need as distractors.
11 Match a theme/word/sentence to a paragraph of the
LEX.
12 Find a word in the text with the same meaning/the
opposite meaning.

22
There are three main forms of display materia] that are
appropriate for the language classroom, namely linguistic
prompts, pupils’ work and cultural items appropriate to
the target language. Consult primary-trained colleagues,
classroom support assistants or your art department for
extra advice about how to enhance your displays.

LINGUISTIC PROMPTS
Can include permanent displays such as classroom
language, days of the week, months of the year, numbers,
colours, and temporary displays of the vocabulary
relevant to the unit that you are doing. Remember that
you can pin a piece of paper on the wall and use the
OHP to project a large version of a picture you may want
to use,

PUPILS’ WORK
Might include identity cards or introductory penfriend WORK
DISPLA
letters (with a photo if consent is given), decorated
menus, price lists using topic vocabulary, posters for
events, bar graphs or pie charts produced using the
results of class surveys.
Clothes cut out from fashion magazines or sports
magazines and labelled. For events like the world cup,
football kit can be labelled with colours and the name
of the country in the target language.

CULTURAL ITEMS
Might include maps, celebrity posters, tourist posters
and posters advertising events.

23
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 SECTION

Presenting
or revising
vocabulary
IDEA This activity adds interest to learning/revising vocabulary
for clothes or lost property and can include materials
(leather, wool, etc.) and colours.

PREPARATION
Arrange with colleagues to borrow various items that
pupils will associate readily with them (e.g., leather
jacket, suit jacket). The easiest items are coats, but you
may find other items that are characteristic of members
of staff such as bags, scarves, etc. Pupils are much more
interested in saying ‘It’s Mrs Brown’s shoe’ than
responding to a flashcard.

ACTIVITY
Hold up the items to practise the vocabulary first: ‘It is
a red coat’, and then go through the items again asking
pupils to guess whose coat it is. This can either be done
STAFF
JACKETS
as class oral work or you can ask each pupil to write
down a sentence for each item as you hold it up.
Don’t forget to return everything promptly at the
end.

26
PREPARATION
You need as many C4 envelopes as there are pairs or
groups of pupils and a few to spare. Into each envelope
put one A4-sized piece of card onto which you have
stuck a picture that you have taken out of a magazine.
You will find that you can exploit the language better if
the picture shows more than one person. They can
simply be pictures of fashion models but pupils will find
them more interesting if they are pictures of celebrities.
In the envelope, together with the picture, place about
10 strips of card, on each one of which you have written
a sentence such as ‘He is wearing a black tie’, ‘She is
wearing a green skirt’. Most of the sentences should be
true statements about the picture, but also include a few
distractors. There does not need to be the same number
of true statements and distractors in each envelope.
Make sure that you devise a labelling system so that if
you drop a statement card, you know which envelope it
belongs in, for example write a letter A on the back of
everything that belongs in envelope A. It is best to write
these statements on the computer as there is so much
repetition in them. Print out, photocopy onto card and =: PICTU
FASHI
TO
SENTENC
MATCHI
guillotine.

THE ACTIVITY
Pupils work in pairs or groups. Give each pair an
envelope and ask them to place the correct statements
on the picture and put the remainder away in the
envelope. Walk around checking pupils’ work. When
they have finished one, they can put all the pieces away
in the envelope and swap envelopes with another pair.
Continue until pupils seem confident about the
vocabulary involved. You can ask pupils to read out the
sentences they have chosen. Follow-up work can include
copying the statements into their books or pupils finding
their own pictures and writing sentences about them.

2]
 Use this to practise phrases and vocabulary associated
with food and to introduce or revise the past tense.

PREPARATION
Collect together various items of half-eaten food such
as a banana skin, apple core, orange peel, half-eaten
sandwich, empty crisp packet. Pupils always love the
disgusting! If you want to keep smells to a minimum,
or if you intend to ask pupils to hold them up, then wrap
them in clingfilm or put them in small plastic bags. Then
put all the items into one lunchbox or into several boxes.
If using several boxes, you can repeat some of the
vocabulary.

ACTIVITY
Decide which person of the verb you want pupils to
practise (I, you, he, etc.) and demonstrate using one

pee
IN
ALUNCHBOX
lunchbox, for example ‘For my lunch I ate...” Then
pick volunteer pupils and let them open the successive

RJ
HALF-EATEN
FOOD lunchboxes and say the appropriate sentences.

28
With so much concern about what we are eating these
days, you can make your contribution by encouraging
pupils to think about what they eat. Instead of just
learning the words for food and drink, pupils can
categorize items according to how healthy they are.
There are various ways in which you can do this.

RED/AMBER/GREEN ON THE BOARD

—
Draw three columns on the board — red, amber, green
to pupils that red is for fattenin g foods that
and explain
we
we should reconsider eating, green is for foods that
of as we like and amber is in between .
can eat as much
held up each food/dr ink flashcar d and
After you have
each
practised the vocabulary, ask pupils to say where
put. Then fix the card to the appropr iate
one should be
column on the board using Blu-Tac k.

USING SMALL CARDS IN PAIRS/GROUPS

the names
Give each pair/group a set of small cards with
set three cards
EATING
HEALTH
of food items on them. Include in each
Pupils must lay
with the headings red, amber and green.
under the correct
out these headings and place the foods
paper,
one. Alternatively, if you have coloured sheets of
amber and green
you could give each pair a piece of red,
As follow -up
paper on which they place the food cards.
either as
work, pupils can write this up in their books,
senten ces
simple columns and lists of words or using
?
such as ‘In the red column you find/we put...

DISPLAY WORK
wall and ask
Make red, amber and green sections on the
or magaz ine cuttin gs which
pupils to produce pictures
target langua ge and pin these
they have labelled in the
up in the correct section on the wall.

29
 You can use this activity to teach the past tense and food
(or any other item — whales can swallow anything,
including luxury yachts and their contents!).
Cut a fat whale shape out of card and place it on the
OHT and slide underneath it small OHT transparency
pictures (mini acetates) of food and also include a
surprise item such as a boy.
Start by asking the class what they think the whale
had for breakfast. Make discreet coughing noises or
disgusting sick noises and carefully drag out each item
from under the whale so pulling them out of the whale’s
mouth and say ‘For lunch I ate. . ”
When you have been through all the items once, put
all the items back underneath the whale and repeat,
revealing items slowly with pupils trying to guess them
before they are fully coughed up and saying the
sentences: ‘For lunch I ate. .

THE DUSTBIN
A similar activity can be done with a cardboard dustbin
and dustbin lid. Place the small acetate pictures under
the dustbin, lift open the lid and pull them out of the bin
RJ
WHAT
DID
THE
WHALE
HAVE
FOR
BREAKFAST?
one by one. You could also have a cat standing proudly
by the bin, saying what he ate.

30
 IDEA!
Use theme tunes of well-known programmes and have
pupils guess what type of program me it is: ‘It’s a soap’,
‘It’s a sports programme’, etc. If you’re very talented,
sing them! If not, record them. (One can often get
recordings — ask around, particularly if any colleagues
are involved with local pub quizzes.)
Initially you may need to play quite a lot of the tune
for pupils to recognize it, but you can then do follow-up
work where you fast-forward the tape and randomly pick
a bit for them to listen to. Play just a tiny extract and see
if anyone can get the answer. Play more if necessary or to
ascertain whether the guess was correct or not.
You can also use these theme tunes to practise
opinions: ‘I think X is great’, or practise verb tenses,
for example present: ‘Do you watch X?’, past ‘Did you
watch . . .? and future ‘Are you going to watch . . oe TUNES
THEME

31
 On an OHT write about five questions for round one,
asking who is whose relation, for example ‘Who is Ralph
Schumacher’s brother?’ Prepare about four OHTs in all
for four rounds. Try to make sure that your rounds cover
different interest groups and that there are a fair number
of questions that most pupils will know. You might have
one round on sport, one on TV soaps, one on music
personalities and one on film stars, and obviously include
all the family relative words that you want to practise,
particularly those that are not so well remembered by
teenage classes such as wife, husband, son, daughter,
grandchild.

PUPILS WORK IN PAIRS OR TEAMS

Display the first round of questions on the OHT and
read out the questions and allow pupils a reasonable

CELEBRITY
QUIZ amount of time to write down the answers. Advise pupils
that if they do not know the answer immediately, they
should jot down the question so that they can return to it
later. Then whisk away the OHT for round one and
display the OHT for round two. After the final round,
allow pupils a minute or two to fill in any gaps. At the
end, pupils can swap their answers with a neighbouring
team to be marked as you go through the answers,
Exploit the language to the maximum as you go through
the answers, re-reading each question and making the
pupils say a full-sentence reply.

WRITTEN FOLLOW-UP IN CLASS OR AT HOME

Pupils each write five similar-style questions (and
supply
the answers to them). You then take them in and
use the
most appropriate questions to produce a quiz for
next
time. Alternatively, you can ask pupils to write
each
question, with the answer in brackets, on a small
piece
of paper which you fold up and put in a hat. You
then do
the quiz by pulling out a question and reading
it aloud.

32
This activity can be used to teach lost property
vocabulary, such as keys, wallet, sunglasses, passport,
mobile, or clothes or toilet articles and how to say X’s
bag. You can also include rooms of the house because
celebrities’ hotel bedrooms can often be mini-apartments
that consist of rooms such as kitchen, lounge, bathroom,
bedroom, balcony, etc. You can use simply ‘was’/“is’ or
‘we have found’, or the passive.

PREPARATION
Prepare a few visual props to help — background picture
of hotel on screen/OHP, divided into floors and rooms
and showing which celebrity is in which room, either just
by writing up names or by using magazine pictures of
stars which you pin on the board. You then need some
lost-property items or magazine pictures of these items,
such as footballer’s shorts of the right team colour,
expensive-looking sunglasses, etc.

ACTIVITY
Introduce your hotel plan and the celebrities who are
occupying the rooms.
Then, to start with, you can hold up the
items/magazine pictures of items and ask pupils to
as
suggest who they belong to, by asking questions such
“Whose football shirt is this?’ and getting pupils to say
‘It’s X’s football shirt. Drill all the items a few times and
then you can move on to sentences such as ‘We’ve found
X’s wallet in Y’s bedroom’ — obviously include any recent
HOTEL
BEDRO
CELEBR
scandals or pair up likely/unlikely couples!
Ask pupils to make similar sentences by asking
‘Where have we found X’s dress?’ Pupils enjoy saying or
;
writing their own sentences.

33
IDEA, A number of commercial courses provide copymasters from
which you can make small sets of cards, which often consist
of picture cards and word cards. With the wealth of visual
material now available on the Internet, you can also make
your own sets of cards. These can be used in a number of
ways such as a starter activity to revise work or as a quick
break from teacher presentation to check how much pupils
have taken in. If pupils work in pairs, this means making
fewer sets of cards and is also more fun. It is well worth
putting a distinguishing mark on the back of each card,
CARDSsuch as an A on all the cards in one set, a B on the next set,
etc. so that if a card drops onto the floor you can put it
back with the correct set.

MATCHING UP CARDS
Pupils place the cards face up and match the words and
pictures. This can be done as a race with the first pair to
finish putting up their hands.

PELMANISM OR PAIRS
Pupils shuffle the cards and place them face downwards
on the table. Pupil A turns over two cards. If they make
a pair, pupil A keeps them and has another go. If they do
not make a pair, pupil A turns them face downwards
again and it is pupil B’s turn.

DISTRACTORS
You can make sets of cards which include distractors so
that for eight picture cards you might have a choice of 12
words. This requires pupils to do a bit more reading and
thinking. The distractors can require pupils to look carefully
at detail, for example to choose between ‘I play tennis when
the sun shines’ and ‘I play tennis when it rains’.

34
‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ has versions in many
different languages. It is possible to download the
format, including the music, from the Internet and into
PowerPoint and, if you have a data projector, you can
then project it for everyone to see. To find out which
countries have the programme visit the Who Wants to
be a Millionaire website at http://millionaire.itv.com/
millionaire/home.php . can create textboxes at the
You
bottom of the screen onto which you type questions. It is
then very easy to edit the questions to make different
versions of the quiz for different topics. It is ideal if you
can get the target-language version with their title and
presenter, but if not use your own country’s.
If you do not have a data projector available, then you
can make an overhead transparency of the introduction
to the programme to create the atmosphere and capture
pupils’ interest and then use questions written on
overhead transparencies. You can then say each question
in the slow and deliberate way that they do on the
programme and this can give you a chance to make
pupils listen repeatedly to the particular structures and
vocabulary that you choose to use.

WRITTEN ANSWERS
Instead of playing as a quiz between teams or groups,
you can also ask all pupils to write down the answers
which can help to focus their attention better. Pupils can
also get more practice in writing questions if they have to
write some questions and suggested answers. You can
then choose the best questions to put in your next quiz.

MILLIO
A
BE
TO
WANTS
‘WHO

35
IDEA The topic of household chores is most unappealing,
particularly to teenage boys, who are certainly not going
to admit to doing any (you can get in lots of practice of
‘Nothing’ and ‘Never’!), so introduce it with various
robots which have their own specific tasks. To practise
the first person of the verb, use a speech bubble in which
the robot says what it does. Give each robot an
appropriate name, such as Rose for the gardening robot.
Prepare an OHT or worksheet with several robots, such
as those below. Present to the class and do
comprehension and repetition work. Written follow-up:
draw a robot and say what it does.

Cordon bleu: Rose:

I do the cooking I do the gardening
I lay the table I sweep the garage
I clear the table I walk the dog
I do the washing-up I take out the rubbish
I tidy the plates

Rally: Miracle:
I do the shopping I do the hoovering
I do the housework I clean the bathroom
I do the cooking I tidy the bedrooms
I clean the bathroom I make the beds
HOUSEWORK
FOR
ROBOTSI lay the table

36
1 Draw an elephant on the board with its trunk
hovering above a full glass of wine as if it is about to
drink, and practise the sentence ‘I am about to drink
the wine’ (or ‘He/it is about to drink . . .”).
2 Then elongate the trunk into the glass and rub out
some of the wine to practise the sentence ‘I am in the
middle of drinking the wine.’
3 Finally, rub out the rest of wine and practise the
sentence ‘I have just drunk/he has just drunk the
wine.’

CHOCOLATES ON A TRAY
As a follow-up treat at the end of the lesson, present a
tray of chocolates/sweets, but before each pupil is allowed
to take one, he/she has to say ‘I am about to eat a
chocolate. You can then insist that they say ‘I have just
eaten a chocolate’ before they pack away.

WINE
DRINKI
ELEPH

37
IDEA This idea can be used to teach or revise spare-time
activities and to revise various persons of verbs in the
past and present and words for saying how often
(everyday, rarely, or using days of the week). I find it
particularly useful for practising the we/they forms of
the verb. You can also use it for daily routine or lifestyle
activities such as smokes, drinks, eats too much.
Draw bizarre alien creatures on an OHT or worksheet
(e.g., square screen-shaped bodies for the planet where
they watch too much television/long-limbed creatures for
the sporty planet/beer bellies for the drinkers). Make
their names and/or the names of their planets link in to
their activities. Give them a speech bubble saying ‘I... ed

or shared speech bubble saying ‘We .. ” Drill the

verbs/activities using different persons of the verb as
appropriate. Follow-up work can include pupils
producing their own creatures, together with speech
bubbles

BEFORE/AFTER SCENARIO AND NEW YEAR'S

RESOLUTIONS
Create a ‘before’ and ‘after’ version of the unhealthy
creatures to practise the habitual past ‘We used to.. ’
and contrast it with the present ‘Now we . ’
Likewise the unhealthy creatures can make New
Year’s resolutions and you can draw the slimmed-down
versions in dream bubbles.

EXAMPLE CREATURES

Square slugs: Sporty snakes:

We watch TV We play football
We play computer games We play tennis
We listen to music We go swimming

PLANETS
DIFFERENT
FROM
CREATURES
Brainy bats: Bloated blobs:
We read books We eat, we drink,
We do our homework We eat, we drink
We speak lots of languages We eat, we drink
USE OF APPROPRIATE PAST TENSES

RE
These suggestions are for scenarios to help practise the
different past tenses.

PREPARATION
If you have any appropriate pictures of things such as
volcanoes erupting, then use these. Similarly you could
set the scene with pictures of the ruins of Pompei, which
was swamped in the lava from a volcano in AD 79. You
can use up-to-date events as long as you are aware of
any personal sensitivities pupils may have. You also need
to have ready the difficult vocabulary/phrases that will be
needed.

ACTIVITY
First practise saying ‘I was in . . ” with, for example,
places around the town or rooms in the house.
Then ask the question ‘Where were you at the time
the earthquake erupted?’ and practise sentences such
as ‘I was in the kitchen at the time the volcano erupted.’ WHEN
DOING
Follow with sentences such as ‘I was eating’,
‘I was sleeping.’
Then ask the question of another pupil, “What were
you doing when the volcano erupted?’
Another response might be ‘I was watching television
when the volcano erupted.’

OTHER EVENTS
When the earthquake happened YOU
WERE
WHAT
VOLCAN
—-
When the bomb exploded
When X scored the winning goal

39
IDEA. This is another activity which practises the use of
appropriate past tenses.

PREPARATION
Prepare a brief scenario of a crime, saying simply “There
has been a murder in an airport’, or ‘There has been a
robbery in a department store’, but don’t give any
details.
Place in an envelope the details of where exactly the
crime took place.

ACTIVITY
Practise the vocabulary you will need, such as the places
around the airport (information desk, newsagent, check-
in, duty-free, cafeteria, lift, Gate no. 4, etc.), or the
departments in the department store.
Practise asking ‘Where were you at the time of the
crime?’ Pupils have to respond by saying ‘I was in. . . at
the time of the crime,’
Then ask again ‘What were you doing at the time of
the crime?’, to which pupils have to respond differently
with sentences such as ‘I was buying a newspaper.’
Ask each pupil to write down about four sentences
saying where they were and what they were doing. Tell
them that they have to make their story sound as
convincing as possible. More advanced pupils can
mention an alibi and use third-person verbs, for
example ‘I was with my friend who was buying a drink.’
Then you can act as the detective by interviewing
pupils, asking them to read out their sentences.
You can either interview all pupils or pick pupils
randomly, or you can state a characteristic that will
eliminate some pupils. When you’ve finished, open
the envelope with the details the crime. If there is
WAS
|TIME
CRIME
THE
OF
AT only one pupil who has mentioned that place, he/she
is automatically the criminal. If there is more than
one pupil, then all the pupils who mentioned that
place have to come out to the front. You then interview
these pupils again and the class has to decide which
one has the least convincing story and is therefore the
criminal.

40
If you are worried that no pupil will mention the place in
the envelope, you can cheat by preparing several
envelopes in your bag, although you tell the pupils
there’s only one. Just make sure you have a way of
pulling the correct envelope out of your bag!

4|
IDEA, This activity helps to practise the appropriate past tense.

PREPARATION
Bring in some old children’s things from your past. The
more pupils can laugh at them the better. They might
include a vinyl record, old comic/annual, or clothes.
Don’t forget you’ll probably be using some things that
pupils would consider old-fashioned! If you have thrown
everything away, then look on the Internet for things
such as old pictures of pop stars, old cars or old football
players.

GHOSTS
ACTIVITY
Present the items to the pupils, saying sentences such as
‘When I was young, I used to read . . ., I used to listen
to ..., I used to love .. ., I used to follow . . . (football
team), we used to have. . . (old car), I used to collect...’
Then encourage pupils to produce similar sentences
in response to questions such as ‘When you were little,
what did you used to watch on television?’, ‘What school
did you used to go to?’, ‘Where did you used to live?’
Pupils can follow this up with written work on what
they used to do.

GHOSTS
To add variety, you can sketch a quick picture of a castle
wall with two ghosts peering over the top. You can give
each ghost a speech bubble in which he/she is saying
‘When I was young, I used to... ” After practising
appropriate language pupils can then write a dialogue
between the ghosts discussing what they used to when
they were young. More advanced pupils could describe
what life was like when the ghosts were young.

4)
It can be very difficult to draw convincing pictures of
people with various occupations so this activity uses the
items that various professionals would use.

PREPARATION
Collect together a number of items that could be
considered typical of particular professions — usually
either a tool they use or an item they make, for example
letters (postman/woman), scissors and comb
(hairdresser), loaf of bread (baker), spanner (mechanic),
builder’s trowel (builder), plane (a carpenter), markbook
(teacher), thermometer (nurse/doctor), microphone
(singer), football (footballer).

ACTIVITY
Use the items to practise jobs in appropriate sentences,
for example ‘I am a builder’, ‘I’d like to be a singer’, or
‘My mother/My father is...
You might also do a lucky dip. Put all the items in a THIS?
USES
WHO
bag and have pupils pull one out and say what they
would like to be according to what item they pull out of
the bag, for example if they pull out the spanner, they
would say ‘I’d like to be a mechanic.’ To give pupils more
choice, they could be allowed to choose whether to use
the positive or the negative, for example ‘I would not like
to be a mechanic.’
Many of the ideas of what to do with small items or
flashcards can similarly be adapted.

43
IDEA Quizzes are a good way of motivating pupils to write
down a large number of sentences as they will think of it
as a game rather than just more writing. This activity
may sound a bit chaotic but less able pupils in particular
often get more written down than if they were just sitting
in their places.

PREPARATION
Before pupils arrive, pin up around the room flashcards
relevant to the topic(s) that you have been doing
recently. Make sure you number them, either by writing
on the card or by pinning a number to each card. Use
about 20 cards to make the activity worthwhile and so
not to have too many pupils crowding around one card.
I have often used 30 as this keeps pupils busy. If it is
difficult to pin them up, then you can simply lay them
out on tables.

ACTIVITY

QUIZ
CLASSROOM
Practise the appropriate language with pupils, making it
clear what language you expect for each picture. Pictures
of activities can require a separate sentence for each
picture, for example ‘I am swimming’, ‘I am playing
tennis’, whereas with nouns, you may wish pupils to use
a particular phrase such as ‘I would like an apple. You
may choose to use this activity to practise the past tense.
Then, if you have pinned up 20 cards, tell pupils to
write down numbers 1—20 and explain exactly what sort
of sentence you require for each picture. When you say
‘Go’, pupils get up from their seats and have to go
around the room, writing down the 20 sentences.
Reward the first pupil(s) to finish writing down all 20
sentences correctly and legibly.

44
Interview-style questions can be used in the teaching of any
topic, from personal information or hobbies to availability
and suitability for a summer holiday job.

PREPARATION
Make pairs of cards. On one card of each pair, you need a
pen portrait of the person you are looking for and the
questions the pupil will require to find this person. It is best
for elementary learners for all the question cards to have
the same questions so that you can drill them thoroughly in
advance. More advanced learners can have different
questions. On the second card of each pair write the
answers, either as a cue in note form or in sentences for
young learners. All answer cards should be different.

PERSO
THE
FIND

Elementary Ca
rd Ib
ie
Here are the details
that you must
ien about yourself
Interviewed: when
ae
lam 12
My birthday is
22nd April
|have two br
others
| have three
dogs
I like tennis

45
 Ask various students the relevant questions until you
find someone who can fulfil all five conditions above.

ACTIVITY
Give out one card to each pupil. Pupils then have to
circulate, with the question-card pupils asking questions,
until they find the pupil who has the correct pair card.
You may find it best to give out question cards to all
pupils on one side of the classroom and answer cards to
those on the other side and explain to pupils that this is
what you are doing.

46
WEATHER AND AN ACTIVITY
Use a weather flashcard and an activity flashcard to
practise sentences such as ‘When it’s fine, I play tennis.’
Pupils can come out to the front and pick one card from
the weather pile and one from the activities and then
make a sentence. A similar activity can be done with sets
of small picture cards. Pupils can lay out sensible pairs of
weather and activity and then write up their sentences.

MAP AND WEATHER

Use a map of the country and put various weather
symbols in the different regions for the practising of
sentences such as ‘In the North it is cloudy.’ This works
particularly well with an OHT map and little bits of
OHT acetate (mini acetates) with the various weather
symbols, which can then be moved around the map, so
as to encourage the use of different sentences. Weather
can be practised in the past (what the weather was like
yesterday or has been like today), present (habitual —
what the climate is usually like) and future forecasts.
Don’t forget that some languages are spoken in more
than one country and this is a good opportunity to use ACTIVI
WEATH
maps of a range of countries, particularly if they have
very different climates.
You could also show a nightmare global-warming
scenario saying what the weather will be like in 2100.

ANIMALS AND THE WEATHER

You can use animals to practise work on types of climate
or simply to say who likes what sort of weather, for
example frog — rain, polar bear — snow, lizard — sun,
monkey — hot.

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 SECTION

Great games
IDEA Use this to teach geographical vocabulary: hill, beach,
forest, port, lake, river, etc.; directions: right/left; or
position words: in front of, next to, near... and/or
compass points
Preparation: make three OHTs, the first, OHT1,
being a map of a treasure island complete with geographical
features (mountain, forest, etc.); the second, OHT2,
being an overlay which is made by laying a blank OHT over
the treasure island OHT1 and writing in the new
vocabulary (mountain, etc.) in the correct place; the third,
OHTS3, just has the outline of the island and a cross (or
treasure chest if you can draw) to show where the treasure
is. Hide this OHT3 in an envelope. You may also need a
blank OHT4 to write pupils’ initials on (see 3 and 5).

1 Put OHT1 on the OHP and put OHT2 on top of it.

Practise the geographical features vocabulary first
with the overlay OHT2 in place and then without it.
2 Practise whatever directions/position words you
ISLAND
TREASURE intend to exploit.
3 Start the game by getting pupils to put their hands up
and tell you where they think the treasure is (left/west
of the river, next to the lake). Mark the spot with the
pupil’s initials. You can do this on OHT4.
4 When finished build up a bit of suspense and
excitement as you get OHT3 out of its envelope and
place it on the OHP over the OHT1 (and over OHT4
if you are using it), taking care to match up the
coastline of OHT1 and OHT3 so everyone can see
where the treasure is and which pupil has got the
nearest. It is important that the pupils can see that
the treasure OHT3 was prepared before and comes
out of an envelope so it does not look as if you have
just decided where the treasure is and risk accusations
of fix or favouritism.
5 Be ready for pupils to demand a second game — often
better to save this for next lesson as variety is also
important. The winner can be allowed to draw the
treasure on for next time.

50
Find the treasure in an abandoned city, or find a cat or IDEA
baby after an earthquake.
You can use this activity to teach buildings around
town — town hall, station, church, school, various shops,
supermarket, etc. — and directions, including first, second
on the left/right, and location words such as opposite.
This activity uses the same idea as the treasure island
activity described on the previous page but the scenario
is either an abandoned city (for example Pompei or an
Inca settlement), which can include some rather
anachronistic buildings(!), with the task being to find the
treasure or, if you prefer to avoid the anachronistic, then
we might imagine our cat went off wandering around our
modern town just before an earthquake and now we’re
trying to find it.
Make up the OHTs as for treasure island, but this
time OHT1 is town plan with streets and buildings
(tourist brochure or Internet sites could provide you
with a map), OHT2 has the names of buildings, and CITY
ABAND
OHT3 has the treasure/cat.

51
IDEA! Use this activity to teach the verbs ‘to live’ or ‘to be’, and
the floors of a block of flats. This can then be adapted
to teach words such as door, window, balcony or rooms
in the house.

PREPARATION
1 Find a large cardboard box such as a banana box,
which is about one metre long and about 70 cm wide.
The depth is unimportant.
2 Stand the box on its end so that the bottom of the
box is now the front of your block of flats. Draw on
floors (e.g., basement, ground floor, 1st floor, etc.)
complete with balcony, windows (and shutters
if appropriate for the country whose language you
are teaching).
3 Make the windows (or shutters) so that they open
and close.
4 Decide what you are going to use as inhabitants —
glove puppets, soft toys, pictures of celebrities (you
can stick pictures of the heads of celebrities on
cardboard and put these on sticks or straws).

LANGUAGE PRACTICE
1 Place the box somewhere so that it is clearly visible
to the class (e.g., on top of a filing cabinet).
2 Introduce the vocabulary — basement, ground floor,
etc. — using the box.
3 Poke a glove puppet through a window to say, for
BOX
CARDBOARD
A
IN
LIVING example, “The cat lives on the second floor’ or
‘Homer Simpson lives .. ” Repeat with other
characters on other floors.

TOM AND JERRY VERSION

Just use two glove puppets who appear at different
windows. Use the question ‘Where is X?’ or ‘Is X on
the Ist floor?’ If you use a cat and a mouse glove
puppet or stick puppet, with a bit of practice you can
do a chase with the mouse appearing on one floor and
then the cat.

52
HOUSE VERSION OR FLOORS/DEPARTMENTS IN
A BIG DEPARTMENT STORE

You can make another cardboard box into a house to teach

the floors and rooms but you should give some indication
of what the rooms are on the outside of the house (e.g., one
window which opens and another window through which
you can see a bit of the room). Likewise for teaching the
different departments in a department store.

53
IDEA, This is a whole-class version of the game Cluedo in which

42
players have to solve a murder mystery, finding out where,
by whom and with what the murder was committed.

PREPARATION
You need a plan of house on OHT and 12 small
rectangles about 4 cm x 3 cm of OHT acetate. Make six
of these into the suspected persons. I keep the people as
simply Mr/Mrs (and have used a top-hat symbol to show
which are Mr) and use simple colours (red, blue, etc.)
but pupils may ask you for the Cluedo names (Colonel
Mustard, Miss Scarlet, etc.). On each of the other six
CLUEDO
rectangles of acetate draw a weapon (I usually try just to
teach knife, rope and revolver but pupils who know the
game invariably ask for candlestick, spanner and lead
piping so have these ready, although these words are
unlikely to be on the syllabus).

HOW TO PLAY
1 Give each pupil a blank slip of paper on which they
must secretly write the name of: one room, one
person and one weapon. Ask them to fold over their
piece of paper and collect up the pieces of paper and
put them in a box. Pull one out, look at it but don’t
say what’s on it.
2 Pupils then put their hands up to guess which room it
says. As pupils guess, you can cross off the rooms they
mention and then tick the correct one. Reward the
pupil who gets the correct answer with a point.
3 Pupils then have to guess the person (Mr Green,
etc.). You can line up the six persons along the side
of the OHP so they are visible and, as the pupils
guess them, move the wrong guesses out of sight.
When the correct guess is made, move that person
into the correct room. Reward the correct guess.
4 Repeat (3) with the weapon.
5 Start again, having rubbed out any marks on the
rooms. One of the winning pupils can pick out a piece
of paper from the box and say yes or no to pupils’
guesses.

54
Use this activity to teach phrases such as “You are nice’,
and to practise numbers. You can also use it for fortune-
telling language ‘You are going to travel...

HOW TO MAKE A FORTUNE TELLER

1 Give each pupil a square piece of paper, or an
A4 sheet and show them how to make a square by
folding down one corner and tearing off the end
strip.
2 Fold the four corners of the square to the middle to
make a new square.
3 Turn the paper over and again fold the four new
corners to the middle.
4 Fold this square in half to make a rectangle, unfold
and fold in half the other way.
5 Now insert your thumbs and forefingers into the flaps
created and bring them together towards the middle.
You should now have created the mechanisms of the
fortune teller.
6 On the outside of the fortune teller write the numbers
TELLERS
FORTUN
one to eight in the target language
7 On the inside, on each separate triangle, write a
colour.
8 Under each triangle the student should write a phrase
such as ‘you are’ + adjective or ‘you are going to’ +
activity.

Although easy to make this is quite difficult to explain.

There are many websites which lay out instructions as to
how to make the fortune teller, one of the best is —
http:/\www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/origami/
fortuneteller

PLAYING FORTUNE TELLERS

Once pupils have written their sentences into the fortune
teller, they can circulate, working in pairs to tell each
other’s fortunes.

55
 Pupil A: ‘Pick a number.’ (Pupil B has to pick from
those on the outside of the fortune teller.)

Pupil B: ‘Five,’

Pupil A then opens and shuts the fortune teller five times
and shows the inside to Pupil B who then chooses one of
the four colours showing.

Pupil A then opens the flap and reads out the fortune
under the colour chosen.

56
Ideal for teaching the narration of past events.

GROUPING PUPILS
Pupils need to be in groups of 4—6. A quick way to put
pupils into fours is to ask two pupils to turn round to
work with the two pupils behind them.
Each pupil needs a sheet of A4 paper and they must
conceal whatever they write on the paper from the other
pupils.
It can be useful to use a writing frame on the board
or OHT to help pupils. The sections in brackets are the
pupils’ free choice, although you may wish to guide them
with ideas.

(boy’s name) met

(girl’s name)
at/in (name of place)
on (date or day of the week)
Eiersaid @.-.)
CONSEQ
Shersatd((. 5...)
They (action they did)
The consequence was...
FWY
ONAN

THE GAME
Ask the pupils to write a boy’s name on the paper and
then turn down the top of the paper to conceal what they
have written.
Then they should pass their piece of paper to the
person on their left in their group. The recipient of the
paper must not unfold it but must write down a girl’s
name on the paper. They must not write on the flap but
on the sheet of paper itself so that all the writing ends up
on the same side of the paper. They then fold the paper
over again and pass it to their left. The process is
repeated for all eight items. Then, at the end, unfold the
paper and read them out to the class. The teacher can
read the first few to make sure the pupils know what
language to use and then pupils can volunteer to read
theirs out.

57
IDEA The game assassin encourages speaking and writing in
the past tense. Although it seems a bit complicated to set
up, writing the cards will not take you long as you can
copy and edit so much of them. While the speaking
activity described on this page is an excellent activity on
its own, you may also like to follow it up with the pupils
writing their own version. You will find instructions for
this on the next page.

PREPARATION
Pupils work in groups of four, one detective and three
suspects, so you need as many sets of four cards as you
have groups of four pupils, i.e. seven sets for a class of
ASSASSIN
28. As you go around to each group and give out the
cards, ask each group to choose an intelligent person
to be the detective. To the detective, you give card one
which has details of the crime and cues for the questions
to ask the suspects. It is important that the detective does
not show this card to other members of the group. The
three suspects each have a card with cues to say how
they spent the evening, one of which has information
which betrays him/her to the detective (for example the
perfume/after-shave they were wearing, what they drank).

HOW TO PLAY
The detective asks the suspects the questions in order to
work out which suspect carried out the murder. The best
group involvement is achieved if the detective asks each
suspect question one and then each suspect question two
and so on until, on asking the last few questions, they
discover who the murderer is.
I have found that with school-aged pupils you get
better practice of the whole sentence said correctly in the
past tense by giving them the whole sentence to say. This
also then acts as a model for the second part of the
activity when the pupils write their own version.

58
 e
e Detectiv
Card 10° Th er detail s. Ask
all the
a re th e mu rd
He re
You are the
detective.
to find th e
murderer.
30pm in a
estions below
qu at about 1 1.
itted
suspects the se they foun
d
Last ni gh t there was 4 ‘< Near the corp ai ns .
i d wi ne st
ulevar
café in the Bo
ar ts (playin
al n ace of he st night?
the house la
did you leave
|. What time ght.
you go last ni
2. Where did tot he fé
Ca Rouge?
you get
3, How did
you eat?
4. What did
did you drink?
5. What e café?
di d you do in th questio n
6. What the café?
did you leave | eesei the
sgiare your rep
eplies
7. What time ho me ?
oH house at 9pm
straight
g. Did you 8° one? “Keb t© the
*° the café al
Café Rouge j
9. Did yo u go “3 vard St Mich
om? oe ibs
Or with wh ; went to the
c “
hs late a hotdog
rs ieee red
wine
: ; noe table
fopehall
a se café at mi
dni
» |!Went to a club
he
9.1 we nt to the café
af
; three Rigi and the club
with

Figure 1: A set of sample 59

cards for the assassin game
 This is a follow-on activity for pupils to do when they

46
have played the assassin game described on the last page.
I have found this to be one of the best ways to get
pupils to say and write simple sentences in the past
tense, particularly as they really like writing versions for
each other and playing each other’s versions.
When pupils have played the assassin game, make
sure they realize how the activity works (i.e. that most of
what the suspects do should be the same with the telling
differences kept for the last couple of questions). They
can then write their own version, either in groups or
alone, with a view to giving it to another group to do.
Suggest they think of what the giveaway factor is going to
be before they start writing. Remind them to keep their
voices down as they will be passing their finished version
on to another group to solve afterwards and so they
should be wary of giving the game away. To produce
accurate language, they would be well-advised to stick
closely to your model to start with. You can organize it
so that they give in their versions to you and you correct
them before they are used in the next lesson by another
group. I have also made them write their original version
on rough, lined paper, taken them in and corrected them
and then made the pupils write out a neat correct version
on smart-looking card. We have then played the game
again in our class using their versions and we have also
‘sent’ our cards to be used by another parallel class and
received their versions back in return. This way pupils

VERSION
PUPILS’
THE
ASSASSIN:
have repeated time after time those basic past tense
sentences such as I went, I ate, I drank, etc.

60
During this activity pupils can practise descriptions,
lost-property language, personal details, hobbies and
professions.

SCENARIO
A bag has been found with certain items in it, but
several people claim it is theirs. To start with you can
be the lost property officer and the class those looking
for their bag. Ask a number of pupils their name,
address and date of birth and then show the class an
item from the bag such as a library card with those
details on which shows that the bag must belong to
that person.

IN GROUPS
If groups of four there should be one lost-property
officer and three people who claim the bag is theirs.
The lost property officer can be given a bag with the
items in it and a card with questions. The questions can
simply use descriptive language about the items in the :IT?
BAGIS
WHOSE
|
bag such as ‘What colour is your mobile phone?’ or
personal information language such as ‘What’s your
address?’ Alternatively they can be much more devious,
using information on things like train tickets, ‘Where
did you go by train?’, depending on what sort of
language you want to teach. The other three members
of the group who claim that the bag is theirs have their
answer cards which either have sentence cues, one-word
cues or picture cues that they use to answer the lost
property officer.

PRACTICE IN MAKING UP QUESTIONS

Most learners find it much more difficult to make up

questions than to answer the questions that their teacher
asks them. Another use of this activity can simply be to
display the items found in the bag at the front of the
classroom and ask pupils to write down questions which
could be used to check if the person claiming the bag
was likely to be the real owner. This activity could focus
very narrowly on one structure, ¢.g. using a range of
sports equipment such as a tennis ball, a golf ball, a
squash racket, a football and a table tennis bat to 6|
 encourage pupils to write down five questions such as
‘Do you play tennis?’, etc., or it can be more open-ended,
encouraging pupils to form a range of questions.

62
Each group/pair has an envelope in which there are
pictures and a number of cards with sentences on them.

1 The pupils must lay the cards out on the table in

front of them and match the pictures to the
sentences. You can put in more sentences than there
are pictures, for example a picture of a boat, one card
which says ‘we went by boat’ and one which says “we
went by plane’. If you do this, then tell the pupils to
put the ‘wrong’ cards out of the way in the envelope.
2 They should put the cards into a logical order.
3 They copy out the sentences to form a narrative
including all the pictures (e.g., plane, hotel, beach,
souvenirs, café). This activity can be as easy or
difficult as you make the pictures.

Here are some suggestions

PICTURES SENTENCES SNAPS

HOLIDA
A calendar with a ring We left on 5 August
around 5—12th August

An aeroplane/airport We went by plane

A hotel We stayed in a hotel

Beach We went to the beach

Café We ate an ice-cream in

a café

Souvenirs with price labels We bought souvenirs

63
IDEA, This activity is similar to Idea 48. However, instead of
having words and sentences in an envelope, pupils only
have pictures in the envelope. They then have to find the
appropriate language from their previous work. They can
be instructed to write at least one or two sentences per
picture.

SAME OR DIFFERENT ENVELOPE CONTENTS FOR EACH PAIR

Envelopes with the same contents are the easiest to
prepare for a whole class. However, producing several
different versions (e.g., skiing holiday, beach holiday, city
holiday) means that as soon as pupils have finished off
one story, they can have another envelope to write
another story. If you plan to do this, always have more
envelopes than pairs as otherwise you will find that there
is a traffic jam with no new envelope available for those
who are the quickest to finish. You can of course make
envelopes of varying difficulty to use in mixed-ability
classes.

HOLIDAY
SNAPS:
DIFFICULT
VERSION

64
 = Of

Active listening
yz You can use this as a listening activity to practise parts of
the body and numbers. You can also use adjectives such
as long, thin, short, fat, hairy.

PREPARATION
Give a small blank rectangle of paper to each pupil
(e.g., a piece of A4 cut into four, or use little squares
from a message pad).

ACTIVITY
You make statements about a monster, for example
‘It has two heads’ and, in response to each statement you
make, pupils have to draw a monster according to your
description (two heads, one eye, three legs, etc.). At the
MONSTERS
end, they put their names on the back. Collect up and
eliminate any which show miscomprehension, such as
the wrong number of limbs. Then give the remainder to
a colleague to judge and award a prize for best monster.
It is much better to use a monster rather than a person
as you do not have to be good at drawing to draw a
monster whereas many pupils would be put off thinking
that they are no good at drawing people. Telling pupils
in advance that their monsters will be judged encourages
them to make an effort and they find this activity much
more interesting than an ordinary listening exercise.

66
This activity can be used for topics such as a plan of a
house, flat, school, shopping street, town or campsite. As
well as the topic-specific vocabulary, such as the names
of the shops, it can use left/right or position words such
aS opposite, next to, in between.

PREPARATION
Give pupils either simply a blank sheet or a quick outline
they can copy from the board. This might be a shopping
street with five shops on each side and one shop already
named. Easy outlines can be done for a flat, a house, a
part of a school or a department store. If you prefer, you
can obviously duplicate much more elaborate outlines
such as town plans based on real towns in tourist
brochures with the key buildings blanked out and
replaced with numbers.

ACTIVITY 1 - ONE INSTRUCTION AT A TIME

Give one instruction at a time and pupils have to write in
the word in the correct place. So, for example, you may
have a street with a baker’s shop in it and you say “The HOUSE
A
DRAWI
greengrocer’s shop is on the left of the baker’s.’

ACTIVITY 2 —- FOR BUDDING ARCHITECTS OR TOWN

PLANNERS
Give a series of instructions such as ‘In this campsite, the
shop must be near the entrance’, “The showers must be
next to the toilets’. Pupils have to note down these
instructions and then they have to draw an appropriate
plan and label it. Pupils can do this individually or in
pairs or groups.

67
IDEA, A useful listening exercise for practising descriptions and
for teaching the words girl/boy or getting pupils to hear
the difference between he and she, as so often classroom
dialogue tends to focus on I/you.

PREPARATION
Pupils need paper or exercise books to jot down the
ne answers.

ACTIVITY
Ask the pupils to write 1-5 (or however many you are going
to do) in the margin and then begin with your first
statement such as ‘Name a boy who has short, blond hair’,
‘Name a girl who wears glasses’ and have pupils write down
the name of a fellow pupil. There will often be more than
one correct answer. Alternatively you can say ‘he has .. . or
‘she has .. ” and pupils need to listen out for he/she as well
as the description. Some more adventurous pupils might
like to be the ‘teacher’ and say the next sentence and so
they say the cue sentence and pupils all write down an
answer. When checking through the answers, you can ask
pupils to make a whole sentence so that instead of just
saying Jane, they have to say ‘Jane has short, brown hair’
Likewise you can do follow-up written work in which pupils
have to write out a sentence for each of the names they
have jotted down. Make sure that they have the appropriate
model sentences ‘He has .. .” and ‘She has . . ” and the
WHO
IN
CLASS
THE
HAS
.. appropriate vocabulary to complete this part of the activity.

68
In language learning we often forget how important it is
for pupils to hear new words a number of times before
we ask them to say the words. We can find ourselves
rushing on to make pupils say new words before they
have had time to absorb the sounds and meanings of
these words.

In these activities pupils concentrate on listening and

they show their comprehension through actions. The
reasoning behind these activities is that even well-
behaved children will daydream, and it is much better if
they actually have to do something that the teacher can
see them doing in order to show they are following the
lesson.
In the following games pupils all stand up and when
they are eliminated (ie. ‘out’) they sit down. Pupils can
be eliminated for the wrong action or being the last one
to get to the correct action. To maximize practice for as
many pupils as possible, try to get very few pupils out
near the beginning and then, perhaps by making the
activity more difficult or by speeding up, get a lot more
out just before the end. I have found one way of avoiding
just having a few pupils in for a long time at the end with
other pupils getting bored is to say that you will time the
whole game for two minutes and all pupils who are still
in at the end automatically get a point. This means that GAMES
LISTEN
ACTION
everyone has a chance of winning a point.

TRUE/FALSE STATEMENTS
Pupils must put their thumbs up to signify true and turn
their thumbs down to signify false. This activity can be
used with any topic. It can be used with flashcards so
that you hold up, for example, a picture of a fish but say
‘It’s a horse’.

69
IDEA FINGER NUMBERS
When you say a number, pupils have to put up that
number of fingers. Can be used for numbers 1—10 or can
be adapted for 10, 20, 30.

TURN LEFT/TURN RIGHT/GO STRAIGHT ON

Pupils have to put their arms out to the left, the right or
straight on in response to your commands. This can be
made more complicated by having to use fingers of the
correct hand to show Ist, 2nd, 3rd. Thus if you say 3rd
on the right, pupils have to hold out their right arm and
hold up three fingers of their right hand.

TOUCH YOUR... PARTS OF THE BODY, OR CLOTHES

You say ‘touch your head’ or ‘touch your shoes’ and
pupils have to touch the relevant item.

SIMON SAYS
SIMON
SAYS...
A well-known variation on the above in which pupils
must only carry out the action if you say ‘Simon says’
at the beginning. So if you say ‘Simon says touch your
nose’ then pupils must do so but if you omit the ‘Simon
says’ then pupils must not do the action. Find out what
the target language version of this activity is.

10
POINT TO THE PICTURE IN THE BOOK
Pupils all have a textbook open at the correct page and
must point to the correct picture in the book when the
teacher says a word or sentence which is relevant to that
picture. This may be better done simply as an activity rather
than a game as it is not very practical to eliminate pupils
while doing this activity unless it is a very small class or you
ask pupils to watch each other and point out who is out
(though this can lead to arguments). One way to add a bit
of competitive edge to this activity is for each pair of pupils
to share a textbook and to compete with each other to be
the first to touch the correct picture. Even without any
scoring system, pupils seem to enjoy trying to be the first to
touch the picture.

STAND UPIF...
If you play this as a game in which pupils are already
standing up then you can say ‘Put your hand up if...’
You can make up sentences about physical appearance such
as ‘Stand up if you have blue eyes’, or about other things
such as brothers/sisters/hobbies/when their birthday is,
for example ‘Stand up if you play football for the school’,
‘Stand up if your birthday is in May’, ‘Stand up if you have £HEEP
TO
POINT
three sisters’. It may be best done as a non-competitive
game unless you can be sure of your facts.

TI
IDEA This can be used for topics such as personal information
or members of the family.
You can often make topics more interesting and more
relevant by using up-to-date factual information in your
listening exercises. The fact that pupils may already know
some of the answers in their own language often
motivates them to listen keenly. Items which lend
themselves to this type of activity include:

football scores
dates of birth of famous people
relationships/relatives: ‘x has three children’
descriptions of famous people
BOM
OOOsimple news headlines for more advanced students

FACTS
YOUR
GET
RIGHT

N
This activity can be done as a simple exercise or as a IDEA
quiz, with pupils working individually or in pairs.
You describe a person in the class and the pupils have
to write down who it is. Once you have established what
to do, you can ask pupils to volunteer to describe
someone in the class. This is a good way of stretching
some of the more able pupils while other pupils are
simply doing a comprehension exercise.
You can also do this activity with other people who
are known to the pupils, such as members of staff or
famous people. This allows you to use more adult
vocabulary such as bald, beard or moustache. You need
to make sure that everyone knows these people. One way
to make the activity more accessible is to put up a list of
people from whom pupils choose. You do not need to GUESS
WHO
give a whole description of one person at a time. Instead
you can say one sentence for one question and then say
another sentence about the same person later on as a
different question.
If pupils do not guess who you are talking about
straight away, encourage them to make notes so that they
can return to the question later. Then give pupils a few ©
minutes at the end to fill in or guess any answers they
have not completed.

As a follow-up activity pupils could write a statement

about each of the people mentioned or they could use
the appropriate vocabulary to make up further questions
which you could use in a similar exercise or quiz at a
later date.

73
IDEA, This listening exercise consists of the teacher giving
pupils a list of categories in the target language and how
many items of each category they must write down.
When pupils have written down this list, they then have
to write down the items required. This is a good end of
unit or end of year activity.
Your list might look like this:

five colours
ten numbers
five animals
six nationalities
four members of the family
twelve months
seven days of the week
Ge)
fon
mes
Tow
(oe ten school subjects
eatchemiary
three opinions
ten sports
six hobbies that are not sports
ee
tee
— eight places to go around the town
four rooms in the house
Poesix items of furniture

ACTIVITY
LISTENING
REVISION

74
 ‘ne

Creative writing
IDEA This activity can be used to practise some or all of the
following:

—_ the names of town-centre buildings, shops;

bo home and work places: block of flats, house, factory,
office;
services: school, hospital, police station, fire station;
& geographical features such as near the sea, on a river,
near the mountains;
5 location words: near to, far from;
6 transport facilities, such as motorway, airport, railway
station, bus station, cycle tracks, car park;
7 leisure and entertainment facilities, such as park,
sports’ ground, leisure centre, youth club, cinema.

PREPARATION
A blank A3 sheet of paper for each pair/group. Little
picture cards of places around the town or a list of
TOWN
IDEAL
MY facilities to be included/excluded. Vocabulary lists
accessible for other words pupils might want.

DEMONSTRATION
Use the board/OHP to show pupils how they might draw
on a coastline, river, motorway and then place on the
buildings.

ACTIVITY
Pupils work in groups or pairs. Pupils have to draw
features such as the sea, hills, roads, railways, etc., onto
the A3 sheet and then lay out picture cards with shops,
leisure centre, houses, etc., in a way that seems ideal to
them. They label the features in the target language. Set
a time limit by when they must have finished, or some
pupils would take all day drawing and not get on to the
writing. They can then write up an account of their ideal
town. At the simplest level: this can include ‘In my ideal
town there are . . . (a list of nouns)’. At a more advanced
stage, pupils could use phrases such as ‘In my ideal town
I would like . . ., there would be . . ., one could have. . ”

16
FOLLOW-UP WORK
You can do some oral work with questions such as ‘In
your town is there a. . .?’ or ‘Where is the . . .?? or you
can allow pupils to walk around to see what the other
groups have done.

7]
IDEA Using the same idea as the ideal town, pupils can be
given a blank piece of paper and some picture cards as
starters to help them design their ideal school, house,
bedroom or holiday. If some of these items are rather
beyond the scope of your usual coursebook materials,
then try using glossy magazines or the Internet. For
some items you may find it useful to write a phrase by
the picture to make it clear what the picture is supposed
to be or to give pupils the appropriate vocabulary, for
example ‘a computer with lots of games’.

Pictures could include:

IDEAL SCHOOL
Sports’ centre, swimming pool, bar, cinema, theatre,
recording studios

IDEAL HOUSE
Expensive car for the garage, remote control for the
gate/garage, games room, children’s TV room, music
recording studio, sports’ facilities for example tennis
courts, swimming pool, jacuzzi, beauty salon,
bar/restaurant, luxury bathroom, lift, automatic doors.

IDEAL BEDROOM
Computer with lots of games, wardrobe with lots of
clothes or wardrobe for each colour, drum kit, robot to
tidy up.

IDEAL HOLIDAY
Exotic location pictures, desert island, moon, Hollywood,
etc., and

O pictures of the activities that your pupils might like to

do on their ideal holiday where cost is no object: jet
skiing, scuba diving, hang-gliding, bungee jumping;
O pictures of hotel facilities similar to those used for the
ideal house or the ideal bedroom;
Oo pictures of luxury transport: helicopter, Porsche,
rocket;

HOLIDAY
BEDROOMPE
HOUSE,
SGHOOL,
[IDEALO pictures of celebrities they would like to meet.

= co
VARIATIONS (WORK PARTICULARLY WELL FOR IDEAL
HOLIDAYS)
Pictures are spread out on several large surfaces around the
classroom and pupils (or one pupil from each group) have
to collect eight (for example) pictures in a set time and then
use those pictures on their plan of their ideal item. They
then have to write out their description/account.

HOMEWORK
Pupils have to bring in their own pictures, for example
ask them to bring seven pictures about an ideal holiday.
These could be pictures that pupils find in newspapers,
magazines or on the Internet. Alternatively pupils could
draw simple pictures.

19
IDEA This activity is useful for practising comparative
structures and adjectives.

PREPARATION
Make your own version of two monsters on OHT which
you can show pupils. Prepare vocabulary lists if needed —
it is often handy for pupils to have a lot of different
adjectives that they might use, and, if relevant to the
language you are teaching, lists of irregular comparatives.

ACTIVITY
Tell pupils they have to draw two monsters, give each
monster a name and then write ten sentences comparing
them. Pupils can often make up more sentences by
saying something the opposite way round, for example
‘*X is taller than Y’ and ‘Y is shorter than X’. You can
limit the activity to one comparative structure such as
‘X is more elegant than Y’ or you can include ‘X is less
fierce than Y’, “X is as funny as Y’, ‘X is not as happy
as Yor

MONSTERS
COMPARING

80
This can either be done at a form-filling level or as an
Cher cise in writing a paragraph from a form.

FORIA-FILLING ~ WRITING A FACTSHEET

Pupils use 2 magazine article as a reading comprehension
exercise from which they extract the necessary details to
fill in the factsheet. It is rare that you will find an article
which is at exactly the correct linguistic level so it is
often easier to write your own version from an article or
a factsheet. The Internet can be a useful source of the
necessary information. After all doing the same one as an
example, you can have a choice of follow-up worksheets
available, for example one sheet with several footballers,
one sheet with several soap stars, one sheet with several
members of a band.

Surname: First name:

Date of birth: Place of birth:
Eye colour: Hair colour:
Brothers and sisters: Successes: (roles played/
(or family) goals scored)
Hobbies: Favourite colour:

PARAGRAPH WHITING
Pupils can use the information gathered in their factsheet
and present in paragraph form, with sentences such as
‘he has .. . eyes’, “he was born in... ’, etc. OF
CELEBR
PORTRA
A
HOMEWORK
More highly motivated pupils can be encouraged to
bring in their own information from magazines or the
Internet to use in a future lesson to produce a similar
factsheet or paragraph.

WALL-DISPLAY
Pupils like secing pictures of their idols on the walls so
this activity lends itself well to a wall-display with pupils
either producing handwritten or computer-typed versions
for the wall, together with pictures.

8|
IDEA, Before undertaking this activity in a school, check that
there are not going to be any objections to you using
horoscopes. In favour of this activity, you can say that by
showing that anyone can write a horoscope, you actually
demonstrate to pupils that there is no truth in them.

STIMULUS MATERIAL
1 Magazine page with horoscopes in the target
language. These are often very difficult, covering
a wide range of vocabulary but actually seeing
horoscopes in the target language acts as an
inspiration for pupils. At the very least, pupils can
recognize the signs of the zodiac and then use the
names and the dates for their own version. Underline
the more accessible phrases for pupils and list these

HOROSCOPESunderneath as useful vocabulary.

2 Prepare lists of appropriate language structures and
vocabulary that pupils are likely to want, as otherwise
you will find yourself inundated with requests for how
to say things. Decide what structures you want pupils
to use, for example ‘you are going to... . or ‘you will
... and what sort of vocabulary would be useful.

Your list might include

You will meet + nouns, such as an

interesting person,
You will receive some money, bad news,
good news
You will win some money
You will go a location
You will have to + make a decision
You will be successful in + work, romance, school,
money matters
You will have bad luck in

ACTIVITY
You can introduce the activity by going through the
magazine horoscope reading the underlined phrases with
pupils. Pupils can then write their own. You can limit this
to one sentence per sign or be more open-ended.

82
 BE
The environment is a topic which is now included in
many an exam syllabus, but it often involves introducing
rather a lot of specific vocabulary. As one way of
introducing or reinforcing this vocabulary, you can use
this comprehension exercise.
Provide each group/pair of pupils with an envelope
containing pieces of card each with a sentence about the
state of the environment in 50 years’ time. Pupils then
have to sort out the ideas into optimistic and pessimistic
predictions, and copy them into their books. Your
statements could include:

PESSIMISTIC PREDICTIONS
The hole in the ozone layer will get bigger.
It will be hotter because of global warming.
There will be more hurricanes and floods.
There will be more deserts.
There will be more pollution.
There will be more traffic.
Many species of animal will disappear.
Many types of plant will disappear.
Many trees will die because of acid rain.

OPTIMISTIC PREDICTIONS
There will be more electricity generated from renewable
sources.
There will be hydrogen cars which do not cause «LMViE?
YEARS
0
LIKEAL
BE
pollution.
Everyone will recycle more things.
Houses will have better insulation. EARTH
PLANET
THE
WILL
WHAT

83
IDEA, Developing on from the previous idea you could ask
pupils to consider topics which cover a broader range
of current affairs. Statements could include:

PESSIMISTIC PREDICTIONS
There will be more famine and disease.
There will be more terrorism.
There will be more wars.

OPTIMISTIC PREDICTIONS
Scientists will find a cure for AIDS.
Everyone will have enough to eat.
There will be less racism.
Poor countries will become richer.

CURRENT
AFFAIRS

84
 eM:
To provide pupils with practice of the appropriate
structures and vocabulary, you can start with a series of
questions which pupils can answer by manipulating the
question sentence. You can do these questions orally and
then ask pupils to write down the answers, for example
In 10 years’ time...

1 how old will you be?

2 will you be studying or working?
what will you be studying or what will you be doing
as a job?
will you be living with your parents or independently?
will you be living in this country or abroad?
will you have children?
what will you be doing in your free time?
where will you be going on holiday?
will you stay in touch with your current friends?
Ke
UB
DA0 will you be rich/happy/hardworking?
OMAN

This activity could be used with more advanced

pupils to practise structures such as ‘T’ll probably be... .’,
‘It’s likely/unlikely that...
vies
YEARS
TENS
INP
WHAT WILL YOUR TOWN/YOUR HOUSE/YOUR SCHOOL
BE LIKE IN 50 YEARS TIME?
This activity could be started as a series of questions to
answer, with the option for more able pupils to add in WHAT
YOU
WILL
DOING
BE
their own detail later on.
You might use this activity to practise the same sort of
vocabulary as the ideal house/town /school or you could
use more vocabulary about the environment.
For example, will there be solar panels on your
house/school?

85
IDEA KEY ORGANIZATIONAL POINTS
1 Set a strict time structure for the production of this
so that there is not too long a gap between pupils
producing their articles and seeing the final version.
Do not be too ambitious to start with. A magazine
consisting of one double-sided sheet of A4 that is
finished is much better than a larger version which
is never finished.
Remember that each different type of article could
involve a lot of linguistic preparation so you could
either limit your magazine to one or two types of
writing or do it at the end of a term’s work which
has included writing the different types of article.
Linked to point 3 is the need for the magazine to be
easily understood by the rest of the class.

CONTENT
1 Articles on famous celebrities. These can either be in
note form or written out in sentences.
Articles on sports’ results, fixtures. At its simplest
this could be simply tables with headings such as
‘Last Saturday’s results’, “The draw for this season’.
Past-tense accounts of school trips, in which a
number of pupils in the class would have participated.
Wordsearches, simple crosswords, picture crosswords,
anagrams.
An interview with . . . (headteacher/foreign language
assistant/visitor). Make sure the interviewee is
appropriately linguistically briefed beforehand and
sees a copy of the final article before you print it.
6 Adverts or special offers.
SETTING
MAGAZINE
STUDENT
A
UP 7 Lonely hearts column.
8 Horoscopes.
9 Problem page (difficult language).
1 0 News items — either about something happening in
the school or outside. (There is a real problem with
the news becoming quickly out-of-date, so pick your
items carefully.)

Instead of a magazine, you can simply produce a puzzle

sheet — all pupils make up a puzzle and you duplicate the
86 best as a sheet for the whole class to do.
Before embarking on any of these activities, it can be well
worthwhile talking to colleagues who teach pupils drama
in their mother tongue to find out what sort of things
pupils do, if they evaluate their own work and that of
other pupils and what criteria they use.
Topics which lend themselves well to pupils
performing dialogues or conversations include:

Café/restaurant scenes — food, opinions, complaints.

Shopping scenes — food, clothes, complaints.
Hotel, campsite, youth hostel — booking, complaints.
Bag snatching.
OA
Nw
B&WHijacking, kidnapping.
6 Road accident.

GROUP SIZE
A group of more than four usually becomes
unmanageable and tends to leave some pupils with little
to do, so organize groups of two, three or four. Insist that
everyone must have a part.

WRITING THE SCRIPT

Give pupils a definite time limit and clear instructions
about what the scene is to be about. Insist that all
members of the group write out all parts of the script so
that they are all involved in writing it, no matter how big
or small their individual part is. This stops a lazy pupil
from simply writing out his/her own tiny part. Remind
pupils that you will be taking in their books and giving
marks for their script. Make sure that they have access to
appropriate vocabulary lists. Encourage pupils to keep
more or less to the language that you have been
practising as otherwise it becomes very difficult for the
IDEAS
TOPIC
AND
WRITIN
SCRIPT
rest of the class to follow and they are likely to lose
interest.

87
IDEA This activity follows on from the previous one.

BRINGING IN PROPS
If pupils write their script one lesson and then act out
their scenes in the next lesson, this will enable them to
bring in props for the actual performance. A gap between
the writing and the performance will also allow you to
take in their books and correct them. Allow pupils some
time at the beginning of the next lesson to rehearse their
script again. Whether you allow them to read from their
books or learn their part off by heart will depend on how
ACTINGmuch time you have to spend on the activity.

ENCOURAGING PARTICIPATION
Make sure pupils know you expect them all to
participate. You can make the activity part of a speaking
assessment, if you feel that pupils are not taking it
seriously. Show that you will not tolerate any rudeness
from the audience.

USING THE VIDEO CAMERA

You can use a video camera to record the final version
and this can help to motivate pupils to perform as well as
possible, although it may inhibit some pupils so you will
have to use your judgement. However, do not tie yourself
up with the videoing as you need to be in control of the
class. Use a pupil instead. It helps if you are able to
borrow small clip-on microphones for your performers
so that they can be heard easily. Encourage your camera
operator to try and focus the camera on the whole group
and not to move around or you will all feel rather seasick
when you watch it.

EVALUATION
You can run the activity as a competition with marks for
each group. The judge could be another teacher or pupils
can judge. To organize pupil judging, decide what the
scoring system is, out of three or out of five. Then ask all
pupils who would give one point to raise their hands,
then two, etc. and add up the score. You could give one
score for words and one for acting skills/costume.

88
Pupils prepare a fashion parade with a commentary. You IDEA
will need one lesson in which they prepare the work and
then a second lesson when they bring in the clothes they
want to wear in the fashion parade. If it goes well you
may wish to repeat the parade for a parallel class or for
a VIP, such as a senior member of staff. With additional
practice, this can be a good item to present to a wider
audience such as parents or parents of prospective pupils
to the school, as everyone can enjoy the visual aspect of
the activity even if they do not understand the language.

PREPARATION
Pupils will need access to appropriate vocabulary, such as
describing the models: ‘Here we have . . . wearing. . .’, and
a wider range of vocabulary for clothes and accessories than
the average textbook will have. Access to a native speaker or
a clothing catalogue can be useful here.

LESSON 1
Pupils work in groups of two, three or four. They need to PARAD
FASHIO
decide who will be the model or models and what clothes
they are going to wear. They must then write the comment-
ary, decide who is going to narrate which bit and practise
their script. Insist that everyone in the group must partici-
pate, either as a model or as a narrator. Try to get round the
groups effectively to check their scripts. Make sure they write
a list of who is bringing what for next lesson. As well as
clothes, they may wish to bring in some suitable music.

LESSON 2
Decide on a venue for this lesson. You may be able to use a
drama room. Otherwise clear appropriate space in the
classroom. Allow pupils some organizational time at the
beginning of the lesson to get changed and practise their
script. Then do the fashion parade. To avoid argument, you
can number the groups and pull numbers out of a hat to
decide the order they go in. Insist on good behaviour from
the audience. You can run it as a competition with marks
for each group. The judge could be another teacher or
pupils can judge. To organize pupil judging, decide what the
scoring system is, out of three or out of five. Then ask all
pupils who would give one point to raise their hands, then
two, etc. and add up the score.
89
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 SECTION

6
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Using ICT
IDEA Computers are very useful for helping all pupils to
produce professional-looking display work, no matter
what their artistic talent or their handwriting ability.
Topics can include leisure centre posters, tourist
information, hotel details, fashion parade, ideal uniform,
ideal home, weather forecasts, healthy eating or any other
topic for which informative posters or illustrations are
appropriate.

PREPARATION
Make sure that you are familiar with and can explain to
pupils how to do the following:

1 how to access the word-processing programme(s) that

your pupils will be using;
2 how pupils should save their work;
Q how to write text including any accents you need;
4 how to change the font, script and colour if a colour
printer is available;
5 how to insert a picture or graphics;
6 what the print arrangements are. Is it black and white
or colour? Make it clear to pupils if you want to check
their work before they print to avoid waste.

Decide where pupils are going to find appropriate

pictures or materials; your IT colleagues will know what
picture banks are on your computers. Decide if pupils
CLASSROOM
DISPLAY
WORK are going to have direct access to the Internet or if you
will need to access the Internet yourself and download
and paste materials into a folder for them. Details about
hotels, tourist and leisure facilities in the target language
are usually plentiful, but if pupils are accessing them for
themselves you will need sites you can suggest or they
may waste a lot of time. Bilingual sites are useful as
pupils can work out what things mean for themselves.
Give pupils clear instructions about what to produce,
or show them an example. Make sure they have access
to the language they will need. Give them a time limit.

92
We often think of preparing PowerPoint presentations
as something that the teacher does, but, in fact, asking
pupils to prepare PowerPoint presentations is a good way
of motivating pupils to consolidate vocabulary, especially
if you allow them to include a few special effects.

TOPICS
Any topic which lends itself to visual presentation can be
revised this way. A simple example is asking pupils to make
slides which each consist of one weather picture and the
appropriate weather phrase. A more complicated task is an
account of a holiday in the past or an ideal holiday with
pictures such as a means of transport, a hotel, a beach, etc.,
and pupils type in sentences to tell the story. You can ask
different pupils to work on different topics which means
that when you watch the slide shows as a class you revise
more topics and, of course, you can add them to your
departmental resource bank!

PREPARATION
Make sure you know how to type text into PowerPoint
including accents if needed, insert pictures and press the
special effects buttons. Decide where pupils are going to
find appropriate pictures; your IT colleagues will know
what picture banks are on your computers or may
suggest Internet sites.
Give pupils clear instructions and a realistic time
limit. Allow time at the end of the lesson or in a future
lesson to view the results. POWER
PRESEN
Extrovert pupils have always enjoyed playing teacher
and coming out to the board or making transparencies
for the OHP, but with PowerPoint you can encourage
shyer pupils to allow the class to see their work as no one
actually has to stand in front of the class if they do not
want to.

93
IDEA You or the pupils can take pictures and incorporate them
into written work on the computer.

TOPICS
Could include:

O pictures of themselves* to accompany descriptions or

introductory letters;
© pictures taken around the school — outside, inside,
headteacher, etc., to accompany a description of their
school;
O pictures pupils have taken outside school that they
bring in on disk or they email to school.

PREPARATION
Be sure to sort out the technical issues before embarking
on this activity with a class. Currently the simplest
system is probably to use a digital camera. Show the
pupils how to take and how to load pictures onto the
computer. Make sure they know how to save their work.
You may also decide to show them how to move and edit
a picture.
If you have never done this before, try the following:
equip pupils with appropriate vocabulary for them to be
able to write an introductory letter about themselves. As
soon they get started, very quickly, go around the class
CAMERA
DIGITAL
A
USINGtaking a portrait picture of each pupil. You can then give
the camera to one of the pupils who loads their photo
onto their computer and then passes it on to the next
pupil for them to do the same.

* If you are using pictures of pupils, check if there is a list

confirming which parents allow you to photograph pupils.
Have an alternative ready for those pupils you cannot photograph,
such as a picture of the school badge.

94
Language teachers have often encouraged pupils to
write and carry out surveys in order to practise the
skills of asking as well as answering questions. This can
be made more meaningful by helping pupils to convert
their results into computer graphics such as pie charts
or bar charts, labelled in the target language, which can
be displayed on the wall.

PREPARATION
Make sure you are familiar with the programs that you
are going to use, how the information is fed in and how
it is represented. Find out what experience your pupils
have had of these programs.

TOPICS
Topics which can lend themselves to survey questions
include: asking pupils about their favourite TV
programmes, music, bands, school subjects, football
teams, how many brothers and sisters they have, which
area of town they live in, aspects of daily routine, such as
what they had for breakfast, what time they get up, etc.
If you are going to use computer graphics to
represent the findings of your survey, you will need to
anticipate the types of answers that you will get and how
these can be represented visually.

1 You can ask closed questions which wiil produce a

yes/no answer which you can then represent as a pie
chart or bar chart.
2 You can use questions in which you give the
respondent a limited number of options to choose
from.
USING
ICT
PRODU
TO
SURVEY
3 You can give respondents open-ended questions
where you anticipate that you will get a fair number
of similar responses and then you can create a
category of ‘other’.

Give pupils clear guidance and help in writing the

questions. For pupils with limited linguistic skills, you
may provide a list of questions from which they choose a
few, or you may provide model questions which they can
adapt by changing one word (for example what is your
favourite ...). 95
 Tell pupils how many questions to write and how
many people to interview and show pupils how to use
the computer program to illustrate their results.You may
prefer to do the survey one lesson and the IT work the
next.

96
Email has made the whole idea of penfriends much more IDEA,
interesting and up-to-date. In the past, the time lag
between pupils writing letters and receiving replies led to
a loss of momentum and interest. Now that we have the
technological means to overcome this, we need to make
sure that we do not spoil this activity through bad ’
planning.
Organize this activity as a class-to-class exchange
rather than just individual pupils corresponding. Within
the class, pair up pupils, but all the pupils in the class
can access all the email letters, which makes it easier to
share when the numbers are uneven or individual pupils
are away and do not write a letter.
Do not be too ambitious about how much you put in
each email. It is more motivating for pupils to have a
more frequent exchange of emails than to take so long USING
EMAIL
writing the first one that it uses up all the pupils’
linguistic resources and may never get sent.

TECHNICAL DETAILS
First find out how pupils will be able to use email. It may
be that they will have to send you their letters on an
internal intranet system and then you can forward them
to the foreign school. Draw up a precise timetable with
your foreign school, including dates and topics. Book the
IT facilities well ahead in your own institution. Your plan
could look something like the following. This would give
you a week to check up that the reply emails had arrived
and do any linguistic preparation needed before reading
them with pupils.

Tues, 1 October School A — pupils write and send

introductory emails with their name,
age, brothers & sisters, pets.
Wed, 9 October School B pupils read school A’s
introductory emails and send similar
emails back.
Tues, 15 October School A pupils read school B’s
replies and send emails with a short
description of themselves and a photo
(see Idea 73 on using the digital
camera). 97
 Other topics could include:

where they live and a map showing these places

description of the school
hobbies
sport
music/celebrity likes/dislikes
daily routine
the weekend — past, present or future
NDNNBWNYD

98
This is an extension of simple emailing that I have used
for coursework with a class of 22 GCSE Italian pupils.
The idea is equally valid as an exercise for pupils, who
are not doing this form of coursework, to help any pupils
who want to carry out a survey.
It was particularly useful for us because the Italian
postal system at that time was not speedy and we needed
replies by a certain date in order for pupils to finish their
coursework, and we did not want a situation in which a
pupil did not receive a reply. The theme for the
coursework was to compare aspects of Italian life with
aspects of British life.

1 Pupils wrote a letter asking questions about certain

aspects of Italian life (food, daily routine, school,
etc.). Pupils included items that were of particular
interest to them, such as what type of mobile phone
covers the Italians had. The handwritten copy of their
initial letter was kept as part of their coursework, but
they typed it into the computer and emailed it to
Italy.
2 The Italian pupils then sent their replies.
3 Our pupils then wrote up a comparison between the
Italian way of life and the British way of life. They COURS
AS
EMAIL
were using genuine source material sent by Italian
pupils but having to change around the I/we
statements to they/the Italians. This, comparison was
then submitted together with their initial letter as
their coursework.
4 In cases where pupils did not feel that they had
written enough, they could email more questions to
Italy and obtain more replies to help them extend
their work.

99
IDEA, Divide the class into pairs/teams. Start with everyone
typing a news story. Every few minutes signal that more
details have surfaced about the story and that one pupil
from each team has to come out to collect a strip of
paper with the additional information to be incorporated
into the story. Information always comes in a little faster
than pupils can cope with to add a sense of excitement.
When time is called, the teams must print out their
stories and the most complete one wins.

TOPICS
Any topic which uses vocabulary that pupils can cope with,
for example an account of a discovery of a shipwreck (can
find all sorts of things), a celebrity wedding (can say who is

NEWSROOM
there, what they are wearing, etc.).

PREPARATION
Type out the complete story, starting a new line for each
statement. Put into largish font (at least 20 point) so
that several pupils can read it together. Leave a couple
of line spaces between each sentence so that you will be
able to cut the story into strips and have a strip which is
comfortable to hold (minimum width about 2cm). Make
as Many copies as you will have pairs/teams, preferably
on stiff paper. Cut into strips and put all the sentence
number one strips into one envelope, all the twos into
another, etc.
At its simplest level, pupils receive the statements
as full grammatical sentences in chronological order
and merely type up the details, copying word for word.
A slightly more advanced version involves using complete
sentences but giving them to the pupils in the wrong
order and they have to arrange them in the correct order
(easiest version uses times, more complicated version
uses phrases such as after lunch, before half-time, after
opening the new hospital, etc.). More advanced again,
the information arrives in note form and pupils have to
write their account in correct grammatical sentences.

100
You will need two mobile phones, but one only need be
used to receive the call. You can liven up the presentation
of new work or act out a listening exercise by using
mobile phones to simulate a telephone conversation,
rather than merely reading it out. You can do this simply
as a demonstration if you have the opportunity to team
teach with a colleague or a language assistant.
Alternatively you can involve pupils, preferably in the
role of the client or the part of the dialogue that they are
likely to need to say in real life or in the examination
situation.
Topics which can be enhanced in this way include:

Oo phoning for a pizza or phoning for a Chinese

takeaway;
O booking a hotel, campsite;
O arranging to meet a friend.

Although you may not consider it entirely relevant to PHONES

MOBILE
your examination work, pupils are often very interested
in learning some of the text-messaging abbreviations that
are commonly used. You can show them some examples
of messages and even ask them to make some up, using
the abbreviations.

101
IDEA Instead of simply asking each other questions on a topic,
pupils work in pairs to write the script for a radio
interviewer and a celebrity (sports personality, soap
opera character, someone in reality show such as
Big Brother).
The secret with this is to encourage pupils to use the
language that you have prepared with them and not to
make up complicated answers that no one in the class
will understand.
Drill the language that you are intending to use
very thoroughly with pupils. This activity can be used for
a range of quite simple topics such as hobbies, sport,
personal information, daily routine, likes/dislikes, what
you did last weekend, talking about a holiday or a
sporting event in the past tense or talking about future
plans.
Then ask the pupils to work in pairs to write the
interview, with both partners writing down both parts.
RADIO
INTERVIEW
Set a time limit. Any pupils who finish before the end of
the time limit should practise their dialogue as pairs. You
may prefer to take in pupils’ work at this stage to correct
it and do the recording next lesson.
After pupils have practised in pairs, they come out to
the front where you have prepared a microphone and a
tape recorder. The pupils introduce themselves and they
perform their interview to the class and you record it.
Make sure the pupils are well-positioned for the
microphone. You may need to encourage pupils by
insisting that everyone must take part as it is part of their
speaking assessment or by making it into a competition.
You can then pick two or three of the best ones (this will
depend not just on the language but also on the clarity of
the recording) and use them as a listening exercise with a
parallel class who are working on the same topic. Likewise
your class can receive some back and you will find that they
enjoy the listening both for meaning and to see if they can
guess to whom the voices belong.

102
For this activity, follow the same instructions as for the
radio interview. This activity does however lend itself not
just to interviews but also to a whole range of other
scenes which can be acted out such as those in cafés,
shops, etc.

PREPARATION
Make sure that you know how to work the video camera
and that you have a suitably positioned TV screen to play
back the video to the class. Whereas you would probably
only choose a few radio interviews to present to the class,
you will find that they will want to see all the TV recording.
Follow the same guidelines about careful linguistic
preparation, clear instructions about the length and
content, and a time limit. Just as you might want to take
in the scripts to correct them before they perform them
next lesson, putting off the filming until next lesson also INTERV
TV
allows pupils to bring in appropriate props.
Again, exchanging a finished video with a parallel
class can be good fun.

103
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 SECTION

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The more
advanced pupil
IDEA This activity is designed to teach the language of
prohibition, permission and obligation. Drill pupils
thoroughly in the phrases they are likely to need to use,
such as must, must not, can, cannot, will not, not
allowed to, ought not have. Then give pupils their cue
cards and ask them to prepare a conversation.
ON THE BUS
SNAKE

Card one
ssenger oe a
You are a pa
enly realize
bus. You sudd
y scarf worn
that the stripe
to you isa
!s
by the man next
scarf!' You
snake not 4
scream!
Card two
You are a snake ch
armer
and you always tak
e your
snake Sissie, who
is quite
harmless, everywhe
re with
you. You have nev
er seen a
notice Prohibiting
snakes on
buses.

ree
Card th
bus
iving Y° ur
You are dr 3 enger
enly 4 P
ss
when sudd e ake
aosn
re am s th at there
sc me
You thin
on the bus- th e S$
ask
had better
ge t off the bus.
bee. to

106
THE ELEPHANT HAS EATEN MY GLOVE

Card one
O
sitor to a Z0
You are a vi 4 h s
mplain to
and you co ha nt
an elep
keeper that
gl ove. You
eaten your ce
noti
see any
cannot the
sitors that
warning vi
4 thief.
elephant is

Card three
You are a visitor to a Zoo
who hears another visitor
complaining to the zoo
keeper about the elephant
eating his/her glove. You
listen to them arguing and
then give your opinion.

OTHER SCENARIOS
Restaurant owner/smoker/other clients.
Art gallery attendant/tourist taking photo.
Church warden/tourist wearing shorts.

107
LDEA| This activity is similar to the snake on the bus
conversations but practises the language of pleading,
convincing and making excuses. First practise the sorts
of structures that pupils are likely to need, such as ways
of saying sorry, you did not mean to, if only you
understood the problems I’ve got, etc. Then give them
the cue cards and ask them to prepare a conversation.

PARENT/TEENAGER ROW
Card one: You are a parent who is furious because your
son/daughter has arrived home late and did not bother to
phone you.
Card two: You are a teenager who has arrived home late
because...

MOTORIST/TRAFFIC WARDEN

VAST
UES
Ws25. Card one: You are parked on a double yellow line . . .
(because you are getting tablets for your mother who will
die if she does not get them immediately).
Card two: You are a traffic warden who is tired of lazy
motorists parking on double yellow lines.

OTHER SCENARIOS
Store detective/shoplifter.
Police officer/drug user.
Referee/footballer who is being sent off.
Train ticket inspector/passenger without a ticket.
Motorist who has just reversed into another motorist.

108
This activity is useful for practising the language needed
for expressing opinions and the language related to a
specific topic such as an environmental issue. Tell pupils
that they will all be taking part in a local radio phone-in
programme about a proposal which is causing
controversy in the neighbourhood, for example a new
incinerator plant by a school, new airport, a proposed
nightclub or pleasure park near an old people’s complex.
You can either give pupils a free choice about the
views they wish to express or you can give them a
specific role to play (for example young Sam in favour
of ..., old Professor Jones against . . .).
Make sure that pupils have practised the type of
phrases that they will need, such as ‘It is scandalous
that .. . Give them a set time or a homework in which to
prepare their radio slot. Then the teacher or a confident
pupil plays the radio presenter and orchestrates the
debate, bringing in the various pupils to express their
PHONE-
RADIO
views.

109
IDEA It can sometimes be difficult to interest young people in
current affairs and politics and so you can find yourself
teaching the concepts as well as the target language. One
way to combat this alienation is to personalize it. Sketch
a desert island on the board, a ship sinking just off the
island and a few pin people on the shore. Tell the class
to imagine a small group of people (including the class)
shipwrecked on a desert island. Discuss the issues listed
below with pupils in the target language. If you still think
that it will be difficult to get pupils to respond, then
prepare a worksheet with questions and possible answers
so that pupils only have to choose an answer. This will be
useful for pupils when you ask them to do follow-up
written work, describing how life is organized on the
island.

O How do they make decisions? (unanimous/majority

DESERT
ISLANDvoting). If there are nine of us, can we all share the
decision-making? What happens if there are 30 of us?
Or 200 of us? Or the whole school? (politics)
O How old do you have to be to share the decision-
making? (politics)
oO What are our priorities? Finding food? Building a
shelter?
Oo Do we all work? Is there an age when you are too
young or too old to work? Do we all work for a set
number of hours or until we have brought back a
certain amount of food?
O How do we share out food? Look after the injured?
What do we do about Jane whose leg was bitten off
by a shark while swimming ashore and who cannot
help look for food? Should we bring her food? Is there
anything she could do so she does not feel she is a
burden? (social welfare/dignity for the
disabled/taxation)
Oo What rules do we live by? What do we tolerate? What
do we punish? (murder? theft? rape?) How do we
punish? Can we afford two people to guard one
person when we need everyone to gather food? (law)
O Should we let John have a day off work so he
can
write a song and entertain us this evening? (How do
110 societies pay for the arts?)
What do we do about Ben who is lazy — always late
starting work, full of excuses about being ill, stops
working when he thinks no one is looking?
(absenteeism, scroungers)
Rachel says she can make a fishing rod and a little
dug-out canoe and go and fish for us, but as this is
risky because of the sharks, should she be rewarded
for this? (pay differentials)
Should anyone educate the children? What should
they learn?
Another ship is wrecked and we can see people
swimming towards our island. Do we let them land?
(asylum seekers and immigration)
IDEA As with the desert island scenario, this is a way of
introducing and practising the language needed to
discuss some of the difficult concepts of the world
of work.
You tell a story based on a brief history of the
Industrial Revolution and draw the parallels with
workplace issues today. If you feel a bit uncertain about
this, ask your history or economics colleagues for a
quick lesson. But remember that you are only using this
as a vehicle to practise the language pupils need to
understand and talk about the world of work. You can
liven it up with your own little sketches or pictures from
history books or you can use current cartoon characters
to run your factories. Again you may prefer to prepare a
worksheets with questions and suggested answers to help
pupils express themselves and use the new vocabulary.

O We set up a factory.
Oo A rival sets up a factory with better machinery
producing goods more cheaply.
O What do we do? Cut wages? Sack workers? Invest in
new machines? All work longer hours? Cut profits?
Cut the boss’s pay?
oO Is there any benefit for the bosses in all agreeing to
keep wages low?
Oo Do bosses like a situation of high unemployment
because people will be willing to work for low wages?

THE
iNDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION
Oo What can workers do to stop wages being driven
down? Are workers better off if they all act together
or if they all do their own thing?
Oo What are trade unions for?
oO Cheap foreign imports flood the market (cf. IT work
outsourced).
O What do we do? Trade barriers?

112
Nowadays you do not need to worry about bringing back
newspapers from your holidays or going to the one shop
in town which sells foreign papers as you can find up-to-
date newspaper headlines on the Internet.

1 Pupils match up headlines and pictures. This can

involve either very different topics or similar topics.
Pupils match up headlines and articles.
Pupils have the headlines in front of them. You then
read out the first few lines of an article and pupils
have to decide which headline you are referring to.
Pupils are given a number of newspaper headlines
and they have to say which one they would use as
their main headline and why (‘because it is
scandalous’). You can discuss whether their main
headline would vary according to what sort of
newspaper it is (intellectual or popular) or whether it
is a daily or a weekly or whether it is a local or a
national paper.
5 Use headlines to analyse the type of language and
abbreviations that they contain.
If your pupils have access to the Internet, you can ask
them to bring in yesterday’s headlines and explain in
a couple of sentences what they are about. HEADLI
NEWSPA

113
IDEA Write a series of questions which you can ask pupils
about an advert. Make them answer the questions in full
sentences so that they have the opportunity to practise
the language needed to describe an advertisement. Then,
for further practice, ask the pupils the same questions
about other advertisements. You can use either
newspaper adverts or TV adverts that you have recorded
from satellite TV. The questions could include the
following

Is it amusing or boring?
Is it informative?
Is it truthful or is it deceitful?
Does it describe the product?
AN
dO
BW Does it make you want to buy the product? How?
Why?
Who is it aimed at? (adults/children/men/women)
Does it use animals/cartoons/children?
Does it exploit women?
OND
© Does it have a double meaning? Pupils may need
some help in answering this question about a foreign
EXPLOITING
ADVERTS advert.

Then you can ask pupils to write up their observations

about one or more of the advertisements as a paragraph.
Once pupils have written about specific advertisements, it
becomes easier to discuss advertising in general.

114
As pupils become more advanced, they will be expected
to understand a wider range of newspaper and magazine
articles and be up-to-date with current affairs. Some
articles in textbooks can date very quickly and teachers
are left finding their own more recent articles and having
to think of ways of exploiting them. These are some of
the question techniques that are used by exam boards.

1 ‘True/false (and correct the false sentences)

2 ‘True/false/can’t tell
3 Gap-filling with
a) the exact number of words needed provided;
b) with the correct words and distractors provided;
c) with no words provided;
4 Miultiple-choice questions
Nn A table to fill in with details from the text
6 Matching beginnings and ends of sentences with the
exact number of sentences or with distractors
7 Questions in the mother tongue
(oe) Questions in the target language
9 Writing a summary of the news item or article in the
target language or in their mother tongue
10 Translation of extracts from the article into the
pupils’ mother tongue
11 What these numbers refer to
12 Who these names refer to
13 Who these statements refer to
14 Finish the end of the sentence in your own words in
the target language
15 Explain the meaning of these phrases in your own
words in the target language

Other exercises can include:

16 Rewriting the article in a different tense (the article

is about something that is going to happen and then
pupils write about it as if it has happened)
17 Re-writing as full sentences information which has
NEWSPA
OF
OUT
GETTIN
MOST
THE
been given in note form, such as a portrait of a star
giving details such as age and place of birth
18 Match a theme/word/sentence to a paragraph of the
text
 19 Find a word in the text with the same meaning/the
opposite meaning
20 Retranslation back into the target language of some
sentences that use the same vocabulary as the
original passage

116
With the increased availability of satellite TV, it has
become easier to obtain suitable materials, but it is not
always easy to find appropriate programmes. The news is
not always the best source as it tends to be read very fast
for learners and it can be disheartening to spend a long
time writing exercises about an extract, only for it to date
very quickly. Often it is discussions, short extracts from
speeches or documentaries which are easier for
foreigners to follow and which may focus on issues that
are likely to remain current for some time.
In addition to the range of question types suggested
for reading comprehension on the previous page, TV
recordings can also be exploited in the following ways.
1 Exercises that require pupils to listen very carefully to
sections of the text and transcribe words or phrases
a) to put into a gap-filling exercise; SATELL
TV
b) to complete a sentence;
c) to answer target language questions.
2 Exercises involving writing down numbers,
percentages or dates as pupils often find these very
difficult.
3 Writing down an email address or a website
reference.
4 Some questions to elicit comments from pupils about
what they can see as well as what they can hear.

117
 Although pupils nowadays are familiar with the Internet,
they often have difficulty in finding things in the target
language. Some exam options require project work,
coursework or prepared topics for oral exams.

1 Make sure that pupils have good access to the

Internet.
Advise them on using appropriate search engines.
Gs
bo For their searches, advise them to use words or
phrases that are not the same as the English and that
are likely to be unique to the target language so that
they do not have to waste time with a lot of English
articles. If necessary suggest the words which which
they could put into their search.
4 With languages such as Spanish which are widely
spoken, if they want to find out about Spain, it is very
important to type in en Esparia with the topic heading
as otherwise they will also call up lots of material
from South America and they may not realize that the
information they get is not from Spain.
5 Skimming texts to see if they are relevant is a very
difficult task for many pupils. You can suggest that
they try to find some bilingual or multilingual sites
HELPING
PUPILS
USE
JO such as the European Union which has versions of
)THE
INTERNET
TO
LEARN materials in all the official EU languages.
6 Find out if, in the target language, there are any
children’s websites that offer any simplified material.

118
 SECTION

Ew
Involving native
speakers
yz The ideal for any language teacher is to facilitate contact
between language learners and native speakers. This has
a tremendous motivational effect as the learners begin to
believe that the language they are learning is a reality.
Furthermore, there are the obvious benefits of practising
the language and having a genuine reason to use the
language.

EXCHANGE VISITS
If it is possible to set up an exchange visit with a foreign
school, then this offers a wealth of opportunity for using
the language. However these opportunties need to be
created as pupils on exchange visits often have difficulty
finding things to talk about and there can be a tendency
for them to stay within their own language group. It is
important therefore to create situations in which the
pupils work in mixed nationality groups and have to
collaborate and communicate with the other members of
the group in order to accomplish the task. This final
section of this book suggests a few ways in which you can
do that and have fun at the same time.

Do not forget to use your visitors not just with their

hosts’ classes but also with other classes in the school,
and particularly with pupils who may have little
opportunity to go abroad.

OTHER WAYS OF FINDING NATIVE SPEAKERS

As well as the obvious use of your foreign-language
assistant or pupils who are visiting your school as part
of an exchange or Comenius project, you can look for
native speakers who are studying at your local university
or groups of teenagers who have come to study in
language schools. Organizers of such schools often
welcome the opportunity for their pupils to undertake
structured activities with other pupils.

COLLABORATION
SPEAKERS
NATIVE
WITH If you cannot manage to get any native speakers into the
school, then it is well worth establishing contacts with
schools with whom you can exchange emails (see Idea 75
in Section 6).

120
Using native speakers offers unparalleled opportunities
for pupils to use language for a genuine purpose,
particularly if the native speaker is also sympathetic and
can help the pupils with their language difficulties. As
with any other activity, careful preparation is essential.
Ideally, you need about one native speaker of the
target language to each group of four to five learners.
If this is not possible, you could rotate with other
activities in a carousel so that each group gets a turn
with the native speaker.
Preparation: in the lesson(s) before the native-speaker
visit, give pupils opportunities to practise asking
questions, as, so often, they are conditioned only to
answer. You can encourage some creativity by asking
them to suggest things that they would like to ask the INTER
native speaker. At the simplest level, they can ask
‘Do you like .. ”, including names of bands or football
teams. You may like them to write down the questions in
advance ready to do the interview.
For the lesson with the native speaker(s), arrange the
pupils in groups of 4 or 5. After 10-15 minutes, swap
native speaker with another group. At the end, ask the
pupils to feed back to you and the class what they have
found out about their guest.

121
IDEA, This is an extension of the interview idea, but all pupils
can be involved both in writing the surveys and
responding to the surveys. This can work well as a
follow-up activity to the interviews with pupils, practising
the same sort of language as they prepared for the
interviews.
The organizational details will depend on the number
and proportion of native speakers you have. Decide if all
pupils should use one language or if pupils should write
the questions in the language they are learning.
Provide plenty of linguistic support to help pupils
write the questions and give clear instructions about how
many questions they should write and how many people
they should interview. Encourage pupils to write down
their answers before they start circulating and to record
the answers they receive.
See Idea 74 for further advice on question writing
and on how the survey work could be followed up with
display work that pupils label in both languages.

SURVEYS
CLASSROOM

122
Safety first: check up on your school’s guidelines for this
type of activity. Make it quite clear to pupils that they
must stay together within a designated area, preferably
within your sight. When going outside the school
grounds, make sure that you have the necessary
permission from the home pupils as well as the foreign
visitors. The entrance to a large supermarket can be a
good place for this activity, often covered by security
cameras, but have the courtesy to contact the store
manager first. Make sure you have adequate staffing. You
will need to use several venues if you have a large group
of pupils. Alternatively, if the venue is very near the
school, you can take one group out after another.
This activity may provide more linguistic opportunity
for your foreign visitors than for the home pupils, but
your pupils may be able to do something similar if they
go abroad.
Organize the pupils to work in pairs to write three
STREET
SURVEY
simple questions.
This activity can work well if the home pupil stops
the passer-by, the foreign pupil asks the questions and
the home pupil records the answers as the foreign pupil
may have difficulty in understanding the passer-by’s
response, particularly if they have a strong regional
accent, for example:

Home pupil: Good morning. Please could my French

friend ask you three quick questions?
Foreign pupil: How often do you come to this
supermarket?

See Idea 74 for further advice on question writing

and on how the survey work could be followed up with
display work that pupils label in both languages.

123
IDEA ‘Bring me’ is a simple classroom game which starts with
an easy command such as ‘Bring me a book’ and can
progress to more demanding tasks such as ‘a French
pupil wearing an English school tie’ or a ‘French and a
British pupil tied together’.
Divide the class up into mixed-language teams and
make sure that you position yourself and the teams in
such a way that the teams are equally distant from you
and so that a representative of each team can come out
to you without falling over the furniture.
You can shout out the command and then
representatives from the team must bring out the item
to you. You can award one point for every team that
brings the item and two points for the team that brings it
first. If you want to ensure that everyone in the team
participates, you can number the pupils in each team
(1, 2, 3, 4) and then say ‘Bring me a pen, number 2’.
Alternatively, you can have each command written on
a piece of card, with one card for each question for each
TREASURE
A
HUNT team. Keep all the no. 1 questions in one envelope, all
the no. 2s in another, etc. You can use a different colour
for each team.

TREASURE HUNT
A treasure hunt can involve just the classroom or a larger
area. Try to write the clues so that pupils will have to
collaborate. For example, you can write the clues in the
foreign language so that the guest pupils will understand
them easily but they will have to communicate with the
home pupils in order to find the places.
Give the pupils strict instructions about staying
together and a return time.

124
 Put pupils into mixed-language groups and give them
some written instructions to follow to make something.
At its simplest this can be a plan of a town, a school or
a house which they have to draw following the
instructions.
You can provide some instructions only in one
language and some instructions only in the other
language so that pupils can only complete the task if they
have understood the instructions in both languages.
Make each instruction short and clear, but warn pupils
that they may need to read all the instructions before
they begin.
For example, if doing a town plan, instructions can be
‘Put the castle south of the river’, ‘Put the supermarket
next to the castle’, so they will need to experiment with
a rough plan before they produce their final version.
If you can arrange access to suitable facilities and
bring in the ingredients, pupils could follow instructions
to make a typical dish. This activity can be particularly
exciting for pupils who come from a country where food
technology does not form part of the curriculum.
Other ideas that rely on understanding instructions
include paper-folding activities such as making a paper
hat or a paper boat. Pupils can then decorate the hats for
a silly hats parade.

MAKE
CAKE,
A
HAT
OR
AMOSAI

125
IDEA The idea of this activity is that pupils have to
communicate together in groups to produce a picture.
You can choose a specific theme such as ‘memories of
our exchange visit’ or ‘international friendship’. The
easiest way to organize this activity is to divide the pupils
up into mixed-nationality teams and give each team a
large sheet of paper on which to produce their final
picture. You can then display the pictures in your own
classroom or elsewhere as appropriate.
Give clear instructions about the theme and style
of picture you want (for example writing/no writing). It
might also be useful for pupils to have some rough paper
on which to sketch out their ideas to start with. Pupils
will also need appropriate drawing materials such as
crayons, pens or paints.
If you are feeling more ambitious, you can use a wall
of your classroom to produce a frieze. Cover the
appropriate section of wall with paper and divide it up
into sections for each team of pupils to work on. Towards
the end of an exchange visit, you could make a visual
diary with one section of the wall representing each day
|
ee
CLASSROOM
THE
FOR of the stay (for example ‘Monday’, “Tuesday’). Make sure
that there is enough room for pupils to work if they will
\O
MURAL
WALL
A
MAKING be drawing directly onto the wall. Otherwise, use sheets
of paper which you then pin up onto the wall.

CHALK OR PAINT A WALL OR CAR PARK

For the more ambitious, you can find a wall outside the
classroom or you can give each team a parking space in
a car park on which they draw a picture. This may sound
far-fetched but it has been done (I have the video to
prove it!). Each group of mixed-nationality pupils is
given one space that they have to design and paint (can
be permanent or can be chalk). Make sure you seek the
appropriate permission beforehand!
You may be able to get advice or help from your art
department or community artists. Have a camera ready
to record your pupils’ achievements, particularly if you
use chalk in a rainy climate!

126
Pupils can work together in mixed-nationality teams yz
to produce a model such as a castle. You can be very
prescriptive by giving each team an identical set of
materials and a precise task, such as ‘Make a model of
a medieval castle’.
Alternatively you can give a precise theme for the
outcome but allow pupils a choice of materials. Or you
can encourage creativity and suggest that pupils make
their own sculpture using materials of their choosing.
Recycling and respecting the environment are often
themes that schools choose to encouragYour e. art
department may help you find pictures of professional
sculptures that have been made using recycled materials
or you may know of some in your locality.
Materials can include old cardboard boxes,
magazines, cans, used matchsticks, packaging, etc. You
will need to encourage pupils and friends to help you
build up a suitable collection of materials in advance.
You will also need appropriate glue, sticky tape and
string.
Give pupils clear instructions and a time limit.
MAKIN
SCULPT
WRITING EVALUATIVE COMMENTS IN THE TARGET
LANGUAGE
Allow time at the end for pupils to view each other’s
work. You can also ask pupils to write a comment in both
languages about each of the items seen. Make sure pupils
have appropriate sentence models and vocabulary such
as ‘I like the statue of the dog because it is unusual’.

127
IDEA, Ask pupils to select six photos to make a display to
commemorate a visit.
You can limit it to a couple of hours’ activity and just to
what pupils can find in school or you can encourage pupils
to take photos on their various activities throughout their
stay. We used to have to dash down to the one-hour
development service for this activity, but now with digital
cameras and mobile phones, the possibilities are endless
providing you know how to deal with the technology. Read
Idea 73 on digital cameras and Idea 72 on PowerPoint
displays in Section 6 for advice.
For this activity, pupils work in mixed-language teams
and they must select just six photos to display.
Alternatively, this can be a nice activity for your foreign
pupils to carry out on their own with their own teachers
at a time when perhaps the home pupils are busy with
lessons. Make sure that they have the necessary technical
support such as a technician or senior pupil.
They should write a caption or description for each
in both languages, and should be able to justify their
DISPLAY
6-PHOTO
A choice, for example ‘I wanted to include a picture of the
swimming pool because we do not have one in our
school’.

A POWERPOINT PRESENTATION
Pupils work together in mixed-language groups to make
a PowerPoint presentation incorporating some of the
photos they have taken and a bilingual text.

Pupils really enjoy doing this and when the presentations

are ready, you can invite senior staff to a presentation to
add status to the event.

128
 SE
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS
You can imagine that the pupils who are here on a visit
are foreign correspondents who are sending back a
report each day to ‘Head Office’, namely the pupils
they have left behind. Pupils can work collaboratively to
prepare an email each day with the home pupil helping
to facilitate the technical side of how to log on, how to
include pictures, while the foreign pupil types in the
message.

MUSIC
Pupils work together to compose a tune or an
accompaniment together. Alternatively they can write
and perform a song.

DANCE
Pupils can work together to produce a dance routine.

PUB-STYLE QUIZ
Pupils work in teams of four, either to answer a written
set of questions or to respond to questions that are read
out, with one short round in one language and one short
round in the other language. Most of the questions
should be realistically answerable by both nationalities
with the occasional question where they are likely to have
to rely solely on the pupils of one nationality.
WITH
NATIV
SPEAK
OTHER ACTIVITIES
Mixed-language groups can also benefit from many of MORE
IDEAS
FOR
WORKIN
the activities mentioned elsewhere in this book,
particularly the IT activities (Section 6) and the creative
writing and acting out activities (Section 5).

129
APPENDIX
OVERHEAD PROJECTOR HINTS AND IDEAS

1 Never use an overhead projector (OHP) without

checking it and the transparencies beforehand. Check
it is the correct distance away from the screen — the
further away the bigger the image.
Check you can focus it, dust it, change a bulb and
keep a spare bulb handy.
Make sure everything you prepare is legible from the
back row — you will need to check with your OHP as
it is positioned in your classroom — but as a general
rule you will need a type size of about 24 point if you
word-process your OHTs. You may find a font like
Arial gives you the best clarity. Make sure you enlarge
any printed images as necessary, before copying them
onto OHT.
If photocopying onto to OHT, make sure you have
the correct type of OHT for photocopying as other
types may melt in the copier and cause very expensive
damage.
Printer OHTs — you can get special OHTs for use
with computer printers which can be useful if you
want to produce colour OHTs, but they can be costly
on ink. For black and white it is just as easy to print
on paper and then photocopy.
If writing/drawing your own, use different colour pens
to highlight grammatical points such as verb endings
or simply for interest. Check colour visibility as strong
sunshine makes some light colours very difficult to
see and the light in the classroom may vary
considerably at different times of day and in different
weather.

130
REWARD SYSTEMS

Many schools now operate reward systems to motivate

pupils. If this is the case in your school, it is best to try to
link in any system you use in the languages department to
the overall school system. Rewarding pupils for oral work
is important in languages to encourage participation and
make them realize that speaking and listening work is as
important as written work. As a lot of language-learning
activities lend themselves readily to scoring and pupils are
motivated by frequent rewards, you may find that you
need a sub-unit of the school unit. For example, if the
school policy is to award a merit mark for an exceptional
piece of work, then you may decide that pupils need to
earn 3 or 5 points to gain a merit mark.

Points Chart
Pupils like to see their progress, so you can make a chart
on which you write a list of pupils’ names in alphabetical
order and write up their points. Pupils seem to enjoy the
competitive nature of this. It is a good idea to appoint
a reliable pupil at the beginning of the lesson to write in
the points so that you simply have to say ‘A point each
for John Jones and Jane Smith’ and do not slow down
the pace of the lesson while you find the names yourself.
Make sure that unscrupulous pupils cannot add points
to the chart without you seeing, so either take the chart
away with you and only display it in the lesson, or make
sure that pupils are not in the room without you. You can
make it on OHT acetate and just display it to pupils at
the end of each lesson/week.

131
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