Jazz Up Your Lesson
IF YOUR CLASS LIKES TO DRAW...
Activity for the whole class.
Type of work: in pairs.
1. Give a drawing/a picture of a famous artist/a photo etc. to every student in your class. Ask the students not to show their pictures to the other students. Allow some time for looking at the picture and finding the necessary words for describing them. Encourage questions.
2. Let one student describe his/her picture to their partner and the partner should draw it in his/her copybook. Set a time limit.
3. Let the students compare the described picture with the drawing, find anything that was different and the reason why it differed so. Make conclusions of what to do and what not to do while describing and drawing.
4. Having learnt the lesson, let the students change their roles and repeat the task.
5. Possible variation: ask the students to choose any picture at home and describe it in detail in written form. Next lesson ask a volunteer to come up and read his/her description to the whole class. Let the other students draw. Compare the pictures of the students with the original. Praise the most precise/acсurate drawings.
IF YOUR CLASS LIKES TO MOVE...
Activity for the whole class.
Type of work: in teams.
1. Divide your class in teams of 3.
2. Hide several objects (pens, pencil sharpeners, glasses, balls, soft toys etc.) in the classroom so that the object would be visible yet difficult to find.
3. Allow the teams to choose a volunteer who would go and look for the hidden object. After the person is chosen – cover his/her eyes with some scarf or kerchief.
4. Distribute the hidden objects among the teams so that every team has one object to find.
5. Put the “blind” volunteers on the starting point and show the hidden objects to the teams.
6. After a signal to start, the chosen volunteers should go and try to find the hidden objects with the help of their teams. The team members should give them directions on how to move.
7. The game ends when all the volunteers find the hidden objects.
8. Possible variations/complications
a) While the teams are giving the instructions they can not say the name of the person to whom they are giving these directions.
b) Do not distribute the objects – let the teams work on the question of which object to look for during the game, not before.
c) Hide only one object for all the teams to find.
IF YOUR CLASS LIKES TO IMAGINE...
Activity for the whole class.
Type of work: individual work.
This activity may be successfully used to train new vocabulary.
For instance, your current topic is “Traveling”.
1. Ask the students to write an acrostic on the discussed topic, using their active vocabulary.
For example:
Train
Roller-skates
Active sport
Vehicle
Engine
Lose way
Insect repellent
Niagara Falls
Garage
2. Ask the students to draw a spidergram on the discussed topic, using their active vocabulary.
For example:
After finishing the task ask the students to compare their spidergrams and find out the most frequently used word\words and something truly original.
3. Ask the students to cipher any country or city and give, for example, 7 clues for other students to guess it. You may also ask the students to bring some souvenirs/some objects from these countries to facilitate guessing.