Eva Buyuksimkesyan creative writing, efl, ELL, elt, fun, fun activities, grammar, ideas, lesson ideas, lessons for teachers, writing, writing a paragraph, writing a story, writing games, young learners

Draw a Door

Rue Cremieux, Paris

My door is on the roof. I climb with a rope. I have stairs from moon. (Maral, age 11)

One of the most favourite activities we do in class is creative writing. It is great for revising grammar and vocabulary. It is also great for unleashing their hidden talents. Although they sometimes complain about drawing, they end up with wonders.
Here is one we’ve recently done:

Creative Writing Task:

Imagine it is 2040. Draw the door of your house an describe your life there.

  • Aim: Talking about daily routines.
  • Describing people and and places
  • Using present simple tense

In the end I was happy with a bunch of creative minds who managed to think outside the box.

Eva Buyuksimkesyan activities, creative tasks, creative writing, creativity, descriptions, fun activities, grammar, grammar games, guided visualisation, lesson ideas, narratives, past continuous, past simple, past tenses, story writing, web 2.0 tools, writing, writing a paragraph, writing games

Getting Ready to Write A Story

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Level: All

Age: All

Target Language : Narrative Tenses, Adjectives to describe emotions, feelings, etc.                               

Give each student a handout with the chart below.

Play the sound effects you chose

Ask the students to fill in the following chart

What do you see?  
What do you hear?  
What do you feel?  
What do you taste?  
What do you smell?  

When your students finish completing their charts, ask them to share with their friends.

Remind them how we can start to write a first paragraph of a story. ( how we set the scene, etc)

Optional: you can ask your students to draw the scene based on their chart.

Then tell students to write an introduction paragraph for a short story or a novel.

You can download free sound effects

http://www.freesoundeffects.com/free-sounds/weather-sounds-10038/

http://www.soundsnap.com/browse

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Eva Buyuksimkesyan chain stories, conditionals, efl, fun, gamification, grammar

Chain Story Tweets

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My 9th graders are difficult to teach, they are not motivated but whenever I want them to play a game, they become very eager. They are very competitive and even the weakest of them, try to do their bests to win a point for their teams so we play lots of games.Sometimes I adapt drill-like activities to games or interesting activities.

We were revising If Clauses and I decided to do it as tweets. I explained them how we write chain stories. Then put them in groups, gave them poster size paper and three sentences that they could start their story. They really enjoyed working in the groups and the 8th lesson of a very long day needed happily.

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Another Twitter inspired activity 

More Conditional Activities

 

Eva Buyuksimkesyan activities, Conditional Sentences, efl, esl, fun, games, grammar, If Clauses

Fun Activities with Conditionals

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1. Writing chain stories or even writing chain poems.

If you decide to do the chain poem writing activity, then give them a skeleton

If I drink coffee,

I’ll stay awake tonight

If I stay awake tonight,

I’ll fall asleep in the morning.

And if I fall asleep in the morning,

My teacher will be very angry.

 

2. Go and Open the Door

This activity was taken from Creative Poetry Writing by Jane Spiro.

3. Prepare conversation cards or even prepare conversation cards on PowerPoint or Google presentation.

4. Prepare 2 different sets of cards. You can use two different colours. One colour for If Clause, one colour for the result clause.

Divide the class into two and play tic-tac-toe or put them in groups and tell them the first group who matches the halves will be the winner.

5. Songs are great for teaching or revising conditionals.

My favorites are:

  • If I were a boy (Beyonce)
  • If I had a Million Dollars (the BarenakedLadies)
  • Smile (Charlie Chaplin)
  • Time After Time (Cyndi Lauper)
  • Hero (Enrique Iglasias)
  • Count on me (Bruno Mars)
  • California Dreaming (The mamas and Papas) 

6. A great list of fun activities on TEF.net http://edition.tefl.net/ideas/grammar/activities-second-conditional/

7. Ask students to stand up and form a circle. Shout a half conditional sentence, throw the ball to a student and ask him to complete it.

8. Give students scrap paper, preferably used photocopies and tell them to write 5 half conditional sentences on. Then tell them to stand up and play snowball fights. Stop them when you think the fun is enough for them. Tell them to pick the closest snowball, go back to their seats and finish the sentences.

9. You can aslo find some fun activities here. 

10. Tell them to find out some superstitions from a different country and their own country and prepare a quiz or a poster.

 

 

 

Eva Buyuksimkesyan grammar, past continuous, past simple, songs

10 Songs to Teach Past Simple and Past Continuous Tense

Without music, life would be a mistake.
  Friedrich Nietzsche

These days I’m dealing with the tenses with all levels so I decided to group the songs according to the tenses. As I’m focused on Past Simple and past Continuous now, I’ve started from them.

When I prepare the lessons, I’ll also add them. 

Because you Loved me Celine Dion 

Jealous Guy John Lennon 

Hotel California The Eagles

Storyman Chris de Burgh

Fairy Tale Alexander Rybak

Seasons in the Sun Terry Jacks

Our Last Summer ABBA

No reply Beatles

Candle in the Wind Elton John

You were there Eric Clapton