Category: grammar

Posted in 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

Posted on by Eva Buyuksimkesyan

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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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Posted in chain stories, conditionals, efl, fun, gamification, grammar

Chain Story Tweets

Posted on by Eva Buyuksimkesyan

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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

 

Posted in activities, Conditional Sentences, efl, esl, fun, games, grammar, If Clauses

Fun Activities with Conditionals

Posted on by Eva Buyuksimkesyan

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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.

 

 

 

Posted in grammar, past continuous, past simple, songs

10 Songs to Teach Past Simple and Past Continuous Tense

Posted on by Eva Buyuksimkesyan

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

 

Posted in activities, efl, fun activities, grammar, lesson ideas, Passive Voice, teenagers, web 2.0, wordle, young learners

Passive Voice, two activities using web

Posted on by Eva Buyuksimkesyan

Pub Quiz on the Net

Target Language: Passive Voice, Simple Past Tense

Level: A1, A2

Materials: ( colourful) pen, paper, internet connection,

Team students according to the size of your class.

Give them categories as inventions, literature, discoveries, music, etc.

Tell them in teams they will search on the web and come up with 10 questions, such as who composed ‘four seasons’?

Tell them in turns they will ask their questions to the opponent team. The answers should be in passive voice. The winner is the team with more correct answers.

Then tell your students to create a poster with their questions and the correct answers. They can use ‘glogster’ for the class blog.

Pub Quiz on Wordle

Target Language: Passive Voice, Simple Past Tense

Level: A1, A2

Materials: pen&paper, internet connection

Wordle: Passive voice

Create a word poster with some inventions, discoveries, books and movie titles, songs, etc.

Team your students

Distribute the word poster

Tell them to search the web and find out who the inventors were.

The group who finds who the writers, directors, inventors, etc first becomes the winner.

Follow up:

Students can create posters for the inventions.