Eva Buyuksimkesyan efl, ELL, elt, energizers, esl, fast finishers, fillers, Fillers and First Week Activities, follow up, fun, fun activities, games, gamification, gapfillers, grammar games, group work, ice-breakers, ideas, inspiration, lesson idea, lesson ideas, lessons for teachers, warm-ups, warmers, writing a story, writing games

Roll The Dice

You feel tired and have no energy to plan a lesson for tomorrow,
Your students have been too fast to finish the tasks you planned for this lesson,
You see they sulk, they feel bored or tired and can’t understand the lesson,
then why not roll a dice and let the fun begin.
What can you do with a dice?
There are wonderful no-prep activities to liven up your class, to motivate your students to speak or even to write. Here are some activities you may want to use whenever you feel the need:
1. The student rolls the dice and tells things aboult herself according to the number on the dice. If the number is three, for instance, she must say three interesting facts about herself.
2. Write what each number is for (from 1 to 6) on the board. Such as, 1 something you’ve done so far today; 2 something you want to buy this year, etc and the students roll the dice in turns and talk about themselves.
3. Dictate them an opening sentence for a story. Tell them you’ll throw the dice and they have to continue to write the story. The dice will decide the number of sentences they’ll write. If the number on the dice is 4, they will write four sentences. Then dictate them another sentence, tell them they can change the subject but they have to fit the sentence into their story. Then roll the dice again and students continue to write. Roll the dice for the last time and tell students to finish their stories.
4. Ask students to write questions on cards. Put the pile of the cards in the middle of the desk. Roll the dice. The students must answer questions according to the number on the dice in turns.
5. Divide students into 6. Give each team a number from 1-6 and a topic such as travel, school, celebrations and then tell them to write questions on their topics on small slips of papers or cards. When the questions are ready, ask them to roll the dice and answer the questions in turns. If 1 is travel and they’ve rolled 1, then they will choose a question from that pile.
6. Assign a task for each number 1: draw the word, 2: use the word in a sentence, 3: define the word, 4: spell the word, 5: give a synonym, antonym or a derivative of the word, 6: ask a question using the word.

And the list goes on….
Hope these will help.

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 4 skills, drama, efl, ELL, elt, energizers, esl, ice-breakers, lesson idea, lessons for teachers, narratives, reading, speaking, stories, storytelling, teaching, teenagers

Three Chairs, A Drama Activity for Language Classes

threechairs

I’ll share a quick drama activity I learned from our drama club while performing at an event at school.

  • Put 3 chairs in front of the board.
  • Put labels on the chairs as “sad-1”, “happy-2″,”angry-3”
  • Write some situations on slips of papers and put them in a box. (You are waiting at the bus stop and the bus is late / You are going to take an important exam /You are travelling to …
  • Let students choose a slip of paper
  • Give them a few minutes to prepare a very short story based on the situation they have on their papers.

Begin with the volunteers. Explain the rules.

Tell students that you will shout a number from 1 to 3 and she/he will sit on that chair and start telling the story according to the emotion written on the chair. While the student is telling the story change the numbers randomly.

This activity will be suitable for intermediate and above but I think it can also be tried with beginners as a reading aloud activity. The teacher can give a text to practise reading aloud and then asks the students to read the text sadly, angrily, cheerfully, etc

 

Eva Buyuksimkesyan fun, fun activities, future tense, games, ice-breakers, ideas, lesson idea, lesson ideas, lessons for teachers, narrative tenses, narratives, past continuous, past simple, past tenses, poems, realative clauses, revision

Revisiting Grammar

lilacs-1287880_1920

May is round the corner. This means another school is about to end. Here you can find some revision games and activities that you’d like to use.

When I’m 65 (to revise tenses, time clauses)

Team your students

Prepare small cards, on small cards write random numbers such as 18, 22, 56, 38, etc.

Put the cards upside down on the desk

Tell students, take one card and make a sentence.

  • When I’m 65, I’ll probably have grandchildren.
  • When I was 18, I was a student at university.

postcards-1174179_1920

I had a great holiday there (to revise tenses)

Put some postcards or photos of places on the walls and tell students to walk around and imagine they were on holiday. They have to concentrate on one picture and then go back to their seats and write a paragraph, how they spent their holiday there. Then they can read and their friends try to guess which picture he has chosen.

I’m poem (to revise participles, relative clauses)

Ask them who they are. They will probably laugh and tell their names but tell them what roles do they have as a person in different places. Tell them that you’re their teacher, a mother, a wife, a friend, a colleague and although you are the same person but for your different roles, you have different responsibilities, feelings, emotions. Ask them if they are the same person as a sister, cousin, grandchild etc. Then give them the skeleton and ask them to write a poem describing who they are for different people and how they feel and react.

  • I’m the girl who loves reading books
  • I’m the sister watching you grow up
Eva Buyuksimkesyan challenge, creativity, inspiration, Landfill Harmonic Orchestra, lessons for teachers, opportunities

No more words needed, I guess

Can dreams come true?

Can a teacher touch the lives of students?
Do unbelievable success stories exist in only movies, chicken soup stories?

Can children in slums be saved and educated as the kids who have more resources?

What does a music teacher need to form an orchestra, a fully talented class of kids or just imagination and dedication?

What can teachers learn from each other?

 

I clicked on the link one of my friends from my PLN shared on Facebook and found out about them and I cried and I just wanted to share them.

I know nothing about them but I will take them to my classes and show them to my students, share with my colleagues …

No more words needed, I guess

Just click HERE and watch 🙂

 

Thank you Julie Raiku for sharing the link.