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 a 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 efl, esl, fillers, fun activities, summer school activities, warmers

Some Cool Summer School Ideas

ImageChef.com - Get codes for Facebook, Hi5, MySpace and more
 

It’s summer in the northern hemisphere and most of us have started our summer holidays. Yet some of spend their holidays working in the summer schools or summer camps. Here you can find some activities that may help you

Need Energy

Asking Questions, some fun activities

Games, Fillers, Warm-ups

Quick Fillers

Fun Writing Activities

Old Techniques Revisited

Motivating Learners with Fun Activities

Songs in EFL Classroom

Eva Buyuksimkesyan 1st day activity, 1st week activities, christmas, efl, lesson ideas, New Year, web 2.0 tools

Ideas for the next holiday season

I know I am a bit late for the following lesson ideas but for a while I’ve been a bit reluctant to write anything. I hope I will keep my blog alive in 2013 …

Now here I go …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lesson for the next Christmas

  • Write Christmas on the board
  • Tell students to brainstorm ideas
  • Write the skeleton of the poem

Christmas sounds like —

Christmas tastes like —-

Christmas feels like —

Christmas looks like —

Christmas smells like —

Christmas sounds like —-

Christmas is a time

When —

  • Then you can even decorate the class with the students as we did

A lesson for the 1st day of the New Year

3,2,1 expectations from 2013

When I say we are going to do our New Year’s resolutions, the students always complain telling that they’ve been doing it for ages. I decided to adapt the famous 3,2,1 introductions to a New Year’s first lesson.

Old School option

Give students post-it notes

Write the instructions on the board

3 things you want to do/achieve this year

2 places you want to be/see/visit this year

1 thing you want to buy this year

Digital option

Give the same instructions

Tell students to create comics.

Here are some examples from my students. They are still posting their comics 🙂

http://www.creazaeducation.com/members/Caroler/cartoonist/50850533

 

 

 

Eva Buyuksimkesyan 1st day activity, 1st week activities, asking questions, fillers, warmers

Asking Questions – A Warmer or A Filler

I found this activity hidden in one of my idea notebooks a few minutes ago while trying to organize my files.

Ask students to write a question on a piece of paper.

Tell them to fold it down and pass it to the next student.

The next students will also write a question and fold the paper and pass it to the next student.

This will continue until the students get their own papers.

Then tell students to choose

1. a funny question

2. the question they’d like to answer

3. a question they can’t answer

4 . a question with a a grammar mistake, etc

Then they can answer the questions they want to answer.

They can create a wall poster titled “Our Questions and Answers’

I also think this can be a great idea as pre (reading, listening,writing, speaking,etc)

Write the topic on the board

Tell students to write a question on that topic and pass the paper to the next students

When they get their own papers tell them to check the text if they can get an answer for any of the questions on the paper.

or

If you have access to a computer room, before reading the text in the course book, students can search the web and try to get answers for their questions.

 

Eva Buyuksimkesyan activities, descriptions, fillers, fun, fun activities, lesson ideas, warmers

Describe …

 

Here are some activities you can use when teaching descriptions.

Characteristics:

Agree on a list of 5 people known to students

Dictate words and phrases which describe the people chosen

Students write the descriptions you dictate beneath the name of the person they think is referred to.

Rights/ Wrongs

Choose something to describe.

Tell students to divide a piece of paper into 3 sections as right, wrong and neither right nor wrong

Dictate a number of short statements.

Students write each short statement beneath a suitable heading.

Running picture descriptions

Divide the class into groups.

Place a picture on your desk or on a wall.

Student A from each group goes to the picture to look at it carefully then goes to his group and dictates what he sees. He can go to the picture as many times as he wishes.

My dream holiday

Display 10 postcards of holiday destinations.

Tell students to walk around and choose a postcard.

Tell them to return their seats and write a short letter to a friend telling their visit.

Ideal Holiday Destination

Display 10 postcards of holiday destinations.

Tell students to walk around and choose two postcards.

Tell them to return their seats and write a short letter to a friend telling which will be an ideal destination for their next holiday.