Eva Buyuksimkesyan creative follow-up tasks, creative tasks, efl, fun, novels, post reading, reading, short stories

Opposites, an activity for while or post reading

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I’d like to share a quick activity that I’m planning to do with my students tomorrow.

1. Tell students to think about the characters in the book/story/novel you’re working on

2. Ask them to prepare a list of characters traits and then ask their friends if the adjectives they chose for these characters are correct or they are the opposites.

For example: (from Animal Farm)

             Benjamin Cynical

              Boxer      Lazy

              Molly      Caring

Variation: Prepare cards with characters’ names and an adjective to describe them. Ask students to choose a card at a time and decide if the adjective is correct or it must be the opposite to describe the character.

Eva Buyuksimkesyan activities, creative tasks, creativity, efl, ELL, elt, esl, exercises, fun, fun activities, games, online games, pair work

Looking at Digital Games and Heroes

image taken from yahoo images
image taken from yahoo images

 

I am not a fan of online games. I don’t play any but my son spends most of his free time playing online games. I have lots of students who do the same and when the subject is online games, even the quietest one starts to speak. A few years ago I had three students in my class. They were very much interested in games. They were very interesting boys because they were not ordinary players as they learned a lot about mythology and literature playing these games. One of them is writing stories and probably he’ll become a famous writer one day. That’s my hope for him.

I was clearing my files during the break and I came across a handout I coped from a book (unfortunately I don’t remember the name of the book) on literature. There were questions about favourite titles and characters. I put the handout among the ones I’d like to use this year but then suddenly I thought about another activity. Why shouldn’t I adapt it to games that the students are fond of playing and would work on the activity eagerly?

So here are my questions. I’ll be very happy if you can suggest other questions for this activity.

Think about the online games you love playing. First finish the sentences then compare your answers with your partner.

  1. I think I’m like the character ————————– from the game ———— because ———————-.
  2. I like the title of the game ————————— because ———————-.
  3. The game which I find very challenging is ———————————.
  4. I want to meet the character ———————- from the game —————- because ————————-
  5. The character whose action I admire is ————————– because ——-
  6. For me the most interesting 3 online games are ———————————.
  7. It is easy to win a game in ————————– because ———————–
  8. It is difficult to win a game in ———————– because ———————-.
  9. The game ——————- is set in a ——————————. It is —————–.
  10. 10. In the game ———————— you need to be a team to win.

Here you can find the handout I prepared for the activity.

Links to some blogs and interesting posts on online games

 

 

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 activities, dialogue, efl, fun, fun activities, ice-breakers, lesson ideas, vocabulary, writing games

5 Fun Activities For the Monday Morning

 

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1. Categories

Divide the class into two.

Explain the rules. You will give the students a category.

Call 2 students from each team to the board.

Set 2 minutes and tell them to write the words that come to their mind.

Some categories:

Things in a fridge

Things you can buy from a supermarket

Expensive items

Things you can find in a living room.

Adjectives that describe personality.

2. Right Word, Wrong Place

Prepare a handout with newly learned structures or some quotes on the topic you’d like to discuss in the class.

Make grammatically incorrect sentences changing the place of two words in the sentence and ask students to correct them.

3. Catch the words

Draw a circle and write some letters with which students form words. Prepare a handout jumbling the words you’ve recently studied in the class.

4. Dialogues

On slips of papers, write sentences or ask students to write sentences.

Put the students in pairs.

Give each pair 4 slips of papers, preferably the same 4 sentences and tell them to write a dialogue and insert the sentences they have on the slips of papers into their dialogues.

5. Comprehension Questions

Write the topic of the reading passage/listening activity on the board.

Tell students to copy it on a piece of paper and then write a question about it.

Then pass the paper to their friend and ask them to write another question. Then tell them to pass it to the next student. When each student receive their own papers, ask them to read the text and try to find if any of the questions are answered.

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