Clear a spot in your lesson plan for this engaging activity because you are going to love it. This is a small writing guessing activity using Present Perfect Simple and Present Perfect Continuous- you can also throw in Past Simple if you are feeling adventurous- with an added touch of technology.
Skills and subskills: writing, vocabulary, speaking and grammar
Strategy: whole class, individual work, whole class
Revise vocabulary related to jobs using the FlipTiles template on Wordwall- see the game below. If you don’t want to create your own, you can always use mine. I’d be honoured.
In the Flip Tiles, you will see vocabulary for professions or jobs they already know like teacher, architect… and some more challenging ones like priest, street vendor or surgeon. That was the idea, to revise old content and introduce new.
And so, we spent some time guessing the words and flipping the tiles.
Bonus. Fun revising activity: after revising all the vocabulary on the tiles, I pointed at one job and instructed students to repeat after me but only if the word matches the tile and remain silent if I was making a mistake. Fun! I told you.
More? Yes! You can do the same with pronunciation. Instruct students to repeat after you only when you have pronounced the word correctly. 😊(most of the times I give myself away when doing this exercise)
Step 2: Writing. Using Grammar.
Individually, students choose a job from the ones displayed.
Ask students to write clues for this job without mentioning the job. Tell them they will then read their sentences aloud one by one and the class will have to guess their job.
They will need to write three sentences:
Using the present perfect continuous
Using the present perfect
Optional: using the past simple
Example.
I have been training all morning ( 3 points)
I have scored two goals today (2 points)
Yesterday, I played a match (1 point)
Step 3: Here comes the fun
Ready to play? Divide the class into 2 teams. Instruct a student from Team A to read his/her first sentence, ie, his/her first clue to the job. If members of the other team guess the job only by listening to the first sentence, they score 3 points; if the second sentence needs to be read, they score 2 points and well, you know what the score is if the student needs to read sentence number 3 or if they can’t guess the job.
I hope you have enjoyed this little game. If you use it, let me know how it goes.
Is there a limit to how long you can spend teaching and talking about a topic? I wonder, how many subtopics are there to talk about? It’s been one month since the course began and I am still doing lesson One. OMG! At this pace, I am never gonna reach the end of the textbook.
Here is a little something I did with my C1 students. Unit 1 was about cities, but how do we talk about cities and not about Housing? My thoughts exactly, we cannot.
Topic: Housing
Level: C1
Activities: Speaking, Listening, Mediation, Vocabulary. Board Game
PDF ( available at the end of the post) 🙂
Optional lead-in: Speaking
Students get into pairs and talk about these 2 questions.
It is said an average person lives in 11 homes in their lifetime. What is your number?
If money was not a problem, where would you live and what kind of house would you have?
Revising Vocabulary
It is always a good idea to give students some time to come up with vocabulary they already know. You can do it in different ways.
The traditional way: give students a couple of minutes to come with as many words or expressions they can think of related to housing. This can be done in pairs with one person writing down the answers. Get group feedback and write the most interesting words/chunks on the board.
Using technology to create a word cloud on the board: you can use Answergarden, Mentimeter or Wooclap for this. (hover over the name of the tool and it will take you to the tool)
Fun extension: ask pairs to write a sentence using as many words as possible from the board. Score pairs a point per word and award a bonus point for the longest.
Introducing Vocabulary
affordable home
low-income housing
budget
low -income households
mortgage
tenants
landlords
overburdened with housing costs
homeowners
social housing
to make a down payment
disposable income
average price
to evict /eviction
homelessness
rising home prices
overcrowding and under occupations
real state bubble
subsidized
housing issues
cohousing
utility bills
to downsize
squatting/squatters
to rehabilitate /rehab, rehabilitation
Listening and Speaking. Video: Affordable Housing
Time to listen
Before watching the video, ask students to predict the answers to these questions. This will hopefully lead to some discussion where students will be encouraged to use some of the vocabulary above.
Play the video and ask students to check their predictions. Comment on the answers. Were their predictions accurate?
Making housing more accessible would help reduce…
What share of a household budget do you think is spent on average on housing?
Why has the price of housing risen so dramatically in the last decade?
What share of a household budget is spent on housing in low-income households?
In many countries, a large share of young people is still living with their parents. Predict: is your country one of these countries? Justify your answer
Reading and speaking
Divide students into pairs for this activity
STUDENT A: cohousing
Cohousing, which is a form of intentional community, originated in Denmark in the 1960s Intended to recreate an “old-fashioned sense of neighbourhood” through resident participation in the design and operation of their communities, this type of community model allows families and individuals to occupy private homes while at the same time contributing both time and money to common facilities that are owned and managed by the larger community.3 Community members pay monthly or yearly membership dues and often help with tasks such as cleaning and repairing shared resources. While residents contribute to the financial responsibilities of acquiring and maintaining common facilities and resources, each member maintains an independent economy and personal income.
Summarize what you have just read and give your opinion
STUDENT B: Squatting
Squatting has a long history in Spain, often fuelled by high rates of homelessness. But there is now a darker phenomenon too – squatters who demand a “ransom” before they will leave a property. And this has led to the rise of private eviction companies, some of which use threats to achieve their goal.
Summarize what you have just read and give your opinion
Speaking: Conversations questions+ Board game
Driven by my obsession to make students use new vocabulary, I am constantly thinking and trying different ways to “force” new vocabulary into my students’ speeches. In this case, I have created a board game here using the vocabulary above. A dice, some counters and some conversation questions and they are ready to go. Students throw the dice and try to use the word/chunk in the square they have landed on. They can also try to use the word/chunk in the previous and following square. If they do so, they can move forward one square.
Is giving homeless people homes more effective and sensible than making them stay in shelters or on the street?
How much is Airbnb affecting the housing market in cities where rent is on the rise?
What can be done about rising homelessness in big cities?
Does it make sense to encourage homeownership through tax policies?
Should housing policy be more balanced, supporting rental housing and homeownership on a more equal footing?
Source https://www.nytimes.com/
Exam-oriented task using vocabulary
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In this case, I gave them this task and asked them to discuss the prompts in pairs. Needless to say, encouraging them to use the new vocabulary,
It is not the first time I have written something about this great site to learn vocabulary but, it was such a long time ago, that I think it deserves to be brought to your attention again.
Learning Chocolate… that’s the name of the website. Hey!! I even like the name. I wonder why they’ve chosen this name for a website that helps students improve vocabulary but it certainly does so and in a very efficient way.
What do I like best about this site? It teaches vocabulary in a visual way but also, and this of the utmost importance to me, is that it teaches students how to pronounce the words they are learning.
How does it work?
The vocabulary is organized into categories, ranging from the easy Numbers or the Seasons to the more sophisticated Insect Life Cycle.
How do you learn with this page?
First, on top of the page, you will need to choose your language and also, the language you want to learn.
Now, you are ready to start.
Choose a category. The main categories are: beginning, around you, daily life, your society, your world and special series.
2. You will see words related to this category with the corresponding image and pronunciation.
3. The website also offers exercises to consolidate the vocabulary. For each category, you will find 3 match-up exercises, a fill-in the gaps and a dictation.
There are three different kinds of match up exercises:
Match up 1: you will find a list of words and below the words, a list of sound icons. Click on a sound icon and drag it and drop it to the corresponding word. When you finish, click Complete.
Match up 2: you will see the pictures and below the words to drag and drop.
Match up 3: same as match up 1, but in this exercise, you will see the pictures and not the words.
Also
Fill in: you will see several gaps and you will have to type the words that correspond to each image.
Dictation: you will find a list of sound icons. Click each of them and write the word you hear.
What I especially like about this site is that it uses visual aid to help students learn better and faster and, at the same time, teaches them how to pronounce the words.
I need to share this activity. It really has all the ingredients for a perfect lesson.
Things I want you to know about this lesson.
It is super engaging and gives your class a touch of modernity
It is collaborative
It deals with two basic skills, listening and speaking, but a lot of subskills are also at work.
It gives students and teachers a good excuse to stand up from their seats and even take the lesson outside, as I did.
It helps build rapport in the class, which is sooo important at the beginning of the course
I am not going to lie to you. It needs some initial preparation, but it pays off. Believe me! Besides, I find the whole process of preparing the activity very entertaining. Ok. I know. You don’t have time. The good news is that you can always use mine if you like my choice of cities.
Before the session, look for a video that can easily be divided into parts. In my case, we were learning about cities and their problems so I decided on this one 10 of the most overrated cities, from one of my favourite channels on Youtube. I chose only 4 cities to form groups of 4 students.
I used Camtasia to make 4 new videos, one for each city: Rome. London, New York and Río de Janeiro. If you don’t have Camtasia, don’t let this put you off, you can easily use the free online https://online-video-cutter.com/es/.
Once you have the videos, you need to upload them to, for example, Google Drive.
Once online, you need to copy the URL and create a QR Code. I create mine here. The Gif below shows how to do it once the video is uploaded to Google drive.
5. Now, you need to print the 4 QR Codes on separate pieces of paper.
6. Before the class, you will also need to tell students to download- I bet they already have it- a QR Code reader (I use QR Scanner) to their mobile phones and bring some earbuds for the next class.
Done!!! See? No big deal!! Now, everything is ready. Ready for the fun part!! 🙄
Tell the students this class will be done outside. Yay!! It could be the aisle or any other place on the premises that has enough room for the students to move. In my case, I used the schoolyard and pasted the QR Codes on the walls, well, not exactly walls as you can see from the picture.
Part 1.Listening and Retelling
Ask students to form groups of 4. Each of them should choose a different city
Ask students to scan the code for their city and take notes.
Explain they will need to share as many details as they can about the city of their choice with their group. Apart from the main specifics of the city, they will need to explain why the city is overrated.
Allow 15 minutes for this part as students will need to watch their video several times to write down as many details as possible.
Next, students get back to their groups and start sharing the information gathered about their cities.
Part 2: Speaking. Critical Thinking
In their groups, students talk about the issues the city in their videos has and together they debate whether the city where they live faces these same problems. Ask them to elaborate on their answers and offer possible solutions to tackle the problem.
Hope you have enjoyed my lesson and decide to give it a try!!
Engaging, challenging and highly effective activity to teach students how to do a Listening Cloze Exercise! This is a must-do activity to help students learn the technique for a fill-in-the-blanks exercise.
If I have to name the activity most of my older students find highly frustrating, it is probably doing a listening comprehension activity and not being able to understand anything. At least, that’s what they tell me. I suspect they are stretching it a tiny bit and they have managed to get the gist of what is being said but, already in a black mood when the audio finishes, they just feel they will never get better. The truth is that getting the gist is not enough when you are unable to answer the questions posed, especially when tested in an exam. That, we both know.
Though I always tell them that they need to work on this and promise that if they make a habit out of listening every single day, they will eventually get it and blah, blah, blah…, the truth is that we, as teachers, also need to find the time to explain how to do this kind of listening exercises. Because although it doesn’t work magic, there is a technique… and it can help them.
It seems to me the beginning of a course is the right time to do it and so, this past week, I set out to explain this technique.
But, you know me. With a game. Playing.
Step 1- Choose a Cloze Listening Exercise.
Step 2: Form Groups
Give all students the exercise on paper and ask them to form groups of 3ish people.
Step 3. Explain the Task
Explain that prediction in this kind of listening exercises is key. Stress the importance of trying to predict two things:
The grammatical category of the word(s) that will fit in the gap: is it a noun, a verb…etc?
The challenging part: ask students in their groups to try to guess the word (s) that they think will fill the gap. Ask students to name a secretary in the group that will be in charge of writing down their guesses.
For example in Number 1, one group might write “their teachers” but another group might decide “parents” is the best option.
Give students some individual time to read the text and start thinking about the options. Then ask them to join their groups and decide on one option for each gap.
Step 4. The Whiteboard
Divide the whiteboard in as many columns as groups- see the picture- and ask the secretaries of each group to come up to the whiteboard and write their options. Comment on any coincidences to build suspense- in the picture, have a look at question Nº 2, they all wrote “culture”-. Remember you are teaching them the technique, but it is also a game.
Step 5: the Listening
Play the audio (2 or 3 times). At this point, ask students to focus on their exercises and forget about their guesses.
Step 6: The Winners
Correct the listening exercise. Write the correct answers on the board and give 1 point for every coincidence. You know who the winner is, don’t you?
Note: In one class, one group got as many as 4 correct answers without even listening to the audio. Amazing, isn’t it?
Do you want to try? Follow all the steps and then listen to the audio. Check. How many wild guesses did you get right? Surely, you can’t expect to wild guess the exact number for gaps 3,5 and 6 but you know that it is a number and that, is saying a lot. Answers here.
