Tag Archives: games

Create your Own Wordle Game

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Yes. I am sure you have all heard about the latest craze in word games. No? You haven’t heard of Wordle? Well, if you haven’t, you missing out.

If you have played and loved but discarded Wordle as a teaching tool, I am here to show you there is a great alternative. Keep on reading!

Created by a software engineer called Josh Wardle, Wordle is a word game and it has become so popular that it has even been verbed  and people are beginning to say “have you wordled today?”

But, how do you play?

  • The idea is that you need to guess the Wordle in 6 tries.
  • Each word must be a valid 5-letter word
  • After each guess, the colour of the tiles will change to show how close your guess was to the word. Green if the letter is in the correct spot; yellow, if the letter is in the word but not in the correct spot and grey if the letter is not in the word in any spot.

Anyway, the game is fun to play but as a teacher, I thought it was maybe a bit too difficult for my students. Sometimes the words to be guessed are “knoll” or “crimp”. So, fun for me but I could see no use for the game in my classes as the words to be guessed were either too difficult or not relevant for the content I was teaching.

But, thanks to Tony Vincent and his awesome blog  learninginhand.com, I learned there is a Wordle you can easily customize with the words you need. How cool is this to use as a warmer, stirrer, filler or cooler?

The website is called mywordle.me and was developed by Pallav Agarwal. It works as explained above as regards tile colours. What’s different?

  1. You can customize your own word
  2. It can be 5 or 6 letters long
  3. You can do as many as you want
  4. You can share the link with your students and they can all play at the same time.

Next class? Start with a Wordle game to revise vocabulary.

Some Spanish Slang, How to Say it in English and a Strategy to Make it Fun.

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If you love giving quizzes to your students or if you are a student yourself, you’re going to love doing this quiz. Why? Because in this quiz, students are going to learn some expressions that are not in the dictionary. Well, some of them might be. Plus, they are going to take an active role when answering the questions in the quiz. All of the students. Keep on reading!

Why is not giving the quiz enough for me?

It very often happens that when you display a quiz such as this one for the whole class only a bunch of students – normally the ones who volunteer for everything you do in class- actively participate in giving the answers.

Well, this is not enough. Not for me. I need all the class to participate. And I don’t really mind here whether the answers are correct or incorrect. That’s not the point. The point is that they are, at least trying. And trying is learning, And making mistakes is learning.

NOTE: I am well aware that there is not just one way of saying the expressions in the quiz. This is just the way I say them.

(Click on the image, it will take you to the quiz)

Procedure
  • Give each student two pieces of paper; 10×7 cm approx. will be perfect.
  • Ask them to write on one side the letter A and on the other side, the letter B. On the second piece of paper, ask them to write the letter C. Tell them to write the letters big enough to see from a distance.
  • The letters A, B and C correspond with the three possible options in the quiz. For example, if they think the second answer is the correct one, they should choose and show the letter B.
  • Tell students they will be competing in pairs and they should keep score of the points each of them gets. If both students guess the correct answer, no points are awarded; but, if one student beats the other one in a question, that’s when they score a point.

BONUS: A nice idea to keep track of the points they score is to use, for example, chickpeas, pasta or peas. That adds a fun touch to the exercise.

 

  • Display the first question. Give students 10-15 seconds to think. Say “UP” and have students display the correct answer. Students in pairs compare their answers and score points, if necessary.

Follow-up

Sadly, just because they do the quiz once does not mean they are going to learn the content in it. You will need to revise it, and not just once. So, this is what I do:

      1. Once they finish, ask them to write down all the expressions they remember and share them with the class.
      2. Display the quiz again, one question at a time, but do not show them the answers. Students will need to try to remember the correct answer.
      3. Give them the link to the quiz to practise again at home.

That’s all! I hoe you have enjoyed the post!

Mixed Conditional Sentences

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Learning about  Mixed Conditional Sentences is the perfect way to finish this weird year, don’t you think so?

I am sure you have been speaking English way too long without adorning your speech with  Mixed Conditional Sentences. Well, I am here to remedy this.

First, you need to open your mind to the fact that when you first start learning about Conditional Sentences, we only teach you the basic types like, for example, when you learn Conditional Type I and we teach you If+present simple⇒Future “Will” . Of course, this is correct  but as you get more proficient, you soon realize that there are so many variations to the basic type that you begin to wonder if any combination is possible. I am tempted to say “yes”.

Anyway, I am here to teach you about Mixed Conditional Sentences. Are you ready?

So, we are going to study two cases:

  1. If + Past Perfect ⇒ Would

                                  If I hadn’t studied, I wouldn’t be in the advanced course.

As you can see,  we have a combination of Conditional Type III  (if+Past Perfect) and Conditional Type II  (would+infinitive)

When do we use it? When we refer to a past event that could have had a direct result on a present situation if it had been different.

I know … difficult to grasp. Some help in Spanish?

(Nos referimos a un hecho pasado que de haber sido de otro modo habría cambiado el presente.)

Now, let’s have a look at some pictures with some hints in bubbles. Try to finish the sentences using this Mixed Conditional Structure.

 

Now, write your own sentences.

2. If + Simple Past --- Would have+ Past Participle

              If I were tall, I would have enrolled in the army

As you can see,  we have a combination of Conditional Type II (if+Past Simple) and Conditional Type III  (would have+ past participle)

When do we use it? When we refer to a present event that could have changed a past situation.

In Spanish? Un hecho presente que podría haber cambiado un hecho pasado, es decir, el pasado habría sido diferente ,si el presente fuera diferente. I know, you have to read it several times.

Now, let’s have a look at some pictures with some hints in bubbles. Try to finish the sentences using this Mixed Conditional Structure.

Now, write your own sentences.

 Writing: Ready for a Guessing Game?

Aim: guessing the exact sentence on the back of the tile

Time: 1 minute/sentence

Put students into pairs and choose one of the flip tiles. Instruct students to complete the conditional sentence on the tile. They will need to write it down. Tell them the picture is a hint. Listen to their sentences and flip the tile. Award 1 point for each exact sentence. Similar but not quite? Half a point 🙂

 

PDF with more exercises here. Use a QR Code Reader to scan de key

A Guessing Game Using Tenses

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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
  • Level: B1,B2
  • Magic Touch: Wordwall
Step 1: Learning Vocabulary: Jobs

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:

  1. Using the present perfect continuous
  2. Using the present perfect
  3. 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.

 

Housing Issues. A Lesson Plan for C1 students.

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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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.

Source: https://ala-apa.org/

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.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/

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,

Exam-oriented: Oral Mediation Task

Here and Here

Here’s the PDF for the lesson.I hope you find this lesson useful.