Activity 3: Language learning strategies

Put it on the Map

Age: 9 - 12 years old

Materials: Building Flashcards and masking tape.

Aim: Teach prepositions (in, opposite, on, next to, in front of, behind)

Procedure:

1. Draw a simple street plan on the borad or, to make the activity more physical, mark out the plan on the table/floor with a masking tape. Label one of the streets “High Street” and lay out the flashcards.

2. Teacher: “Xavi, put the museum on High Street”, “Marc, put the block of flats opposite the museum”. Continue until all the cards are on the plan.

3. Ask questions like “Where is the museum?, Where is the____?”.

4. Role play (in pairs)

Student A: Excuse me, where is the cinema?

Student B: Oh, it’s next to the_____ // I don’t know.

Extension:

1. Take all the flashcards off plan. Choose two students and tell them to put the cards back on the plan in a new order.

2. Tell the rest they have 2-5 minutes to memorize the new plan. They then turn their backs on the plan.

3. Get two students to ask “where” questions.

Tip:

Giving directions is difficult to master and children need lots of listening practice before giving instructions themselves. When using street plans they often fail to realize that after a 90º change of direction a “left hand turn” is now different from before. Walking or pushing a toy car round a large scale plan makes “direction giving” more intelligible and MORE FUN!

Language Learning Strategies

Name of the activity: Catwalk-game

Context:  8 -10 year-old aged students in an extracurricular English classes

Objectives: there are two. The firs t is for the teacher to know the vocabulary students really know and the second one is to introduce the new one. Furthermore, the color topic would be reviewed.

Student preparation: the vocabulary learnt in previous courses,

Procedure: ask a confident student to stand up and walk around the class. Ask the rest of the students “ what is he or she wearing?”. The students will answer with the vocabulary they know. And the teacher introduces the new vocabulary. The teacher always asks for the color of the clothes. If there is a target vocabulary which is not found in the outfit of the students, the teacher  uses flahscards or pictures where famous people appear in order to encourage them to learn the new vocabulary introduced.

Example: Maria stands up and walks around the room.

Teacher: what is she wearing?

Pepito: she is wearing a red skirt and a white shirt.

Teacher: a white……blouse because Maria is a girl. And girls do not wear shirts, they wear blouses. 

Isabelle, Patricia, Sandra

Activity 3: Language learning strategies II

For this activity we were asked to desgin an exercise in which students could practice a LLS

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Vocabulary Learning Activity

Level: Depending on the vocabulary used this activity could be adapted to almost all levels of English. The example presented is aimed to teach an elementary level.

Age: Mainly designed for kids.

Warm up:

The teacher gives his students a list of jobs and occupations in English and a copy similar to this one:
Then he asks the students to debate out loud how would they match the pictures and their names. Once the matching exercise is complete, the teacher would divide the class into teams (couples would work too for a short number of students) and ask each of them to pick up five identical pieces of paper or cardboard. Then, each of them must write on those pieces of paper five names from the list and give them back to the teacher, who will check the deck to avoid repetitions and then shuffle it.

Main activity:

The game is divided in three different rounds but all of them are played using a set of randomly chosen name cards from the deck they created. Each team gets 30 seconds to guess as many names as possible, with one player (sitting across from the rest of the group) giving clues to his teammates. Players can always use sound effects and pantomime, but speech becomes more restricted as the game progresses:

Round 1 = Cluegivers can say anything. Passing is not allowed in this round.
Round 2 = Cluegivers can say only one word. Only 1 guess allowed.
Round 3 = Cluegivers can't say anything. Only 1 guess allowed.

When a group guesses correctly the content on one of the cards, that paper is taken out of the deck for that round only and each round ends when all names in the deck have been guessed. The group with the highest score after the third round wins.

Follow up:

The teacher then would ask them about their families, inquiring which are their parents' occupation. As homework he could also ask them to write about what they want to become when they grow up.