This is a popular warm-up task. There is a strange situation presented and students’ task is to explain themselves. To tweak a little bit, you may ask your students to use a particular grammar structure, to include an idiom or two, or you may set a time limit. However, for lower levels, no tweaks are necessary cause the task itself is quite challenging.
https://wordwall.net/resource/55293816
It is a well-known game which can be used as a warm-up, filler, end-of-the-lesson activity or energiser. The aim is to talk for a minute without any pauses, hesitations, or repetitions. Students’ task is to be creative and witty whenever possible. So, let the students choose the topic, talk for one minute and have lots of fun, focusing on fluency rather than accuracy.
https://wordwall.net/resource/55243619
We all have one of those days from time to time. We don’t feel like doing anything, have a sore throat, a splitting headache, feel blue, spent the whole night with a teething child, whatever. However, we have to go to work and teach the best we can. After all, we are the teachers, right?
This is an activity which will let you relax while your students will be creating tasks, writing, speaking, and correcting one another. All you need to do is to prepare a photo (take the one I enclosed or ask the students to choose one from their phones) and recall what you want them to revise.
Once they have a photo, ask them to:
When they finish, ask the students to check each other’s works. Monitor and help, enjoying a sip of hot coffee every now and again.
An old activity which can be used in class as a warm-up or revision exercise. It has a lot of different possibilities, not only practising vocabulary. Actually, you can revise anything you want with your students. You may ask them to give definitions, to make sentences, dialogues, or stories, to give one or five examples, to speak, or to write. You can practise all sorts of vocabulary or grammar, but also language functions or different skills. There are no limits here. And the best option is to ask your students to prepare their own games. Have fun.
It is a short activity which can serve as a warm-up, energiser, a short task for fast finishers or the basis for the whole lesson. It is suitable for both teens and adults on absolutely all levels.
Show your students a set of photos presenting different emotions. Identify and discuss them. Ask your students to choose one photo.
Now, the first task is to describe a situation in which their parent, partner, boss, a shop-assistant, hotel receptionist, friend, bus passenger, etc reacted in this way.
The second idea is to ask your students to make a dialogue with the prevailing emotion from one of the photos at the party, during a romantic walk, negotiating a contract with an important client, at the dentist, etc.
You can also ask your students to write a few sentences the people from the photos could be saying using a particular grammar structure you want to revise, or just change the sentences into Reported Speech.
Your students could also make sentences, dialogues, short stories based on the photos using a set of vocabulary you would like to revise.
You can also ask your students to choose two photos and tell a story which led from one kind of emotion to another one. Or even use all the emotions presented in the photos in one story.
Your students could also think of some pieces of advice they could give to the people from the photos to feel better or worse 😉
I am sure you will come up with a thousand more ideas how to use the photos showing different emotions. Let me know in the comments whether you like this kind of tasks.
Ho Ho Ho, Christmas is coming. And because it’s 6th December tomorrow, I have a little Mikołajki present for you. I know oral matura exam is not compulsory this year but isn’t teaching a language about practising communication skills after all (no matter the exam structure and requirements)? I prepared a version for a teacher and student so your students can actually work in pairs. I hope you will have a lot of fun, I mean ‘Christmas is coming’ fun.
This is a huge revision set which you can use with your teenagers before different kinds of exams (E8, basic and extended matura, FCE, etc) as well as with your adult students. It consists of 14 parts, each one corresponding to a different exam topic: Man, House, School, Work, Social Life, Food, Shopping, Travelling, Culture, Sport, Health, Science and Technology, Nature, Crime and Society. In each part you will find 4 tasks: – SNAP: a picture connected with the topic, – VOCAB: eight words or expressions connected with the topic, – CREATE: a photo and a question or writing task – STORY: a topic for story telling
This is a very universal set. And because of it you can adapt it easily to the level of your students and your needs. You may use a certain part as a warm-up only or use it as the basis of your whole lesson. The SNAP and VOCAB tasks are just photos and words or phrases on different levels. So it’s totally up to you and your creativity what you decide to do with them.
I hope this will help you have very effective and enjoyable revision lessons with your students. Let me know whether you have found the ideas useful. So help yourself and bon appetit!
The set is available in the shop: https://sklep.dealwithkinga.pl/produkt/revision-set-genially/
I’ve just gathered a few of my Christmas activities in one place for you to enjoy during your last lessons before or first lessons after Christmas. All of them can be found on wordwall. Short, quick, can be used as warm-ups, energizers or fillers. Suitable for teens and adults on different levels.
CHRISTMAS CATEGORIES
Students have to put the words and expressions into 4 different categories: Christmas decorations, traditions, food and winter time.
CHRISTMAS MATCHING
Students have to match the pictures to Christmas expressions.
CHRISTMAS QUIZ
Students have to choose the correct answer. It’s a typical vocabulary game.
CHRISTMAS PHRASAL CRAZE
This time we deal with grammar, and to be more precise with phrasal verbs. Definitely for more advanced students.
CHRISTMAS SPEAKING
And the last exercise is devoted entirely to speaking. Could be used as a typical work in pairs or speed dating activity.
MERRY CHRISTMAS
I hope you will find those activities useful, still this year or maybe in the future. I’d like to wish you all the best. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
This time I’ve created a lesson for lower levels. Although its main aim is to use Present Simple in statements, questions, and negations, it focuses mainly on speaking to make learning grammar more meaningful. Your students will talk about different jobs as well as describe other people’s and their own daily routines. They will also practice telling the time. The lesson is quite simple so it can be easily adjusted to your needs.
This is a task for more advanced students – starting with good B1+ up. I would like to thank Monika – the author of ‘That is evil’ blog because I first came across the idea of malaphors on her blog a couple of days ago and I fell in love with the idea immediately. I had so much fun making my own malaphors that I thought my students could also enjoy it. So I prepared this presentation. It consists of 3 parts – first students have to identify the full idioms hidden behind the malaphors and their meanings and think what a new idiom might mean, then they have to coin their own malaphors and finally they are supposed to make (orally or in a written form) dialogues or stories that would illustrate the new meanings of their own malaphors. You can always ask the rest of the group to guess the brand new malaphors on the basis of their friends’ stories.
NOTE: You need to use the slide show option in order to reveal the idioms and their meanings gradually.