Post by ellen on Oct 27, 2016 18:11:39 GMT 8
As in all my posts, I’m not reinventing the wheel. In fact, I just want to share my experience of using ideas presented in Macmillan’s Teachers’ editions and students’ books. It’s not necessary to use the detailed description of the activities; I usually change them depending on my students. Also, a lot of “Science Exploration” lessons can be turned into nice games matching those children abilities which are beneficial for language learning and which are listed on page 10 of Jayne Moon’s book (at least “Having fun” and “Joining in the action” are among them).
I especially like activities allowing children to feel like explorers for a while. Their task is to make a kind of experiment and report the result to everyone (sometimes I also use charts they have to fulfill, preferably on the whiteboard). A couple of examples.
Teaching comparative degrees of adjectives (using words “faster” and “slower”). I have a bunch of balls, trains, and cars in the classroom. First, we give a “name” to each toy (blue ball, red car, yellow train). I show an example then. “I like the blue car and the red car. Which car is faster? Three, two, one…” (then I let the cars roll down some sloping surface and report the result) “The red car is faster!”. I ask then a couple of pupils to choose a car/ball/train (“Which toy do you like? I like the…”) to compare with the other student’s toy. The role of the teacher is given to different students one by one. The aim can be just to compete and compare the toys or to find the fastest/the slowest. My kids usually enjoy it a lot and ready to play this game again and again.
We can vary the way of playing and adjectives for this game. I played a similar game with longer/shorter, having paper cut-outs of some animals (snakes, fish, etc.) placed between pages of a book so that only the tails are visible. Kids are to pull out one cut out each and compare between each other (T:”Whose snake is longer?” S: “My snake is longer!”).
Another activity I used was that lesson in HOT 2 (or 3?) where couples of students had to check if they can carry different things holding them between two long bars. They had to try carrying some stuff from one station to another and answer the question: “Can you carry the ball?” – “Yes, we can!”/”No, we can’t” and fulfill the chart.
The only problem I’ve met playing these games was students’ reluctance to stop playing them when our time is up.
I especially like activities allowing children to feel like explorers for a while. Their task is to make a kind of experiment and report the result to everyone (sometimes I also use charts they have to fulfill, preferably on the whiteboard). A couple of examples.
Teaching comparative degrees of adjectives (using words “faster” and “slower”). I have a bunch of balls, trains, and cars in the classroom. First, we give a “name” to each toy (blue ball, red car, yellow train). I show an example then. “I like the blue car and the red car. Which car is faster? Three, two, one…” (then I let the cars roll down some sloping surface and report the result) “The red car is faster!”. I ask then a couple of pupils to choose a car/ball/train (“Which toy do you like? I like the…”) to compare with the other student’s toy. The role of the teacher is given to different students one by one. The aim can be just to compete and compare the toys or to find the fastest/the slowest. My kids usually enjoy it a lot and ready to play this game again and again.
We can vary the way of playing and adjectives for this game. I played a similar game with longer/shorter, having paper cut-outs of some animals (snakes, fish, etc.) placed between pages of a book so that only the tails are visible. Kids are to pull out one cut out each and compare between each other (T:”Whose snake is longer?” S: “My snake is longer!”).
Another activity I used was that lesson in HOT 2 (or 3?) where couples of students had to check if they can carry different things holding them between two long bars. They had to try carrying some stuff from one station to another and answer the question: “Can you carry the ball?” – “Yes, we can!”/”No, we can’t” and fulfill the chart.
| Can you carry….? | Teacher and Cecilia | Cecilia and Jane | Teacher and Jane |
| Balloon | Yes, we can | No, we can’t | No, we can’t |
| Ball | Yes, we can | No, we can't | Yes, we can |
| Teddy bear | No, we can’t | Yes, we can | No, we can’t |
The only problem I’ve met playing these games was students’ reluctance to stop playing them when our time is up.
