Making Grammar Text Exercises Open-Ended

Purpose: To make grammar text exercises more engaging and more multi-level; open-ended exercises allow students to participate at their own ability levels.

Preparation Time: 10+ minutes; allow extra time if you plan to make a handout rather than using the board.

Materials: grammar exercise from a traditional grammar book; board and markers

Preparation: Look at the sentences in the grammar activity and decide how you’d like to change them. For example, in a beginning level exercise, you might see the following sentence:

Lucy ______(do) her homework every night..

An alternate approach involves asking students to fill in the blanks with any word that makes sense in the sentence. Use the same text in Rounds 1 and 2, but change what students need to fill in.

Round One: Lucy does _______ every night.

Students could fill in the blank with: dishes, mending, exercises, etc.

Round Two: Lucy ____ her homework every night.

Students could write: finishes, does, checks, etc.

Round Three: Students write their own version of the above sentence, changing the name, the activity, the verb and/or the time.

Procedure:

I do it:

1) Review the vocabulary or grammar that you are focusing on. If your grammar focus is the past tense, make sure the verbs in the sentences are in the past tense.

2) Model the activity by doing several examples and using different words to fill in the blanks, so students understand there is no right answer, as long as the sentence makes sense. Go through all 3 rounds with each sentence.

3) Try doing some examples that don’t make sense to check for comprehension.

We do it:

1) Do a number of examples on the board, filling in the blanks with words elicited from students. Have fun trying out different possibilities.

2) Ask students to come to the board and fill in blanks. Other students decide if sentences make sense.

You do it:

1) Students work on their own to complete the sentences, written either on the board or on a handout. Tutor/teacher circulates to assist as needed.

Note: In a multi-level class, give a time limit rather than a quantity-of-work limit. Each student does as much as he or she can in the given time.

Statement Checks

Purpose: This is a conversation activity that encourages students to produce language quickly and cooperatively, while practicing a specific grammar point.

Prep Time: 10+ minutes (time needed to locate 3-4 pictures)

Materials: projector for showing pictures to class; 3-4 colorful, interesting pictures from magazines or books

Prep: Once you decide on the grammar that students will practice, choose photos to use both for modeling (“we do it” step) and for the activity itself.

Procedure:

I do it

1. Introduce or review the grammar structure and vocabulary you want students to practice, such as using prepositions, adjectives, or the present tense. Also, review the components of a simple sentence. You’ll model correct sentence structure in the “we do it” step as well.

We do it:

1. For the activity itself, students will work in small groups, but to model the activity, the tutor or teacher and the class act as one group. Explain that one person in the group is a recorder. For the “we do it” phase, the teacher acts as the recorder.

2. Show a picture to the class for one minute. For a large group, use a projector, if possible, so that everyone can see.

3. Ask students to say sentences about the picture, using the grammar point you’ve specified.

4. The recorder (teacher) makes a check mark on the board for each sentence that the group produces.

5. At the end of a minute, count the number of check marks. This is your score.

Note: For a lower level class, you might want to repeat the above activity, but model it with a small group, so students will understand how to proceed. Have one of the students act as the recorder this time.

You do it:

1. Now divide students into small groups.

2. Each group decides on a recorder within the group. The recorder also participates in producing sentences.

3. Show the picture on the projector for one minute while groups create sentences.

4. When time is up, students count the number of check marks they have.

5. Now show the class a different picture for one minute, with the goal of generating more sentences than they did the first time. Students will almost always find that they have more sentences about the second picture.

Vocabulary House

Purpose: This is an association activity and a memory aid that helps students retain new vocabulary.

Preparation Time: 5 minutes

Materials: markers, large sheets of paper, such as newsprint, one per student, pencils

Preparation: Gather materials. Think about the floor plan that you intend to draw on the board as a model.

Procedure:

1. Each student draws the basic floor plan of a house where he or she has many memories. The rooms/yard/gardens should be empty (no furniture) and large enough to write plenty of words in the empty spaces. Students use pencils initially, then trace over the lines with markers.

Demonstrate this activity first by drawing a simple floor plan of your own present or childhood home on the board. Model putting words into certain rooms and talk about the associations you’ve made. For example: “I put the word ‘traffic’ in the kitchen because that is the busiest room in my house. Everyone always ends up in the kitchen! It is the center of our family life.”

2. Students select a new word, associate it with a place in the floor plan they drew, and write the word in that room. Everyone will have a different association.

3. After they have done this with several words, students tell each other, in pairs or small groups, why they put each word where they did. When students tell one another why they put each new word in a particular room, they learn a lot about each other.

4. Students keep their Vocabulary House, adding words to it and talking with classmates about it throughout the unit or class.

5. Charts could also be posted on the wall, creating a “neighborhood”, while students continue to add to them.

Buidling Workplace Vocabulary

Purpose: To practice talking about jobs

Preparation: None

Procedure:

1. Have students generate a list of jobs.
2. Choose two to three job titles and have students suggest typical activities for this type of employment.
3. Have students get in groups and pick one job and tell a story about a person, real or fictional. Example: Jenny is an assembly worker. Every day she puts things together. She must work very fast. She does the same job again and again. Sometimes her job is boring.
4. Have students illustrate the actions or difficult vocabulary words in the story by drawing stick pictures, cutting pictures out of magazines or taking photos of people on the job.

Extensions:

• Create a simple dialogue where one person asks basic questions about another person’s new job. Then have students practice the dialogue, pretending to be a nurse, or assembly worker or an accountant.

• Practice word processing skills by typing up a story, printing it in large font and making a poster picture story with it.

• Use a workforce Web site, such as www.iseek.org, to find information about average salaries, benefits and educational requirements for each job.

Jigsaw Technique

Purpose: To practice reading comprehension; to practice speaking skills.

Preparation before class:

1. Choose appropriate reading material to use with your students. Examples of good types of material for this activity include anecdotes or stories, stories told from two or three different viewpoints, fairy tales and information about different community services or different cities.
2. Divide the material into sections. The number of sections you create depends on the type of material and on how many groups of students you would like.
3. On a separate sheet of paper, write comprehension questions for the material so that 2-3 questions pertain to each section.
4. Photocopy the material and then cut out each section separately. Make enough copies of each section so that each student can have one section (not one of each). Make one copy of the question sheet for each student.

Procedure:

1. Distribute a section of the text and the questions to each learner. Learners read the text silently and then work with other students who have the same section to complete the questions. If your text is divided into sections A, B, and C, all the students with part A work together (AAAA groups). Explain to learners that they will not be able to answer all of the questions, only the ones that pertain to their part of the text.
2. When students are ready, regroup the students so that each group forms a complete version of the text (ABC groups).
3. In the new groups, each student summarizes or retells his/her part of the story, so that other students can answer the questions for that part. Students should not read the text to their group, nor show the4 group their question papers.
4. When groups have finished, go over the comprehension questions as a whole class.

Variation:

This activity can also be done with listening material if you have multiple cassette/CD players, can make copies of the sections of tape and have places where groups of students can go to listen to their section without letting other groups hear.

The Three Rs

Purpose: to help learners understand what recycling is and why it’s important, as well as to provide listening practice

Prep Time: time needed to view the video and think about how you’ll explain vocabulary

Materials: index cards, copies of worksheet, equipment needed to show video, realia needed to clarify examples of reducing, reusing and recycling

Prep: gather realia, locate index cards, make copies of worksheet

Procedure:

1) Setting the Context and Introducing New Vocabulary:

Start by giving students some examples of reducing, reusing and recycling and ask students if they have done any of these things or anything similar and why. It is not necessary at this point to use the terms reduce, reuse, or recycle. See below for some possible examples you could tell students.

Examples of reducing: using cloth grocery bags, using plastic containers to store food, use your own water bottle, write on both sides of a piece of paper, turn lights off when no one is in the room

Examples of reusing: giving clothing to a younger brother or sister, buying something that is used (a car, books, appliances), new uses for boxes or jars

Examples of recycling: using paper, plastic, glass, cans to make more of the same thing

Teach students the terms reduce, reuse, and recycle, referring to the examples that you discussed. Then elicit/discuss reasons why doing these actions are important.

Please note: If students aren’t familiar with recycling, avoid turning the lesson into the topic of how to recycle; this would make a good follow up lesson. Instead, focus on what it is and why it is important.

2) Practicing the New Language

For this portion of the lesson you will need access to the Three Rs video found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKdZYYmTT9A

You’ll also need copies of this fill-in-the-blanks worksheet.

Introduce the Three Rs video by telling students that they will be doing a listening activity called the Three Rs. Ask students to guess what the Three Rs are.

Play the video once and ask students what they remember.

Pass out the fill-in-the-blanks worksheet and, if necessary, watch the first part of the video and do a couple examples as a class. Then play the whole video a couple times while students fill in the rest of the blanks.

Check the answers for a couple of students and then refer other students to the ones who have the correct answers until every student has the answers. If there is interest, play the video again while students compare their answers to what they hear in the video.

3) Follow-Up Discussion

Students can work with partners or in small groups to come up with some more ideas about ways that people can reduce, reuse and recycle and then report their ideas to the rest of the class.

4) Wrap Up

Pass out an index card to each student. Write the following questions on the board for students to answer on their index cards.

1. Write your name

2. What are three things that you learned today?

3. What questions do you have about the Three Rs?

Read the cards and choose some questions from the cards to discuss/answer as a class.

What is it?

Purpose: To practice vocabulary, descriptions and sentence formation

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Materials: Index cards

Preparation: Choose nouns that your students know and that relate to their goals. Write each noun on a separate index card or piece of paper. Lower-level learners can be given pictures.

Procedure:

1. Give each student a card with a word on it. They should write or say three sentences that describe the word. For example: It is yellow. It has a peel. You take the skin off it before you eat it. Encourage students to use complete sentences.
2. After writing the sentences, each student should read them out loud. The other students in the class should try to guess what the word is.