VICKY LANGY FREE
Imagination poses no limits! Feel free to apply these ideas in your classroom and let me know how the experience was. Once again, the students can be divided into groups which should coordinate to quickly form the tense the teacher dictates. The whole activity can be extremely amusing, apart from educational, since the students need to change positions to rearrange the parts of each tense if they want to form the affirmative, interrogative and negative versions of it. Needless to say, you could simply use a readily made picture of a train and paste the grammar parts on it, as I have done in order to create the first, and most impressive, wagon that which contains the subject of the clause!
The idea is rather straightforward: you can design a wagon on your screen on a Word or Pages document by placing a rectangular shape on top of several circles which serve as the ‘wheels’ of the train.
This allowed me to visualize any grammar rule I wanted as well as include some funny figures in each wagon (famous people, cartoons or colorful pictures) to give the learners something more to be excited about! Past Simple vs Present Perfect Simple The first player (pair/ team) that has no cards left can happily exclaim ‘Bingo’! Admittedly, this is everyone’s favorite part of the game and can be heard from time to time even from passionate players who have not won!Ģ) Grammar train Past Continuous: AffirmativeĪre your students bored with grammar rules and formulas? Turn everything into a train and they will love it! The inspiration for such a venture came after attending a seminar, where a quite similar idea was presented, but I decided to develop it a bit further and design my own wagons on my computer. While the teacher (or another student) pronounces random letters or words, the players remove the letter they hear in case this is depicted in one of the cards they decided to keep in front of them. Based on that, the students have to choose their favorite six (that is the usual number of cards allowed in my classes) letters/ words and have the cards depicting them laid on the desk. The final activity is exactly the same as the popular Bingo game, but involves the use of letters, not numbers. In the second one, they need to form the word they hear using the cards in front of them and in the third case they are allocated the teacher’s role, now having the opportunity to test their classmates’ knowledge of the alphabet by asking them to raise the card of the letter or word they utter. In the first game I mentioned before, the teacher pronounces a word or a letter and the learners have to pick up the correct card as quickly as possible. Each group can win points for each correct answer it gives, which makes things even more suspenseful! ‘Form the word’ game
VICKY LANGY HOW TO
Students can be divided in groups before they have a go at these games and learn how to collaborate from an early age. Judging by the names, it can easily be understood that the first games are a product of my inspiration during a cheerful lesson with the juniors, while the last one is well-known worldwide. Mickey can join in the fun, too!Īs soon as the cards are prepared, the games that can be played with them are endless! The ones that never fail to excite my students are ‘Find the letter/ word’, ‘Form the word’, You are the Teacher’ and, of course, ‘Letter Bingo’. This activity does not take considerable classroom time and is always welcome by the children. On one side of the card, they can write the letter in uppercase and lowercase, while on the other they can write the word that begins with that letter and draw a picture of the word. All they need is some cardboard paper (or any colored paper) cut in small square pieces and their crayons. The students who start their journey in the English language are always very happy to make their very own alphabet cards. Thank you so much for your fantastic post, Christina!ġ) Alphabet cards Proudly showing our carefully arranged cards! She is an enthusiastic teacher and blogger and also an iTDi Associate. I have the great honour to present my new guest blogger to you – a wonderful educator from Crete, Greece: Christina Markoulaki! I have connected with Christina on Twitter and hope one day to meet her face-to-face.