Disappearing dialogues is a very much used language teaching technique

1. Elicit and write the dialogue. Or use a prepared dialogue.

This post was submitted by James.

First, come to class with some pictures you’ve cut out of a newspaper or magazine. Nice gift ideas. Tell the students it’s Christmas and walk around the class giving items. Stop at a student, handing them the picture and say, “Merry Christmas! Students if advanced must reply with more than “you’re welcome” and should use one of the ways to say “Thank you’ ,you’ve put on the board. Keep going around the class until students get the hang of it…..

Next, give students in groups, one of these pictures ( from Hadfields Adv. Communication Games) and put them in pairs. They must make a list of students names in the class and write down one of the gift items beside it. They may have to ask you the names of the gifts or look them up in the dictionary.

Finally, when they have decided who is getting what gift, give the signal and students will walk around the class using the target language and giving gifts.

To conclude, ask students what they got and which present they liked best (and why!). Everyone in the class will feel great. If by some chance, some students are not getting many gifts, give them some from your magazine collection. This will make them feel great.

This post was submitted by Jerry.

1. Put on the board

my ….. – mine.

your ….. – yours.

his ….. – his.

her ….. – hers.

its …… – its.

our … – ours

your … – yours

their ….. theirs.

2. Prior to the class while students are waiting, go around an scoop up some student’s items (put them in a basket / bag).

3. Take out some items and ask students. “Is this your…..? Is this yours? Whose is it? etc…

Get students to respond and give back the items one by one.

4. Give students some small pictures of items. Tell them they got a gift and they should put a secret label on it, so they can tell if it is theirs. (I get them to sign it or put a secret sign on it. – NOT their name).You could use these pictures.

5. Collect the “gifts” and shuffle/mix. Tell the students they have lost their gifts but found some others. Go around the class asking students – “Is this your…. ? Is this yours? When a student has returned all the gifts to their proper owner, they can sit down.

6. Conclude by asking which gift they got, they like the best.

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.

Write a simple sentence on the board. Students copy it.

Ex. The dog ran. 

Ask the students questions and the students after each question must rewrite the sentence, answering the question.

Ex. Where? The dog ran ………….

      What color of dog? The …….. dog ran to his mother

      How?  The black dog slowly ran to his mother

      How long?  The black dog slowly ran to his mother ……

      Why?  The black dog slowly ran to his mother for 30 minutes because ……

Afterwards, get students to read their creative sentences to the class and to each other. You’ll be amazed at how well they can do this and write.

Here’s an example of sentence stretching on powerpoint – from the Owl of Purdue’s writing lab.

This post was submitted by Jesse.

There are many ways to teach writing but one way that I really think provides enough structure for beginning and developing writers is guided writing.

Give students a text with words missing (usually nouns). In groups or pairs they can complete the text together, guessing the words to be filled in. Better yet, if the story has some context or theme.

If the students are low level, provide a word bank, so they just have to choose words. Higher level students can do it without a wordbank. Check against the teacher’s copy but remember – there is no ONE correct answer!

A way to make this even better, is to give the students a nice “frame” with the guided writing passage so they can draw a picture with their writing (drawing really helps the acquisition of vocabulary and it makes it easier to share with other students who can then read the writing with more understanding). Here’s an example of many such guided writing passages.

This post was submitted by Peter.

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This post was submitted by sergei.yegorov.

First, practice the vocabulary and language: Stand at the front with a whiteboard and marker, and secretly draw a figure on the whiteboard to prompt the target language (e.g. “He is tall,” “She is wearing a red blouse,” “He has blue glasses,” “He has curly hair,” etc.). On the count of three, turn the board around and get all students at the same time to say whatever they can about the picture. After giving them this chance, pick out certain features and say them, getting the students to repeat after you. Do this a couple of times to warm them up.

Next, put students in pairs, designate them as A and B, and get them to open their notebooks to a blank page (or distribute scrap paper). Demonstrate how to do the activity: teacher draws a figure on the board. B’s close their eyes. Teacher shows A’s the picture for about 15 seconds. Afterwards, A’s close their eyes, B’s open their eyes. A’s must describe the picture to their partners from memory in English, and B’s draw what their partner says. Afterwards, teacher reveals the original picture, and students compare their drawing to the teacher’s. Switch roles and continue the activity!

This post was submitted by Daniel K.

Make a quick organizer for writing. Have the students fold an A4 “hamburger” like, 4 times. They will have 8 lines for writing when they unfold it.

They must write 8 sentences about themselves, all beginning with “I am….”.  Teacher monitors. 

Next, go around the class with students reading their poem in total or just in parts, taking turns to tell about themselves. The teacher MUST make one too!

Extension: Time permitting, have students tear along the folds and have sentence strips. Gather them, mix and redistribute. Students go around asking…”Do you…..? If yes, they return their sentence strip. Continue until they have no sentence strips left and then sit down. When all students are sitting down, the task is finished….

See Grammar Poems for another nice, similar writing activity.

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.

There are several steps to making a storybook and I’ll use my own Mr. X’s incredible Day/Yesterday as an example. Get the ppt/video here for use with students.

1.  Tell the story with students. Play a video / use a storybook / use a ppt but pictures are essential! Go slow and exaggerate and use your voice/gestures to communicate vocabulary and content/context.

2.  Students re-tell the story. Note the vocabulary for the story on the board and students use this to make sentences to retell the story. Or, just show pictures and use them as a prompt to retell the story. See how I used Voicethread to retell the Mr. X story. But you can just take the words off the ppt and use a picture only ppt.

3. Writing. Students are now more comfortable with the story and vocabulary. Get them to write 6-10 sentences to outline the story. For each sentence , provide a prompt on the board for lower level students. Higher level students can add more information for that sentence number. The teacher monitors and helps correct/edit. I use this worksheet for Mr. X.

4. Bookmaking.  Give students some sheets of A4. They fold in half and staple to make the book. Or fold again and cut the folds to make a mini book (students usually like this smaller book more!). Students cut and paste their pictures into the book and also write their text from the worksheet. Color, make a title page, borders and personalize.

5. Present/Publish. Students can read their books to the class or in small groups. Sharing is a must! Make a library for your student produced books! 

You can make books about just vocabulary also. You can even use Tar Heel Reader – to get pictures and inspiration for alphabet and vocabulary books. I highly recommend it and if you want to make an electronic book, get a password code and impress your students!

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.

This lesson recipe is my “go to” lesson. An idea which you can use at the last minute for almost any children’s class. Also a good lesson when unprepared or just plain tired/hungover! (it happens).

Give each student a blank A4 piece of paper. Draw a large rectangle on the board. Give the chalk to one good student (or do it yourself). Write a title – it could be anything: the beach, the mountains, a beautiful day, our school, the city etc…

Ask the students what they see. They will catch on and respond with ..”I see ….!  Draw that and label it. Continue filling up the whole page with students drawing and writing and saying more things they see. 

Get some students to present their drawings afterwards and hang them up around the classroom to inspire your students. If time permits, get the students to turn over their page and draw their own labeled picture on their own topic!

This site, Odopod, offers a nice drawing board and also a wonderful slideshow of other people’s drawings to inspire students.

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.