1.  Put large posters of “Yes” and “No” at opposite ends of the classroom. (you might also use “Rocks! – Sucks!  or “I think so” or “I don’t think so” etc….)

2.  Students stand. Read a statement such as “I love chocolate ice cream” .  Students answer by going to the side of the classroom, the poster, that represents their opinion/answer.  Or if undecided they can go to the middle. Continue reading statements.

3.  Give students a slip of paper. They write their own statements or closed questions (Yes/No). Then each take turns reading theirs and seeing the opinions/beliefs of classmates.

….

You can use this technique in many ways and to cover/introduce many topics and language items. Really good for doing surveys interactively… A perfect example of “learning on your feet” and Active Learning.

This post was submitted by David .

Students create the materials for learning/practicing English. In doing so, they are more interested in the topic because it is from themselves and also they have the necessary context to prompt output / speech.

Find many examples by clicking the SCC tag here.

Jason Renshaw also recently blogged about The English Wizard Grid. Read about how he recommends using it. It is a handy organizer to prompt student speech about a certain language point / theme. Great stuff.

They can be of all sorts. Just start with a piece (or pieces) of paper and get the students folding and labeling.  Like HERE.

They can be as elaborate as Accordion Books or as simple as a 4 square graphic organizer. Go here for lots of great ideas and downloads of foldables. This site, has lots of photos showing you many examples.

Graphic organizers are another sort of foldable. Get many HERE on EFL Classroom 2.0 – but even better, get your students to “fold” them and then draw in the lines! There are a million ways to use them and they can be used for almost any type of lesson – Vocabulary / Stories / Grammar etc…

I’d also recommend TALKERS or Cootie Catchers. Also, Origami. Find out more about both HERE.

This post was submitted by david .

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.

Write down on the board some of your own (the teacher) family names. Underneath write;

A. Who is …………………..?

B. …….. is ………..’s …………….

A. ……………………………?

Students ask the teacher about the family members on the board. The teacher replies, using “B” and writing more information on the board. The student then asks one additional question about that family member — Is she married? How old is he? What does he do? etc..  Continue while stroking out already talked about family members.

Next, give the students a blank piece of paper. In 30 seconds they should write down as many family member names as possible (in their own language or script/alphabet!!!!).

Finally, in small groups or pairs, they look at each others paper and using the above language – ask about their partners family.

At the end, if time permits, get students to say one interesting thing about their partners family.  I guarantee you this recipe is very delicious!!!!

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.

Give each student a slip of paper. Ask them to write their name and two things they like (or you can switch this to suit your class – like from? / Nationality? job? etc…).

Next, students stand up and introduce themselves to each other.

Hi, I’m ….. and I like …… and …….     Both students state and then switch their pieces of paper. 

Next, they introduce the last person, pointing to the person as they say, “Hi, I’m …. and I like …. and ….. This is (pointing) ….. , he/she likes…. and ………..  Switch papers again and continue.

Lots of fun and not easy to do (to remember the names).

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.

You can put in groups of words and then display them in a “cool” fashion. Your teenagers especially will love this personalization.

I designed a quick game of random wordles – What The Wordle?!. Students make guesses and if correct get points. If they add more words to the wordle, they even get more points. I’ll be making more and putting them up on EFL Classroom 2.0’s resource pages. Go here for them and the work/scoresheet.  Go Here for a cool Picasa webalbum version, a great way to display your student’s creations…

Get your students using wordle, a great way to practice vocabulary!

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.

1. Give each student a blank piece of paper.

2. Ask them to fold it “hamburger”, once, twice, three times. Unfold!

3. They will see 8 blocks for writing. In the first block ask them to write a sentence prompt… something exciting for example. “A man walked into a bank with a gun and ……” Tell them to finish the sentence.

4. Students pass their paper to their left and after reading the sentence on the paper, add their own sentence.

5. Continue passing the sentences along until the page is full. The last student should try to write something that concludes the story.

6. The student gets back their story and reads it. Read some outloud to share or have students read them in groups.

While students are writing, they should also be encouraged to correct their classmates writing! This will help get them to begin peer editing.

Another “wrinkle” is to have them only read the sentence before and then fold down the paper before they pass it on….creates a more random, funny, story.  

Another “wrinkle”. I also like doing this with gossip. Write some gossip gambits on the board. ( I heard it through the grapevine / the world on the street is / It’s common knowledge that… / I heard that … / Don’t pass this around but… / ). The first student uses one and writes some gossip about the student on their right. Pass the paper and continue the gossip! It gets hilarious!

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.