The Six Steps:

1. Look at the word

2. Hear the word

3. Say the word

4. Spell the word

5. Write the word

6. Find the word

Here is how I use Six Steps:

1. Write the word on the board, have students point to it

2. Students cup their ears with their hands, you say the word

3. The students say the word back to you

4. Students spell the word outloud

5. On a small slip of paper, the students write the word

6. Hand out a summary of the story/article that the vocabulary applies to that you will be reading in class. Students are to use a highlighter to scan the sheet for the word.

7. Erase the word then write the next word on the board and repeat the cycle.

My students love this activity because it gets them invovled in their own learning!

This post was submitted by Rachel.

PASS THE CHICKEN!

The prop is the most important element to this game : ) To begin, all students sit in a circle. Select one person to be IT. That person holds the rubber chicken. The teacher or a “caller” says to the person holding the chicken, “Name five animals. Pass the chicken!” As soon as the caller says, “Pass the chicken,” the person holding the chicken passes it to the right. Students quickly pass the chicken around the circle. If it returns to the original holder before he or she can name five animals, the holder is still IT. Otherwise, the person holding the chicken when IT finishes listing five animals is the new IT.

A nice part of this game is it really doesn’t matter if the topics are easy or hard… it’s pretty random who is going to be IT next : ).

Some Easy Topics

• animals
• fruit
• famous people
• songs
• books
• clothing
• weather words
• holidays
• countries
• languages

Anything that fits your curriculum!

This post was submitted by Ellen.

Whatever vocabulary list / word bank you have – you can map it! Yes, just ask the students to draw a local map or a floor plan of a house or even a zoo layout.

Next, ask the students to put each vocab item in a particular place. Ask them to explain their choices. 

ie. Colors.  I put blue in my livingroom because it is where I like to think and feel blue! 

Students can discuss their choices and why they put X in Y.  It works like a charm and even fosters critical thinking skills. A wonderful technique for learning / acquiring vocabulary (because we know we acquire vocab. better if we connect it to an object / place).

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.

Simply use this handy organizer and get the students to list all the vocab for a certain topic (at the beach, at the restaurant, animals, jobs etc…).

Afterwards, you can use this for assessment or simply play a game of scattegories. Students read out their answers, one at a time for each letter and get points. No repeating what others have said.

Simple but effective!

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.

The weather is a standard topic and beyond reviewing the vocabulary (which you can do with this powerpoint I made ) , you can really do it communicatively by getting students to do / practice weather reports!

After going through the vocabulary and asking students “What’s the weather like in…..? or …today? -  Give them a map of their own country.  Ask them to draw weather symbols on the map and also numbers for high/low temperatures. Model this by doing your own on the board then giving each student a map.

Elicit student language. Here’s an example from the British Council.   Ask students – What’s the weather like in …..?  What the temperature in….? 

Students make their own weather map and then present or answer questions with other students. Finally, get a few students to do a weather TV report and/or show an actual video of a news report. 

You will also amaze students with this real time “World Sunlight Map“.

This post was submitted by David .

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.

Simply generate with the class your vocabulary list. It can be recent vocabulary from your book/lesson/unit.

Then, the teacher describes one thing/place/person on the board and students try to guess. Only one guess / student or team ( or you will have some students just saying a hundred guesses!). Erase or mark out each correct guess and play until all have been guessed.

Finally, let the students write down the vocabulary and do the same in small groups or pairs.

Other variations include snap (where the teacher says a word and students must be the first to “snap/slap” the word) , pictionary (some students draw and others guess the vocab item), charades (students act and other students guess the vocab item).

For more vocab groups like the above , see these powerpoints  Lots of great wordlists in picture form…

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.

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.