Classroom Activities

English Teaching Materials, Games and Activities

Hello. I was asked recently by Chris Sharp to describe one of the card games found on my new digital data CD-ROM BAH 4, which is available through ELTbooks. The name of the game is "Heads and Tails" (Hungry Dog). I first perceived the game during a discussion on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ETJ-Activities/ about a "Sound Dominoes" card game produced by Peter Warner, whilst looking at a game on the Genki English website called "shiritori", which is a popular game in Japan.
There are three different sets of cards on the disk, the red, the yellow and the green set and the cards can be used to play two different games. In one game we match the tail of the dog to the nose of a dog by matching the final sound of a word with the initial sound of a word to form a closed loop with the cards. Here's an example of a completed loop using the yellow cards: crab-bed-dog-golf-fish-ship-pen-nut-tennis-snail-lunch-chick and back to crab to complete the loop. No matter which card is played first the loop will always be closed successfully.

Here is a sample from the yellow set:

　
It's more challenging to move from head to tail as the Japanese game, shiritori, moves from tail to head.
　
To play the "Hungry Dog" version, place the picture of the hungry dog, with its bowl of food, at the finish. If possible have three teams playing this game together, the green, the yellow and the red. Scatter each team's cards face up at three different start locations and have them (or yourself) choose a start card and place it with the nose of the dog pointing towards the food, as it is sniffing out the food. Now teams race to match the heads to the tails so that the beginning sound of one word matches the final sound of the following word so we may end up with this line: ship-fish-golf-dog-bed-crab-chick-lunch-snail-tennis-nut-and pen which will take you to the bowl of food; it's challenging to turn these words around in your head. To celebrate, with fun, the winning team gobbles the food and points to the other children shouting "Hungry dog!", which I find far more satisfying (pun intended) than "We won!", which you sometimes hear (not in my class). Then they exchange colours and play again. They always want to play at least three games. If one team is always losing, then the balance of the teams is not good, so the teacher perhaps should have the final say on who is in each team.

Here is the "hungry dog".

　
If your students are used to playing phonic games or have used the loop cards which are found on the disk, then you probably don't have to give them any instructions or help for the first game, though with this second game they could very well need help. I sometimes race against them, and of course win, without giving them any instructions when we play "Hungry Dog", there always seems to be a perceptive child who works it out without any help and I usually ask that child to keep it a secret as I want the child to think about initial and final sounds of these target words or by himself/herself. Whenever a child doesn't know one of the target words, then they just ask "What is it?"

Here is a sample from the English Land set, which is found on my disk BAH 4:

The example loop card uses vocabulary from English Land by MariNakamura　

If you don't have the disk and want to try out the game (Heads and Tails), then I'm happy to send you one of the colours.
　
Regards,
David Lisgo

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It's an awful long time since I wrote anything in this column and for that I apologise. I was so busy renovating my house and then moving into it and into a new schoolroom that almost everything was forgot about. We are now living here.

And teaching here.

'Go for a walk' or 'take a walk'? Well, I'm very comfortable with using either of these phrases in my everyday speech and writing but in the classroom they are different because one is a book and the other is a CD. Perhaps my favourite book for using with young children is "Going for a Walk" by the late Beatrice Schenk de Regniers, which is sadly out of print. It's beautifully illustrated by Robert Knox and the story within it is simple and lovely. Let me quote a little from the book:

"The little girl goes for a walk.
She sees a cow.
The little girl says Hi!
The cow says Moo.
The little girl walks on."

And so the story goes on with her walking past various animals until she meets up with the little boy and off they go to play in a sandbox together. My young students love to shout out "Hi!" together with the girl and of course make all the necessary animal sounds. It's also easy to role play this story by having the children play the various parts, for example one child will play the little girl and she will take a walk around the classroom meeting up with the various animal characters who are now played by other students. It can be freely done or the teacher can use it as a listening exercise so that the child follows the order spoken by the teacher.

A confession. I have no musical ability and find it extremely difficult to keep any kind of rhythm and when I hear a familiar tune I will sing along "It's been a hard day's night..." or "I can't get no, no satisfaction..." and the words of the song fail to materialise, so how could I ever be someone who teaches children's songs and music. Often I would go to meetings and find that I was the only native speaker of English apart from the presenter, all the other participants would be female Japanese teachers of English and certainly they could all hold a tune and all play the piano. I dreaded it when the presenter decided to introduce some kind of chant or song which involved some kind of clapping and slapping of the hands whilst singing at the same time as I would be the only one unable to keep the rhythm going.

Perhaps there are other teachers out there who like myself have been hiding their impediment and avoiding public situations where one has to carry a tune and rhythm. Well, I have to tell you that all is not lost and that a great new resource is now available so "Let's Take A Walk". That is the title is of a new creation is from EFL Learning.

I only got my CD last week and already the class I'm using it with is able to sing along easily with two of the songs. I went to their primary YouTube address and together with my students we watched the "Hello Song" twice and then we sang and danced the song whilst listening to the track on the CD. After class we met with each of parents and gave (they are not so expensive) them a CD and asked that they play it in the car and at home for the children to listen to. For me the beauty of the song is its simplicity and its catchy tune, let me quote it:

Now, it's time to say hello, say hello, say hello.
Now, it's time to say hello.

Hello everyone.

And the second verse...? Well it's exactly the same. Great for me and easy for the kids.

Today, we learned another song and again success, though I must admit I had some difficulty with the clapping. The title of the song is "0 5 10". I have to say that I was surprised at how quickly the children learned to sing the song. Here is how I used it:

First we listened and watched the "fast" version of the animated display on YouTube and some children, who must have been listening to their CDs, began singing along, then the children laid two lines of large number cards from 0-10 and we listened and sang to the "slow" version of the CD whilst pointing to the appropriate cards. After that we moved onto the vast version, though I was avoiding the clapping which could be heard in the background until one perceptive child began to clap along impressively, soon we were all giving it a go and enjoying singing the song.

You can find more videos from elf learning here and become Facebook friends with them.

I look forward to next week's lesson and another new song, though I will have to practice my clapping somewhat. If you want to give your young charges a love of music and song, then this is an ideal starting place.

Note.
EFL Learning have decided to donate 5% of their proceeds from the first 1000 CDs to assist with the tsunami relief effort. A good cause for us all. You can order the CD version here or you can download from CDBaby.

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Hi,

Where do ideas for creating teaching materials come from? Sometimes they seem to come from thin air, they just appear in your consciousness as if they've been there, hiding away in some dark corner, all the time. These ideas I like very much as they seem to take so little effort. Most of the time creating new materials is more akin to writers block, so when this happens to me I visit my favourite web site, ESL printables, and gain inspiration from the thousands of creative teachers who inhabit this wonderful online world. I've been an active member for over a year. It has over 280,000 members and there are a little over 6000 members in Japan, but less than 10% have ever uploaded a worksheet and probably only 1% could be considered active; the rest of the world membership is similar.

ESL printables is a site set up by a teacher for teachers. We share our materials with each other. These materials always remain the property of their creator, but by putting them up on the website we give permission to other members to use them freely with their own students. This means they are welcome to use them in their own schools but since the material is not shareware, it should not be distributed, nor sold, to anyone else. If used in the classroom, they should be given to the students (the students shouldn't pay money for them).

Many people join and find that they don't have the ability to create their own materials so they steal materials on the Internet and from fellow members and upload those in the hope of gaining some miserable points, which will allow them to download materials. This is a big problem for this site and there is an active moderators list of volunteers to help deal with this daily and growing problem.

More recently a bigger problem arose. A member of ESL printables a publisher for a publishing company (AFS Yayincilik, also known as AFS English) in Turkey has illegally published some books full of worksheets belonging to ESL printables members. He even invented some fictitious authors and illustrators to make his books seem genuine. The owner of the ESL printables site, Victor Gayol lives in Spain, he reminds me of David Paul somewhat in that he doesn't usually get involved unless absolutely necessary, and now he is trying very hard, along with many other members of ESL printables, to right this wrong. He recently started a Blog to campaign against this "illegal and unethical behaviour". I have great respect for his efforts because the individual teacher can do so little when the problem lies on the other side of the world.

I write about this problem in my column in support of teachers around the world. Please visit Victor's Blog to read more about this problem.

Sincerely,
David Lisgo
ESL printables member

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Try asking your students are a few simple questions such as "What's an elephant?", "What's a table?" or "What's a cat?" Last week I asked several university students the question "Where is Japan?" before someone answered "It's in Asia." and that was after we had reviewed continents. How did your students do? Were they shouting out the answers eagerly or perhaps they didn't know how to answer. I have a seven-year old student who will stop me occasionally whilst I'm speaking and say "David, what is a (polar bear)?", then I have other students who would rather give me a blank look than ever ask me such a question.

If you have heard David Paul's story, then you might know that Finding Out was published because one of David's students asked two simple questions of some visiting dignitaries, "What do you do?" and, to the answer "I'm a publisher.", "What is a publisher?" David has incorporated both of these questions into it's Finding Out book 2.

I'm going to look at the second question which is found in unit 5 page 32 in the activity "Aliens", here I quote from the book:

(Alien) "What's an elephant?"

(Boys) "It's gray." "It has a long..."

It doesn't seem like much, but it has great potential.

Unit 5 concentrates on "this/that" so I wanted to create something that would practice these targets as well as the more difficult descriptive language and so I decided on the game "I'm an Alien Zookeeper". Of course, to my knowledge, there was no such game. First of all I created 40 question cards featuring an alien zookeeper asking questions about the animals of this planet. Most of the vocabulary (animals) is taken from my 'animal habitats' cards.

Here you can see the poster from this set.

Then I wrote a simple description for each of the animals using this pattern:

It's...

It has...

It eats...

It lives in...

Notice that a boy or girl gives each description. Initially I wasn't going to put a picture of the animal on the card, but then I thought that the students would take too long in finding the correct card and then everyone would get bored with the pace of the activity. Then I made a set of small flashcards featuring each of the animals.

All these cards have the same backs, which I hope you find interesting.

Here are a few activities which the cards can be used for.

1. Scatter card
Language target: "What is a...?" and "This is a..."
Material: animal flashcards and alien zookeeper question cards.
Procedure: scatter the flashcards on the floor or table, pretend to be an alien and ask the students "What is an elephant?", then try and elicit the answer "This is an elephant.", whilst holding and showing the picture, also have the children use the answer "I don't know.", when they don't know. Do this until the students have almost got it and then break them into small groups and one student from each group pretends to be an alien for a set number of questions before passing the question cards to another student.

Alternatively have the children sit around the cards holding fly swatters, then one child, acting as caller, asks the question "What is an elephant?" A child covers or slams the correct picture saying "This is an elephant." and receives the calling card as a reward. Children take turns as caller.

2. Animal mimes
Language target: "What is a...?" and "That is a..."
Material: selected animal flashcards and alien zookeeper question cards.
Procedure: limit the cards to known easy to mime animals. Select someone to be an alien and another person to answer the alien's questions and then deal out the flashcards (face down) to the other students, then the alien asks the question "What is (an elephant)?" All the other players mime an animal, but the player holding the elephant card must mime an elephant. Then finally the student answers the question by pointing to the player who is miming an elephant and says "That is an elephant."

This sounds like an interesting game. I must try it myself.

3. Scatter card: animal descriptions
Language target: "What is a...?", "This is a...", "It's...", "It has...", "It eats..." and "It lives in...".
Material: animal description cards and alien zookeeper question cards.
Procedure: scatter the animal description cards on the floor or table, a player is chosen to play the part of the alien and asks the question "What is an elephant?" A student finds the right card and answers the question using the information given on the card. Play proceeds as in the first "scatter card" game.

After playing such game you should find your students more open to using 'this/that', when asked "What is a...?" and more open to using descriptive language.

"I'm an Alien Zookeeper" is available directly from myself for ¥1500 plus postage; please e-mail your order. The pack contains:

30 picture cards
30 question cards
30 description cards

The cards are the same size and quality as Switchit cards. That is, printed both sides colour, laminated, machine cut and corners rounded, then packed in a sturdy box.

If you want to make your own, then you can either design them yourself or wait until the materials come out on a new Blending a Hand CD. I'm hoping to have a CD covering units 1-7 of Finding Out book 2 available in December.

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Just when I thought I had taken care of likes and dislikes, I reach unit 4 of New Finding Out 2 and find that I must now combine 'I like/I don't like...' with colours and plurals. I had this brief inspiration and wrote some notes on a scrap bit of paper and then yesterday I began developing this game not knowing how it would end up. I worked on it for about four hours yesterday and again today, making many changes and adjustments until I was satisfied. I played the game with two classes this evening and it was great, just what I worked and hope for. Here's a picture of some of the finished cards.

It so difficult for Japanese students to grasp the idea of plurals and the idea of countable and uncountable nouns. With this game they get lots of practice with colours, simple expressions of like and dislike and a lot of repetition regarding plurals. This will certainly help them to gain a natural grasp of the language instead of trying to understand everything through a grammatical sense.

Here are the "Rainbow Colors" cards, which are the equivalent of special Switchit cards or jokers.

Individual cards can be used for pairwork in large groups and writing activities, but if possible play the game in small groups. I will describe how to play in groups of 3-5. You need eight of each card, preferably with the backs printed.

Deal seven cards face down to each player, put the remainder of the cards face down in the centre and turn over the top card. If, for example, a card with a red border is turned over, then the player to the left of the dealer must place another red card on the open card and make a suitable sentence, such as "I like purple grapes.", then the next player must play another card with a red border or a "grapes" card If the player doesn't have a card with a red border or picture of grapes, then he can play a "Rainbow Colors" card and change the colour by saying "Rainbow (orange)." And play then passes to the next player on the left who must now play a card with an (orange) border. When a player cannot play a card, then he or she must pick up a card from the face down pile. The winner is the first player to get rid of all of his or her cards.

This is another brick laid in my task of producing another Blending a Hand CD in support of Finding Out and all the teachers who use it.

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