The Magic 4: One for Writing Biographies, One for ‘Used to’, One for Tardiness, and One for Revision

Sezgi Yalin, North Cyprus

Sezgi Yalin earned her M.A. in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Illinois in Chicago. She holds a B.A. in Journalism and English Literature. She worked as an English teacher and teacher trainer in the USA and Poland, and gained additional experience in the field in various countries such as the UK, Spain, Egypt, China, Nepal, Tibet, Vietnam, Cyprus and Turkey. A CELTA and Pilgrims trainer, her research interests are teacher training, integrating technology into teaching and creative writing. E-mail: sezgiriza@yahoo.com

Menu

Background
How these activities work
Activity 1 – Revise biography writing
Activity 2 – My teacher used to…
Activity 3 - Mirror poems
Activity 4 – Revise with a fruit
Extension

Background

The following activities were created on the spot while teaching students from elementary to intermediate levels at the English preparatory school of a university, and each generated ‘magic’ in class, highly motivating students to do their best. The activities were then further developed hoping that they would retain their magic, spicing up lessons, adding variety and breaking the monotony. Each activity has a different aim and deals with different language skills and language points. Even though the third one focuses more on classroom management, taking advantage of students’ tardiness to class and leading them to turn it into something productive, it can be used at any time during the lesson to give students some creative relaxation time away from the sometimes mechanical stages of a lesson. The other activities deal with what we teachers sometimes consider very dry lessons dealing with biography writing, the practice of ‘used to’ and the revision of language points through ‘fill-in-the-blanks’.

How these activities work

Activity 1 – Revise biography writing

1. Learners are asked to produce the timeline for someone they know or admire.
2. In pairs, learners use their timeline to talk about the person and share a ten- sentence biography with their partner. The listener counts the sentences.
3. One of the learners is asked to talk about the biography from his/her timeline to the whole class.
4. The rest of the learners are asked to sit in groups of 10 where they are numbered from 1 to 10. Each learner with a certain number (e.g., 1) writes the corresponding sentence (e.g. sentence 1) as the learner shares the biography.
5. Then, learners report back the sentences from 1 to 10, and the student who has shared her/his biography writes all the sentences on board.
6. Problems with the biography on the board are elicited and marked on the BOARD, e.g.
   1. no topic sentence
   2. no linkers
   3. no time-related words
   4. no concluding sentence
   5. not in chronological order
   6. punctuation problems
   7. repetition of information
   8. language problems
7. New groups of three are formed, and they rewrite the biography, fixing the problems.
8. Teacher collects the biographies, numbers them and puts them up on the walls.
9. Learners move around reading each biography and make notes on problems and one positive thing about each one.
10. Teacher elicits problems and positive things and writes them on the board under the title of each biography posted on the walls.
11. The original writers revise each biography according to the problems listed on the board.
12. Teacher collects biographies to give students more feedback later.

Activity 2 – My teacher used to…

1. After ‘used to’ is presented and clarified, learners in pairs are asked to list five things they think their teacher used to do and five things s/he currently does. Each learner in the pair needs to take notes.
2. The learners are asked to sit in two concentric circles, those in the inner circle facing those in the outer circle. Every time they hear their teacher clap, the learners in the outer circle move anticlockwise and start talking to their new partner, sharing their guesses about the teacher.
3. When learners sit across from their original partner, the teacher collects the lists of guesses about him/herself and uses examples from these lists to dictate to the learners.
4. Students are asked to look at the information dictated and correct any possible language errors.
5. After eliciting the corrected sentences and writing them on the board, learners, in groups, are asked to decide if the statements about the teacher are true or false.
6. The groups guess one by one if each statement is true or false by writing T or F on a piece of paper. At the end of the activity, those with the highest number of correct answers win a prize.

Activity 3 - Mirror poems

This activity was designed to discourage students from being late to class but also gives the latecomer an opportunity to use the target language and share it with the rest of the group.

1. When a student is late to class, s/he has to construct a poem of two or more lines on any topic. S/he does this during class as an activity on top of everything else that goes on in class. Doing more than the rest of the students acts as a kind of punishment.
2. When ready, the student is asked to read the poem to the rest of the class. The other students are asked for their opinion.
3. The teacher then stands behind the poem writer and recites the poem line by line. After each line, the student echoes the teacher. The poem can be read in different tones and moods. If the teacher reads a line with a dramatic voice, for example, the student has to repeat it in the same way. This way the writer and the rest of the students have an opportunity to hear the teacher’s pronunciation, stress and intonation while reading the poem.
4. Step 3 can be repeated by asking another student to recite the poem or the teacher can read the same poem standing behind another student, thus giving the original writer an opportunity to hear his/her poem from another student in the class.

Activity 4 – Revise with a fruit

Fill-in-the blanks revision exercises can be made more fun through this activity.

1. Students sit in one big circle or a few smaller circles, depending on the number.
2. Each student is given a fill-in-the blank statement and the correct answer for the blank.
3. One by one students come into the center of the circle and read their statement. For the blank, they hold up a real or fake fruit, indicating there is a missing word.
4. Those in the circle discuss with their neighbor what the missing word might be.
5. When ready, the student in the middle of the circle throws the fruit to one of the student in the circle, and that student provides the missing word. If the rest of the group does not agree, the student holding the fruit throws it to another student for another answer. If the group agrees, then the student holding the fruit repeats the sentence with the missing word. The student in the center of the circle confirms or corrects the answer.

Extension

The activity on classroom management, for example, can be extended/revised for those students who over use L1. Instead of writing a poem, especially at higher levels, they can be asked to write and tell a joke.

The revision activity can be extended by adding one or more blanks to the fill-in-the-blanks exercises for students to form collocations or idioms. The correct answer can be withheld from the student in the center of the circle so as to make it more challenging for all participants. In another variation, students produce their own fill-in-the blanks exercises with the guidance of the teacher, and quiz the others in the same suggested in the original activity.

For the writing activity, during a different lesson, the biography can be replaced with another genre by still keeping the writing and editing process as a collaborative effort.

Please check the Methodology and Language for Secondary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Teaching Advanced Students course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the How the Motivate your Students course at Pilgrims website.