Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 1; January 03

Ages 11 – 12
Time 20 minutes
Materials A slip of paper for everyone
Focus Vocabulary for sounds.

Procedure

1. Hand out the slips of paper.
2. Ask everyone to close their eyes and listen for one minute to whatever sounds occur.
3. Tell them to open their eyes and write what they heard on slips of paper. Tell them they can ask you for any English vocabulary they need but don't know.
4. Ask everyone to say what they have written down. Write useful or interesting expressions on the board; also, take notes for yourself because you will need a record shortly (Step 6).
5. Lead pronunciation practice.
6. Wipe the board clean then dictate the expressions you have just erased.

Extension

1. After having collected words and expressions as indicated above, ask the pupils to select some of these and write them down in a sequence that seems right to them. Tell them that the sound of what they write is important. A poem may appear.
2. Invite pupils (probably not all of them) to read out their texts.
3. Write three or so especially nice ones on the board for everyone to copy into their notebooks and/or lead choral repetition of one or two.

Variation
You may pay attention to words representing sounds, e.g. pitter-patter, hurry-scurry did not come up in your lesson, just ask your pupils if the know a few, either in their own language (which you translate) or in English.