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October 2008

Five-minute fillers
Landed with a spare five minutes with a class of young learners? Use these hands-on activities designed to appeal to childrens sense of fun
Singing about animals
Language focus Song, vocabulary: animal names Skills focus Speaking: pronunciation Thinking focus Ranking Teaching approach Promote accuracy correct errors Interaction Whole class work, suitable for large classes Procedure 1. Introduce the song Old Macdonald had a farm. 2. Ask the children to suggest which animals to sing about, but they must be ranked in order of size, starting with the smallest animal. 3. Write the childrens suggestions on the board in a grid. See example below. 4. Then ask the children to identify the sound that these animals make. Add these to the grid. 5. Finally, ask the class to sing their version of the song.

Guess the local place

Language focus Description, simple present tense Skills focus Writing Thinking focus Selecting and evaluating Teaching approach Promote creativity accept errors Interaction Teamwork, suitable for large classes Procedure 1. Divide the class into teams. Then set the children a challenge. They have to write three clues about a local building or place of interest. The trick is to write ambiguous clues, so that the answer is not immediately obvious, and the clue could refer to more than one place. See the box for examples. 2. Team members take turns to read out a clue. If a rival team makes an incorrect guess, they are out of the game. If they guess the place after one clue, they score three points; after two clues, they score two points; and after three clues, they score one point. If no other team can guess the place, then the writers of the clues score three points.

Food pyramid
Language focus Diagram, vocabulary: food Skills focus Listening for details, spelling Thinking focus Sorting information Teaching approach Promote accuracy correct errors Interaction Pairwork, suitable for large classes Preparation Draw the food pyramid on the board. Procedure 1. Refer to the food pyramid on the board and give one example of the kinds of foods that belong in each section of the pyramid. 2. Tell the children to copy the pyramid, allowing enough room to write in food types. 3. Read from the list of foods to categorise, choosing food items from different categories each time. Allow the children time to think about where to write the food in the pyramid. 4. When you have finished, ask the children to check their answers with a partner.

Create a fantasy tale

Language focus Narrative, simple past tense Skills focus Speaking Thinking focus Combining ideas Teaching approach Promote creativity accept errors Interaction Teamwork, suitable for large classes Preparation Draw the story grid on the board. Procedure 1. Divide the class into two teams. In large classes you could do this activity with nine teams. 2. Tell the children that they have to invent a story outline using the elements in the grid. You may have to explain unfamiliar vocabulary from the grid. The rules of the game are that they can choose words that go across the grid, down the grid, or diagonally. 3. If a team can invent a story while keeping within the rules of the game, they win a point and the other team has a turn. 4. The game should continue until all possible stories have been suggested. The team with the most story outlines is the winner.

The king and the dragon

Language focus Description, simple present tense, prepositions of place Skills focus Listening for details Thinking focus Recalling Teaching approach Promote accuracy correct errors Interaction Whole class work, suitable for large classes Procedure 1. On the board write the key vocabulary for this activity: dragon, tree, king. 2. Check that the children know the meaning of these words and how they are pronounced. 3. Now tell the class that you are going to read a short description. You would like them to draw the picture as you read. 4. Read the following dragon description and pause after each sentence for the children to draw what they hear: There is a dragon which lives in a tree. Every day a king sits under the dragons tree. He reads stories to the dragon. 5. Check that the children have accurately represented the events of the description. 6. Ask the children to share their pictures with their classmates. Follow-up Ask the children to write the dragon description in their own words under their illustration.

Taken from Five-Minute Activities for Young Learners by Penny McKay and Jenni Guse (Cambridge University Press), a fantastic teaching resource for keeping young learners entertained and building skills.

Bursting with bright ideas for you and your students!

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