Weekend Warmers

Faces
Aim of the activity To encourage the students to talk about their weekend Preparation One sheet of paper with a smiley face on it and one piece of paper with an unhappy face on it. Procedure Put the smiley face on the wall at one end of the classroom and the unhappy face at the other end of the classroom. Ask the students to stand up and arrange themselves in a line between the two faces according to how good or bad their weekend was. They will have to speak to one another to find out who had the best/worst time and negotiate their place in the line. Alternative Ask the class a question about their weekend/their past For example: How did you feel at 9pm on Saturday night? How did you feel at 8am on Sunday morning? or How did you feel on your first day at school? How did you feel on your last birthday? Then get the students to stand next to the appropriate face and discuss why they felt that way with their classmates. You might like to add an in-between face for the less extreme emotions!
(See scanned originals folder for pictures)

Stand in line
Aim of the activity To get the students up and moving. Preparation Depends on the line-up you decide to do. Procedure Ask the students to stand in line according to one of the following criteria: the first letter of their first name

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their date of birth the time they went to bed or got up this morning Hand out one picture card to each student and ask them to line up according to the first letter of the word it represents by saying their word out aloud. Hand out a clock face with a different time on it to each student in the class and ask them to line up in chronological order by saying the time on their clock out aloud. Divide the class into groups, mix up the letters of a word and give one letter to each student in the group. Call out the complete word and ask them to get into the correct order to spell the word. Mix up the words of a sentence and give one word to each student in the group. Ask them to arrange themselves in the correct order to make a sentence by saying their word out aloud. Mix up the lines of a poem, a limerick or a song and give one line to each student in the group. Ask them to arrange themselves in the correct order of the poem or song by saying their line out aloud.

Weekend Pie Chart.

Aim To talk about the weekend from another perspective. Its fun and enables them to use their imaginations. Preparation and Procedure Teacher draws a pie chart similar to this on the board and the students have to guess who the famous person is. The pie chart represents what the person was doing at the weekend.

Students guess who the famous person is. (Prince William). They create their own pie charts of their famous person and their partners have to guess who it is. Language of comparatives could be used to talk about the charts. Eg He spent more time...than... He spent less time...than... He spent the most time... He spent twice as much time...than...

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Weekend Graph
Aim To talk about the weekend from another perspective. To revise gradable adjectives. Preparation and Procedure Prepare a graph which represents your weekend.

You then have to explain your graph. E.g. I felt awful on Sunday morning because I woke up with such a terrible headache. Students draw their own graphs and explain them to their partners. You can adapt the adjectives to the level of the class.

Frustration: Speaking
Aim Defining relative clauses and descriptions. Preparation and Procedure Give everyone in the class lots of small pieces of paper and ask the students to write the name of someone famous on each piece. This person can be living or dead, real or a fictional character. However, the name should be someone that is familiar to the whole class. Tell students to screw the papers up and to throw them into a box that you circulate around the class. The class should sit in a circle and be divided into two teams. One student from Team A takes a paper from the box and tries to explain who the person is to their team without saying the name. For example, if the name were Michael Jackson: Student: He was American..a pop singer ..the king of pop. If nobody from Team A guesses, the student should replace the paper and take another. They only have 30 seconds before the turn goes to a student from Team B.

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60 seconds: Speaking
Aim Good speaking practice for higher levels. Preparation and Procedure Divide the class into groups of three (a group of four if there is an extra student). Students in each group take it in turns to be the referee. The referee chooses a subject which Student A must talk about for 60 seconds. Student B can challenge Student A if they think Student A has hesitated or gone off the subject. If the referee agrees, Student B earns a point. It is then Student Bs turn to talk for 60 seconds. If the referee disagrees, Student A gets a point and continues talking. This is very good practice for oral exams.

How many words?: Vocabulary

Aim A good word building exercise for all levels. Preparation and Procedure A very popular word game. Write the following grid on the board:

Ask students to call out nine different letters. Make sure they offer you a nice selection of vowels and consonants. Put them into the grid.

M R S

B E D

A L U

Tell the students they have 5 minutes to find as many words as possible using the letters in the grid. The word can only contain these letters and each letter can only be used once. They score as follows: 3 letter 4 letter 5 letter 6 letter 7 letter 8 letter 9 letter word word word word word word word 5 points 10 points 25 points 50 points 100 points 500 points 1,000 points

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Telegrams: Vocabulary
Aim Looking at word order. Preparation and Procedure The class calls out 10 letters which are written up on the board. Teams then have to create a telegram using the 10 letters as the first letter of each word. For example: L, M, J, S, A, H, W, C, T, B Lost my jeans. Staying at home. Where could they be.

Weekend Phrases.
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Match the following expressions:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

be at a loose end a quid spend a bomb the box get pissed get legless be broke have a lie in get ripped off chill out

a. be very lazy and mostly watch TV b. have no money c. spend a lot of money d. the TV e. get drunk f. have nothing to do g. a pound h. postpone/delay doing something i. get up later than usual

veg out j. be charged too much for put off doing something something k. relax, take it easy l. get very drunk

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Complete these sentences.

__________________ vegged out for part of the weekend. __________________spent a bomb. __________________put off doing something really important. __________________got totally ripped off. __________________had a deserved lie in. __________________got pissed. __________________was broke by the end of the weekend. __________________enjoyed watching the box __________________chilled out in the evening. __________________spent a few quid.

Which statements best describe your weekend?

a) The weather affected my mood. b) I met up with some people I really like. c) I shouldnt have spent so much money.

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d) Im pleased I had a lie-in on Sunday - I needed it! e) I found my homework pretty hard. f) I enjoyed chatting to my host family. g) I didnt get bored at all. h) If I hadnt got drunk on Friday night, I wouldnt have felt so wasted on Saturday morning. i) I received a nice surprise. j) My family got in touch to see how I was. k) Ive got no idea what was on TV because I didnt watch any. l) I had a good time on Saturday but Sunday wasn't much fun. m) Although I wasn't really in the mood for it, after Id done some exercise, I felt a lot better. n) I got round to writing some letters/postcards. o) I did some things I dont normally have time to do during the week. p) I didn't go outside Oxford. q) I didnt stay in Oxford. r) I discovered a place in Oxford Id never been to before. s) I went to more pubs than restaurants. t) I did something cultural. u) I hardly spoke my own language at all and Im proud of it! v) Even though I didnt really want to, I did something to please someone. w) I felt a bit homesick actually. x) I did something Id never done before. y) I was a bit disappointed by something. z) I was pleasantly surprised by something.

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