Read and toss

This was posted on Twitter which I thought would be a great starter. I'm going to use it this week by asking students to write their own sentences on strips of paper that they then screw up and throw. Maybe a word limit for each sentence so all teams have similar length sentences. The activity could then be a competition. 

Pound shop challenge!

A colleague of mine gave all staff at my school the challenge of going to a pound shop over the holidays to find a teaching and learning resource. Here is what I found and have come up with:

Soft Ball

1. Throw the ball to a student and they must answer a question. Then throw it back for me to throw to another. I ask the questions.

2. Same as above but students throw the ball to each other asking their own questions.

3. Divide the class into two teams. They ask the other team a question. If the team gets it right, one student is allowed to try to get the ball in the bin/ box. The team with the most goals wins.

4. Musical ball - students pass the ball around the class and when the music stops, the student holding it answers a question.

5. 2 lines facing each other about 2m apart. The ball is passed back and forth zigzagging down the two lines. Students have to say a keyword before they throw it to the next person. This could be timed.

Playing Cards

1. Students take a card as they enter. Hearts must do one starter, clubs another etc.

2. Random way of putting students into groups.

3. Students take a card as they enter. Code on the board gives them a letter and they have to think of 5 keywords beginning with that letter.

4. Writing activity with 4 categories (eg school subjects, opinions, snacks, past tense). Each team picks 4 cards which corresponds to each category. The cards they pick will determine how many of each category they will need to include in their writing. This could be done as a competition.

5. Students take a card as they enter. Each suit and each letter corresponds to a category. Students have one minute to think of as many keywords as possible for that category or they have one minute to talk about the category

Race whispers or silent spelling

Choose three sentences for the race. Get students into teams of 6-7 students. All students need to say the whole sentence. Teams have to race to be the first to finish. It works well when students are sitting across the room so you can see and hear everything. I asked the last person to stand when they had finished so I could clearly see who had won. It gets quite loud even though they were supposed to be whispering!

Instead of whispering, students at the back of each team are given a word which they spell out using their finger on the back of the person in front. The word is passed on through the team in this way and the front person writes it down on a piece of paper.

Teachmeet - North Petherton 29th January

Here are some ideas that I picked up at tmsomerset.

1. Writing through blogging - set a word limit challenge or give students prompts (...it wasn’t my fault...), picture prompts or 5 words as prompts.

 2. For a different way of presenting, get an educational account for Prezi

 3. Build with crome - digital lego

 4. Video FX live - use for greenscreening

 5. Hamilton trust website for ideas with planning

 6. www.purplemash.co.uk 

 7. Heads up charades

 8. Hand books in for marking with a traffic light system to show how students think they have done in the topic

 9. wee mee - create avatars

 10. make waves - school blogs and secure social networking

 11. Barefoot World Atlas app

 12. Use soundcloud to record audio

Revision ideas for Year 11

Ideas from my colleagues of revision activities for GCSE classes:



-GCSE vocab cards: students make cards with German phrases, blank on the other side. In groups, they put a card down, person who says it fastest in English keeps the card (good for 8-10 phrases). After a while: write the English on reverse side and play other way round. Make sure pupils initial their cards in case you mix groups.

- Ask studens to draw a grid, each grid covering a topic (could be grammar e.g. tenses and/or modules e.g school/health etc). Read out phrases or words in TL; students group them in English under correct topic.Works great for tenses.

- Mini-whiteboards: Draw in 10 seconds what teacher said in TL.



- I have been using the 12 game but in multiples of 10 at the end of lessons…students count up to 120, they can say one number at a time, or two, or three, but whoever says 120 is out. So one student might say 10, the next 20, 30, 40, the next 50, 60, 70, the next , 80, 90, the next 100, 110…then the student who would have to say 120 is out/loses a life. Works for whole class or small groups.

Fake texts

Just found this website for making fake texts. Endless possibilities! 

Human Dominoes

Thanks to @tomhockaday for reminding me of this at #ililc4.

There are many names for this activity and I've called it a round robin in the past. As students enter the classroom, get them to take a slip of paper with an English sentence on and a different sentence in the target language. Someone else in the room will have a matching English sentence and someone else a matching TL one. 

One student reads out their TL sentence and the student who has the matching English sentence stands up. They then read out their TL one and it continues until the whole class has read out theirs. 

I wanted to get the whole class involved so I did it slightly differently yesterday. Each student had their slips of paper and I asked them to get in a circle around the room. I left them to it and they had to find the two students that would stand either side of them. After they had finished, we read out the phrases to check they were in the right place. 

As an extension, I asked them to write the English of their target language sentence. Ignoring the other typed English sentences, they then played Quiz, Quiz, Trade. 

As a final activity, in groups, they had to write a paragraph using the sentences they had in their hands and not their original. I got them to write on mini white boards and took a photo. Next lesson, we will peer assess as a class and in pairs.