Activities

Writing Activities

Writing Benchmark 1	CLB 1  Activity: Ask students fill in the blanks using a form with the following:  My name is ______________. I am from _______________. I live in _________________. I am married/single ____________. I go to school/work at ___________. I (like to) play _________________. I like _______________________. I speak _________________.   Filling out an application form
Writing Benchmark 2 This is a good introduction to journal writing. They can practise writing on their own by describing things that they observe in their daily commute or just by observing the things around them.	CLB 2 Activity: Show learners a picture of nature and ask them to describe what they see. A form can be provided to assist them.  Example: A picture of a park with kids playing.  I see a __________.  (park/playground) There are ________ at the park. (kids/children/people) It looks like they are _________. (playing/running/walking) I could tell that they are having ________. (fun) The image was taken during ________ season. (summer) Learners can also extend the activity and keep writing as they wish to continue describing the picture.
Writing Benchmark 3	CLB 3  Learners at this level can write simple sentences with proper punctuation.  Activity: Ask students to write 4-5 sentences that describe their new experience in Canada. It can be about: grocery shopping  travel experience weather experience They should only pick one topic. This is a good initial activity for paragraph writing.

Grammar Activity: Conjunctions

The objective of the game is to practise connecting sentences using conjunctions. 

Materials: 

Paper or cardstock cubes with conjunction words written on each side of the block prepared before the class. (Cube Template)

Conjunction Words: after, before, although, whenever, while, even though, until, because, since, if, and (may add free choice)

How to Play the Game: 

One student will start a sentence and toss the cube to someone. The next student will have to add a conjunction word from where his/her thumb lands completing it with additional sentences. He/She will then have to start another sentence and continue to toss the cube to someone else.

Example: 

Student #1: Chris made a pumpkin pie… 

Student #2: whenever he has time.

This game can be extended to writing by asking students to write their sentences. One student can write it for the team or wait until two - three rounds is over.

Resource: Grammar Games

Writing Activities

Activities	Level and Context
A Birthday Message Learners would think of someone special to them and write a Birthday message. This can also be an art project where they can draw something significant about the person they are greeting or any symbol that would remind them about the celebrant to make the Birthday greeting more meaningful.	Beginners This activity is for those who are struggling writers who express themselves better in drawing. This will help stimulate their cognition in showing affection and express it through writing. https://minds-in-bloom.com/10-fun-writing-activities-kids/
Write ‘A Choose Your Dream Vacation’ Ask the student to imagine and think of their dream vacation. Who will they take with them? Where are they going? How long will it take to get there? If you are to plan for it, how will you do it? Why do you want to go there? What kind of food would you want to try? What kind of activities are you going to do there? Why is it your dream vacation?	Intermediate  Learner Students for this activity are those who are writing for  I got this idea from https://minds-in-bloom.com/10-fun-writing-activities-kids/ but for group work writing context. I prefer individual writing but will encourage students to brainstorm and talk about their ideas of dream vacation. Aside from the questions provided, it will be good to learn from others and think of good thoughts in writing.
Write a Funny Joke Write a funny joke that you know from your own language and translate it to English. If you know an English joke, you can also write it. Write as many jokes as you want.	Beginner ESL students for sure know a lot of jokes from their own language. Writing is fun when they are stimulated with fun activities that they can relate to and express themselves. This will encourage students to translate their L1 words and think of how they can share their joke to others.
Journal Writing Students will look back and think of their whole day. I ask these questions to stimulate their thinking:  What did you learn today?  What was your favourite part of the day?  What’s fun today?	Intermediate This is a current practice that I do everyday. I find it effective writing because they get to think of what they learned and what’s memorable for them. I also encourage them to use the new words that they learn when writing their journal. Some students share what food they eat during lunch or recess that they find special for that day. It is a good way to express themselves in writing.
Narrative Writing Students will think of the most recent movie they watched and retell the movie by writing. Students will tell what they like about it and how the plot and the climax of the story became interesting. Will they recommend it to other students?	Intermediate  Students are always excited to share the story of a good movie. It's fun to express themselves when they are excited. This is a good writing experience when they have to express themselves through writing.
Puppet Show  Writing their own story and having fun at the same time is the best way to encourage writing. I ask students to bring 2 long socks, it doesn’t matter if it’s coloured or black and white. We decorate it and they have to write a dialogue of 2 puppets.The dialogue concept can be about family, friends, party invitation or just a conversation of any sort. When writing, they have to follow the rules of quotation in writing their dialogues.	Intermediate Students enjoy a puppet show. This is always fun for kids. They love doing this. This can also be a good encouragement to adult learners because they can use this at home to entertain their kids. It might not work for some but for mom’s who would love to do this for their kids will be glad to comply.

It is interesting to see students progress in writing from lists of words like days of the week and months of the year to writing down grocery lists. Students' creativity comes out in writing when they are stimulated with fun concepts that interest them. It is also fun when students are excited to write about something that they can relate to and willing to share and express themselves through writing. From daily narrative, journal and story writing to advancing themselves to expository writing must be fulfilling to watch when they reach a certain level. Expository writing at some level must also be part of their experience. This will help them use what they learn based on facts from a book and retell what they understand. This will help them broaden their comprehension skills too by recalling facts that they read and write words that they learned.

I found some interesting list of activities for reluctant writers: 

https://literacyideas.com/7-fun-writing-activities-for-students/

Here are some links that have very interesting activities to try: 

https://busyteacher.org/classroom_activities-writing/esl-creative-writing-prompts-worksheets/

Speaking Activity

Objective:  Students will talk about something they are familiar with or passionate about. 

Timeline: 15 minutes

Strengths: Shares their country and culture, entertaining and facilitates recall of experience. 

Levels:  Intermediate or Advanced

Procedure: 

1.    Write 4 ideas to choose from on the board or easel prepared in advance.  

·         Tell me something about your country?  If I will go for a vacation, where will you bring me and why?

·         If you are to meet someone dead or alive, who would it be and why?  What would you want to tell him/her?

·         If you are to change something from history, what would it be and why?  What would be the effect of that change in this generation? 

·         What occasion do you miss from your country and why? What activities do you do during that occasion? 

2.    The students will find a partner for the conversation.  Each student will choose what topic they want to talk about.  Allow 3-5 minutes exchange of ideas.

3.     The students should switch partners and retell the story of their first partner to another student.  Each student should have 3 partners to switch with to retell the story.  Remind students to be creative, have fun and enjoy the conversation. 

4.       Teacher will go around to monitor conversation and to give feedback when necessary. 

5.       Once all have exchanged ideas to three students, ask for a volunteer that would want to share their favorite idea in class. 

********** Speaking Activities

Speaking activities must be interesting and fun to do to motivate learners do their best.  I have come up with brief list of links to start my collection of best practices tips and speaking activities.

1. Five Fun Classroom Activities for Engaging English Language Learners

• Play Trivia
• Role Play
• Turn on the Subtitles
• Play Word Association
• Play Word Lottery

   

2. Classroom Practices That Accelerate Language Acquisition for ESL Students

• Visual Supports
• Graphic Supports
• Linguistic Supports

3. Techniques for ESL Pair Work

4. ESL speaking activities that work for students at every level

5. ESL warm-up activities and five minute fillers - 29 fun ways to start a class **********

Pronunciation Activity

Objective: Student will practice word drill and tongue twisters pronouncing minimal pair of words with /s/ and /sh/ sound.

Timeline: 5 minutes

Level: Intermediate or Advanced

Procedure:   

1.     Show video of /s/ and /sh/ mouth movement pronunciation starting from 0:24 to 2:00 seconds of the video.

2.     Student will be given 3 minutes to practice list of minimal pair of /s/ and /sh/ word drill and a tongue twister.  

	sip	ship
	see	she
	seat	sheet
	was	wash
	sock	shock
	Kass	cash
	seep	sheep
	Sue	shoe
	mass	Mash
	sore	shore

          Tongue Twister:  

              "She sees sea shell from the sea shore." 

       

Resource: Pronunciation Practice pg. 19 

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Listening Activity 

Objective:  Students will be able to identify details on the audio recorded conversation.

Timeline: 10 minutes

Level: Intermediate

Procedure: 

1.     Students will be asked to note important details they will catch on the recording.

2.     Teacher will play the recording and can replay as requested. Audio can be played only three times. 

3.     Student will be given a worksheet to complete. 

4.   Students can discuss, expound and ask questions about the scenario. 

Resource: Transcript

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Assignment 3:  Pronunciation Analysis and Activities

Pronunciation Activity 

Rationale:  The student in this video (Chinese) can exchange conversation. However, just like Vietnamese, Chinese and Thailand does not contain clusters at the end of words, consonants are sometimes dropped entirely.   In this video, it is difficult to understand what she was trying to say. There are very distinguished sounds that are missing when she was spontaneously expressing herself like /k/, /r/, /th/, /g/, /s/, /ch/, and /sh/. I want to focus on final blends because I see it to be the most important for her to progress and be more effective in conversations. This will also help her in word stresses as she gets to be familiar with words.

Objective:  Improve pronunciation focusing on different final blends and consciousness to words that needs articulation enhancement.

Timeline: 15 minutes

Level:  Intermediate                                                                                

Procedure: 

1.       Teacher will first play a video of Final Blend brainteaser.

2.       Students will be introduced to a word list of Final Blends. They will be instructed to record the words that they find difficult to pronounce and it will be discussed after. They can also work with pair or group to check some pronunciations.

3.       They will be given 5 minutes to practice reading all lists of words.

4.       After 5 minutes, teacher will ask students which words they have trouble speaking.

5.       Teacher will show and introduce an online Merriam-Webster dictionary to students and find the word and use the audio to listen as to how it is pronounced properly. (We don’t have to check all the recorded words they have.  The tool will guide them as they practice at home.)

6.       After about 3-4 word sample, proceed with the rest of the activity.

7.       There are sentences given at the end of the word list which they can also practice reading. (Sentences are combination of questions and statement so they can also practice their stress and intonation.)

8.       Finally, the rest of the activity, to create two sentences will be given as homework for them to practice.     

Overview:  The “Final Blends” material for this activity maybe challenging for some students. Given that this is specifically planned for intermediate students, it is expected that they can grasp as much as what is presented. Corrective Feedback is presented in a way that students will have independence researching and listening to words they are having difficulty with. Individual feedback will then focus only on specific final blend difficulty of each student.  

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TESL 0120: Unit 4

Listening Focused Lesson Plan

Level: Beginner
Objective: Students will:

·         Listen for time order words of sequence

Lesson Sequence

1.      Homework and Review

2.      Pre-listening

          a. Ask students if they are familiar with the song “Yesterday” and who sang it

          b. If they know the song, ask them if they can sing part of it or if they know the lyrics of the song.

3.      While-listening:

          a.   Start the recording, and then check for gist.

          b.   Play the whole recording and have students write down any time order words they hear. Play the recording again.

          c.   Have students compare the words they wrote down with a partner.

          d.   Discuss differences as a class and offer corrective feedback.

          e.   Distribute time order words vocabulary list. 

 

4.      Post-listening

          a.   Ask students what word they find that states time from the song. (The only time word they have from that song is the word “Yesterday.”)

          b.   Ask them why it was easy for them to catch the missing lyrics of the song.

          c.   It is now the moment to introduce the time order words vocabulary. 

**********

TESL 0100: Unit 3

Form, Meaning and Use: 3 Dimensions of Larsen-Freeman's Grammar Model

A common mistake I see in writing for the beginner learners is the difference between There, Their and They’re. This happens because words sound the same. It doesn’t matter in spoken language as they are homophones, but when it comes to writing, it makes a difference.

Form:  There is an adverb or pronoun. It is the opposite of ‘here’ and pointing to a place (‘that place’). It is also used to show that something exists. Their is a possessive adjective and is used before a noun. It is used to refer to something a person has or owns.  They’re often placed before an adjective or verb ending in –ing. It is a contraction of ‘they are’.

Meaning: There and They’re answers the question where and Their answers the question who.

Use: Providing example sentences for each and questions that would answer how it should be used.

There: Q: Where is my book? A: It’s over there.  (Answering the question where.)

            I will look for a hotel to stay when I arrive there. (pointing to a place ‘that place’)      

            There is a book on the table. (used as opposite of ‘here’)

            There are many countries in Europe. (used to show that something exist)

They’re:  They’re very interested in the project. 

                I personally think they’re crazy!

               They’re singing loudly.

Their:  Their house is big. (used before a noun and refers ownership)

            All of their friends were crazy. (used before a noun and answers the question who)

            The children put their books in their school bags. (used before a noun and adjective and indicates possession)

Drill: 

So now you know the difference let's try the original question:

• They're/Their/There playing they're/their/there video games over they're/their/there.

The answer is:

• They're playing their video games over there.

Why?

They're playing (they're is used before a verb ending in -ing making it the progressive tense)

Their video games (their is a possessive used before a noun to show possession)

Over there (there because it means not here, in that place)

Lesson Plan: Civic Election (Unit 4)

Date: (For October 6, 2018)

Class levels: CLB 6 – 7 Listening, Reading, Speaking, Writing

Class Time: 2 hours

Communicative Language Task Goal

To gather information on the issues in the civic election, determine what is relevant to themselves, and participate in a Q&A Forum.

By the end of the lesson today, learners will:

-          identify three or four key issues in the civic election

-          work in a group to determine what questions should be asked of candidates

-          examine the websites of assigned candidates to determine their platform on the issues

-          participate in a Q&A Forum by choosing one member of the group to represent their candidate and ask questions chosen by the group

Lesson Procedure

Lesson activities and procedure	Language focus	Language Skills	Purpose of the activity	Interaction	Time
Describe what learners are doing	Identify what linguistic and communicative ability elements are being addressed (e.g., vocabulary, sociolinguistic knowledge)	What skills are being practiced (e.g., Speaking)	Why they are doing this (e.g., to be able to…)	Are learners working individually, in groups, as a class	How much time it takes
Warm-up and Introduction: Whole class discussion of voting in Canada. Elicit what students know about the voting process, eligibility to vote, upcoming election issues, mayoral candidates. Write relevant points on the board as they are brought out.	·   vocabulary ·   sociolinguistic knowledge ·   culture	Listening Speaking	Express knowledge  of Canadian culture; use vocabulary	T – S S – S	10
Pre-Task: Introduce vocabulary (from video to follow); Pair work: give a matching exercise where one S has the vocab list and the other has the definitions. Pairs will complete as many matches as possible without showing each other their lists. check answers as a whole class and clarify any difficult terms	vocabulary	Speaking Listening Negotiating meaning	draw on each other’s previous knowledge to negotiate best fit for meaning	S – S	10 10
Main Task (1): Listen to Video give Ss a list of the speakers in the video in order of appearance.  (first listen) Ss should identify whether the speaker is a candidate or a voter, and listen for what their issue is (second listen) Ss should try to note each speaker’s issue or opinion. Stop the video a few times to allow time to write. https://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/mayoral-candidates-discuss-making-winnipeg-more-inclusive-at-new-forum-1.4124175	·   identifying roles ·   identifying opinions ·   noticing vocabulary	Listening Writing	listen for main point use cues to identify roles	Text – S	15
Pre-Task (2):  Brainstorm the questions: Groups of 3 or 4 Ss; assign each group a candidate (up to 7 groups); based on issues identified in the video, and allowing for a look at the front page of their candidate’s website*, brainstorm four questions or issues to ask all candidate https://www.winnipegelection.ca/constituencies/mayoral-candidates/ Groups choose one or two people to write their issues or questions on the board in columns by group group members who are not writing should read what other groups are writing to identify duplicate ideas when writing is done, consolidate the ideas by asking observers to identify common issues, circle them in different colours ask if anyone wants to promote or demote an issue, and why after consensus, erase issues  not chosen	·   expressing opinion ·   negotiating for consensus ·   identifying common ideas	speaking listening reading writing	to demonstrate understanding from written and graphic representation to summarize ideas to persuade	S – S Text - S	20
Task 3: Q&A Forum Preparation: Group members will note down answers to questions from the website of the candidates (each member will have to prepare to discuss the answer using their own words based on the answer of the candidate) A representative from the group will ask the questions.    Proper Forum: The First group’s representative will start asking the first question.    Anyone from the other group will answer the question using their own words based on the candidates answer from the website. Each group member will be given a chance to answer all the possible questions that can be asked during the groups turn. After all questions are answered, the group will switch turns in asking and answering questions. The Q&A will end after all members were able to participate.	Vocabulary Building Working with Group collaboration and discussion Expressing/ writing individuals understanding based on the candidates comments Spontaneous speaking	Writing Reading Listening Speaking	-show understanding about community issues and matters in the society that affects the members of the society express their thoughts based on their own understanding from the candidates answer	Text - S S - S	20 20
Post-Task: Mock Election Project a brief list of the voting instructions; call on some Ss to read them out loud; ask a different S to say what they think is the reason for rule Appoint a returning officer and a scrutineer Hand out prepared ballots and instruct Ss to vote based on the answers given in the forum Appoint two Ss to create a tally list on the board; they will mark the tally as the returning officer and scrutineer read the names from the ballots Declare a winner and give the group members whose candidate won a small prize!	-expressing opinion	Reading Speaking Reading Writing	-confirm understanding of the rules -demonstrate how to follow the rules	Text - S	10

Exit Assessment

Give Ss a short open-ended questionnaire to complete before they leave (5 min):

What is one thing you already knew about elections in Canada that was presented in this lesson?

2. Describe something that you learned in the lesson that you didn’t know about elections in Canada.

3. Were you able to participate in the discussions as much as you wanted to during this lesson?

Reflection and Suggestions for Next Time

Your notes after the lesson

Resources:

CTV News Winnipeg (2018), Mayoral candidates discuss making Winnipeg more inclusive at new forum, [website], retrieved from https://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/mayoral-candidates-discuss-making-winnipeg-more-inclusive-at-new-forum-1.4124175

Open Democracy Manitoba (2018), Winnipeg Election 2018: Mayoral Candidates, [website], retrieved from https://www.winnipegelection.ca/constituencies/mayoral-candidates/