Online MA in TESOL!
Huge sentences made easy
I've found this simple game gets results much faster than I
first expected. I am glad I went to the trouble.
I wrote many common words on small cards. Two of each word.
Four of words like 'to' which are often used twice in a sentence.
I organized them for my own convenience into categories such as prepositions, nouns, etc.
The game is simple. I collect each pair of cards necessary to
make whatever sentence I feel like. Then I deal the cards into two piles.
Each team gets a pile and must make a correct sentence using all the cards.
The first team wins points. I give a point per card.
Surprisingly, nearly all the students get very involved in evaluating
whether it's a good sentence or not. I have found classes became very
good at creating long correct sentences after only a couple times playing
this game. I suspect it really stimulates their lateral thinking, or
whatever. And we all know how hard it is to make kids attempt to create
longish sentences. Now it's easy.
As the teams work on their sentences, the teacher can compose the next sentence.
Give the teams 3 to 5 chances to offer their correct sentence.
It's a race, but after one team submits an incorrect sentence, the other
team gets 10 seconds or so to submit their guess before it's open
to both teams again. This encourages them to learn the relationships
between words rather than wild guessing. But really nothing can be
a wild guess if you give them six words or more to use.
You must also give them a period or question mark card accordingly.
I also use suffixes including '-ing' '-s' '-es' and '-ed'. This doesn't
bother the kids at all. They like it - more points.
Try this game. I bet you will find your kids quickly consolidate what
you know they already know but can't seem to use.
A deck of blank business cards works great.
-Peter D. in Taiwan
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