Dear Teachers,
Here is an ESL role-play idea from an imaginative and motivated teacher in France called Erie. The role-play is idea is simple and basic, but what is useful about the idea is how Erie handled the set up of this task so that his class of twenty children could:
1. manage it well from an ESL language point of view
2. manage it from a classroom management point of view
As those of you who follow my blog will know, I absolutely love role-play as a means of teaching English. It is something children enjoy doing naturally, for them it is fun, and it allows for optimum speaking practise for the whole class.
I have 26 plays and skits for use with primary children in small groups, and on my plays page you'll find a free one, along with some nice pictures of the skits in action in schools.
http://www.teachingenglishgames.com/eslplays.htm
So thanks Erie for sharing this great role-play idea with us today!
Yesterday, we talked about Thanksgiving and what the Pilgrims had on their dinner
table. To learn the children food-vocabulary we did a Restaurant play. With menus on
the table for the clients, the servers (one for each table of 4 clients) had the
same items on his ticket (with room behind each item to write down the name of the
client who ordered it), and a cook who had all the flashcards with the items on a
table. The instructions were for the server : "Hello, can I take your order please",
for the clients " Yes, I would like ... and .... and ...." (but all the plates on
the same table had to be different). Once the server had the orders of his 4
clients, he had to go to the cook, and say (in English) what he needed for his
clients. He served each client the plates ordered and got paid. (5$ per person, and
the (printed) dollar bills were distributed along with the menus).
I let the most turbulent children play the role of servers, and those who have
difficulty in learning vocabulary the role of cook, it was amazing ! The servers did
a very good job, felt responsible et played the game as they should, and the "cook"
knew all the items at the end of the game. The children really loved the game.
For my older students - CM1/CM2 - I'll be doing the same game, but with more food
and drink-items and a price (1 dollar) per item.
Showing posts with label role-play activity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label role-play activity. Show all posts
Friday, 27 November 2009
Friday, 6 November 2009
Request for role-plays and dialogues
Hello readers,
Today I received a request for role-plays and dialogues from a teacher who, like all teachers, does not have much time to prepare for classes.
My primary games book does not have this kind of activity.
It is for teaching and practising vocab and grammar and does not go far towards speaking fluency.
The teen/adult book however has plenty of that type of activity.
For example Talk About It. This requires no preparation and may be used with any topic. Plus you don't need to buy a set of books for every child, or make tons of photocopies.
Set up chairs in rows facing each other so with ten students you would have five on each side. You sit at the end of the row as timekeeper. The people on your right are talkers and have to talk about a topic for 1 minute without stopping. The people on the left are listeners and do not talk at all except to encourage the talkers and provide a word if they get stuck.
You can allow any kind of topic, serious or funny. You can hand out topics for students to talk about, have all students talking about a different topic, all about the same one, or let students choose their own topics. If you let students talk about topics of their choice they may have more to say on them, however forcing a student to talk about a topic you select can stretch their imagination and vocabulary. In general I would say that it is best to give students a choice of topics at the very least rather than force someone to talk about goldfish when they know nothing about them other than that they are orange.
With elementary kids it is vital to pick topics the children know well, such as talk about a member of your family, your pet, what you like eating, what you like doing in your spare time, describe one of your favorite TV programmes, your morning routine before school, your journey to school and what you see out of the window, and so on.
All the talkers talk at the same time so you have to accept a certain amount of noise and you cannot expect to control and correct everything that is said. This is a fluency exercise so errors are to be expected. When the minute is up, the right row moves one seat down and the last person comes to the front near you so they are talking to different people. The left side never moves. The people on the right talk on the same topic repeatedly so they have a chance to become more and more fluent at expressing themselves.
Then to give the listeners a chance to contribute and give value to their listening activity have each talker ask a listener a question about their topic. See how many listeners were really listening! In the next class swap listeners and talkers over. Keep the time carefully because this makes things move along and more fun.
With advanced students you can vary the game by giving a 2-minute talking period to allow students to go into their topic in more depth.
A SECOND DIALOGUE IDEA NEEDING NO PREP FROM THE TEACHER
Have the children write up a dialogue for homework on a given
topic. Then get them to cut their dialogue into strips. Mix ALL the A's
into one tub and ALL the B's into another tub.
The kids then split into A's and B's and each one takes 5 strips from each
tub. The A's and B's then go through the dialogues they have randomly
taken, then swap with a different partner. Some of the dialogues will
make sense and some will be funny.
Then they could change their silly dialogue to a sensible one as a pair
and perform it to the class, the silly one and the sensible one.
You don't have to prepare anything for that you see - the kids do the prep
work!
More ideas like this in my teen/adult games book
http://www.teachingenglishgames.com/adults.htm
Kind regards
Shelley
Today I received a request for role-plays and dialogues from a teacher who, like all teachers, does not have much time to prepare for classes.
My primary games book does not have this kind of activity.
It is for teaching and practising vocab and grammar and does not go far towards speaking fluency.
The teen/adult book however has plenty of that type of activity.
For example Talk About It. This requires no preparation and may be used with any topic. Plus you don't need to buy a set of books for every child, or make tons of photocopies.
Set up chairs in rows facing each other so with ten students you would have five on each side. You sit at the end of the row as timekeeper. The people on your right are talkers and have to talk about a topic for 1 minute without stopping. The people on the left are listeners and do not talk at all except to encourage the talkers and provide a word if they get stuck.
You can allow any kind of topic, serious or funny. You can hand out topics for students to talk about, have all students talking about a different topic, all about the same one, or let students choose their own topics. If you let students talk about topics of their choice they may have more to say on them, however forcing a student to talk about a topic you select can stretch their imagination and vocabulary. In general I would say that it is best to give students a choice of topics at the very least rather than force someone to talk about goldfish when they know nothing about them other than that they are orange.
With elementary kids it is vital to pick topics the children know well, such as talk about a member of your family, your pet, what you like eating, what you like doing in your spare time, describe one of your favorite TV programmes, your morning routine before school, your journey to school and what you see out of the window, and so on.
All the talkers talk at the same time so you have to accept a certain amount of noise and you cannot expect to control and correct everything that is said. This is a fluency exercise so errors are to be expected. When the minute is up, the right row moves one seat down and the last person comes to the front near you so they are talking to different people. The left side never moves. The people on the right talk on the same topic repeatedly so they have a chance to become more and more fluent at expressing themselves.
Then to give the listeners a chance to contribute and give value to their listening activity have each talker ask a listener a question about their topic. See how many listeners were really listening! In the next class swap listeners and talkers over. Keep the time carefully because this makes things move along and more fun.
With advanced students you can vary the game by giving a 2-minute talking period to allow students to go into their topic in more depth.
A SECOND DIALOGUE IDEA NEEDING NO PREP FROM THE TEACHER
Have the children write up a dialogue for homework on a given
topic. Then get them to cut their dialogue into strips. Mix ALL the A's
into one tub and ALL the B's into another tub.
The kids then split into A's and B's and each one takes 5 strips from each
tub. The A's and B's then go through the dialogues they have randomly
taken, then swap with a different partner. Some of the dialogues will
make sense and some will be funny.
Then they could change their silly dialogue to a sensible one as a pair
and perform it to the class, the silly one and the sensible one.
You don't have to prepare anything for that you see - the kids do the prep
work!
More ideas like this in my teen/adult games book
http://www.teachingenglishgames.com/adults.htm
Kind regards
Shelley
Friday, 14 December 2007
Role-Play Idea for Speaking Practise
Hello there teachers,
I just received this request from a teacher and I thought this made a really useful role-play to share with everyone:
"Thanks you very much for your games. They help me very much in my teaching. My students have been very excited.
Now I have difficulty in finding a way to give my students to the lesson of speaking. Can you suggest me some exciting activity? Here is the content of the lesson:
Plans to make life in a village better:
Widen the road
Build a medical center
Build a football ground
Grow cash crop
Build a bridge over the canal.
Build a new school
Possible results of the plan
Cars and lorries can get to the village
People's health is looked after
Young people can play sport
People can have more money
People have a shorter way to city
Children have better learning condition
Students have to use "if clause" to talk about plan and result."
My reply idea for this is to role-play a committee meeting, with a chairman, a treasurer and committee members. Each group should be only about 6 students to allow everyone a good chance to participate. Make a guess at the cost of carrying out each of the improvements mentioned above. Then allocate a total budget to the treasurer. This should be far less than the cost of carrying out all the improvements.
Students select two or three items from the above list that they will argue for at the role-play meeting. Students put forward their priorities and argue about what should be done first. The purpose of the meeting is to come up with a plan of action listing the improvements that will be made this year and those that will be made in the next few years.
You might want to modify the list to suit your own village, town or city. Other ideas are:
Work on encouraging tourism
Adopt a scheme to preserve the natural environment
Planting more trees and landscaping
Building more homes
If you use this idea with the place where your students currently live it will feel relevant to them and they might find it interesting so you will have to modify this at will and ask the students for their ideas before elaborating your list so you know what is important to them. Teenagers might be more interested in adding a nightclub and shops to the community than landscaping!!
Do try it out and let us all know how it goes, and what new ideas you can add!
More role-play ideas can be found in the esl games and activities for adults here:
www.teachingenglishgames.com/adults.htm
I just received this request from a teacher and I thought this made a really useful role-play to share with everyone:
"Thanks you very much for your games. They help me very much in my teaching. My students have been very excited.
Now I have difficulty in finding a way to give my students to the lesson of speaking. Can you suggest me some exciting activity? Here is the content of the lesson:
Plans to make life in a village better:
Widen the road
Build a medical center
Build a football ground
Grow cash crop
Build a bridge over the canal.
Build a new school
Possible results of the plan
Cars and lorries can get to the village
People's health is looked after
Young people can play sport
People can have more money
People have a shorter way to city
Children have better learning condition
Students have to use "if clause" to talk about plan and result."
My reply idea for this is to role-play a committee meeting, with a chairman, a treasurer and committee members. Each group should be only about 6 students to allow everyone a good chance to participate. Make a guess at the cost of carrying out each of the improvements mentioned above. Then allocate a total budget to the treasurer. This should be far less than the cost of carrying out all the improvements.
Students select two or three items from the above list that they will argue for at the role-play meeting. Students put forward their priorities and argue about what should be done first. The purpose of the meeting is to come up with a plan of action listing the improvements that will be made this year and those that will be made in the next few years.
You might want to modify the list to suit your own village, town or city. Other ideas are:
Work on encouraging tourism
Adopt a scheme to preserve the natural environment
Planting more trees and landscaping
Building more homes
If you use this idea with the place where your students currently live it will feel relevant to them and they might find it interesting so you will have to modify this at will and ask the students for their ideas before elaborating your list so you know what is important to them. Teenagers might be more interested in adding a nightclub and shops to the community than landscaping!!
Do try it out and let us all know how it goes, and what new ideas you can add!
More role-play ideas can be found in the esl games and activities for adults here:
www.teachingenglishgames.com/adults.htm
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