Crumbs #25 One sentence grammar practice (From the lazy teacher’s diary)

Ingredients

• A set of sentences with the key structure. In our case these were random (as in: not a part of a story or a discourse) sentences with let and make, in the present tense and in the past. I wrote them myself (ten of each), although any set of sentences included in typical gap fill activities that often feature in our coursebooks would do.
• The sentences were typed up, printed and cut up into strips. In order to manage them better, I printed the make sentences on the white paper and the let sentences on the yellow paper.
• Students work in pairs or groups of three. One of the students picks up a card, reads the sentence in silence and comes up with a short story to illustrate the sentence. The student should not really use the key verb and as few of the other words from the original sentence as possible.
• The other student(s) listen and reproduce the orignal sentence.
• The game continues. In our case, the students played in the teams of three first with the first set of the sentences and then with the other set.

Why we like it

• Very little preparation.
• It can be also SS-generated, if one more stage is introduced (every student writes three sentences with ‘make’ and three senteces with ‘let’), afterwards these sentences are dealt among the teams /pairs.
• It is easy to adapt. It can involve one, two or a selection of the target langauge structures.
• It is an opportunity to extend the grammar practice and to make it more productive.
• The students have a chance to practise grammar as well as develop their listening skills and their speaking skills.
• The kids produce mini-stories which can include both narrative and dialogue. Their main aim is to convey the idea of the grammar structure to make it possible for their peers to reproduce.
• The mini-stories help to create the context for the grammar and can make it more meaningful and memorable.
• It is an activity that gives the teacher lots of freedom, it can be stopped at any given point, after a certain number of rounds or minutes.
• Apart from the target langauge, the students get some practise in key word transformation and paraphrasing, without any specific exam focus.
• I used it with my B1 teens but I am considering how it can be adapted to the needs of my primary A2 kids, too.

Happy teaching!