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Classroom Activity 10
Classroom Activity 10
The Biggest Fish Ever Caught
Level: Intermediate.
Time required: 90 minutes.
Goals: To become familiar with the “fish story” genre,
in which the storyteller exaggerates his or her
accomplishments; to tell an original fish story and
build spoken fluency.
Materials: scratch
paper and a pen or pencil
Optional materials: a picture of a person fishing,
a chalkboard and chalk, a large piece of paper
and markers.
Procedures:
1.
Activate students’ background knowledge around the
subject of fishing. You can show a picture of a person
fishing and have students write down
as many words
as they can to describe what they see.
Or you can mime the action of fishing and ask if anyone
can guess what verb you are acting out; then give
students two minutes to write down fishing-related
vocabulary they know. Have students share their
vocabulary lists with a partner and explain in English
the meaning of terms their partners do
not know.
After a few minutes of discussion, the pairs report
their combined lists to the class.
2. Read or summarize the following information for
your students: Today we are going to listen to a fish
story, and then each of you will have a chance to
tell one of your own. Fish stories are entertaining
because the storyteller uses a lot of exaggeration.
3.
Ask if anyone can define the word exaggeration.
If no one can, share example sentences that incorporate
exaggeration to lead the class to the
meaning: the
history of the world!’ tonight.
It will take me 10 years
to finish it.” explain that
exaggeration is a statement that makes
something
or someone seem to have much more of a characteristic
or quality (for example, seeming larger, or better, or
worse) than it/he/she really does.
4. Tell students you are going to read them a fish story
called “The One That Got Away” (see page 48).
The first time they listen, they should simply try to
identify the main idea. To focus their attention,
you can
write Wh– question words on the board and
ask students to identify the main character, the setting
, and the main events. Remind students that
they don’t
have to listen for every detail this first time.
5.
As you read, use miming and gestures to act out parts
of the story with
challenging vocabulary.
Be dramatic and have fun! You can also draw pictures
on the board or on a large piece of paper to illustrate
parts of the story (e.g., a fish nibbling on bait at the
end of the line).
6. After you have read the story once, ask for student
volunteers to share their answers to the Wh– questions.
7.
Read the story again and have students focus on parts
that seem untrue
or unbelievable. Ask students to write
them down as they listen.
8.
Have students share with a partner or in a small
group the exaggerated elements they identified.
If you hear a student correctly identify an
exaggerated
element, ask him or her to share it with the
class later. When you review as a class, make sure
the students identify the following exaggerations: when
the story happened. It weighed more
than everyone in
the room combined. the fish into the boat. bye to each
other.
9.
Read the following information to your class:
In a fish story, the storyteller exaggerates his or
her own accomplishments.
Fish stories do
not always have to be about fishing.
Think about your proudest achievement, or something
you would like to accomplish— like running a marathon,
or writing a novel, or becoming the president of your
student
government. Imagine that you have achieved
this goal.
Tell a fish story
about your real or imagined
accomplishment. Take 10 minutes to outline your
story and make notes about the details you plan
to exaggerate. Tell your story to a partner.
10.
Circulate the classroom as students are
brainstorming. Provide guidance
as necessary. Make
sure students are not writing complete sentences.
Remind them that this is a chance to practice speaking
with fluency.
11. Have students share their fish stories with a
partner or two. When students are listening,
they should try to identify elements that seem
exaggerated or impossible. Afterwards, they should
check their understanding with the storyteller.
Then students swap roles and repeat.
12.
When students are finished telling their stories,
you ask a few volunteers to summarize their stories,
Effective interactive teaching strategies to
encourage speech in your classroom
First, I want to put some activities in the spotlight.
The following interactive student activities are
three of the most effective ways to
encourage
more speech in your classroom.
1. Think, pair and share
Set a problem or a question around a
certain topic, and pair up your
students.
Give each pair of students enough time so
they can reach a proper conclusion, and permit the kids
to share their conclusion in
their voice.
This way your students will be engaged, communicating,
and remember more of the class than ever before.
2. Brainstorming
Interactive
brainstorming is mostly performed
in group sessions. The process is
useful for
generating creative thoughts and ideas.
Brainstorming helps students learn to work together,
and above all, learn from each other.
You’ll be surprised by all the great ideas they come up with!
3. Buzz session
Participants
come together in session
groups that focus on a single topic. Within
each group, every student contributes
thoughts and ideas.
Encourage
discussion and collaboration among the
students within each group.
Everyone should learn from each other’s input and
experiences. As a
teacher, you could give your
students some keywords to spark the
conversation.
Of course, there are many other interactive teaching
ideas as well. I split up the activities in different
categories:
Individual student activities
Individual student activities
4. Exit slips
These
are best used at the end of the
class session. You’ll ask the students to
write for one minute on a specific
question. It might be generalized
to “what was the
most important thing you learned today”.
Then,
you can decide if you are going to open up a
conversation about it in your next class. You can ask
them if they still remember what they wrote
down.
Need a digital exit slip template?
5. Misconception check
Discover students' misconceptions.
See if students can identify what is
the
correct answer when given a false fact.
It’s useful when going over a previous lesson.
It encourages students to think deeply and wager
all the possibilities.
6. Circle the questions
Make a worksheet or a survey that has a
list of questions (make them specific) about
your topic, and
ask students to circle
(or check) the ones they don’t know the answers
to.
Then, let them turn in the paper.
Create corners concerning different questions that
were circled. Let
your students work on the extra
exercises and explanation in the
corners, individually.
As your students will all have circled different questions,
you have to give each student a different and
personalized order to visit the corners.
7. Ask the winner
Ask students to silently solve a problem
on the board. After revealing the answer,
instruct those who got it right to raise
their hands (and keep them raised)
.
Then, all other students have to talk to someone with
a raised hand to better understand the question and
how to solve it next time.
Student pair activities
8. Pair-share-repeat
After
a Think-pair-share experience,
which I’ve written about in the first
interactive learning lesson idea,
you can also ask students to find a
new partner
and share the wisdom of the old partnership to this
new partner.
13. Peer review writing task
To
assist students with a writing assignment,
encourage them to exchange
drafts with a
partner. The partner reads the essay and
writes a three-paragraph response: the first paragraph
outlines the strengths of
the essay, the second
paragraph discusses the essay’s problems, and the
third paragraph is a description of what the partner
would focus on in revision if it were her essay.
Students can learn a lot from each other and
themselves as well! Here are 10 more creative
self-assessment ideas.
Student group activities
14. Board rotation
This interactive learning strategy is even
more interactive than others! Divide your
class into different groups of students and
assign
them to each of the boards you’ve set up in the
room. Assign one
topic/question per board. After each
group writes an answer, they rotate
to the next board.
Here, they write their answer below the first answer
of
the previous group. Let them go around the room until
all the groups have covered all the boards.
Not that many boards in your classroom?
Try using tablets and BookWidgets' interactive
whiteboard.
15. Pick the Winner
Divide
the class into groups and let them
work on the same topic/problem.
Let them record an answer/strategy
on paper or digitally. Then, ask the groups to switch
with a nearby group and let them evaluate their
answer. After a few minutes,allow each set of groups
to merge and ask them to select the best answer from
the two choices, which will be presented to
the
complete class.
16. Movie Application
In
groups, students discuss examples of
movies that made use of a concept or
event discussed in class, trying to identify
at least one way the movie makers got it right, and one
way they got it wrong.Think about
movies showing
historical facts, geographical facts, biographies of
famous people, …
17. Crossword puzzle
The
crossword game is perfect to use as
repetition activity. Choose a list of words and
their description, and BookWidgets creates
an interactive
crossword for you. The crossword game
transforms these boring lessons
into a fun experience.
Here you can read more about how to create them and
for which topics you can use them (not only for teaching
languages)!
18. Scrabble
Use
the chapter (or course) title asthe pool
of letters from which to make
words
(e.g., mitochondrial DNA), and allow teams
to brainstorm as many
words relevant to the topic as
possible. You can also actually play
scrabble and ask
students to form words from the newly learned vocabulary.
19. Who/what am I?
Tape
a term or name on the back of each
student. You can also tape it on their
forehead. Each student walks around
the room, asking “yes or no” questions to the other
students in an effort to guess the term. Of course,
the term has something to do with your lesson topic.
20. Bingo
Bingo
is a fun game that can be used for
all sorts of exercises: language exercises,
introductory games, math exercises, etc.
Take a look at this
blog post with all the different bingo
possibilities here. You’ll be surprised about how many
interactive lesson activities you can do with just one game
