Classroom Activity 7

Classroom Activity 7

Classroom Activity 7

Spring Cleaning

Level:

Upper Beginner/Intermediate

Goals: T

o introduce students to household chore vocabulary and adverbs of frequency; to give students experience in taking part in a survey.

Time required:

40–60 minutes

Optional Materials:

copies of chore chart Background: Many people clean their entire house at the beginning of spring.  Many household chores listed in this activity can be part of the spring cleaning process.

Procedures:

1. Use the following list as the vocabulary for this activity: (Household Chores,wash the dishes, hang the laundry, dust the furniture,

make the bed, water the plants,  iron the clothes, sweep the floor.)

Introduce the vocabulary with students.

Start by eliciting a list of chores that students do around the house.

Check comprehension of the vocabulary

you plan to work with (use the list of chores provided or other terms

you would like to include) by showing or drawing pictures of the

nouns and using gestures to convey the meanings of the verb

.

2. Write the list of verbs in a column on the board.

  Write the list of nouns in another column—out of order,

as in this example: ( make, the furniture, the bed , the dishes,

wash, dust, etc.)

 You should make it clear that the items in the columns are

not in order and tell students that their task is to match the

items correctly.

3. Have students work in pairs to match the verbs and nouns

to create common household chores.

4. Go over the answers as a class.

Have student volunteers come to the board and draw a line

from the verb to the matching noun. Discuss any verb that

might make sensewith more than one noun

(e.g., wash the clothes). Once the correct answers are on

the board, have students compare their answers andcorrect

any mistakes. (make, the furniture, wash, the bed, the dishes,

dust,etc.)

5. To check comprehension, ask a student to come to the front

of the room. Have the student select one chore (without telling

anyone what it is) and have him or her act it out.

Have the rest of the class guess what chore it is. Continue

until you have gone through all the chores or until every

student has had a chance to act out one of the phrases.

(If your students are familiar with the present progressive,

they can make their guesses in complete sentences—

for example, “She is sweeping the floor.”)

6.Have students rewrite the correct phrases in their notebooks.

7. Now you can add a grammar element to the activity.

Introduce or review the following adverbs of frequency:

Adverbs of Frequency

(always, often, sometimes, hardly ever, never.)

8. Tell students that the adverbs of frequency :

(always 100%, , often 75%, sometimes 50%,

hardly ever 25%, never 0%.)

9. Write a list of percentages in a column on the board from

largest to smallest. (Remind the class that percentages are approximate, not exact.) Write the adverbs of frequency

in another column— out of order, as in this example:

(always100% sometimes, 75% often, 50%, etc.)

10.Students in pairs, match the percentage to the adverb

of frequency.

11. Go over answers as a class. Have student volunteers

come to the board and draw a line from the percentage to

the matching adverb of frequency. Once you have the correct

answers on the board, have students compare the answers

they came up with and correct any mistakes. (always100%

sometimes, 75%, often, 50% , etc.)

12. Now the class is ready to practice using the target vocabulary in

context. Elicit from students how to ask and answer questions using

the vocabulary and adverbs of frequency they have just learned.

Here is a suggested pattern:

Q: How often do you _____[chore]_____?

A: I _[adverb of frequency]____[chore]_____.

13. Write the target language on the board to be used as a reminder. Explain to students that they will use this language to complete

the next activity.

14. Have students, in pairs, practice asking and

answering questions.

15. Draw the chart on the board and have students

copy it into their notebooks. How often? Chore:

________________always, often, sometimes, hardly ever, never)

16. Put students in groups of eight (or the number of chores

you have on your list).  Assign each student in the group one

of the eight chores.

17. Have students ask and answer questions in their groups

and fill in the chart, as in this example,

where Student A has been assigned the chore

“wash the dishes”:

Student A: “How often do you wash the dishes?”

Student B: “I never wash the dishes.”

Student A puts a mark in the “never” row on the chart.]

18. Students continue asking and answering questions

with every person in the group, putting a mark in the

appropriate row for each response. Students should

also mark their own response on their chart.

Extension

1. After students have completed their charts, have all the students

with the same chore get into a new group. Ask students to

compile the information they have collected onto one chart.

This chart will represent the entire class.

2. Have each group come to the front of the room and share the

results. Reporting structures they might use include the following:

• “Ten of us always wash the dishes.”

• “Ten of the students in this class always wash the dishes.”

3. Create stations around the room for each adverb

of frequency (e.g., always in one corner of the room, often

in another corner). For each chore, ask the class,

“How often do you _________?”

Students go to the correct station based on how often they do that

chore. Students can look around the room and see how often their

classmates do each chore.

They can also have short discussions in their group,

based on these questions: