Classroom Activity 7
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Classroom Activity 7
Spring Cleaning
Level:
Upper Beginner/Intermediate
Goals:
To 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 sense
with more than one noun
(e.g., wash the clothes). Once the correct answers
are on the board, have students compare their
answers and correct 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 i
nto 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:
