menu (available for free from the original blog post linked above) was based off of seventh grade Common Core Standards and the Core Competencies for the ESL department at the college where I teach. The level one English Skillology menu (also available for free by clicking the picture or this link) is also based off the Core Competencies of our department, but the Common Core Standards come from the third grade ELA set.
Much of the design was the same, and you can read about that in the first blog post. The method worked well for both the students and myself, so I saw no reason to change it. Reusing the basic design allowed me more time to focus on the activities themselves, and I think there's a good mix of skills represented. Here's a quick overview of the 20 activities: Reading
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vocabulary to the definition, picture, answer, or anything else I chose to put on the other side. My question words match up card set has three different cards. The first card asks the students to match the wh– word with the type of answer it elicits and a picture. The second card asks students to match the wh– word with the correct question (there is a blank line instead of the wh– word). The third card asks students to match the wh– word with a short answer. Again, since we are virtual this semester (and it's looking more and more like next semester will be as well), I created a digital version of the match up cards. The digital version does not require the boards, but all of the matching items are the same. Rather than using rubber bands to indicate their matches, students stretch provided lines from one side to the other.
Once students have gotten relatively familiar with the question words and the answers they each produce, it's time for our first game. Beach Ball Questions is one of my students' favorite games to play, I think because they get to throw a ball around the classroom. All that is required to prep this game is a beach ball and a Sharpie marker. Blow up the ball and use the marker to write a question word in huge letters, one for each section of the ball. Allow the writing to dry, deflate, take to school, reinflate, and you are ready to play. Students gather in a circle and I start the game by tossing the ball in the air and catching it with two hands. Using whatever question word my right thumb is on, I ask a question before tossing the ball to another player. The person who catches the ball must first use a complete sentence to answer my question, then he/she asks a new question that begins with whatever word his/her right thumb is on. Play continues in this manner for as long or short as you like. I encourage students to not repeat questions, and sometimes I will help them think of one if they can't come up with something new. During our question word unit I keep the beach ball at school, and whenever we have an extra couple minutes at the end of class I'll grab it and we'll play for awhile. It's a great way to get out of our seats and practice our speaking and listening skills, as well as our question word vocabulary. The second practice game we like to play (which you can download for free using the links above or in this paragraph) is Escape! The Question Grid. The goal of this game is to move from one side of the grid to the other by asking and answering questions. Students choose one side of the grid (one student per side), and any question word on that side, from which to start. On a student's turn, he/she answers the question asked by the previous student, indicates which square he/she would like to claim (it must have at least one side touching a square which already belongs to the student), and asks a question using the word in the square. If the question is grammatically correct, the student uses his/her dry erase marker to color in the square on the laminated grid. The next player then takes his/her turn. Play continues until one student reaches the opposite side and escapes the grid. A digital version of Escape! The Question Grid is also available. In the digital version students must type their questions onto the provided rectangles, and then drag and drop the rectangle onto the square they are claiming. There is also a variant of the game that includes bridges. The bridges, limited to five per player, can be used to cross over a square previously claimed by an opponent. In order to deploy a bridge, a student must type a complete sentence answer to the question posed on the cover of the square he/she wishes to cross over. The use of the bridge constitutes the player's turn, but does open up more spaces for him/her to claim in the future. Though this game takes a bit more prep work than Beach Ball Questions, and can't be as easily used as a time filler at the end of a lesson, it is still a very fun practice game. I especially like it because we can play it over and over again since the questions and answers change every time. As I said in the beginning, these are only the resources, activities, and games I use in the initial stages of my question words unit. On Thursday I'll share some of the more advanced activities and games we use, including a couple more free ones. Happy teaching, everyone! On Monday I shared with you one of the fun games that my students and I play to practice prepositions, Mousy Prepositions (paper, digital). Of course prepositions is not an easy topic and we practice it quite a bit, so we need more than one game. Today I'd like to share with you three other activities that my students particularly enjoy when learning prepositions: Going Buggy for Prepositions, Preposition Pictionary, and Lego Preposition Build. Going Buggy for Prepositions Going Buggy for Prepositions is an activity is based off of The Insect Game, which I read about in a book that I've long forgotten the title of. To play you will need plastic toy insects, a set of noun cards, and a set of preposition cards. The free download linked above, and via the button below, will give you noun and preposition cards you can print. I recommend printing the noun and preposition cards on a different colors of paper to make separating them easier. Place students in groups of 2-4 and give each a set of supplies (at least one insect and set of cards per group, but my students always want their own insects). On their turn, each student draws a noun card and a preposition card. The student must then make his/her insect demonstrate the chosen preposition with the selected noun. If he/she is able to do so, he/she gets a point. This game is not quite as exciting as those that follow, but it does get the students up and moving, which is generally a good thing. Preposition Pictionary I wish I had some great inspiration story to share with this game but, as is often the case, it was born out of desperation. There was some kind of problem in the building, nothing serious, but all students were told to remain in their current classrooms until further notice. Since we'd already been together for over an hour that day, the students quickly began to get restless. I wanted our time together to be productive in some way, but I didn't want it to be boring. We'd been practicing prepositions, but had already played Going Buggy for Prepositions, and I was struggling to keep students engaged. One of the students started doodling on the board and another started trying to guess what she was drawing. Then it hit me, Prepositions Pictionary! I grabbed the prepositions cards from Going Buggy for Prepositions, quickly divided the students into two teams, and explained the basic rules of Pictionary to them. On a team's turn, one person would come up, draw a preposition card and, without showing it to anyone but me, illustrate the preposition on the board. Their teammates would then have to try and guess the preposition being drawn. If they were successful before time ran out (I gave them 60 seconds), they got a point. If not, the other team got one chance to guess. They LOVED it! When the announcement came dismissing them to the next class they actually groaned aloud. From then on Preposition Pictionary was the game they begged to play when we had extra time. One enterprising group even revised the rules because there was a field trip and only three people were in attendance. They decided to play as individuals. If you guessed the preposition you got two points and the right to be the next illustrator. The illustrator whose illustration lead to the correct guess received one point. Lego Preposition Build Who doesn't love Legos? I always kept some in my classroom and even my middle schoolers liked just sitting at a table (or on the floor) and building things while chatting quietly with a friend. Some might say they were wasting time, but I think it was a great brain break, and since they were usually talking in English, in an ESL classroom, it was good speaking practice. We also used the Legos in our math lessons (especially when learning fractions), but I always wanted to use them in a grammar lesson. Then one day I received an email with picture instructions for building some object out of Legos and it hit me: prepositions! That summer I looked for the best deal I could find on Legos and bought some extra (This Classic Set was the best deal I found, especially since I had the time to wait for a sale.). I also saved and printed all of the building directions I could find, which ended up being 50 in total. I have uploaded the pdfs to a Google Drive folder and the button below this post will allow you to view the folder. You will want to either download the files you want, or save a copy to your own drive, to ensure continued access. By the time school rolled around that fall, I was ready to go. The students partnered off and arranged themselves at tables around the room. I gave a bin of Legos to each set of four students and one of each pair received a set of picture instructions, which they were not to show their partner. The student with the instructions then told their partner which Legos to choose and how to arrange them to form the object in the picture. Since the picture instructions already had the process broken down into steps the student could concentrate on giving clear instructions without worrying about how the object was built. After the building phase was complete students compared the picture to the final product to see how they did. The next day (or the same day when I had a block schedule) the partners switched roles and completed the activity again, but with a new picture. The students loved it and practiced a lot more than just prepositions. The next year when some of my repeat students heard we were going to work on prepositions again they specifically asked to do this activity. Well, to quote the Looney Toons, "That's all folks!" Those are my four best non-worksheet preposition practice activities. Unfortunately I've only managed to translate Mousy Prepositions to the digital world, but I'm still thinking about the others. If I get hit with inspiration, or discover a great resource, I'll let you know. In the meantime, happy teaching!
At the most basic level, English Skillology is a choice menu. It includes four activities for each of the five skill areas in ESL: reading, writing, speaking, listening, and grammar. Inspired by a Monopoly-style choice menu of someone else's, I decided to use a game board format for my own. Each skill is a side (grammar is in the corners), and has its own color. Students are then free to choose the number and type of activities they want to complete by the end of the semester. If a student were to complete all of the activities, he/she would earn 120 extra credit points.
I designed this particular board for my high intermediate students (I hope to create at least three more boards, one for each of the proficiency levels I teach.). In creating the activities I consulted two different sets of objectives: seventh grade Common Core ELA and the Core Competencies for my department at the college where I teach. Here's a quick overview of the 20 activities: Reading
So how did I create this extra credit menu? In the most general terms, here are the steps I took:
I'm really excited about this particular project. It was a lot of work to put together but I believe it will be very valuable for my students. I especially like how it allows them to earn extra credit by participating in meaningful learning activities. Don't forget to download your own copy of English Skillology from Teachers Pay Teachers today--it's free! |
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