Stress that the sentence must be true. Flip Grid in the Foreign Language Classroom, Digital Can Do Statements in the Language Classroom, Virtual World Language Classrooms (with or without Bitmojis), French & Spanish Learn, Practice, Apply Activities, Foreign Language Vocabulary Review and Practice with Google Slides™, Digital Google Slides™ Activities to Focus on Foreign Language Verb Accuracy, Digital Tool to Support Foreign Language Sentence Creation, Moving Student Foreign Language Writing from Novice to Intermediate, Suggestions for Foreign Language Choice Board Options, Choice Boards by Communication Mode in the Foreign Language Class, Foreign Language Speaking Activity, In-Class or Distance Learning, Using the Gouin Series in the Foreign Language Classroom, Bloom's (updated) Taxonomy in the Language Classroom, Foreign Language Card Games to Practice Verb Forms and Vocabulary. Task-based language teaching is a student-centered approach to second language instruction. How many short/long sentences were used ...? Foreign language. The purpose of that would be to make students aware of not only the process of writing (drafts) but also the fact that when they are more aware of their audiences, they could manipulate the language they use for the purpose of writing. Give each picture a letter and each description a number, and ask students to match them. The next lesson could be spent re-writing the paragraph again based on the questions asked the last time. The Purpose: This activity encourages students to see the poetry in the everyday language around them, while helpfully reinforcing their understanding of some of the conventions of the genre. This activity brings up a lot of further activities attached to this. This activity  can be done in small groups of 4-5 or with the entire class playing in teams. How many simple sentences are there in the various paragraphs? sister/brother who is 4 years old; the principal of the school; a scientist; your fellow student; your teacher; your sister/brother who studies Economics at the University, etc. If it is a more analytical group, ask students to look at sentence structure (simple, complex, compound). Kids practice writing the Arabic letter Fā' in all forms to learn how to create fluid Arabic calligraphy. And many more ... Ask students to reflect on the types of words, expressions they used for the different audiences. The Process: Encourage students to ‘scavenge’ their school, home, and outside community for snippets of language they can compile into a piece of poetry or a poetic collage. Steps Are the objects described based on their function or their form, colour, and so on? In other words, what kind of information is included in the paragraph? I am guilty of asking students to "write each vocabulary word in a sentence" when the sentences are… The goal is the completion of… When they enter the room, students choose 2 or 3 cards and complete a prompt based on the card. As teachers we need to provide opportunities for students to create with language. They can do this on a slip of paper or a small white board. Introduction; Lesson 1; Lesson 2. Preliminary step Pair students up and give them 5 numbers (between 1-40) and the pairs set out to find the cards with their numbers. So, I got to work on a template and used it to create Zut and Caramba cards on lots of vocabulary and language structure topics. Therefore, the description as genre is better that way. The above activity is from Enikõ Csomay. When students get back to a whole class format, ask the following questions (or similar to these being very focused on content, form and discourse features): What words were used for the various audiences for ...? You can also practice grammar with this activity by requiring students to use a certain structure, for example "There is/are ...". Continue until everybody's had each picture. 3rd grade. sister/brother who is 4 years old; the principal of the school; a scientist; your fellow student; your teacher; your sister/brother who studies Economics at the University, etc. Variation In this activity you’ll share a couple of folk tales from the … Give each student a picture (their topic can be anything). Once chosen, the player (or team) can do various things to keep the card depending on the proficiency level of the students. Variations on a theme - describing pictures Follow-up activity The next lesson could be spent re-writing the paragraph again based on the questions asked the last time. While students were able to produce language rather well with this on-the-fly type resources I wanted to up my game a little with this activity. This is… What words were used for the various audiences for ...? Or, you could write for different purposes. Give out task cards, on which you tell the students which audience they need to be writing a paragraph describing the teacher's desk in the classroom. The next lesson could be spent re-writing the paragraph again based on the questions asked the last time. For instance write a poem, a description, a narrative of the table. How is information organised in the paragraph? The importance of teaching and learning vocabulary in context is spreading. Jan 19, 2015 - The importance of teaching and learning vocabulary in context is spreading. We need to keep this in mind as well when students write. Ask students to form pairs or groups of three. (The marked building on their maps is their house.). Free interactive exercises to practice online or download as pdf to print. Reflections Advantage: students need to describe their own desks which cannot be seen by the other student. We need to keep this in mind as well when students write. Rather than identify images the prompts require uses these various language structures. It worked very well for us! How is the description following the patterns of description in terms of space, function of objects, etc? English as a Second Language (ESL) worksheets and online activities. Design an activity set that helps learners focus both on content and form (accuracy) and which has real-life applicability. When the letters are finished, the students 'send' them to their pen-friends, who try to find the building on the map based on the description they got. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Here's a short description of the activities you can find on this page. As I said above I like resources that can be used at any proficiency level.