Level One: Unit 5

Tell Me About Your Family.

The activities below provide fun exercises for the entire class when you have extra time. They are designed to be taught with specific exercises in this unit. Click on an activity in the list below or scroll down the page.

Scrambled letters

Guess the word

People in the news

Game – Twenty questions

Game – What's the question?

Go to the Resources Page for This Unit

Scrambled letters

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 1, "Word Power: The family."

Time: 5–10 minutes. This activity can be used with any unit for a fun vocabulary review and spelling exercise.

Preparation: Near the end of a cycle, choose ten words and scramble the letters of each one. Use the Unit Summaries in the back of the Student's Book to help you. If possible, choose ten words that are related to one another in some way (e.g., words for jobs in Unit 2; words for clothing in Unit 3; all nouns).

In class, write the scrambled words on the board. To make the task easier, give students the first letter:

1.	d e n f i r	(f ___________________________)
2.	t s a e p r n	(p ___________________________)
3.	e t t u s n d	(s ___________________________)
4.	e n m	(m ___________________________)
5.	r e t e h	(t ___________________________)
6.	l e a m	(m ___________________________)
7.	g e n i l s	(s ___________________________)
8.	s l a c s	(c ___________________________)
9.	e w n o m	(w ___________________________)
10.	k e n m i c a n	(n ___________________________)

Pairs rearrange the letters to find the words. Check students' answers.

Answers

friend
parents
student
men
there
male
single
class
women
nickname

Guess the word

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 1, "Word Power: The family."

Time: 10–15 minutes. This activity practices giving definitions and descriptions.

Preparation: Use index cards or pieces of paper (approx. 3" X 5") to make a set of vocabulary cards (around 20), with one word on each card. The words should be any that were generated while studying a certain exercise or cycle (e.g., here, the Word Power on page 86).

Divide the class into groups of four or five and place the cards facedown on a desk at the front of the class.
Explain the activity: Groups take turns. One student from a group comes to the front of the class and picks up a card. That student gives clues (i.e., short definitions or descriptions, synonyms, antonyms) to his or her group who, in turn, tries to guess the word on the card.
Model the game with the word cliff, like this:

It's higher than the low land next to it.
It's often on a coast above a beach.
It's the opposite of canyon.
Now start the activity. If a group can't guess the word in 30 seconds, the student gives the answer. Then a student from another group takes a turn. The winner is the group that guesses the most correct words.

People in the news

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 1, "Word Power: The family."

Time: 15 minutes. In this communication activity, each group chooses an interesting or a famous person who has been in the news recently. The group must pool their information on the person. One student in each group acts as secretary and takes notes. Students start like this: "Let's talk about . . . ." or "Well, how about discussing . . . ?"

Group secretaries use their notes to tell the class about the person that they discussed.

Game – Twenty questions

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 1, "Word Power: The family."

Time: 10 minutes. In this popular game, students practice asking yes/ no questions in the simple present tense while trying to guess the names of famous living people.

Students form groups. Explain the game: One student thinks of a famous person and then answers the group's questions with "Yes" or "No" about that person. The winner is either the student who correctly guesses the name of the person or the student who answers twenty questions before anyone in the group correctly guesses the name.

Game – What's the question?

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 5, "Grammar Focus: Present continuous."

Time: 10–15 minutes. This activity reviews Wh-questions.

Preparation: Each student will need three blank cards.

Divide the class into two teams – Teams A and B. (Note: This activity can also be done in groups.) Give each student three blank cards.
Students think of three statements that could be answers to Wh-questions (e.g., She works in a zoo. He's a flight attendant for United. I study dance at UCLA.). Then students write one statement on each card. Walk around the class and give help when needed.
Collect all of the students' cards and put them in a pile facedown.
Team A starts: One student picks up a card and reads it aloud to a student from Team B. That student then tries to make a suitable Wh-question for it. Students on both teams decide whether the question is correct or not. If it is, Team B wins a point; if it isn't, a student from Team A tries to correct it. If the correction is acceptable, Team A gets the point instead. Keep a tally of the scores on the board. The team with the most points wins.

Guess who!

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 5, "Grammar Focus: Present continuous."

Time: 5–10 minutes. This activity practices yes/no questions. It could be adapted for any unit.

Have students form groups, or divide the class into two teams.
Explain the activity: One student thinks of someone in the classroom. The other students try to guess who it is by asking yes/no questions. The student who guesses correctly has the next turn. Model the task, like this:

Teacher: I'm thinking of someone in the classroom.
Student 1: Is it a man?
Teacher: Yes.
Student 2: Is he sitting near the window?
Teacher: No.
Student 3: Does he wear glasses?
Teacher: Yes.
Student 4: Does he have curly black hair and a red shirt?
Teacher: Yes.
Student 5: Is it Eduardo?
Teacher: Yes, it is! Now it's your turn.
Student 5: OK. I'm thinking of someone . . . .
Now students play the game in groups or teams.

Who am I?

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 5, "Grammar Focus: Present continuous."

Time: 10–15 minutes. This activity practices yes/no questions.

Preparation: Cut out magazine pictures (one for each student ) of well-known people that students are sure to know (e.g., famous entertainers, TV personalities, politicians, people currently in the news).

Introduce or review the names for different kinds of entertainers (e.g., actor, actress, singer, musician) and for other famous people (e.g., politician, government leader, president, prime minister, king, TV personality, talk show host).
Ask each student to come to the front of the class. Pin or tape a picture to the student's back without him or her seeing it. If possible, use pictures of women for female students and pictures of men for male students.
Explain the task: Each student tries to guess whose picture is on his or her back. Students can use only yes/no questions to find out who it is.
Model the task by asking a student to pin a picture on your back (e.g., the picture here is of Boris Yeltsin):

Teacher: Am I an entertainer?
Student: No, you aren't.
Teacher: Am I a politician?
Student: Yes, you are.
Teacher: Do I live in North America?
Student: No, you don't.
Teacher: Do I speak Russian?
Student: Yes, you do.
Teacher: Am I President Yeltsin?
Student: Yes, you are!
Now students move around the class trying to identify their pictures. When a student correctly guesses the person's name, he or she sits down.
Stop the activity after about ten minutes. Find out how many students guessed their person's name correctly.

Game – Tic-Tac-Toe

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 8, "Grammar Focus: Determiners."

Time: 5–10 minutes. This activity practices making past tense questions and statements with regular and irregular verbs. It can be adapted for use with any unit's verb forms or vocabulary.

Draw a grid with nine squares on the board (i.e., 3 rows by 3 columns). Ask students to call out past tense verbs (e.g., drove, enjoyed, saw) and write them on the grid.
Divide the class into two teams – Team X and Team O. Team X starts by choosing a verb and making either a question or a statement with it. If it is not correct, Team O gets a chance to use the same word in a question or statement. If Team O makes a correct sentence, write an O on the grid. Then it is Team O's turn. The game continues until one team gets tic-tac-toe (i.e., three Xs or Os together in a row, in a column, or diagonally through the grid).
Optional: This game could also be played in pairs or groups, which would give each student more chances to make questions or sentences.

Game – Word Bingo

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 10, "Reading: The changing family."

Time: 10–15 minutes. This activity reviews vocabulary and spelling, and practices listening for and writing down key words. It can easily be used with any unit.

Make up a list of 24 words from Unit 5. Then show students how to make a Bingo card on an 8½" X 11" sheet of paper with 25 spaces on it, like this:
Dictate the words from your list: First, say the word and spell it. Then use it in a sentence, like this:

Teacher: Family. F-A-M-I-L-Y. There are three in my family.
Students listen and write down each word inside a box in random order on their Bingo cards.
One by one, randomly call out the words from your list. Students find each word on their card and circle it. (Note: Check the word off on your own list so that no words are repeated. This will also help when checking a student's card later, after he or she gets "Bingo.")
The first student to get five circled words in a row in any direction (including the "Free" space) shouts "Bingo!" Ask the student to read aloud the five circled words. Check them against the original list. If all the words are correct, that student is the winner.