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Have You Ever Ridden a Camel?
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.
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Chain story – A terrible day!
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 3, "Grammar Focus: Present perfect; already, yet."
Time: 10 minutes. This activity practices telling stories in the past tense.
- Students work in groups. Explain the task: Each group makes up several interesting stories about a terrible day when everything went wrong. One student starts the first story, and then the other students in the group take turns adding sentences to it.
- Model the task, like this:
Teacher: Yesterday was a terrible day! We went to the beach.
Student 1: There was no sun.
Student 2: And it rained for two hours.
Student 3: Then we went to a restaurant for lunch.
Student 4: The food was horrible there.
Student 1: And then . . . .
- Students form groups and do the task. Set a time limit of about five minutes. Go around the class and give help as needed.
- Each group chooses one of their stories. Then groups take turns telling their stories to the class. Which group told the best story?
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Getting to know you – better!
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 10, "Writing: I've never . . ."
Time: 10–15 minutes. This fun activity allows students to get to know their classmates better by asking questions about their past experiences, which may include some regular types of experiences along with some rather unusual ones!
- With the whole class, brainstorm some fun and unusual topics. Write as many phrases as possible on the board using past participles, such as:
| won a prize |
| driven in a snowstorm |
| see a ghost |
| met someone from Russia |
| gone on a safari |
| missed the last train home |
| ridden a donkey |
| gone to a party alone |
| climbed Mt. Fuji |
| eaten spicy Indian food |
- Class activity: Students take turns asking classmates questions starting with "Have you ever . . . ?"
Student 1: Carlos, have you ever won a prize?
Student 2: Yes, I have. I won a speech contest once. Jill, have you ever seen a ghost?
Student 3: Well, I'm not really sure, but one night I saw . . . .
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Game – Hangman
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 10, "Writing: I've never . . ."
Time: 20 minutes. This popular activity can review vocabulary in any unit; it also allows students to practice spelling words. (Note: In Unit 10, the focus could be on past participle verb forms.)
- Students form large groups of five or six. Each group chooses a word from the unit. Point out that this game is somewhat similar to the popular TV game show in North America called Wheel of Fortune.
- Groups take turns going to the board. There, one group draws a hangman diagram and blanks – one blank for each letter of the word they have chosen.
- Other groups take turns guessing which letters are in the word. If a group guesses a correct letter, it is written in the appropriate blank on the board; if it is incorrect, one part of the body is drawn on the hangman's gallows. There are nine body parts, which are drawn in this order: head, neck, left arm, right arm, body, left leg, right leg, left foot, and right foot.
- The object of the game is for a group to guess the correct word before the picture of the hangman's body is completed. The group who guesses the word is the winner and gets to be "it," i.e., has a chance to be at the board. If there is enough classtime, play until every group has won and gotten a chance to be "it."
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Picture story
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 11, "Reading: Taking the risk."
Time: 15–20 minutes. This creative storytelling activity practices the past tense.
Preparation: Ask each student to bring two or three pictures from magazines or newspapers showing interesting people, actions, scenes, and events. The pictures do not need to be related.
- Students form small groups. Tell them to pool their pictures and to lay them out on a desk. They have to link the pictures to tell a story. Encourage students to be creative in making up interesting or unusual stories. If necessary, model how a story might begin by showing how some of the pictures from one group could be linked together.
- Set a time limit of about ten minutes. Move around the class and give help as needed.
- As a class activity, groups take turns telling their stories and the rest of the students ask them questions. After all the groups have finished, take a class vote: Which group told the most interesting story?
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