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A Time to Remember
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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Think fast!
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 4, "Listening."
Time: 5–10 minutes. The goal of this activity is to have students practice making statements or asking questions with pre-selected vocabulary. It provides a fun review of vocabulary and of grammar. This could be done in a group or as a whole class activity. (Note: This activity could be adapted for use with any unit's vocabulary and grammar points.)
Preparation: Choose words from this unit or other words that would be useful for students to review (e.g., in Unit 1, Cycle 1: verb tense – the past tense; verbs – Rollerblade, move, study; nouns – English, countries, immigrants).
- Model how the activity works: Give the class a word and then call on one student to use the word in a statement or in a question; designate the verb tense if that is also a focus. For example:
Teacher: Make a statement in the past tense with the verb move. John.
Student 1: I moved to the United States in 1997.
(Note: Then this student calls out the name of another student , who makes the next sentence.)
Student 1: Hanako?
Student 2: My parents moved to Rio last year.
- See how far students can keep the game going before giving them another word, tense, or type of structure (e.g., question, statement).
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Getting to know you even better
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 5, "Getting to Know You."
Time: 5–10 minutes. This communicative activity gives students another chance to get to know each other better in the first days of a new course.
Preparation: Photocopy the following form or prepare a similar one that elicits general information about your students' educational background and work experience. Alternatively, write either form on the board for students to copy into their notebooks to use.
Name: _____________________________________
Educational Background
High school: _______________________________
University: ________________________________
Other: _____________________________________
Languages studied: _________________________
Other subjects studied: _____________________
Best subject at school: ______________________
Work Experience
Part-time job: ____________________________
Full-time job: _____________________________
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- Explain the activity: Working in new pairs (i.e., different from those who practiced together in Exercise 5 on page 4), students take turns interviewing each other and completing the form about their partners.
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It's the teacher's turn!
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 6, "Word Power: When I was a child . . ."
Time: 5–10 minutes. This activity practices yes/no and Wh-questions with be and do. It also allows students to learn something about you, the teacher.
- Write some questions like these on the board for students to ask you:
Where are you from originally?
Where did you go to school?
Did you major in English?
What languages do you speak?
What do you want us to call you in class?
- Present the questions. Then elicit additional ones and write them on the board.
- Students take turns asking you the questions on the board as well as their own follow-up questions.
Alternative presentation
- Turn this activity into a contest. Divide the class into two, three, or four large groups. Explain the rules: Groups take turns asking you questions. Each group gets one point for each grammatically correct question. After five minutes, the group with the most points wins.
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Sentence-making contest
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 8, "Grammar Focus: used to."
Time: 10–15 minutes. This activity reviews describing people, their careers, and changes in their lives.
Preparation: In the class before the activity is done, each student brings one color magazine picture showing several people doing various activities. Collect the pictures and choose the best ones for this task. The number of pictures should equal the number of groups (e.g., class size 20 = 4 students in each group = 5 pictures needed). Then number each picture (e.g., #1, #2).
- Give each group a picture and explain the game: Students try to make as many different sentences as they can – in three minutes – about the people in the picture. On a separate piece of paper, the group secretary writes down the picture's number and every sentence the group can think up.
- When the first three-minute time limit is up, groups exchange pictures (clockwise around the class) and do the task again with the next picture. On the same piece of paper, the group secretary again writes down the picture's number and all the sentences that the group forms. Continue the activity until every group has written sentences for each picture passed around.
- Now find out which group has written the most sentences for each picture. Then that group holds up the picture while the group secretary reads their sentences aloud to the class.
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How things have changed!
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 12, "Reading: Joan Chen."
Time: 5 minutes. This activity practices used to for talking about changes in a city or country. It is suitable for groups of students who have lived for some time in one city (e.g., their hometown or a place they have moved to and currently live in). Alternatively, the focus could be on a state or a country that a group knows a lot about.
- Divide the class into groups of students who share knowledge about a specific place (e.g., a town, city, state, country). Ask students to think of as many differences as they can between the place as it is today and as it was five or ten years ago.
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