Level Two: Unit 13

A Terrific Book, but a Terrible Movie!

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.

It's the teacher's turn!

Likes and dislikes

Think fast!

Horror story

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It's the teacher's turn!

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 1, "Snapshot: Some of the world's most successful movies."

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.

Likes and dislikes

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 3, "Grammar Focus: Participles as adjectives."

Time: 10 minutes. This activity practices using present and past participles as adjectives.

Write these cues on the board:
Tell students to work individually to write down a sentence about each topic (for a total of five sentences). Model the task by writing several example sentences on the board:
Set a time limit of about five minutes. Students do the task and then compare sentences in pairs. Walk around and give help as needed.
Ask for volunteers to read some of their sentences aloud to the class.

Think fast!

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 4, "Word Power: Reactions."

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).

Horror story

This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 13, "Reading: Star Wars – Three reviews."

Time: 20–30 minutes. This exercise offers additional practice in describing movie plots and gives students a chance to practice collaborative creative writing. This is a chain-story task where the class works together to create an exciting plot for a horror movie. (Note: Alternatively, you or the students could choose another genre for the class to write a movie plot for – a love story, a detective story, a science-fiction story.)

Divide the class into groups of about five students each. Then explain the activity: The class, with students working in groups, will write a movie plot together.
Write the title and the beginning of the story at the top of the board:

Spider Woman This movie is about a woman who accidentally turns into a spider. Dr. Ruth Mindbender is a scientist who is doing medical research at a famous university. One day she discovered an amazing new drug . . . .
Now each group thinks up and writes down two more sentences to continue the story.
Groups take turns reading their two sentences aloud to the class. Then everyone in the class quickly decides (e.g., by voting through a show of hands) which group has the best two sentences. That group gets to write their sentences on the board.
Groups continue to write the story in this interactive way for about ten minutes – or until there is almost no more space to write any more sentences on the board. Then tell each group to think up a good last sentence to end the story, and the class again chooses the best one.