THIS activity focuses on using a game as a means of motivation to get students discussing their favorite types of music and musicians.
Step 1: Review vocabulary by asking students about a number of musicians, names of instruments, words used in speaking about music.
Step 2: Divide the students into small groups and give them the “Music: True or False” handout (see below).
Step 3: Ask students to discuss each statement and decide if it is true or false, giving reasons for their decision.
Step 4: Go through each statement, selecting a student from each group to give their opinion — making sure that they state their reasoning for the decision.
Step 5: Make the exercise competitive by giving one point for each correct answer, one point for an explanation and an extra point for a grammatically correct explanation.
Step 6: Extend exercise by having students create “True or False” statements of their own to be shared with other groups.
Handout
Decide if each statement is true or false. Explain to members of your group why you think the answer is true or false.
* The Back Street Boys were originally named “The Boys Next Door”.
* Elvis Presley said, “I don’t know anything about music”.
* Rock and Roll music was first approved of by the US Government because of its patriotic message during World War II.
* The Spice Girls have all been trained as classical musicians. Each member of the group is not only a wonderful singer, but can also play an instrument at a professional level.
* In 1994, singer Paul McCartney sent back his razor, shaving cream, and other products to the Gillette Company to protest the manufacturer’s use of animals in the product testing.
THIS oral story creating and relating activity works best with intermediate level and above students.
Step 1: Before class, the teacher fills paper bags with five to six random objects. You will need one bag for each group of four students. To make this activity interesting, the objects should be diverse and unrelated to each other. An example of a diverse content bag is a postcard from Singapore, a can-opener, a candle, a surgical mask, a theater playbill and a teddy bear.
Step 2: Ask each group of students to open the bag, take out objects and invent an oral story incorporating all the objects found in the bag. Here’s an example based on the bag items described above.
“One morning Shirley received a postcard from her old college friend, Louise. The card was from Singapore, and in it, Louise had invited Shirley to come for a visit. Shirley flew to Singapore and met Louise. They went to a play at a local theater the first night. It was a murder mystery and the ladies felt a bit nervous when walking back to Louise’s home after the show. When they got home Louise tried to turn on the light, but there was no electricity. She lit a candle and …”
Step 3: Tell students not to write and read the stories. This allows spontaneous changes, and for group members to jump in and correct each other or add details in the final telling.
Step 4: When the groups have finished, each group shares their story with the whole class. Each student in the group should tell one part and show the related object to others when it is mentioned in the story.
Step 5: Watch out for those clever souls who would say, “Shelley packed her suitcase for Singapore. In it she put a candle, a can opener, a teddy bear…”
* Variation
Step 1: The teacher makes up a crime that has been committed, for example， “Professor Smith was found dead under a table, Lady Smith’s diamonds stolen from her bedroom drawer”.
Step 2: The groups are then told that the items in their bags are clues to the crime collected by a detective. The story that the groups come up with then are the details of the crime.
THIS exercise requires a short text that you can read out loud to the class in about five minutes.
Step1: Hand out copies of the text.
Step2: Tell your students that as you read the text, they should listen and follow along on the page underlining words or phrases that particularly impress them.
Step 3: After you have finished reading, allow five minutes for you and your students to “say back” the words or phrases that they have underlined.
Step 4: Give some time for discussion, posing questions like: What does this passage seem to be about?
Step5: After discussing, ask students to take a word or phrase in the passage and use it as a starting point for a story in which they write anything that comes to mind.
Step 6: Ask several students to read their stories. The others should again write down words and phrases that impress them. Emphasize that it is crucial that they write a number of words and phrases for each piece, as they will be working with these words and phrases later.
Step 7: Ask students to look at the words and phrases they have collected and to make a poem out of them. They need not use all of them but they can only use these words and phrases.
Step 8: Give them five to ten minutes to do this and then ask for volunteers to read their poems out loud.
