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TESOL Materials--
Comprehensible Input,
Reading,
Writing,
Topic Lessons,
Time Killers and Time Fillers)
Input | Productive Activity |
Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day Notes: The pre and post vocabulary slides are one of my less inspired ideas. Probably best to skip the vocabulary and jump right to the beginning of the story. This is true of the subsequent slideshows as well. | Students write about their own bad day Notes: This can be a real bad day or an imaginary bad day, but it’s best if the tone is humorous rather than sad. Discourage students from writing about something tragic like the death of a family member. |
Fortunately by Remy Charlip | Write a story in the same style |
Because a Little Bug Went Ka-Choo | Write a story in the same style |
That's Good! That's Bad by Margery Cuyler | Write a story in the same style |
Fox in Socks | Running Dictation. Or, alternatively, give students the transcript and have them try to read it aloud to a partner as fast as possible. |
Where the Wild Things Are | Make Your Own Wild Thing |
Rosie’s Walk | Write Your Own Story and Draw Picture |
Choose any picture book from this folder. Read half of the story, but don’t read the ending. | Students write their own endings. Notes: This can theoretically work with any story, but in the past I’ve had good results using The Cat in the Hat (stop at slide 381), and The Gruffalo (stop at slide 162) |
Choose any comic book from this folder. Read part of the story, but don’t read the ending. | Students draw and write and their own endings on comic book paper. Notes: This can work with any story, but in particular suggest doing Dracula up to the end of part 1, or The Time Machine up to the end of part 1--or part 2, Treasure Island up to the end of part 1, Or A Cool Deal up to slide 95 |
Choose any fairy tale from this folder. Have the students read the first half of the story, but don’t read the ending. | Students write their own endings. |
The Gingerbread Man and The Stinky Cheese Man (Alternatives--Fractured Fairy Tales or The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig) | Students write their own subversion of a fairy tale. |
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (online here or here).
Note: This can be copied onto a word document and printed--example HERE (select 4 pages per sheet when printing). Or it can be read online. It’s not necessary to read the whole thing. Some of it will give the flavor. | Discuss the similarities and differences with Vietnamese schools. Then students write the Vietnamese version of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”. (They can also do this as a comic book). |
The Monkey’s Paw | Students write a sequel in which a new owner acquires the Monkey’s Paw. |
Reader's Theater Scripts | Students are assigned parts, and in their groups, read it aloud or act out their part. |
Using Film Clips to Practice Pronunciation--rules 1. clip--script 2. clip--script 3. clip--script | Students practice pronunciation with the script. Possibly students find clips of their own favorite movies online, and practice imitating the pronunciation of those clips |
Jokes | Students come up with their own jokes, then the classmates try to guess the punchline |
General Knowledge Quiz (Hard, Easy) Notes: Draw Grid on Whiteboard, but don’t show students the questions. Students choose a box on the grid, and then hear the question. Hurricane—the team loses all their points Rocket—team has the option of destroying all the points of one of the other teams Arrow—team has the option of swapping score totals with another team.
| Students make their own general knowledge quiz for the other teams |
Ideas for Feedback on the Writing:
Students stand up in front of the class and read their stories aloud
The teacher collects the stories, and the teacher reads them out
Post the stories up around the classroom, and do a gallery walk. Students then go back to their tables and vote on the best story.
In my experience, the success of each method of feedback varies depending on the character of the class. I’ve had some classes where students had a lot of laughs standing up and reading their stories to the class, and some classes where students reacted with horror to the idea of being asked to read their stories to the class. Use your own judgment.
I don’t give a lot of grammar feedback on the stories, because I view them as primarily a fluency and creativity exercise. But I collect them after the class finishes, and try to write a short little personalized message to each student to show them I had read and appreciated the story. (e.g. “Excellent story Ha. This made me laugh. I liked the part where…”).
I may also take a couple sentences from each story (one correct and one incorrect from each student), put them on a word document, and do a grammar auction with them in the subsequent class. But I wouldn’t do any more grammar correction than that.
Notes: This document is a collection of materials that consist of one piece of input and a corresponding production prompt.
This is a continuation of my ongoing effort to make studying English more interesting by getting away from the textbook and giving students enjoyable input. In the past, I've done this by doing a little bit of a movie each lesson (see my
movie worksheets) or doing part of an ongoing story each lesson (see for example
Bone or
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH).
However, recently, I've been moving away from an ongoing story or movie for a couple of reasons:
1) Previously I had been teaching 8-12 year olds, and they were quite happy to do many ongoing movies or storybooks, but now I'm teaching primarily teenagers, and I've discovered that teenagers have more niche interests, and it's difficult to find a movie or story that everyone likes.
2) Some of my classes now I only see once a week, and therefore it is difficult to keep the ongoing story fresh in their memory between classes.
So, I've switched to using input that is self-contained. i.e. Instead of a long story that stretches several lessons, we do a shorter story that is only one lesson.
And then all of these inputs are combined with a production activity.
The
Google Doc was put together for the purpose of sharing these activities with my colleagues, and thus doesn't contain any links back to this blog. But all of these activities have been linked before on this blog. The relevant links are as follows:
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