Using "These are the Daves I Know" to teach Articles to Refer to Groups

(TESOL Materials--Articles to Refer to Groups, Using Songs to Illustrate Grammar Points)

Picture: These are Daves

Video: These are the Daves I Know

Recently, when teaching articles to refer to groups, I used the song "The Daves I Know" (W) from the kids in the hall.

First, I showed the students a picture of famous Daves.  I told them "These are Daves".  I then asked them which Daves they knew.  (In my case, because I was teaching in Vietnam, my students knew almost none of the famous Daves.  But it still generated some discussion.)

I then told them that I would like to tell them about the Daves that I knew, and I played the song.

Afterwards, I wrote on the white board:

These are Daves.

These are the Daves I know.

...and I asked the students to try to guess what the difference in the grammar was.  

Kids in the Hall: The Daves I Know

Kahoot Game: Articles to refer to groups

This is a Kahoot game for articles used to refer to groups.  

I made this game when I was teaching out of Reflect Reading & Writing 6, and this game was essentially just me converting two of the textbook exercises (exercise C and exercise D from pages 165-166) into a Kahoot game.  However, I hope that this Kahoot game can still be used as an independent resource for any teacher who is teaching a lesson on articles to refer to groups.

Because I was using the Reflect Reading & Writing 6 textbook as my basis when I created this game, I imported some questions that the textbook uses, but which I'm not entirely sure qualify as "articles used to refer to groups".

Question 1 (world vs. the world) I think could arguably be classified as Geographic Use of "the".

Questions 5 (the deaf) and 7 (the elderly) are examples of The+ Nominalized Adjectives, but Reflect Reading & Writing 6 includes  the + normalized adjectives in with articles used to refer to groups.

Articles to Refer to Groups

(TESOL Ideas and Worksheets Subdivisions)

* Kahoot Game: Articles to refer to groups

* Using "These are the Daves I Know" to teach Articles to Refer to Groups

One of the textbooks I taught out of (Reflect Reading & Writing 6) included the + nominalized adjectives as part of "Articles to Refer to Groups".  (What do you think?  Does the use of "the" + nominalized adjectives count as an example of "Articles to Refer to Groups"?)  At any rate, below is my activity for the + nominalized adjectives.

* The+ Nominalized Adjectives with a Joke

The+ Nominalized Adjectives with a Joke

(TESOL Materials--Articles, Using Jokes to Illustrate Grammar Points)

Google Slides: slides, pub

This joke is repurposed from my collection of jokes.  I use it in my class to teach  t"The + nominalized adjectives".

In class, I run through it as you would do any other joke/riddle.  I give students the question, challenge them to solve the riddle, and then show them the answer.

After giving them the answer, I highlight some of the sentences like "The poor have it" and "The rich need it".  I ask the students to identify what part of speech "rich" and "poor" are.  If the students say that "rich" and "poor" are adjectives, I then ask the how "the rich" and "the poor" are being used in the sentence.

I then give them the rule that "The + adjective" can refer to a group of people.

Sticky Ball Game for the Geographic Use of "the"

(TESOL Materials--Geographic use of "the")

Google slides: slides, pub

[Notes: This is a sticky ball game that uses gap-fill sentences.]

GEOGRAPHIC USE OF 'THE'  by teacheralinefabron

This is a Kahoot game I found for the geographic use of "the".  I used it in my class, and I found it worked well.

I recently taught a lesson on the geographic use of "the".  I was unfortunately unable to find a good model text on the geographic "the" on Youtube, and in the time I had to prep for this class, I didn't have time to create one.  So I resorted to just finding videos that explained the grammar.  I played parts of these videos for my class, and asked them to take note of when to use the article "the" with geographic features.

If I ever teach this lesson again, I will try to find time to make a better model text.  But for now, this is what I have.

Article THE with geographical Names - English Club

Geographic Use of "the"

(TESOL Ideas and Worksheets Subdivisions)

* Video for geographic use of "the"

* Kahoot game for geographic use of "the"

* Sticky Ball Game for the Geographic Use of "the"

Here is a link to a Kahoot on articles: Articles: a / an, the, no article Quiz by iosonohec.

A fool and his money are soon parted

(Grammar Questions I Couldn't Answer)

Okay, yet another grammar question I created for myself.  Yet again this is from my proverbs lessons.

This one has to do with articles.

Perhaps if I was smart, I would just leave the articles alone, and not attempt to analyze the use of articles in all of the proverb lessons.  Because man-oh-man, does the use of articles get confusing in English.  (If I had started this Grammar Questions I Couldn't Answer series 10 years ago, I bet I'd have a whole blog full of questions about articles by now.  I can't even count the number of times questions about articles have stumped me in class.)

However, Scott Thornbury does not shy away from analyzing articles in his Beyond the Sentence book, and since I was using that book as inspiration for my proverb lessons, I tried to follow his example and have the students analyze all the articles.

In "The pen is mightier than the sword" --Slideshow (slides, pub), Worksheet (docs, pub)--I had my students analyze why the proverb used the definitive article.  i.e. why was it "the pen" and "the sword" instead of "a pen" and "a sword"  .  The answer I directed them to was that the proverb was referring to things in general.  It wasn't just that one particular pen was mightier than one particular sword.  It was that pens were mightier than swords in general.

So, then, if that's the explanation I gave for "The pen is mightier than the sword", what then to do about "A fool and his money".  Why isn't it "the fool and his money" ?

I thought this over for a while, and the answer I used for that lesson was that "the" would refer to all fools in general.  But that wouldn't work here, because not all fools have money.  Some fools have money, and some don't.  So we need to look at one particular case in which a fool happens to have money.  Thus "a fool".    And that's the answer I used for the lesson --Slideshow (slides, pub), Worksheet (docs, pub),

But that was just what I came up with out of desperation.  I'm not 100% sure I'm analyzing it right.

Naruto PowerPoint Game for Articles

(TESOL Worksheets--nouns)

Google: drive, slides, pub
The game design is by Stemarty.  The questions are a mixture of my own sentences, sentences from English Grammar in Use by Raymond Murphy (A) and sentences from Life Pre-Intermediate Textbook.   The students must fill in the gap with: a, an, the, or zero article.
The answers are not on the PowerPoint, so the teacher will have to provide feedback.

Articles

(TESOL Ideas and Worksheets Subdivisions)

* Naruto PowerPoint Game for Articles

* Test-Teach-Test Lesson for Articles

* LINK: Kahoot on Articles

* Teaching Articles with Nominalized Adjectives with a Joke

* I often use The Gruffalo to illustrate that the first time something is mentioned, the indefinite article is used (e.g. "a mouse"), but the subsequent times that thing is mentioned, the definite article is used.

Geographic use of "the":

* Video for geographic use of "the"

* Kahoot game for geographic use of "the"

* Sticky Ball Game for the Geographic Use of "the"

Articles to Refer to Groups:

* Kahoot Game: Articles to refer to groups

* Using "These are the Daves I Know" to teach Articles to Refer to Groups

* The+ Nominalized Adjectives with a Joke