Joel Swagman (Reviews / TESOL): time killers and time fillers

Showing posts with label time killers and time fillers. Show all posts

Saturday, August 24, 2024

The Balloon Debate

(TESOL Ideas--Communicative Follow Up, Time Killers and Time Fillers, Speaking)

Sample: docs, pub

"The Balloon Debate" is a classic ESL activity. I've mentioned it once before (in this post here), and for a detailed description of how to run this activity in class, you can see this post: The Balloon Debate: An Integrated ESL Classic in 6 Easy Steps. It's often used in ESL classrooms as just a generic speaking activity (i.e. just a way to get students to practice their speaking fluency). In this capacity, it can also be used as a Time Filler if you find yourself with 30 minutes at the end of a lesson that you don't know what to do with.

The classic premise is that there is a hot air balloon with a number of people on it that is sinking because it is too heavy. One person needs to sacrifice themselves by jumping out of the air balloon (and falling to their deaths) in order to save the others.

There are profiles created of each person. The students read the profiles, and decide which person in the group they would decide to sacrifice (e.g. who is more valuable? The politician or the literature teacher? The old doctor or the young student?, etc)

This can be done as a role play in which the students are each assigned a role, and must argue for their survival. Or it can be done as outside observers, in which the students are all examining the same profiles, and arriving at a decision together (with no one profile being represented by any individual student.)

There are any number of variations that can be done on the situation. One classic example is a deserted island scenario. Possibly the individuals are on a lifeboat that is heading towards a deserted island, and need to sacrifice someone to keep the lifeboat afloat. In this case, when evaluating which member of the group must go, the students need to think not about the member's value to society generally, but about their specific value in helping the group to survive on the island.

Or, as in the example I linked to above, the concept could be adapted to deciding which person will be fired from a company. (In this scenario, the company needs to cut costs by letting someone go, but hasn't yet decided who will get the boot.)

As I mentioned in a previous post, Balloon Debates are often great for Communicate Follow Ups. This activity could be directly adapted to a reading or listening text using the characters from the reading or listening. Or, it could be loosely adapted as just a "choose which one is out" activity. (e.g. again, sticking with the theme of travel, a follow up to a reading and listening text on travel could be: you are going on a camping trip. Here are six items. You can only bring 5. With your partner, decide which item you are going to leave behind.)

Below is an example of using a Balloon Debate for a Communicative Follow Up. This is from Reflect Listening & Speaking 5, Unit 4, Listening 2: Effective Leadership Skills p.64-68. It is based on the Semco Company which is featured in that listening text. The students are put into groups of six, and are each assigned a role as one of the Semco Employees. They must discuss their value to the company, and at the end, vote to decide who will get fired.

Cut up and give to students. These are all workers in one group at Semco. They need to fire someone to save money. The group decides who will get fired.

IT Support

You are responsible for making sure that all the computers and company databases keep working.

Sales

You are responsible for selling the product to the customer.

Product Development

You are responsible for thinking of the next product, and then making the product.

Customer Care

Your job is to keep in touch with the current customers to make sure they're happy with the product.

Accounting

Your job is to keep track of all the money going in and out and make sure the books are balanced.

Property Management

You are responsible for everything to do with the office building--keeping it clean, keeping the water and electricity on, repairing anything that gets broken, etc.

Friday, April 05, 2024

The Gingerbread Man and The Stinky Cheese Man: Write Your Own Twisted Fairy Tale

(TESOL Materials--Time Fillers, Writing, Storytime, Interesting Input plus Production Prompts)

Google Drive Folder HERE

Slideshow: slides, pub

Worksheet: docs, pub

This is the latest entry in my Interesting Input plus Production Prompts collection.

The input is a reading of The Gingerbread Man (link to PDF HERE). Then, I ask my students how the story might be different if the Gingerbread Man was made out of stinky cheese instead. Then we go to the Stinky Cheese Man (link to picture book HERE--skip to p.36.)

Then the production prompt is for students to write their own twisted version of a famous fairy tale: docs, pub.

In my class, they were having trouble thinking of ideas, so I gave them a few more examples from the Stinky Cheese Man book. First, I asked them if they knew the story of the Frog Prince. They said they did, and I asked the class to tell it to me. Then, I showed them the version on pages 18-19. I did the same thing with the Ugly Duckling (p.14-17) and The Princess and the Pea (p.12-13), etc.

In fact, once I got thinking about it, there's no shortage of examples of subverted fairy tales out there:

This Playlist of Fractured Fairy Tale Cartoons, for example, could also be used as input.

Or this copy of The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig.

In fact, as I thought about it, I remembered I had even written a subverted fairy tale back in 6th grade: The True Story of Little Red Riding Hood--which I then went on to film and add to my Storytime collection.

Think of a well-known fairy tale or folk tale. Retell the fairy tale, but give it a twist to make it different than the original

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Thursday, March 28, 2024

The Monkey's Paw: Reading and Writing Prompt

(TESOL Materials--Time Fillers, Writing, Interesting Input plus Production Prompts)

I'm continuing to look for new materials to add to my "Interesting Input plus Production Prompts" project. I was searching around on esl-bits and found the original version of The Monkey's Paw.

It seemed like a good story to use: nice and short, and also suitably creepy. (As I've mentioned before, my teenage students love horror stories.)

The original ungraded version could almost be used in the ESL classroom (with a high level class, of course.) The sentences are pretty short and simple and easy to understand. An advanced level class could almost understand it without help.

There's just some vocabulary that would need to be adjusted to make it more comprehensible for an ESL class.

I was in the process of trying to re-write the story myself, when I thought to myself, "You know what? I bet somebody's done this already."

So, I searched for "The Monkey's Paw ESL" and sure enough, found a pretty good version here. For the most part, it manages to preserve the vibrancy of the original text, while also simplifying the vocabulary where necessary.

For the purposes of sharing this version with my students, I took the liberty of copying and pasting it over to Google docs, so I could print it out and distribute in in my classroom (docs, pub). While I was at it, I also edited it slightly--e.g. cleaned up a few typos and grammar mistakes that had been in the original.

I distributed the google document to my students, and we read it together in class.

The production prompt, then, is to write about what happens to the Monkey's Paw next. The Monkey's Paw finds a new owner, who will make new wishes. How will these new wishes go wrong?

For the purposes of giving my students maximum freedom, I left the prompt as wide open as possible--i.e. I didn't specify who the new owner would be. But for students who were having trouble getting started, I gave them some helpful ideas.

"Imagine there's a Vietnamese boy who wishes to be a gamer. But then" (spooky voice) "the wish goes horribly wrong."

or "Imagine there's a Vietnamese boy who wants to be a famous tiktoker. So he makes the wish but then" (spooky voice) "the wish goes horribly wrong."

Etc. Other ideas I gave were students who wished to get a band 9 on the IELTS, or become a successful businessman, or get into a top university, etc.

[Sidenote: The original story of The Monkey's Paw states that the paw was only cursed for 3 owners, and that this old couple is now the 3rd owner, so presumably in the original story the curse of the Monkey's Paw is now finished. But I just ignored this little detail when designing the production prompt, and so far my students haven't noticed the contradiction.]

Production worksheet is here: docs, pub

Now, imagine that someone else finds the Monkey’s paw, and tries to make three wishes. Write about what will happen next.

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Sunday, March 17, 2024

That's Good! That's Bad! by Margery Cuyler and David Catrow: Storytime and Writing Prompt

(TESOL Materials--Time Fillers, Writing, Storytime, Interesting Input plus Production Prompts)

Google Folder HERE

The Storytime slides are here: slides, pub. (The images come from this Youtube video here.)

I also created a sequencing activity for this story (cut up and then have the students put this in the correct order): docs, pub

I came across this story, and I thought it would be a great little addition to my Interesting Input plus Production Prompts collection

Ms Sandy presents: That's Good! That's Bad! by Margery Cuyler