Grammar Ideas: High Tech, Low Tech, No Tech

Dave Spencer

Russia, March 2016

General Tips

1) Challenge the students? power of observation

2) Challenge the students? general knowledge

3) Teach students something apart from the grammar

4) Give students interesting contexts to practice in

5) Use teenagers? competitive spirit to your advantage

6) Encourage students to be creative and respond on a personal level

7) Turn things round with the Flipped Classroom

8) Always have ?low tech? or ?no tech? games and activities up your sleeve

A selection of activities

1) Question practice ice-breaker

Give the students the answers to some basic personal questions and ask the students to work out the questions. They then interview each other in pairs using the questions. They could then finish by asking you the questions.

2) Sentence hangman

_ / _ _ _ _/ _ _ _ _ _/ _ _ _/ _ _ _/ _ _ _ _ _ =

I/ H A V E/ N E V E R/ M E T/ T H E/ Q U E E N

Play in teams. Teams get one point for guessing a letter that appears in the sentence, five points for guessing a word, and ten points for guessing the complete sentence. Negative points are given for incorrect guesses. Once the sentence has been discovered, use it to revise/ analyse a particular structure.

3) Spaghetti lines

To practise ?have got?, students secretly link five different names with five different objects.

Jack bike

Harry MP3 player

Emma laptop

Kate and Amy tablet

Oliver calculator

They then take it in turns to guess: Has Jack got an MP3 player? The winner is the first person to identify who has each object.

The basic idea can be adapted for many different grammatical structures.

4) Dream Holiday

Students secretly choose one of three different holiday destinations, one of three months and one of three types of hotel. They can only go on their dream holiday if they find someone else who has chosen the same three elements. So they must mingle and ask: Are you going to New York? Are you going to go in July? etc.

5) Grammar squares

See Gateway A2 2^nd Edition page 42. Students find a minimum of two things for each square ? things that they can both do, things that they can do but their partner can?t do, things they can?t do but their partner can, and things that neither of them can do. Notice that a minimum of two things means that faster students cannot simply say they have finished after a couple of minutes.

6) Grammar Grid

Draw a grid on the board (5 x 4). How many grammatically correct sentences can the students make, using only the words in the grid, in ten minutes? Use the game to revise grammar that you have just taught, e.g. present perfect, conditionals, passives?

Example of words to include at a low level, to practise present continuous, have, adjectives, word order, etc.:

singing/ green/ girl/ that/ small/ brother/ have/ I/ is/ years/ car/ a/ there/ are/ people/ ten/ my/ here/ no/ old

7) Disappearing sentences

Write three or four sentences containing the new structure you want to practice. Gradually rub off the sentences and ask students if they can remember what the complete sentences were. Continue until the board is empty. A fun way to make students want to repeat a new structure.

8) Grammar charades

Have two teams. Give students a sentence containing a particular structure (e.g. for the present perfect: ?I have sent six emails this morning?). The students take it in turns to mime their sentence to their team who get a point if they identify the sentence correctly within a time limit. See photocopiable activities in Gateway Teacher?s Books or the Grammar Communication activities at www.macmillangateway2.com for similar ideas.

9) Strange routines

Show students photos or simply the names of some very different famous people, e.g. actors, sports stars, cartoon characters, superheroes, politicians etc. Tell the students to imagine they are this person and imagine their daily routine. Now they work with their partner asking and answering present simple questions to discover which famous person their partner is.

Contact Dave Spencer via the Gateway Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/macmillangateway

See also www.macmillangateway2.com

Date: 2016-06-12; view: 287