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Games, activities and teaching ideas > Back to school activities for older teens?
Back to school activities for older teens?
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perma
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Back to school activities for older teens?
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Hi everyone!
I �m looking for first-day-back-to-school activities for a group of 17 year olds. I have mostly taught younger teens and it �s been many years since I had classes like this one so I �m not sure what might appeal to them.
They �re in the last year of secondary school and they �ve been classmates for years, so they know each other well. However they don �t know me, as I �m new at their school.
They �re intermediate to upper intermediate and there are around 22-23 students in each group.
Any ideas, tips etc will be much appreciated!
Thank you!!! 
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4 Sep 2012
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lbhspatriot
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Wow, you have quite the task ahead of you! What I like to do with my students on their first day of English class is to get to know them better. And vice versa of course :)
A mind map is a fun idea - have you ever done one? It can look like that:
It �s fun becuase it enables students to talk about themselves (each of them puts their name instead of "ME" in the middle and ten maps out facts about themselves). After all classmates complete their maps you can:
- make them work with partners: they tell one person about themsleves
or
- make them do a presentation in front of the entire class
I usually make them work with partners and then as them to make a nice "proper" presentation for homework. Depending on the class, we make big posters and hang them on te walls or just written essays :)
Hope that helps a bit.
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4 Sep 2012
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MoodyMoody
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If you have a blackboard or whiteboard, I like the Sentence Game. Divide the class into 4 teams (for your size class). Bring one student from each team to the board. Give the students a subject, such as two girls. Give them a verb, such as make. Give them a verb tense appropriate to the level of class, in your case maybe past continuous. (I just posted about that tense.) The students have two minutes to write a sentence in English. The other students can help, but they must speak (only the students at the board can write), and they must speak English. (I take a point off for words from other languages.) Repeat with other students until every student has a turn or you run out of time. The members of the winning team all get small prizes. (It doesn �t have to cost you anything; teenagers LOVE extra credit!)
An example might be "Daphne and Sofia were making a cake when Yanni telled them there was a mouse in the kitchan."
Give one point for each word. Give a point for a correct subject, one point for the correct verb, and one point for the correct tense. My level is lower than yours, so I don �t take off for misspelling; I give 5 points for a perfect sentence instead. So my sample sentence has 18 words, a correct subject, correct verb, and correct tense. It is not a perfect sentence; it has two mistakes: "telled" instead of "told," and "kitchan" instead of "kitchen." I give it 21 points, assuming I didn �t hear any member of that team speak another language. Change the scoring and time to suit your needs.
It works to reinforce grammar concepts you have just taught, but it is also an excellent diagnostic to see where each student �s strengths and weaknesses lie. It �s one of my favorites, and I finally have a large enough class that I can do it again. I plan to use prepositions instead of verb tense, and I give three minutes at my level, but it �s a wonderful, low-prep activity. |
4 Sep 2012
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