Play a little game where you
have two students on one team. They each draw from different piles of
cards.
person one: the passive cards
person two: animal and people
flashcards
Each member selects one card from their pile but isn �t allowed
to show the other member.
Once they have selected their cards, ask them to lay
them out showing what they chose. Then they need to put those cards together to
make a sentence. If the sentence makes sense then they get one point. If it �s
nonsense, they don �t get a point.
Good: He was bitten by a
snake
Nonsense: He was closed by a rabbit.
Some of the
students will try to reason with you about what makes sense and what doesn �t.
This is where the real learning and internalization comes in. It �s a lot of fun.
Prepare for a lot of laughter and chaos management.
You can also let the
students draw pictorial representations of any sentence good or no-good for an
extra point. That is if you have drawers in the group. Also, you might want to
limit the drawing time to one minute, because Pablo will probably want to work
too long on his drawing otherwise.
You can have a third member and have
them use
family flashcards for the subject. �My father was hit by a
bear."
It �s also good to have them rotate positions or card sets to get
them to think about different properties of the sentences.
For large
classes you can give one card to each of the students and they have to go around
and group themselves into sentences that make sense. They can write them down or
mark a successful sentence somehow on a piece of paper and then break up to find
a new group. Make it an individual competition. The person who has the most
marks or sentences is the winner.
