Free downloadable game about clothes WEAR or CARRY?

Have you spent the last 2 weeks teaching the difference between CARRY and WEAR? If your answer is Yes, this new post is for you! 

This is an activity I designed for my 6-year-old learners a couple of years ago. 

It's composed by several tiles, on each one the students had something to do to complete it. On one half they had to write the name of the article of clothing / accessory I had drawn, in the second half they had to draw the garments I had previously written.

In those days my class was composed of 15 students, so I prepared, more or less, 3 tiles for each one to complete.

I had also prepared 'Wild Tiles', the green ones you can see in the pictures, to keep the game going in case of some missing word/drawing.

Once they (had) completed the tiles we started to play in teams of 3 pupils each. When they were putting down their tile, they had to say:  "I'm wearing / carrying … " the object they were placing. Of course the rest of the kids had to check if he was right or not. 

If you don't have time to make it by yourself, you can find the photocopiable PDF of the same game plus a suitable version for children who cannot write by themselves yet (4-5-6 years old) on this link: 

Two different sets of free downloadable Wear or Carry Tiles

Enjoy it!

I design series of activities based on a communicative method that will help children to practice the grammar they're learning at school.

Many ESL activities, I see, are nothing more than 'fill in the blank' exercises that only teach kids how to fill in blanks and miss the whole point of learning to speak and understand a new language.

It's much easier and more fun to learn by doing, and you'll be surprised at how quickly you'll see valuable results. 

You can get my activities on my online store:
http://childreneslworksheets.bigcartel.com

WRITING TIP nº2 -The arbitrary prefix

Here we are, talking about how to inspire your students to write a story.

The second story-inventing game from Gianni Rodari's Grammar of Fantasy is called the arbitrary prefix.

In some way, it could be considered a variation of the Fantastic Binomial (link), and it consists of taking word and placing prefixes in front of them in order to create new inspiring concepts.

Just write down a column of prefixes and a column of words. Then try to connect each one and observe the effect on your brain. 

micro        elephant 

sub           town  

un            bomb  

e              gap  

super        bug  

semi         ghost  

non          playing  

hyper       headed 

or 

micro       town (are there any giants around?)
sub          ghost (ghosts with fish tales?)
un           headed (an horror story?)
e             bug (a spy story?)
super       game (something like the hunger games?)
semi        bomb
non         elephant (?!?!?)
hyper      gap (double hole, double adventure)

etc.

Has any of the connections above already stimulated a brilliant idea for a story?

So, once upon a time, there were two cities that were always fighting. They were constantly busy with their war. But it was a very strange battle. They were struggling to be the best place to live in and they were using weird weapons called unbombs: very expensive devices that improved citizen's life instead of destroying it. 

So each city was spending lots and lots of money to buy these strange bombs

that brought new parks, schools and some kind of services, at every explosion.

People were very satisfied in both cities and when they met, they never stopped showing off the many improvements they got every month, 12 months a year.

Unfortunately one day the hyper-headed guy who made the brilliant unbombs started to suffer an incredibly painful headache. He couldn't do anything a part from lying in bed all day long. The doctor said that he had spent too many years thinking about how to make citizen's happy and now his head was almost blowing up, so he had to rest as much as possible.

What do you think people are going to do now? What about introducing a wicked semi-ghost to create a bit of suspense? 

As always this is only the skeleton of a possible story and not a completely developed tale. I'm sure you can make the most of this tip with your class.

Enjoy it and have fun!

WRITING TIP NUMBER 5

WRITING TIP NUMBER 4

WRITING TIP NUMBER 3

WRITING TIP NUMBER 1

JUMPING IN AND OUT OF SHAPES

I'll tell you a secret: I wrote on the floor of my classroom with a piece of chalk during some of my English classes (!!!!!).

I was teaching opposites using an illustrated book when suddenly I had an epiphany: join two topics to a kinesthetic experience!

So, I started to draw shapes like circles, triangles and rectangles on the floor -avoiding squares, because they are too difficult to define without a ruler and to distinguish from a rectangle by a 4 to 5 year old child.

Later you can add hearts, stars and diamonds.

The funniest thing was my student's first reaction to my unusual behavior:

one immediately erased every single line I had drawn and another warned me she would report me to their head teacher…ahahahah

They weren't expecting an adult to draw on the floor at all!!!

I had to reassure them explaining we were going to clean it after the activity so they finally decided to give me a hand filling the floor with a huge quantity of shapes… 

At the end it was difficult to stop them!

And here we are, with our set ready to be used.

Be sure to leave some space between your shapes and tell them to jump in and out of them.

Do it slowly at the beginning and increase the speed once they've got the different shapes' names.

You'll notice after a while that one or more of your students will feel a strong desire to lead the game, which is exactly what you want!!!

Give it a try and jump!!!

MORE GAMES:

The Ball Goes to....

Phonetics: The S-Game

PHONETICS - The S game

Spanish is a language where you won't find any word starting with S  followed by a consonant.

This happens because they always write an E before the S.

Therefore you will easily hear words like ESchool or ESpain instead of the original ones.

This problem can't be solved if your students are older than 5, because the exposure to the Spanish pronunciation has already set up that part of their brain predisposed to speaking.

But if you are teaching children younger than that, you still have some hope to influence their S - word pronunciation.

Here I suggest this game, a little noisy but fun, based on the classic hot and cold object hunt. 

First write an S - word on a piece of paper, bring a physical object starting with S or use flashcards.

For example:

Skate / Skeleton / Ski / Skin / Sky / Sledge / Slide / Snack / Snake / Snail / Snow / Space / Spade / Spaghetti / Sparrow / Spider / Spinach / Sponge / Spoon / Sport / Spot / Spray / Spring / Square / Squirrel / Stadium / Star.

Then call out one child and send him out of the room accompanied by a 'witness' to be sure he is not going to peek in while you and the rest of the class will be hiding the S-word anywhere inside the classroom.

Once you have hidden it, call the kid in. He will look for the hidden word guided by the other pupils. They will say the S-word modulating the volume of their voice depending on whether the hunter is close or far from it. 

The hider shouts the S-word when the searcher is headed in the right direction and whispers it when he isn't.

There is a  possibility that they'll start screaming very loud at some point….be prepared!!!

MORE GAMES:
Wear or Carry? and The Shoe Behind You

IRREGULAR DOMINOES

Here you are! Is it already time to get your students to learn irregular past tenses? Every real teacher knows that to contextualize words is always better than to memorize them. But the official school program says clearly: KNOWLEDGE OF IRREGULAR VERBS!!!  All together and in one month!  

Don't you feel some pity for those 7 or 8-year-old pupils of yours, who are going to spend their afternoons trying to remember boring verbs?

I usually do and that's why I prepared this customizable domino to print and play.

It works quite well, apart  from waking up the competitive spirit, that sometimes overheats the classroom a little more than I expect.

Once they have played several times, give them an extra point if they can say a sentence using the verb on the tile. 

That way you'll achieve two goals in one activity. Furthermore they will acquire not only the above mentioned  'knowledge of irregular verbs', but also their proper use in the real world.

That's something more useful, don't you think?

DON'T MISS IT!!!

CARD SET 1

CARD SET 2

I design series of activities based on a communicative method that will help children to practice the grammar they're learning at school.

Many ESL activities, I see, are nothing more than 'fill in the blank' exercises that only teach kids how to fill in blanks and miss the whole point of learning to speak and understand a new language.

It's much easier and more fun to learn by doing, and you'll be surprised at how quickly you'll see valuable results!!! 

You can get my activities on my online store:

http://childreneslworksheets.bigcartel.com


More grammar games here: To Be or...To Be

IRREGULAR DOMINOES - SET 1

DON'T MISS IT!!! 

YOUR STUDENTS WILL APPRECIATE IT ;O)

IRREGULAR DOMINOES - GAME EXPLANATION

IRREGULAR DOMINOES CARD SET 2

I design series of activities based on a communicative method that will help children to practice the grammar they're learning at school.

Many ESL activities, I see, are nothing more than 'fill in the blank' exercises that only teach kids how to fill in blanks and miss the whole point of learning to speak and understand a new language.

It's much easier and more fun to learn by doing, and you'll be surprised at how quickly you'll see valuable results!!! 

You can get my activities on my online store:

http://childreneslworksheets.bigcartel.com

IRREGULAR DOMINOES - SET 2

 DON'T MISS IT!!!
YOUR STUDENTS WILL APPRECIATE IT ;O)

IRREGULAR DOMINOES - GAME EXPLANATION

IRREGULAR DOMINOES CARD SET 1

I design series of activities based on a communicative method that will help children to practice the grammar they're learning at school.

Many ESL activities, I see, are nothing more than 'fill in the blank' exercises that only teach kids how to fill in blanks and miss the whole point of learning to speak and understand a new language.

It's much easier and more fun to learn by doing, and you'll be surprised at how quickly you'll see valuable results!!! 

You can get my activities on my online store:

http://childreneslworksheets.bigcartel.com