Back to school and struggling to find ideas to revise vocabulary with your pupils?
Take advantage of the fine weather and start with an interactive trail quiz. My go-to topic to get things rolling at the start of the school year is food and shopping. The kids usually enjoy endlessly talking about food, and it is a subject that can easily be connected to culture and everyday life too. Cooking is all the rage among pre-teens and teenagers, they all watch the televised "master chef" type competitions. Additionally, the possibilities for follow-up exercises and writing assignments are endless. I shall give you a few examples below.
The trail quiz and subsequent exercises were tailored for the 5th grade, but keep in mind that most of my students are quite advanced for their age group, so it could easily be used for the sixth and even seventh grade (as a revision, for instance).
Duration: approximately two-three lessons, homework included.
Make sure you state the purpose of the activity very clearly. Knowing what they are about to learn and why is a very efficient way to grasp their attention and focus their efforts. This is how I formulated it in writing, and gave the kids a slightly abbreviated version:
- During the next few lessons you will learn and practise vocabulary related to food and shopping through a trail quiz here at school. You will do the quiz in pairs/groups, thereby communicating effectively in English.
- By the end of the lessons you will have enriched your everyday vocabulary, and you will be able to converse about food and shopping with greater ease.
- You will be able to write these word and make sentences with them; you will strive to write a text about food and shopping.
- You will then be asked to read a text about British food habits and answer some questions; this way you will have learnt something about British culture and everyday life, and compared it to the food habits in Norway.
The trail quiz is real fun, my kids enjoyed it immensely. Some of them thought a few of the questions were difficult, but the majority managed to answer all of them correctly. You have multiple choice, mix and match, and open-ended questions, among others. Let me give you a couple of examples.
Elementary level, open-ended question:
POST 1
You eat breakfast in the morning. Which meal do you usually eat between 12.00 and 14.00 in the afternoon?
This post is a good opener for discussing eating habits in different countries. For instance, in Norway kids eat lunch around 11.00 a.m., whereas dinner ("middag") tends to be rather early, which is probably unusual in other cultures.
Intermediate, guess the phrase question:
Post 7
We say a bottle of milk. What would you say for the following? (To help you, the first letter of the word is given):
a) a t_______________ of soup
b) a l_______________ of bread
c) a b___________ of matches
Intermediary/Advanced mix and match:
Post 10
Which countries do the following dishes come from? Choose from the following:
China, India, Sweden, Spain, South Africa, Italy, France, Brazil, Japan, Mexico
a) spaghetti _________________________
b) sushi ___________________
c) curry __________________________
d) paella ____________________
e) chilli con carne ____________________
Here is a link to the trail quiz - post it throughout the schoolyard, at notable distances (thus adding some physical activity to the task!) and ensure that the students don't all start at the same post.
It is highly recommended that you show a few examples of posts in the classroom and illustrate how they should answer them. Then hand out the answer sheets , minus the second page that has the correct answers, of course. Equip them with pencils and tell them they will be timed (20 to 30 minutes max).
You will most likely need another lesson to check the answers together in the class. Don't rush it, and make sure you discuss the posts, ask additional questions (if you feel confident in your role as a food culture expert).
Once they have learnt and/or revised the vocabulary through the trail quiz, it's time to anchor the new knowledge. Give them the following writing exercise to do in class (we use Google Classroom). Considering that the learners are on various levels of language acquisition, the writing assignment is leveled. Let me illustrate:
Food and Shopping: Write sentences
You have done a vocabulary quiz about food and shopping. Choose five (5) of the words/phrases below and write five (5) sentences.
breakfast, lunch, cucumber, frying pan, carrot, baker, butcher, jeweler, a tin of soup, a loaf of bread, a box of matches, toaster, leek, potato, spaghetti, sushi, curry, paella, chilli con carne, florist, expensive, cheap, a bar of chocolate, cooker, microwave
FOR MORE ADVANCED LEARNERS
If you feel like your vocabulary is more advanced and you know many of the words you can
write at least 10 (sentences)
OR: combine the words to write a short text.
Give them a time to complete the task - for instance maximum 15 minutes. Subsequently, read a few example texts (without showing them who the author is). Discuss whether the sentences are right and whether the words have been used correctly.
TO SUM UP
- ask them about what they have learnt;
- urge them to say some of the new words they have learnt;
- and ascertain the difficulty level of the exercise.
Finally... homework, "Food for Thought (Reading Comprehension)".
I have chosen a short text about food habits in Britain and included "Check the Text" exercises as well as open-ended questions where they are requested to write about their own eating habits. I suggested that the homework should be done on a voluntary basis, since it was a bit more advanced. Learners who felt it might have been too challenging were asked to write a couple of sentences about what they have learnt during the last couple of lessons.
Hope you will enjoy the activity! :)
Do you want to throw in a grammar revision exercise? Try this Right or Wrong sheet. It's fun!
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