Writing Prompts: 500 Prompts

For those looking for some great writing prompts, whether you're teaching ESL or really any language, check this article from the NYT!

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/500-prompts-for-narrative-and-personal-writing/?_r=1

500 prompt should give you some ideas for writing activities in your classes! Stay tuned as we'll be adapting these prompts into activities for several different languages.


Let us know what you think!

Schreiben: Morgenroutine

Chris here again with another German activity to share. Today we will take a look at a fun writing activity which can be expanded to include communication with fellow classmates.

This activity requires students to have knowledge of reflexive verbs and pronouns. The thematic topic is daily routines and hygiene.

You will need to create a chart for the days of the week and times of the day by the hour. It's a good idea to start at 7 or 8 am and end at a reasonable time in the evening. Provide students with a list of common daily hygiene activities such as sich anziehen (to get dressed), sich duschen (to shower), sich rasieren (to shave), and more. Have students fill in the chart for every day of the week and list when they do which activity for their hygiene and also count how often per week they do it e.g. einmal am Tag, alle zwei/drei Tage, einmal die Woche, nie, etc.

Next, have students write a brief description of their typical routine including as many of the reflexive phrases as possible.

Collect the students' writing and for the next class period create a list or bingo sheet of the most interesting responses from the students' writing. This will be an interview style bingo where students must ask their fellow classmates and practice the third person reflexive when they must find the student who best matches up with the various sentences on the bingo sheet.

Together, these activities should provide quite a bit of reflexive practice across different skills.

Let us know what you think! Connect with us @C_LaCross

German: Translation Writing Assignment

The following is a writing activity primarily designed for high intermediate or advanced learners. This is a translation (Übersetzung) activity.

Students will work in small groups or with a partner as part of a Reisebüro. The goal is to take advertising slogans from English and to try and translate them into German.

Have students focus purely on the slogans. There are of course thousands of ads to choose from. In addition, you can have students do some out of class research on the ad you have provided them and as an additional component to the activity have students give a presentation in German where they must pitch their particular travel destination/vacation. This should be within reach of advanced students although you will want to provided intermediate students with additional time.

Alternately, you could do this activity but focus on other types of products such as cars, groceries, clothes, and more! This type of activity easily lends itself to a business language class. Feel free to adapt this for another language if you are not a German teacher!

Let us know what you think! Connect with us @C_LaCross

Writing Activities: Celebrity Interviews

Chris here again with a fun writing activity to share with fellow teachers. This one involves an activity centered around a celebrity interview scenario and can be expanded in numerous ways. Enjoy!

Celebrity Interviews

Pre-activity

•           Find magazine cover and article templates (e.g. Time)
•         Depending on the material being covered it may be worthwhile to research celebrities who happen to be outspoken on the given topic(s)

Activity

      

• Present the magazine templates to students and offer potential celebrities for them to choose from

• Divide students into groups of three

• Students interview one another and the interviewer will write out the interview at the same time

• Either the teacher or the students should take pictures of themselves which will be placed on the cover of the magazine templates

• The teacher can add the pictures and articles to the templates, although it can be rewarding to let the students do this as it will help them practice formatting skills

• Students type their interviews and go through the writing process

• If the students do this step they should print their completed article with the cover to class

• Students who were not part of the original group must choose an interview that interests them and write a response (length variable) to at least one or more of the other interviews

• The ‘celebrity’ who was interviewed must then offer at least one response of their own (this keeps the discussion going)

• This is a great activity to incorporate technology as this could be easily incorporated into a class blog!

Post-activity

•       This discussion could be expanded and continue throughout the semester
•     Teacher ensures students completed the required steps of the activity and acts as the editor in chief
•    You may find a particularly stimulating topic that the class discussion focuses on - this could be expanded into a debate
• This activity practices conversation, writing, vocabulary use, and almost always has a high level of student interest!

Let us know what you think! Connect with us @C_LaCross

News: Tapestry

Hi everyone, Claudia here,

Today I came across a very interesting phone app that I think I will be incorporating to my teaching. I think Tapestry is an excellent tool for getting your students to practice their writing and work on their creativity. If you can think of other ways we could use this please let us know!

https://readtapestry.com/

Let us know what you think! Connect with us @C_LaCross

Video: Symmetry

Hello everyone, Claudia here,
Today I would like to share this amazing video that you can use in any of your language classes. It's really interesting because it always shows two images at a time that are somehow connected. You can use these to have your students describe what they see, reflect upon it or come up with their own symmetries. Let me know how it works for you and if you can think of other ways to use it in the classroom. I hope you like it!

A Sample Dictogloss Lesson

I posted about the idea of using a Draw and Tell to differentiate a dictogloss the other day using a draw and tell story to review transition words the other day I did it and it worked out really well.

• With my rowdy class I started by putting a text on the board. It said 

 READ THESE DIRECTIONS CAREFULLY 

I will not be taking attendance right away. Please sit down and take out a piece of paper and a pen. When you are quiet, I will tell you a story. You should should NOT write down anything. Just listen to the story. I will begin when you are quiet. 

•  That worked better than it could have. They were quiet and ready within 5 minutes ( I was pleasantly shocked). Then I told them the story.  There was a boy. He was young. He was three years old. He went on a walk. He was attacked by bees. He was scared. He ran away. They followed him. He jumped into a lake. He stayed there until the sun set. The bees went away. He went home. I was eating eggs and bacon. I was happy to see my dog. 

NOTE: This story, though brief, is actually pretty hard since it is purposely bland! SO keep it simple.

• I told students to work on their own and try to recreate the story to be as close to the original as possible. They had 2 minutes. A few of them freaked out, but I let them know they would hear the story again. and they weren't expected to get it perfect.
• After two minutes I told them the story again. This time I drew the dog that goes with it. I told them they had one more minute. Most students did NOT look at the board; however, I noticed some students looking up and using the picture to help them.
• When the minute was done I told them to partner up and they spent the next 5 minutes working with someone else to recreate the text.
• Finally students swapped their answers with another partner and I showed them the original text. They made corrections and the team with the least mistakes got bonus points.
• I asked the students what was wrong with this text. THANKFULLY (as we had been studying transition words) they told me it was missing transition words.
• Now, with their partner, had to re-write the text to include AT LEAST
• 1 relative clause
• 1 cause and effect transition word
• 1 sequencing transition word
• 1 contrast transition word
• 1 addition transition word
• (When students finished early I added other categories to get them to add too)
• Finally we shared all the different ways the sentences could be combined.

This worked really well as a review of transition words, and we practiced general listening, reading and writing skills that would be on the exam. Even though the use of draw and tells is normally reserved for younger groups I think in this case it was a useful add on to help some students with the dictogloss.