First class back after Christmas

Follow me on twitter @RobbioDobbio

Image credit: willingness.com.mt

First class back, Christmas is over, back to the grindstone. Here’s a conversation activity to ease you and your students back into class and hopefully keep a spark of Christmas cheer alive.

Warmer – Xmas present 20 questions

Think of your best Xmas present, tell students they can ask 20 yes/no questions to guess what it is. If they struggle to come up with questions, model a few on the board:

Can you use it to…?

Is it bigger than a…?

Does it have…?

Does it cost more than a…?

The student who guesses correctly takes the teacher’s place and the game is repeated.

If students struggle to think of a present, print and cut up the handout below and use them as game cards.

Christmas Present 20 Questions

 

Who had the best Christmas?

Write on the board:

Objectives

Who got the best present?

Who had the best Christmas?

Who had the most fun on New Year’s Eve?

Who had the strangest Christmas?

Tell students that they need to speak to as many people as they can to find out the answer to the four questions.

Put students in pairs and have them brainstorm the questions they will need to ask:

Who got the best present? – What did you get for Christmas?

Who had the best Christmas? – What did you do at Christmas? Where did you spend Christmas? What was the best thing about Christmas?

Who had the most fun on New Year’s Eve? – What did you do on New Year’s Eve? Where did you spend New Year’s Eve?

Let them ask you the questions first as an example.

Then give students 10 minutes to speak to as many of their classmates as they can. While they circulate, correct their mistakes and board the correct forms. After 1o minutes stop the activity and draw students attention to all the boarded language they have generated.

Then in open class nominate a student to answer one of the original questions:

Teacher: “Xavi, who do you think had the best Christmas?”

Xavi: “Gerrard had the best Christmas, he went to the Bahamas with his family.”

Then ask the rest of the class if they agree and see if the class can reach a consensus.

Follow up

Students write a composition on their Christmas holidays. This could take the form of an informal email to a friend.