I agree with Jessica, the books really aren't too bad, I used to have that wood effect book last year, the dialogues were really quite incredible! Remember eyes for the blind club?.. Jesus that was horrendous.
Also I really like the fact that the book is totally lame, It would be far worse if the book tried to be cool and was full of K-pop and T.V stars that by the time the book could be published weren't cool anymore anyway. That would be even more tragic than the twee little Raccoon propping up the pages.
Anyway I thought I would try and explain my lesson in the attempt to help anyone struggling with the books.
I do conversation class, so my lessons only involve speaking activities, The less I speak the better.
First brainstorm Free time
What is it?
When do you get it?
Who do you do it with?
Where?
Do you get enough?
What would you do with more?
When your 50 what will you do? e.t.c
Throw points around like crazy, especially for a perfect sentence with a because in the middle!
when the board is full of words and sentences. Move on to the world leader Jigsaw activity
I really like these activities, it makes sure every student has to speak and gets the groups in competition mode. Also the responses to what does Barack Obama like doing in his free time were hilarious, killing puppies was my personal fav.
You need to print "World leader game ppt" and make enough copies fro your groups.
Each student in a group of 4 is a politician, they each read their clue to the rest of the group and work out the answer, no peeking at each others cards, go through the first one in front of the class
e.g Student A (2.M.B) says "5 players"
Student B ( Ban Ki Moon) says "Dunk"
Student c (Hu Jintao) says "Orange Ball"
Student D (D.C) says "Michael Jordan"
Whats the answer? A student will shout out basketball.. correct him by saying "Playing basketball" make sure they all understand. Go round giving more cluesif they need it, and correcting when they forget verb + ing.
Go through answers give loads of points out.
Next is a find someone who activity, instead of letting the student say their own answers, I give them their responses (free time ppt). This activity just forces them to use the target language in the dialogue on the top of page 11.
I also elicit all the past times before we play in front of the class and write them on the board.
Students pick which past times they will play with, first person to find 8 people wins (8 different people) give everyone points down to around 10th to finish.
Its best to structure this activity like a rapid fire interview, one question each (around 10 seconds) then Shout CHANGE!, otherwise everyone cheats.
Finally theres a game like 20 questions only its 6 questions, (must be about free time only), Give them a choice of celebrities on the screen, choose one, and get them to find out who you are just by the answers you give about free time (just make it up, but obviously Bom from 2ne1 will have different interests to Myung Buk., dont make it easy by giving them to much information so their questions have to get really inventive.
Have them guess in teams after the 6 questions have been asked, throw points about for inventive questions take points away for boring ones. This is a good chance to get a few teams in to a tight scrap on the points board.
After doing the first two famous people pick a strong student to be Santa on the last round.
Winning team get a stamp each.
Sorry if thats really confusing, it makes sense in my head. All the games are really simple Ive just made it sound complicated.
Phew....... cant believe I just wrote all that, I'm such a loser!
This is for high level by the way. I know it hardly sticks to the textbook, but at least the students are speaking most of the time.
