Idioms

[zachmokpo]

I put together a lesson and game to teach my hs girls about idioms and what they mean. Next week will build upon this but I thought I would post this lesson. I also made a idioms games based on a Who Wants to be a Millionaire power point game (thanks to raisedbywolves for the link).

My students for the most part really enjoyed the lesson and got super competitive when the game begun. Some classes were like I was pulling teeth or whatnot. But for the most part students did take part. I broke up the class into four teams and the team that got the most correct got candy.

[raisedbywoolves]

Good stuff, i'll probably try this in a few weeks. If you want to be their hero, you should explain "under my skin" to them. They've been harassing me all week about what it means, because it's featured in the Kpop song of the month.

[raisedbywoolves]

hmm how exactly did you play this? i can't remember how the rules work on the show. do they lose points for wrong answers?

[zachmokpo]

If they guessed wrong, teams lost a point (they get SAD about that ).

[Scott]

Good stuff.  I might take out 'knob' because to me that means the 'knob' of your penis. 

Still very useful though.

[bza]

I did a modified version of this lesson where I used less idioms and added more slang to the mix.

It worked pretty well. The difference in my lessons I did was that I didn't use the game and instead had them make dialogues in groups using some of the slang and idioms in the lesson. I gave them a sort of mini-dictionary with the words from the lesson.

The dialogues ranged from hiliarious to nothing but WAAZZZZUP, but was quite good.

With the Grade 1's will do a matching activity instead since the last lesson was the Konglish lesson with a game. Two games in a row is a bit too repetitive perhaps?

[Scott]

I'm trying to make a list of name idioms for my teacher's workshop.  Here's what I have so far.  If anyone wants to use this or add to it... 

[dporter]

Might be better to post the list to make it easier to contribute.

Idioms

1)Achilles' Heel :
      A person's weak point.  It comes from the Greek legend of Achilles.

2)Any Tom, Dick or Harry:
If something could be done by any Tom, Dick or Harry, it could be done by absolutely anyone. Also can be used with 'and'.  f every Tom, Dick and Harry knows about something, then it is common knowledge.

3)Davy Jones' Locker:
Davy Jones' Locker is an idiom for the bottom of the sea: the resting place of drowned sailors. The origins of the name are unclear.

4)Freudian Slip:
If someone makes a Freudian slip, they accidentally use the wrong word, but in doing so reveal what they are really thinking rather than what they think the other person wants to hear.  My grandfather once said “I have to urinate” when he meant to say “I have a hearing aid”.

5)Jack-of-all-trades:
A jack-of-all-trades is someone that can do many different jobs.  Scott is often called
a Jack-of-all-trades because he has had many different careers. 

6)John Doe and Jane Doe:
John and Jane Doe are names given to an unidentified male or female who may be party to legal proceedings, or to an unidentified person in hospital, or dead.

7)Jekyll and Hyde:
Someone who has a Jekyll and Hyde personality has a pleasant and a very unpleasant side to the character.

8)Mickey Mouse:
If something is Mickey Mouse, it is intellectually trivial or not of a very high standard.  You could say that a university is Mickey Mouse or that a company is Mickey mouse.

9)Midas Touch:
    Midas was a king in Greek mythology.  Whatever he touched turned to gold.  If s   omeone has the 'Midas touch', they are very lucky and whatever they do will be a    success.

10)Pandora's Box:
If you open a Pandora's box, something you do causes all sorts of trouble that you hadn't anticipated.  In WWI, when the archduke Ferdinand was killed, it opened up Pandora's Box in Europe.  According to Greek mythology when Pandora, the first woman on Earth, opened her box, the world of sin and misfortune was released.



11) Peeping Tom:

A peeping Tom is someone who tries to look through other people's windows without being seen in order to spy on people in their homes.

12)For the love of Pete!  OR For Pete's Sake :
This is an alterative to saying 'For the love of God!' or 'For God's sake'.  Some people find it rude to use the word 'God' in that way. For some, it is considered blasphemy.

13)Keeping up with the Joneses:
This simply means “keeping up with the neighbors,” referring to the suburban competition to best one’s neighbors as far as material possessions and social status go. 

14)Cup of Joe:
This is a way of saying “A cup of coffee”.

15)Average Joe:
This is the average man in the general public.  We also say “John Q. Public”.

16)Rob Peter to pay Paul:
If you rob Peter to pay Paul, you try to solve one problem, but create another in doing so, often through short-term planning.

[hazel]

"And Bob's your uncle"

"Bob's your uncle" is a commonly used expression mainly in Britain, Ireland and Commonwealth nations. Typically, someone says it to conclude a set of simple instructions to mean, "and there you have it," or "you're all set." For example, "To make a ham sandwich, just put a piece of ham between two slices of buttered bread, and Bob's your uncle."

[Mandolyn]

Another lesson that my students really love (and the teachers too). In this lesson, I start with a powerpoint showing the students that many words like sweet, bitter, spicy, can all be used to describe people as well. Then after the powerpoint I put the students in groups of 2-3, sometimes more depending on their level, and I give each team a packet of food idioms and expressions. I have each group write a short dialogue. Usually, each student has to say at least 2-3 idioms during their dialogue (team of 3, usually I have them use a minimum of 6 idioms total in their dialogue) The groups come to the front of the classroom and read their skits for everyone.

I have got some great material out of this. One was a skit about me and the students and it went something like this:
Teacher "You students are all fruitcakes! You are completely out to lunch! I need to bring home the bacon but you make life so hard. I'm going to go hit the sauce now"

Real funny.

Oh and this powerpoint was passed to me from someone else, but I changed a lot of it. I don't know who to give the original credit to.

Also, I usually skip the slide on 'salty' because I have never used that word and I don't even know if I know the exact meaning. In the dictionary it says a childish joke, but I know many people that use it to mean basically the same thing as grumpy.

[shambles2.0]

This lesson could be stretched out to fill an entire class period, but as it is now it takes about 20 minutes to complete.  I've been using it as supplementary material following another lesson.

Anyway, it's pretty self explanatory- start with the idioms powerpoint and then handout the short story, half a sheet to each student.  My attempt to keep the work from being too challenging for the lower level students has produced a very easy worksheet, so please, feel free to rewrite the story.  After distributing it my students kept telling me what "a piece of cake" it was.

After comleting the story, they should tell you about some Korean idioms.

Anywho, hope this lesson helps to fill up some extra class time.

[michel.william]

All -

This is my presentation on Idioms. I thought it went well. All you really need to do is print out(in color) and laminate the presentation idioms slides. Set up students in groups of 4-6.

1. Go through Prezi. (http://prezi.com/9kwc3t5w9lcn/idioms/)
2. Give each group of groups ONE of the "Presentation Idoms" slides & have the students read them outloud. I also created a 5 line dialogue for the students to read out loud(I lost the file so you have to do this if you chose).
3. After student presentation play Mario Bomb game (See attached).

I'm sorry if you find any mistakes. Good luck.

[ejmclaine]

I did the same thing. Only probably not as well

[GreenFloyd]

I made this for a day of camp lessons. I didn't choose to do idioms, but the school wanted me to, so I thought about how I could make them as easy as possible (since I think they are naturally too difficult for middle-school students). Here's what I came up with. It's interactive, so the way I do it is have students guess the answers to the idioms in groups (correct groups earn a point).

For the dialogue screens, you can have the groups think of a way for the Bob character to use the idiom in order to respond to Bill and then you can award points (or do whatever you wish).

Let me know if this works out for you or if you think anything should be changed. Thanks.

added a follow-up review ppt. Anybody could have done it since it's basically copy and pasted from the original, but it's simple and may be useful to you

[mteacher]

For an idioms lesson I cut up different idioms (so each team of 2 gets a pack of words).  the team must try to put the words in the correct order to figure out the idiom.  After that they used the internet (or preferably dictionaries if you have them available) to find the meaning and then each group gets to share with the class.  For a fun activity I had them draw a picture of the idiom, but the actual idiom, not the meaning... so the pictures were pretty funny.  They had to write the meaning on the drawing too.  It was loads of fun and they really enjoyed it - especially if you have a funny idiom - they loved drawing the funny pictures.

[karenology]

Thanks, this lesson is great!  I tried a proverbs lesson but it turned out to be a disaster because it was way too hard.  I think your lesson is just about on target for my kids though!

[GEK]

Thanks!  Used this this morning for a small business class.  Went over great.  They really liked, "going bananas".

[Florence7]

Awesome. Thank you sooo much! I'm going to use it this week!

[Koreachess]

This was a really good lesson plan but there are only 9 idioms instead of tens.  My smarted students noticed that # 7 idiom was missing 헐

[sheedi]

I made a ppt of the original idioms of animals lesson and shorten the wrksts. I used this for my 2nd and 3rd year classes. During the ppt I asked the class questions and had them guess first what they thought it might mean. Let the class do the matching of the idioms with the meaning. Then go over the answers . Then I had them answer the yes or no part of the wrkst.