This is my first post. I wanted to share a lesson I did with my high school students. I get a lot of ideas from this site and feel I should share something.
The lesson is based on the 25 most common English verbs--go, tell, say, etc. My students already know these words, but they're generally bad with speaking and listening, so that's what we practiced.
It's a two-part lesson. First, we play Bingo. Students fill in the Bingo grid with common verbs. I give them a word-bank, with verbs in either present- or past-tense. For lower-level classes, I print a list of sentences, which I make individual students read aloud. Others have to listen for the verb, which they then mark on the Bingo grid. In higher-level classes, I ask students to produce a sentence spontaneously. Students must listen hard to catch the subtle differences between "ask" and "asks," "work" and "worked," etc. Generally, each student says 1-2 sentences before someone wins.
After Bingo, we do a relay. Students form groups of four. One student writes. The others relay. I print three sentences that, in order, tell a story. I hide the sentences somewhere in the hallway. To start, one student from each group runs out and finds the first sentence in the series. Read the sentence, remember the sentence, go tell the writer, who writes the sentence down. When the first sentence is complete, the next student goes and finds the next sentence. The first team to write the story, with no mistakes, wins.
We usually have time for three rounds of the relay. By the end, there are nine sentences hidden in the hallway. I move each sentence each round, to make finding them harder.
This lesson was super-successful with all my classes, including my nightmare class. It lasts 50 minutes and ensures they're constantly speaking and/or listening. They're also focusing on words that English-speakers constantly use. There isn't much spontaneous conversation, which is better practice, but for a conversation class I think it's worthwhile.
I gave a piece of candy to the Bingo winner.
