Christmas songs - FCE practice

Part 2: Open cloze – Shake up Christmas

Shake up the happiness

Wake 1) ___ the happiness

Shake up the happiness

It's Christmas time

There was a story that I 2) ___ told

And I want to tell the world before I 3) ___ too old

And don't remember it, so let's December it

And reassemble it, oh yeah

4) ___ upon a time in a town like this

A little girl made a great big wish

5) ___ fill the world full of happiness

And be on Santa's magic list

Shake it up, shake up the happiness

Wake it up, Wake 1) ___ the happiness

Come on all, it's Christmas time

At the same time miles away

A little boy made a wish that day

That the world 6) ___ be okay

And Santa Clause would hear him say

I got dreams and I got love

I got my feet 7) ___ the ground and family above

Can you send some happiness with my best

To the rest of the people of east and the west

And maybe every once in a while

You give my grandma a reason to smile

'Tis the season to smile

It's cold but we'll be freezing 8) ___ style

And let me meet a girl one day

That wants to spread some love this way

We can let our souls run free

And she can open some happiness with me

Shake it up…

I know you're out there

I hear your reindeer

I see the snow where

Your boots have been

I'm gonna show them

So they will know then

Then love will grow and

They believe again

Part 3: Word formation – Sleigh Ride

Just hear those sleigh bells 1) ___ Ring-ting-tingling, too Come on, it's 2) ___ weather for a sleigh ride Together with you 3) ___ the snow is falling And friends are calling, "Yoo-hoo!" Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride Together with you Giddy-yap, giddy-yap, giddy-yap, let's go Let's look at the show We're riding in a 4) ___ of snow Giddy-yap, giddy-yap, giddy-yap, it's grand Just holding your hand We're gliding along with a song of a 5) ___ fairyland Our cheeks are nice and rosy and comfy-cozy are we We're 6) ___ up together Like two birds of a feather would be Let's take that road before us and sing a chorus or two Come on, it's 2) ___ weather for a sleigh ride Together with you There's a birthday party at the home of Farmer Gray It'll be the perfect 7) ___ of a perfect day We'll be singing the songs we love to sing Without a single stop At the 8) ___ while we watch the chestnuts pop Oh pop pop There's a happy 9) ___ nothing in the world can buy When they pass around the coffee and the pumpkin pie It'll nearly be like a picture print by Currier and Ives These 10) ___ things are the things we remember All through our lives! Just hear those sleigh bells jingling… Our cheeks are nice and rosy and comfy-cozy are we We're 6) ___ up together Like two birds of a feather would be Let's take that road before us and sing a chorus or two Come on, it's 2) ___ weather for a sleigh ride Together with you Giddy-yap, giddy-yap, giddy-yap, go Giddy-yap, giddy-yap, giddy-yap, now Sleigh ride, sleigh ride Giddy-yap, giddy-yap, giddy-yap, let's take a Sleigh ride, sleigh ride All right girls sing Let's take a sleigh ride now Come on

JINGLE LOVE SIDE WONDER WINTER SNUGGLE LOVE (2) END FIRE FEEL WONDER SNUGGLE (6) LOVE (2)

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Download the worksheets here (*docx)

Mickey's Christmas Carol - activity for Younger Learners

My favourite time of the year, Christmas is coming and I've decided to prepare some movie based activities for my (younger) students.

The activity  is based on Disney's adaptation of  A Christmas Carol. Students simply have to circle one of the two options while watching the movie (+/- 22 minutes). You can find links to the worksheets below.

1. Scrooge loves / hates his money.
2. Cratchit (Mickey) says Christmas is a time to spend with family / a time for working.
3. Scrooge accepts / doesn’t accept Donald’s invitation to dinner.
4. Marley’s ghost haunts Scrooge / Cratchit.
5. Marley’s ghost is graceful / clumsy.
6. The first spirit that visits Scrooge is the Ghost of Christmas past / present.
7. Scrooge loved Isabelle more than money / money more than Isabelle.
8. The second spirit visits Scrooge at 12 o’clock / 2 o ‘clock.
9. The spirit of the Christmas Present uses a street lamp as a torch / a torch as a street lamp.
10. The second spirit takes Scrooge to Marley’s / Cratchit’s house.
11. Tiny Tim will be fine / will die if nothing changes.
12. The spirit of Christmas future shows Scrooge Marley’s / his grave.
13. Scrooge wakes up in his bedroom / at the cemetery.
14. Scrooge gives money to the rich / to the poor.
15. Scrooge gives Cratchit pay rise (more money) / more work in his company.

Answer key

1. loves
2. a time to spend with family
3. doesn’t accept
4. Scrooge
5. clumsy
6. past
7. money more than Isabelle
8. 2 o’clock
9. a street lamp as a torch
10. Cratchit’s house
11. will die
12. his
13. in his bedroom
14. to the poor
15. pay rise

 

Error hunt

While doing my CELTA course, I learnt to add PACS (Post-Activity Correction Stage) to every lesson I plan. However, everyone who does it will admit that sometimes it's challenging to notice and write down any mistakes, and sometimes, as in case of this writing assessment I did with my students, there are so many mistakes to analyse that you need far more time than a couple of minutes you'd normally dedicate to the PACS stage.

Personally, I think I sometimes neglect my students' mistakes, don't get me wrong. I use different correction techniques, such as reformulations, instant and post-activity corrections but I feel like there's much more I could do to actually make my students learn from their mistakes.

Therefore, last week I started brainstorming while correcting my students' FCE writings (it was one of those moments when you could do anything else but correcting and marking - we've all been there). And I came up with the idea of an ERROR HUNT game for my students. It was quite easy, but a little bit time consuming, to prepare and what's crucial my "guinea pigs" hugely enjoyed it.

How to prepare an ERROR HUNT game

You'll need:

1. A list of your student's mistakes.
2. Post-its.
3. Pins.
4. Answer sheets for your students.
5. A sheet with error codes you've used while correcting writings. I used this one from British Council - I added P for punctuation mistakes, ESP for Spanglish or Spanish and X for extra words.

How to go about it:

1. Write the errors on post-its, don't forget to write the error code on the post-it (you can write it right above the mistake - I didn't want to make it too easy for my students).
2. Pin/stick the post-its in your classroom, hall, wherever your students will be able to access during the activity.
3. Divide your students into groups of 3-4.
4. Set a time limit.
5. Give each group of students an answer sheet and explain how to use the error code to decode/find mistakes.
6. Students get one point for correcting each mistake.
7. After correcting 5 mistakes students can come and check it with the teacher. If their corrections are OK they can steal the post-its so that other teams can't score the point for that "mistake" (Plus you'll have fewer/no post-its to collect after the lesson).
8. Allow students to error hunt until they've corrected all the mistakes or until the time's over.

Feedback  

Go through the mistakes with all the students. The best way to do it is by preparing a PowerPoint presentation with ready error corrections.

What I would change or improve

It was the first time I prepared this activity so I didn't really know what to expect from my students. As I had hoped, they were absolutely into the activity and they got quite a number of mistakes corrected. However, I wish I had assigned more time or had not prepared as many mistakes. I dedicated 40 minutes to the game and only 5 minutes to the feedback. There was not enough time for my students to correct all the mistakes and go through them all.

I didn't do it, Pac-Man did!

When I was a little girl, I played a lot this game called Pac-Man. Luckily, I am not the only one who did so. You might even be shocked, but even my younger students know the game quite well. This helps me a lot when I explain the form of the verb after the auxiliary DID.

You see, the very first time I had to explain Past Simple to my younger students I had a brainwave. I realised that DID "eats" all the "-ed" endings and irregular forms (extra points!!!) just like Pac-Man eats all the dots on its way.

Since then, I always refer to Pac-Man when I explain Past Simple, I do it to such an extent that my students use Pac-Man more often than DID, for example:

"Did Lisa go to the supermarket yesterday?"

When I ask my students why we don't say "Did Lisa went to the supermarket yesterday?" They simply answer "Because, Pac-Man!" It's all as simple as that. What I am glad about is the fact that they remember to use infinitive without to after DID.

I think using Pac-Man is an entertaining way of explaining how DID works. If your students don't know the game (Poor them!) you can always find an online game on the Internet and play it to show them or you can play it as a reward at the end of the grammar lesson.

I hope you'll enjoy your next grammar lesson with this trick!

P.S. Pac-Man/DID explanation is also compatible with adult learners - we're never too old for a little bit of fun!!!

How to make a cup of tea AKA a conditional sentence...

Have you ever wondered how to explain the form of a conditional sentence to a bunch of nine-year-olds?

While my students had no problems deducing or discovering the meaning of the conditional sentences, they almost always struggled with the form. I have always wondered why, at the end of the day it's just If + Present Simple, will + infinitive. I even got the students to memorise this formula, but as you can probably imagine - it is never that easy. Memorising never equals learning but I guess even teachers learn through their own guided discovery - make a mistake, spot the mistake and correct it.

And so, one day I asked my students how to make a cup of tea. It was a funny situation because they listed everything but a... cup. And as everyone knows, you can't have a cup of tea without a cup!

I took my students to the staff room and we prepared a real cup of tea. I got everything they listed plus all the extras (sugar, milk, sweetener, teaspoon). And then I asked them if I could start pouring the hot water over the teabag. Finally, someone said "Teacher! You need a cup!". At that moment I asked my students whether the cup was important or not. They all agreed that it was essential.

Therefore, the cup became my "IF". All the conditional sentences start with if (I know, not all of them, but don't forget we're dealing here with a bunch of nine-year-olds, we don't want to complicate it too much). And IF we want to make a cup of tea, we need something simple like... HOT WATER, and something characteristic of a cup of tea - a tea bag (will)!

My students remembered the formula immediately, and I never had to repeat it again. What's more, whenever they lost some part of the sentence, I just said "Ana, where's the teabag?" And my students knew which part of the sentence was missing.

One week later, following the same pattern, we learnt how to make a cup of coffee - 2nd conditional sentences. This time, everyone started with the "CUP - IF". And making conditional sentences resulted being a piece of cake, ahem, a cup of tea/coffee, for my students.  

Teaching ideas

Here is the link to the blog with all my teaching ideas, infographics and videos:

http://polishyourenglishwithpau.edublogs.org/

Past Tenses Quiz

This quiz can be used for a quick revision of the uses of different past tenses. The chart can be used for sentence analysis or to help students use the correct tense.

In the first case, the students have to analyse a sentence asking a series of "Yes or No" questions. For example, if your sentence is: "I had a dog when I was four years old", you have to answer the following questions:

• Did it happen in the past? - YES
• Do we know when of where it happened exactly? - YES
• Had it happened before another action in the past? - NO
• Was the action completed? - YES

The tense used in the sentence: PAST SIMPLE, we use it to talk about actions completed in a specific moment in the past.

Following the same steps, we can ask students to choose the correct tense. For example, "I ________ (be) to London three times".

• Did it happen in the past? - YES
• Do we know when of where it happened exactly? - NO
• Additional questions: Is it experience you have? - YES.

The tense used in the sentence: PRESENT PERFECT, we use it to talk about actions that happened in the past but we do not know exactly when. Also we use it to talk about experiences.

Past Simple Monster

Have you ever wondered how to teach Past Simple to a group of eight year olds? Maybe you've already faced the challenge and found your way of doing so. So have I. Today, I am going to share with you an idea that came to me while I was preparing my lesson for a lovely group of very talkative and (hiper)active kids.

In my opinion, teaching grammar to young learners always is a little bit about thinking outside the box. The idea of creating a Past Simple Monster came from the fact that whenever I say the word grammar (it should be banned) my student's are at least puzzled and even scared. And so, two weeks ago, without any introduction, I just asked my students to take out their crayons, listen to my clues and draw a monster.

We drew monster's head with mouth that was a vertical DID. Above the monster's mouth we drew a nose that looked like a question mark, and "ed"-looking hair on the monster's head. We wrote "PAST" on the monster's belly and we went on to draw two arms, a straigh=regular one and a curvy=irregular one. The regular arm ended with two hands that resembled letters E and D, with some examples of regular verbs and the irregular arm ended with a hand made of such irregular verbs as was, were, went, ate or could. We also drew monster's feet labeled as LAST and AGO.

I'm sure you're curious what the final effect was. Well, my student's were happy that they could draw and did not have to listen to any boring grammar explanation. What is more, they learnt all the important information about the Past Simple Tense I wanted to teach them. Mission completed succesfully!