Занимательные задания из книги Mario Rinvolucri «Humanizing your coursebook»

Основной учебник придает курсу обучения системность и предсказуемость, облегчает подготовку к уроку. Но цели, потребности и интересы студентов отличаются, а учебник, к сожалению, не может быть универсальным для всех. Поэтому Mario Rinvolucri, автор потрясающего пособия ‘Humanizing your coursebook’, предлагает дополнить основной инструмент занимательными заданиями для школьников и взрослых.

По словам автора, пособие  ‘Humanizing your coursebook’ будет полезно преподавателям, которые:

• довольны учебником, но хотят разнообразия;
• испытывают проблемы с дисциплиной;
• вынуждены учиться по монотонному учебнику;
• работают без student book.

Книга состоит из набора заданий, которые:

• не занимают много времени на уроке;
• вписываются в любую тему;
• требуют минимальной подготовки;
• адаптируются для разных уровней;
• идеально подходят для групповых занятий;
• “student-centered” с минимальным вмешательством преподавателя;
• являются мультисенсорными.

«Humanizing your coursebook» включает такие разделы: Icebreakers and warm-ups, grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, speaking. Приводим краткое описание раздела и примеры.

Icebreakers and warm-ups

Важность разминки невозможно переоценить. Лед необходимо разбить как в начале каждого урока, так и в начале курса, чтобы дать возможность ученикам познакомиться. Задания из книги универсальны и подойдут для любых случаев. А педагогу не надо ломать голову перед каждым уроком в поисках интересного способа начать занятия.

Filling a Foot  

Level: elementary to advanced 

Materials: none 

1. Pair the students and ask them to take off their shoes. Ask them to place a sheet of paper on the floor and draw round their partner’s foot. They then ‘fill’ the foot outline with information about the partner, excluding name, age and country (if this is an international class). If drawing round a foot would be either embarrassing or taboo, get the students to draw round each other’s hands.
2.  Collect the sheets and shuffle them. Hand them out at random. No one should get their own sheet. 
3. Tell the students to find the owner of the foot on their sheet and get lots more information to put inside the shape. They add the name of the owner of the outline.
4. Put the sheets up round the walls of the classroom

Grammar

Задания предназначены для отработки и повторения определенной грамматической темы: prepositions, pronouns, third person singular, past simple, present and past perfect, irregular verbs, conditionals и так далее.

Примеры упражнений из книги.

Building Houses: Past Perfect 

Level: lower to upper intermediate 

Materials: sheets of paper / notebooks 

When you have exhausted the possibilities in the coursebook, this activity can be used to teach the tense sequences. 

1. Dictate these sentences to the students: 

• They built the walls. 
• They cleared the ground.
• They laid the drains. 
• They put in the electrics. 
• They plastered the walls inside. 
• They poured cement into the trenches. 
• They put up the rafters. 
• They tiled the roof.
• They painted the inside walls. 
• They put in the plumbing. 
• They agreed to the plans with the client.
• They laid grass round the new house. 

Check that they understand and can spell all the words.

2. Ask the students to work in pairs and put the sentences in a logical sequence, re-writing them like this: When they had agreed to the plans with the client, they cleared the ground. When they had cleared the ground, they dug the foundation trenches. 

3. Get different pairs to read out their sequences. There is likely to be some disagreement.

Rhythmical Irregular Verbs 

Level: elementary to lower intermediate 

Materials: none

1. To practise a set of twenty or so irregular verbs, ask the students to stand up and demonstrate with ‘go — went — gone’. ● You and the students touch your ankles and say ‘go’. ● You touch your hips and say ‘went’. ● You fling your arms above your head and say ‘gone’. 
2. Now take the verb ‘cut’. This time you and the students touch your ankles three times, chanting ‘cut — cut — cut’. 
3. With the verb ‘teach’ you touch your ankles once and your hips twice chanting, ‘teach — taught — taught’. 
4. Run through all your verbs as rhythmically as you can.

Vocabulary

В учебнике новая лексика представлена сетами и дается в контексте. Но не всегда достаточно практических упражнений для отработки, а особенно для повторения слов.  Mario Rinvolucri предлагает множество простых способов. Например,

Collective Picture 

Level: elementary to upper intermediate 

Materials: 30 slips of paper for writing items of vocabulary, notebooks 

Preparation: Select a set of concrete nouns and verbs from the last three units of the coursebook. Write about thirty of these words on slips of paper. 

1. Hand out one slip of paper to each student and explain that you are going to ask the class to draw a collective picture on the board. 
2. Ask each student to come up to the board and draw the word from their slip of paper. The idea is to get all the items into a coherent picture. The picture for a verb will be a picture of the verb happening. Do the exercise without speaking. Don’t intervene – let the students produce the collective picture they want.
3.  Ask the class to name all the things in the picture and their parts. Get students to write the words in. 
4. Individually, the students copy the drawing and the words. 
5. Allow time for feedback on how building the picture felt. At low levels, let this happen in the mother tongue.

Reading

В этом разделе автор делится идеями как выжать максимум пользы из текста в учебнике и задания на основе текстов, прочитанных ранее.

Пример задания.

Summarising the Text 

Level: lower intermediate to advanced 

Materials: sheets of paper / notebooks 

1. Select a fairly long reading passage from the coursebook. 
2. Divide the class up into four equal-sized groups, but ask the students to work on their own. 
3. Ask the students to read a text with these tasks in mind: ● Group 1: Pick out 8-12 key words or phrases from the text. ● Group 2: Summarise the main content of the passage in one sentence. ● Group 3: Summarise the main content in one paragraph (maximum four sentences). ● Group 4: Notice their own reaction to the text and express this in 5-10 key words. 
4. Group the students in fours, with one person from each of the above groups. 
5. Tell the students to share the work they have been doing.
6.  Leave time for a short, whole-class feedback on how they experienced the different tasks.

Writing

Глава содержит несколько упражнений на развитие письма для парной и самостоятельной работы.

The Optimist and the Pessimist 

Level: elementary to advanced 

Materials: copies of a reading text from the coursebook, sheets of paper 

1. Ask each student to fold and tear a piece of paper into seven strips. 
2. Pair the students and tell them one is to choose the role of the Optimist and the other the role of the Pessimist. 
3. Dictate a first line to all the pairs. For example: This woman’s dog likes eating chocolate. 
4. Simultaneously, the Optimist in each pair writes a reaction on their first slip of paper starting with ‘Fortunately …’, while the Pessimist writes a reaction starting with ‘Unfortunately …’ 
5. Tell the Optimists to place their sentences after the initial statement. The Pessimists then place their sentences in third position. 
6. Tell the Optimists and Pessimists to simultaneously write reactions to the third sentence, each starting with their respective adverb. The Pessimists place their sentences in fourth position, while the Optimists place theirs in fifth place. 
7. Tell them to react to the fifth sentence, and so on, until their seven slips are all used up. 
8. When the writing phase is over, invite two or three pairs to read out their surreal dialogues to the class.

Listening

Занимательные задания из пособия побуждают учеников прослушивать текст и обсуждать его. А также развивать навыки аудирования интересными методами, например, слушая текст коллективно, как в следующем упражнении.

Four Ears Are Better Than Two 

Level: elementary to upper intermediate 

Materials: CD player, sheets of paper / notebooks, copies of listening transcript 

1. Choose a fairly long listening comprehension from the coursebook. 
2. Play it to the students once and ask them to take notes of what they hear.
3. Ask them to go over their notes individually. 
4. Pair the students and ask them to compare notes.
5.  Ask them to form new pairs and compare notes again. 
6. Play the listening a second time and ask the students to fill out their notes. 
7. Tell the students to work with a new partner and tell them what new things they heard on the second listening. 
8. Play the listening a third time, this time with the coursebooks open in front of them. 

Speaking

Часть заданий в этой секции направлена на улучшение произношения. Остальные упражнения на развитие умения поддерживать беседу. Приводим пример из книги. Особенно актуальна для начала года идея из Variation.

Liar, Liar! 

Level: elementary to advanced 

Materials: none 

Preparation: After you have spent some time on narrative tenses, ask your students to come to the next class with a story to tell about themselves. Explain that it can be a true story or an invention. 

1. Group the students in sixes and ask each student to tell their story without saying whether it is fact or fiction. 
2. After each telling, get the students to vote on whether the story is true or invented. The teller says nothing. When all six people have told their stories, the tellers reveal if they lied or told the truth. 

Variation 

Andrew Wright suggests that if you have to set your student an essay subject like ‘My Last Summer Holidays’, you can spice it up by asking the students to each include three untruths. When the essays have been written, you get the students working in fours reading each other’s compositions. Their task is try to spot the lies. 

В пособии найдете множество свежих идей и хорошо известных упражнений, чтобы закрепить новую тему, повторить изученное, разрядить обстановку, поиграть. Некоторые активности адаптируются и для индивидуального обучения и подойдут для дистанционного формата работы с группой.