Keeping Grammar Alive! Grammar in the Secondary Classroom
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Keeping Grammar Alive! Grammar in the Secondary Classroom

A selection of activities

Dave Spencer

Macmillan Russia Online Conference: 10th November 2016

1) Who, What, How

Ask students to think of as many question words as possible and to write them down. Then ask them to write one question with each question word they thought of to find out information about their partner. The students then interview their partner using their questions. Finally, ask the students to tell you one interesting thing they found out about their partner. The students can then choose some of their questions to find out information about YOU.

2) Sentence hangman 

_ / _ _ _ _/ _ _ _ _ _/ _ _ _/ _ _ _/ _ _ _ _ _ =

I/ H A V E/ N E V E R/ M E T/ T H E/ Q U E E N

Play in teams. Teams get one point for guessing a letter that appears in the sentence, five points for guessing a word, and ten points for guessing the complete sentence. Negative points are given for incorrect guesses. Once the sentence has been discovered, use it to revise/ analyse a particular structure.

3) Spaghetti lines

To practise ‘have got’, students secretly link five different names with five different objects.

Jack                        bike

Harry                        MP3 player

Emma                        laptop

Kate and Amy        tablet

Oliver                        calculator

They then take it in turns to guess: Has Jack got an MP3 player? The winner is the first person to identify who has each object.

The basic idea can be adapted for many different grammatical structures.

4) Dream Holiday

Students secretly choose one of three different holiday destinations, one of three months and one of three types of hotel. They can only go on their dream holiday if they find someone else who has chosen the same three elements. So they must mingle and ask: Are you going to New York? Are you going to go in July? etc.

5) Grammar squares 

See Gateway A2 1st Edition SBK page 54 exercise 4/Gateway A2 2nd Edition SBK page 42 exercise 4. Students find a minimum of two things for each square – things that they can both do, things that they can do but their partner can’t do, things they can’t do but their partner can, and things that neither of them can do. Notice that a minimum of two things means that faster students cannot simply say they have finished after a couple of minutes.

6) VIP party list

Tell students they can come to a party but they must offer to bring some food to be able to come. Some food you want but some you don’t. They must work out what it is you want by trial and error at first, and then working out your criteria. The criteria can be: (1) usually countable or uncountable, (2) words containing double letters (pizza, egg) or not, (3) words ending with a vowel (tomato, apple) or consonant.

7) Grammar Grid 

Draw a grid on the board (5 x 4). How many grammatically correct sentences can the students make, using only the words in the grid, in ten minutes? Use the game to revise grammar that you have just taught, e.g. present perfect, conditionals, passives…Also, students can make their own grids.

Example of words to include at a low level, to practise present continuous, have, adjectives, word order, etc.:

singing/ green/ girl/ that/ small/ brother/ have/ I/ is/ years/ car/ a/ there/ are/ people/ ten/ my/ here/ no/ old

8) Disappearing sentences 

Write three or four sentences containing the new structure you want to practice. Gradually rub off the sentences and ask students if they can remember what the complete sentences were. Continue until the board is empty. A fun way to make students want to repeat a new structure.

9) Grammar charades

Have two teams. Give students a sentence containing a particular structure (e.g. for the present perfect: ‘I have sent six emails this morning’).  The students take it in turns to mime their sentence to their team who get a point if they identify the sentence correctly within a time limit.

Plus:

See all the ‘Grammar Communication’ handouts for each level of Gateway 2nd Edition at

http://www.macmillangateway2.com 

Contact Dave Spencer via the Gateway Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/macmillangateway