Summing up

Hi,
Congratulation, people, for teaching for this long. I just wanted to post one more thing before we finish. I was thinking about how, despite the fact that I worked really hard to provide interesting lessons, the kids don't seem to have learnt much. If I had another year with these kids next year, or taught for another year, I would do the following.
Every class, learn maybe three words and a phrase. Also, almost every class, do some karaoke, and maybe a worksheet. Each 4 or five weeks, I would have them do some sort of presentation, hopefully using the vocab, like, making a recipe and then the dish.
inventing a conversation and then filming it.
The point of having a standard lesson would be so that after a fun lesson (playing hide and seek, twister, etc.), you could get them back to doing more boring things more easily.
Other things I would do is to film their introductions, if they let me, at the beginning of the year, and try and get them to make a better one at the end.
Anyway, just a few ideas. Maybe the volunteers next year can use them.
Take care, lovelies!

Snakes and ladders

So I created a snakes and ladders board (I made three, and it was enough for our classes of up to 20), with squares of four different colours, and bought some dice. Then, I made a bunch of cards, of these four different colours, with questions on them. The students play snakes and ladders, and, after they have moved, take a card, and answer a question. If they get it right, they can move forward to spaces more. I got the kids to make up some of the questions, which was fun, and the cards got more and more ridiculous, which instructions like, "dance", "sing Katie Perry´s "Hot and cold"", "pushups" and "stand on Chair".
Photo, here

Fun Activities for the summer

An outdoor game: Los paises. A game the students knew. Everyone chooses a country (this game can be easily adapted for other categories of words. We played it with fruits and colours). Everyone stands outside in a group, with one person holding the ball. He/she throw it straight up in the air, and shouts a country of another person. that person has to catch it, and everyone else runs as far away as possible. If they catch it on the full, they can throw it back up, calling out a new country. If it bounces first, they shout "stop" when they have it. Everyone has to stop running when "stop" is called. The person with the ball takes three steps and throws it at someone. The game can then restart.
This would be better, perhaps, if played with penalties, like the person who gets hit has to sing in English. We tried that for a while but it was a bit difficult.

SImple activities

Everyone knows each other by now, of course, but you can still use these games in class to get them speaking and using English. http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/teaching/tefl/class-management/class-dynamics/gtky-games/
Happy deciocho!

Tongue Twisters

Hey guys,
Found a decent resource for various Tongue Twisters. I have used them as closing activities (like warm ups but at the end) and have got really good responses from my students. Hope it proves useful for you all:)

http://www.indianchild.com/tongue_twisters.htm

Sarah

21

OK, modeled on the drinking game. Sit in a circle, count up to 21. The 21st gets to make up a rule, like saying Buzz on the primes, swap seats every fifth number, reverse counting, etc. Mistakes are penalised. First I penalised with points (the person with the least points wins), but then used a forfeit. Anybody who made a mistake had to either dance for ten seconds, sing for ten seconds, or talk English for ten. Fun times were had, and a compromising video of the teacher dancing was recorded, so I'm going to call that lesson a success.

Guess Who

"Adivinar quien" is also a game known to the students, so it's easy to put it into practice in class. You can use the faces here. Cut up one sheet so that you have 24 face cards. Give each team the sheet with the faces, and then let them pick one of the face cards, face down. (I wouldn't recommend more than 5 teams). The game works by each team asking two questions at a time (is he a man, does he have red hair), and then trying to guess the face-card of another team. Can be chaotic, can be great.