Student-y type lesson

I was in an advanced English lesson at one of the universities today. The particular group of students I was with today are actually a special group that has all of their classes (except Ukrainian history and Ukrainian language) in English. I decided to do a student-related lesson with them today.

We started off by going over names and playing the Interesting Fact game. This has always been a good ice breaker for me. It gets everyone talking and interacting with each other.

Next, I had made a set of matching cards (the cards written in purple ink were the words/idioms and the cards written in green were the definitions), using idioms (and a few vocab words) that might relate to students. Here are some of the ones that we worked with:

1. senior

2. junior

3. sophomore

4. freshman

5. skip class

6. running late

7. on time

8. ace a test

9. bomb a test

10. all-nighter

11. cram

12. a quick study

13. a know-it-all

14. a mental block

15. to catch up

16. to hit the books

There are tons more that could be used, but these are just a few. They really enjoyed racing to match them up. After discussing them, I divided them into groups and assigned each group 3 phrases to use in creating dialogues. They did an excellent job and enjoyed acting them out.

After that, we played the Starburst game. These were the questions we used:

red: What is the most important lesson that you've learned?

yellow: What is your main goal in life?

pink: Who is someone that you've learned an important lesson from? What lesson did you learn?

orange: If you could give advice to a college freshman, what would it be?

These questions sparked good discussions. Overall, it was a good lesson.