Coffee House discussion ideas

With both the Auburn and Union groups, we had one evening program wherein the theme was "coffeehouse." Now, Ukrainians don't really drink coffee, so it should possibly have been called "teahouse," but whatever. :)

Anyway, I'm going to try to put up some of the themes and activities that we used for these nights. The way we structured it was very similar to how Mystery Night worked: the Ukrainians remained stationary at the tables, and the Americans rotated around the groups so that everyone was able to interact with all of the Americans. These are designed to last for about 10 minutes, depending on the size of the group.

Fears

1. 2-minute list of things people are afraid of

2. (group question) What were things that you were afraid of as a child?

3. (group question) How do fears change as we grow older?

4. Pictionary: spiders, snakes, dark, heights, airplanes, small places, storms, crowds of people

I'll include more as I locate my prompt cards...

Spur-of-the-moment Travel lesson

Through a crazy series of events, I ended up needing to craft an additional lesson while the Union team was here. We decided to go with "travel" as our theme, and this is what we did:

1. Interesting fact game.

2. Starburst game with travel-related questions (small groups). We used these: a) if you could visit any city or state in the US, where would you go/why? b) if you could visit anywhere in the world, where would you go/why? c) if you moved to another country, what would you miss most about Ukraine?

3. American landmarks activity. The Auburn team left some of their supplies with me, and I was able to put them to good use! Thanks to Rachel and Mrs. Kinard. :) The class stayed in small groups. The Americans each took a map of the USA and photocopied pictures of landmarks from around the country (the Hollywood sign, Statue of Liberty, Mt. Rushmore, etc) and discussed their locations, significance, etc.

4. World map labeling. Each group is given a map of the world. Their task is to label as many countries, oceans, continents as they can (in English).

5. Each group is assigned a vacation destination and must create a packing list (Switzerland, Jamaica, Morocco).

6. This was a BIG winner: Each group pretends that they work for a travel agency. They must create a list of 5 Russian phrases that would be helpful for American visitors to know while visiting Ukraine. Then, the students had to teach the American in their group to pronounce one of the phrases. It was really funny and enjoyed by all!

***One extremely successful element of these group projects has been small group rotation. Most of the teams coming in have about 4-5 Americans working in a classroom. So, we divide the students into small groups and 1 American goes with each group. We usually keep one "point man" to help keep an eye on the clock and to keep things moving. I usually have the Americans rotate groups after every activity. This helps to keep things interesting and gives the students more practice with different accents and speech patterns.

Quick and Useful Ideas for Student-Led Projects

Here are some quick and useful ideas for English classes in colleges and universities here in Poltava:

1. Choose a basic theme and vocabulary. Example: Sports.

You can help tailor this lesson for several different ability levels fairly easily. Create a basic vocabulary list (basketball, fans, soccer, whistle, score). Then, add/take away some words to make it more advanced. You can specialize it a little by including words for equipment or verbs (swing, serve, spike, goggles, pom poms).

2. Create-a-clue/ Catchphrase

After going over the vocabulary words (either in large groups or in smaller groups- depending on how many Americans you have to work with), assign a few of the vocabulary words to each team. They must create definitions/ clues for each one. Once everyone has done this, have the teams take turns reading their clues, giving the other teams opportunities to guess which word they're describing. This is a good way to review the words.

3. Stand up if...

Create a list of statements that are agree/disagree or yes/no related. If the students agree, they stand up when you read the statement. If they don't, they remain seated. Examples: stand up if you play soccer. Stand up if you'd rather watch sports than play them.

4. Two-minute list

5. Jeopardy.

You can create your questions with two different ability levels in mind; that way, if you end up in a class with an ability level different than you'd anticipated, you'll be prepared to upgrade or downgrade.

6. Hangman

If you need to make it more complicated, you can use some of the specialized words you discussed, adjectives to describe sports, or use phrases instead of only words.

7. Starburst game. You can make the questions harder or easier, based on the class.

These are good activities that keep things from getting too stagnant and that you can tweak and modify, based on your needs. Most of them require very little prep and tend to be crowd-pleasers.

Mystery Night

Because the Auburn team and the Union team were only separated by one week, I had to be very creative when coming up with themes for our evening programs. I took a risk on the theme for Union Evening Program 1 and crafted a "mystery night." My original idea had been to create a Clue-type game (like, the board game- I love it!), but the more I thought about it, the more I decided that was a bad plan. My criteria for Union's evening programs were: a) minimal prep work, b) minimal supplies needed, c) would work well with a large group (50ish people), and d) would provide a good amount of English practice.

I started scouting on the internet and found this. I started tinkering with the idea and came up with the following plan:

1. I created a "crime" that was committed in Poltava. The crime? A Lada (Soviet-esque car that no Ukrainian would bother stealing- this added an element of humor for the Ukrainian students) was stolen and 9 Americans (the number of people on the Union team) were suspects.

2. 3 Ukrainian friends served as our "witnesses." They made up hilarious little stories (which they told in Russian) about what they had seen. The Americans' alibi was that they had been at a local pizza place eating dinner while the car was being stolen. We had a "waitress," a "passerby," and a "security guard" give testimony of what they had "seen."

3. After our witnesses spoke, I sent the Americans out of the room. Two things happened simultaneously:

a) The Americans were to make up a more detailed alibi (I had only told them that their alibi was that they had been eating at a pizza place).

b) The Ukrainians (broken into groups around tables) were to make up questions intended to crack the Americans' alibis.

The way this works is that the suspects have a few minutes to craft details for their alibi (i.e. what they ordered, what the waitresses were wearing, what the restaurant looked like) so that they all have matching alibis. While they're doing this, the Ukrainians (in their groups) were creating lists of questions.

4. The Americans came back in and split up amongst the tables. I gave them about 4-5 minutes at each table before calling time and having them rotate (by the end, each table of Ukrainians had interviewed all of the Americans). The Ukrainians asked the same questions to each American, making note of whether or not their answers all matched.

5. After everyone had rotated to each table, I sent the Americans back out and took a vote of the Ukrainians, determining whether or not the Americans were innocent or guilty. Of course, they were guilty. :)

6. So, we decided on "punishments." Their punishments were to sing a group song ("I'm a Little Teapot"- complete with motions) and to try to pronounce an extremely difficult Russian word.

The whole thing went over very well! The Ukrainians loved it, and it seemed to break down awkward barriers between the American and Ukrainian students. I'd say it was a hit.

It's a head-scratcher, huh, John?

Dr. Fant, telling his side of the story.

Time to pay up, Americans! They were great sports about trying to pronounce their Russian word. Thankfully, I've been practicing that word for over a year now.

Staging the heist! Yes, that's a Lada.

Guess-My-Interesting-Fact Game

This is a game that I've suggested to several groups, and it usually works pretty well- if there are 4 or so people in the group. This is how it works:

1. Before class, each group member chooses one interesting fact about him- or herself. Write the facts on the board, sans names.

2. After going over the names of each person leading the class, read through the facts.

3. Have the students vote on whom they think most likely to belong to the different facts. It's really funny to see their guesses and reactions.

I've had a lot of success with this game. Sometimes, however, the class is a little shy about guessing. You need to read your audience to see if they can handle it. :)

Jeopardy

This is a definite winner in pretty much any class, and you can do it with pretty much any topic. I usually use it after I've covered a pretty good amount of vocabulary. It USUALLY takes few supplies; if you have access to a black/white board and writing implements, you can make it in no time.

1. Choose a theme (or several, if you want to use it as a major review), such as Transportation.

2. Choose the words/phrases/idioms that you want to use for the game (i.e. car, truck, gas station, bicycle, etc.). I suggest about 20 words.

3. Create definitions (it's best if you use the same definitions that you used when you first introduced the vocabulary) for each word (i.e. "a vehicle with 4 wheels that uses gasoline"- car).

4. Create categories (or just random category titles like Red, Yellow, Orange, Blue) and assign point values to the different questions.

5. My method of organizing the questions and answers is just to make a master list:

Red

100- A vehicle with 4 wheels that uses gasoline (car)

200- A large vehicle that flies through the air (plane)

6. Draw the grid on board. As the students answer questions, erase the value from the board (unless you have to MacGyver things a little...).

MacGyver-ed board.

7. Don't forget to keep score!

I have used this MANY times and all have been successful. It's super.

Auburn: Shopping Lesson and modified Transportation

On the second day of Auburn classes, I went with a different group to another school in town. We started the day by using the "Shopping" lesson and ended with the "Transportation lesson. Here's the rundown on the "shopping" lesson:

1. As a kind of introduction, complete this phrase: "My name is _____ and I like to shop for _____." You fill in the first blank with your name (obviously) and the second with an item that begins with the same letter as your name.

2. "Matching" game. This game is a little different than the usual matching game. For this game, there are category cards (shopping verbs, people, merchandise, patterns) and item cards (to exchange, cashier, socks, plaid). The students are to sort all the different item cards (there are quite a few that fall into each category) into the correct category. After the smaller groups sort through all of their cards, the students divide the items from each category amongst themselves and give clues to the other team (taking turns between teams), so that the other team can guess which word is being described.

3. American-Ukrainian comparison: The Auburn team brought sale papers for this lesson and let the student peruse them, comparing products and prices to those found here in Ukraine.

4. Following up on the sale papers, the students were given paper and colored pencils, with the aim of creating their own advertisements for the product of their choosing. After they created ads, they presented them to the rest of the class.

Example of one of the advertisements.

5. As a class closer, we played Hangman, using the vocabulary words from the "matching" game.

Transportation modification:

In our third class of the day, we ran into a few obstacles that required some quick and creative thinking. Our class was very reluctant to speak out, so we introduced the transportation vocabulary (using the pictures brought from the States) in small groups. The Americans divided the pictures among themselves and discussed a few at a time in their groups. After each team had finished their small stack, they rotated the pictures until all of the groups had seen and discussed all of them.

We ran into an unfortunate incident, wherein we had no markers for the white board (excluding our options of jeopardy and hangman). While the groups discussed vocabulary and played Transportation matching, I MacGyvered a game board, using strips of paper and crayons. I discovered that I could stick the papers underneath the top ledge of the board. I then bent the tops and bottoms of the papers to form a chain. Maybe you can see it in the picture. It was ridiculous but worked pretty well.