Swine flu! For Beginners...

I taught my beginners English club last night, and instead of creating an entirely different lesson plan, I just modified the "sick" lesson from the intermediate class. I cut down the vocabulary for the spelling game to more basic words. We discussed and translated all of the "sick" words into Russian or Ukrainian and talked about how you would use them correctly in a sentence.

We also worked on some role-plays. I was really fortunate and two girls from church who speak EXCELLENT English came to help with English club last night. I divided the class into two groups, putting Ira with one and Olya with the other. In their smaller groups, they read through each role-play, translated it, then worked on performing it. After they practiced in their groups, they performed and translated it for the whole group. Here are the role-plays they worked on:

"Doctor Visit"

Patient: I think I’m sick.

Doctor: Tell me what is wrong.

Patient: I have a fever, a headache, and a runny nose.

Doctor: I’m going to give you a shot to make you feel better.

Patient: Thank you.

Doctor: I’m also going to give you some medicine to take for 10 days.

“I don’t feel good”

Child: I don’t feel good. I don’t think I should go to school.

Mother: What doesn’t feel good?

Child: My head hurts, and I’m hot.

Mother: Let me take your temperature…No, you don’t have a fever. You need to go to school.

Child: I don’t like school.

Mother: I know, but you’re not sick. Have a good day at school.

After the role-plays, we discussed one of the "quotes" from the intermediate class:

{7} Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the LORD and depart from evil. {8} It will be health to your flesh, And strength to your bones. –Proverbs 3:7-8

Homework? Memorize the verse for next week!

Swine flu!

At the moment, Ukraine is under a "quarantine" because of a swine flu pandemic. Many, many people are hesitant to venture out of their homes, and when they do, lots of them wear surgical masks. It's quite interesting, to say the least...

So, for English club tonight, I decided to do a class on being sick. They all got a kick out of that. Here's what we did:

1. Two-minute list of anything that has to do with doctors and/or being sick.
2. Spelling game of illness-related words:
medicine
temperature
thermometer
cough
sneeze
congested
injection
fever
achy
symptoms
3. Discuss phrases like "a runny nose", "to take a temperature", "blow your nose", etc.
4. Role-play a patient, describing symptoms with a doctor.
5. Discussion:
-Why are people so scared of getting sick?
-What are you doing to prevent getting sick?
-What advice would you give to someone to prevent getting sick?
6. Quotation discussion- I found 3 quotes and printed them up for discussion. We read through each one and then discussed what they mean. You can elaborate on each as much as you want, given what your objective is. Here are the quotes I used:

· God heals and the doctor takes the fee. –Benjamin Franklin

· The first wealth is health. –Ralph Waldo Emerson

· {7} Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the LORD and depart from evil. {8} It will be health to your flesh, And strength to your bones. –Proverbs 3:7-8

They liked it, and we had a really productive discussion about the quotations.

Connect 4: bottle cap-style

This isn't the most challenging game ever, but it went over well when I played it with some upper beginners/ lower intermediates.

Make little cards with various verbs in different tenses (i.e. "will write", "bought", "am eating"). Lay these out in a grid; I'm pretty sure that my set is 6 x 6. I play this game using bottle caps from Coke, Fanta, Sprite bottles (mostly because that's what I had on hand) as the game pieces. The students- or groups- are each given a handful of caps. Then, you play it kind of like the game Connect Four. The goal is for each student/ team to get four in a row. To place their bottle cap/piece, they need to construct a sentence using their chosen verb correctly. Example: if they want to put their piece on the square for "am eating," they need to create a sentence like, "Right now, I am eating soup."

The first team to get four in a row wins!

More with Adjectives!

Another activity to do with "travel" adjectives:

After having the students do the exercise of describing their assigned countries with their bags of adjective words, have them upgrade the activity. Ask the students to brainstorm a little about their given country. Ask them to think of famous landmarks or activities found in their assigned country (i.e. China: Great Wall, pandas, eating with chopsticks, etc.). After brainstorming, ask students to write a letter to a friend. The letter should be written as though the students are visiting their assigned country and writing about it to a friend. They should use 3 or so of their adjectives and write about some of the things they are "doing." After they write and edit their letter, have them design a postcard. They can draw pictures of their assigned country and then transfer their letter onto the postcard. Ukrainians really enjoy this activity.

Adjectives

A game that I tried last week turned out to be very simple but a big hit among the students. We were covering adjectives and started by playing the spelling game, using the adjectives that would come up in the next game.

For the next game, we assigned each group a country: China, Egypt, and Greece. Then, they were given a bag of adjectives: ancient, European, dry, warm, cold, Mediterranean, rugged, mountainous, coastal, etc. The students were then to decide which adjectives described their assigned country. They really enjoyed sorting through the words. Then, they took turns describing their countries. Nothing fancy, but they enjoyed it and were able to practice reading and speaking.

Apples to Apples

Many of you are probably familiar with this game. Personally, I love it. I love any game that has to do with words. My sophomore year of college, my roommates and other friends and I would play this for loooooong periods of time and not get tired of it.

For those of you not familiar with the game:
In the game that you buy from the store, there are two kinds of cards included: green ones (adjectives) and red ones (nouns- of all kinds). To play the game, each person is dealt five red cards (nouns). Each player takes a turn being the "judge". The "judge" draws a green card from the adjective stack, reads it aloud, and lays it face up on the table. Each player (other than the judge) chooses one card from his or her hand and lays it facedown in the middle of the table, making no comment about which card was played by him or her. The judge then turns over all the cards and chooses the one that he or she thinks best compliments the adjective. This becomes funny when people pick crazy cards that don't normally correlate to a particular adjective. When the judge chooses a noun as the winning card, the person who played that card collects the green adjective card (similar to getting a point). The first person to collect ten green cards wins.

I used this game just the other day when teaching adjectives. They loved it. For that particular class, though, I dealt the teams (I had them play in pairs) green adjective cards, and I put a red noun card down in the middle. It was a success.

If you don't have an Apples to Apples game, it would be pretty easy to recreate: using index cards (or something similar), make stacks of adjectives and nouns (things, places, people, even concepts like "going to grandma's").

Speed Scrabble details

Dear Jaclyn,

Here's what my scrabble set looks like:
A- 9 tiles, worth 1 pt.
B- 2 tiles, worth 3 pts.
C- 2 tiles, worth 3 pts.
D- 4 tiles, worth 2 pts.
E- 10 tiles, worth 1 pt.
F- 2 tiles, worth 4 pts.
G- 3 tiles, worth 2 pts.
H- 2 tiles, worth 4 pts.
I- 9 tiles, worth 1 pt.
J- 1 tile, worth 8 pts.
K- 1 tile, worth 5 pts.
L- 4 tiles, worth 1 pt.
M- 2 tiles, worth 3 pts.
N- 6 tiles, worth 1 pt.
O- 8 tiles, worth 1 pt.
P- 2 tiles, worth 3 pts.
Q- 1 tile, worth 10 pts.
R- 6 tiles, worth 1 pt.
S- 4 tiles, worth 1 pt.
T- 6 tiles, worth 1 pt.
U- 4 tiles, worth 1 pt.
V- 2 tiles, worth 4 pts.
W- 2 tiles, worth 4 pts.
X- 1 tile, worth 8 pts.
Y- 2 tiles, worth 4 pts.
Z- 1 tile, worth 10 pts.
4 blank tiles

Maybe that will help you. It's based off of a real set of Scrabble tiles.

Love,
Erin