Throughout our seminar in Dakar, Djibril had a daily feature which Roger dubbed as “Djibril’s Magic Moments”
Here are some of the activities he suggested:
1. Guess the word (a kind of “taboo” game)
This is a fun way to review some vocabulary words It lends itself particularly well to nouns and adjectives although we can even choose a category of vocabulary such as “weather” or “aircraft in flight.”
Teams are formed according to the number of students present. A team member, the “guesser” sits in a chair at the front of the class facing his team. The teacher stands behind the guesser and writes a vocab word on the flip-chart. (You can use flashcards if you don’t have a flipchart).
The team give hints in English to the guesser until he can guess the word. At that point, the team moves on to the next word. Each round is three minutes and you can play 3-4 rounds with different guessers.
tell your students that they cannot use actions, but must only give hints by speaking.
2. ***Under construction: Djibril, please send us some more of your “Magic Moment” activities!
3. A video Quiz from Serge, constructed on the ISLcollective website, concerning Captain Sullenberger’s account of the Hudson Ditching of an A320. This relatively advanced exercise, will help you see the potential of the ISL video exercises. Try them! (Click here to find all three Hudson Ditching video quizzes)
4. “The Most Honest Taxi Driver“ a contribution from Warr, who tells us a story and invites students to complete some vocabulary enrichment exercises and helps us not to confuse certain homonyms.
Come on Headbangers! Contact Roger in order to contribute an exercise here!
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…8. Roger’s “Brainstorming”
This flipchart activity is great for warming up a group. The facilitator puts a theme on the top of the flipchart page (our first one was the question “how to get students to talk?”with sub-sections like “to have them…” “to propose that they…”)
The brainstorm theme can also be something like: “Fill up the flipchart with anything related to “attaching” The facilitator encourages the group to come up with all kinds of words, from physical things like paper clips and elastic bands to “file attachments” to abstract attachments like “love” and “affection.” (See photo of flipchart above). Other themes for a brainstorm could include: “cockpit anomalies” “weather” “controller’s equipment” etc.
9. Roger’s ATC Conversation Game.
“The best way to learn grammar is to integrate it into meaningful oral expression.” I really believe this and have created a conversation game that gently pushes students to integrate structures which normally stay outside their “comfort zone.” Grammar points are reinforced because not only will players guess whether or not the storyteller is telling the truth, they will also try to guess the contents of the speaker’s card. Download the .pdf file with instructions and cards here.
