Speaking & Listening

Hello dear readers!

Today we are going to improve our oral skills.

Font: https://pixabay.com/es/photos/playmobil-caracteres-cita-451203/

One of the skills that make students feel more nervous is speaking, because they are afraid of mistaken and do not feel comfortable speaking in a language that do not master. So, we as teachers, need to improve their oral skills encouraging them to speak without fear, but not pushing they to do it unless they feel ready.

The main aim of this activity is to improve our oral skills, through these other aims:

- To learn vocabulary about describing people.

- To improve our English pronunciation.

- To speak in front of our classmates.

- To improve our active listening.

This activity has been designed for 4th of primary (9-10 years old), and it is called Who is the secret person?

The material we need to carry it out are: a computer with internet connection, a digital board, and some papers students need to take notes.

Let's see the steps we need to follow:

1. To create a world cloud with all the vocabulary we know about describing people. It will be done mixing brainstorming ideas of students and new vocabulary provided by the teacher., and display it in the digital board so that they can have a look. Let's see an example made with Fippity:

💥Flippity - word cloud💥

2. We distribute among the students a paper with incompleted phrases like this one:

      Font: Created on my own

3. We give students some minutes to familiarize with this vocabulary and ask them to prepare a short brief with a description of one of their classmates (they cannot say who they are going to describe).

4. One by one, have to put in front of their classmates and, looking to the word cloud and helping with their draft, have to describe a classmate in more or less a couple of minutes, and the others have to listen carefully and try to guess whos is he/she describing, asking him/her questions if they have doubts, establishing a dialogue following the rules given on the sheet.

This activity can be adapted to many other topics, and is helpul to improve oral skills.

Cristina Hilario

Referencies:

Flippity. (2023). Imaginary person. https://flippity.net/wc.php?c=pony-tail,fair%20hair,curly%20hair,short%20hair,long%20hair,tall,short,thin,fat,blond%20hair,bald,beard,moustache,straight%20hair,dark%20hair,glasses,old,young,medium%20height,smart,scruffy,grey%20hair,redhead,braces,freckle&t=Imaginary%20person

422737. (2014). Imagen de Playmobil, Caracteres y Cita [Photography]. https://pixabay.com/es/photos/playmobil-caracteres-cita-451203/