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The main focus of the next activity is on developing writing skills, but it's also good for
developing listening and reading skills and also for practicing past tenses and descriptive
vocabulary. The activity should work at most levels above elementary, as long as the students have
some knowledge of past tenses, but it works best when they also know past continuous/ progressive
too. All you need to get things started is a sheet of plain paper for each pair of students.
Activity#2: Building up a story
The aim: to make up a story.
Objectives: to develop students‘ writing abilities, to develop students‘ creative thinking and
improvisation from their imagination, to consolidate adjectives to describe appearances and
characters.
Materials: none
Procedure
I Pre-writing stage:
The listening part comes first.
1. The teacher asks the students to draw the face of a person in the top right-hand corner of the
page.
2. Once they've done this, the teacher asks them to give the person a name.
3. Then the teacher asks the students to write on the top left of the page five adjectives to
describe the person's appearance.
4. Next he/she asks the students to write five more adjectives to describe the person's
character.
5. After they've done this the teacher asks the students to write three things that the person
likes doing.
6. Then he/she asks them to write who the person lives with.
In this way they build up a character profile for the person they are going to write about.
II While-writing stage:
The writing part.
1. Now the teacher dictates the following sentence to the students: ―It was a dark and stormy
night and …‖ He/she must stop at this point and should ask them to write in the name of the person
they have drawn and followed by the word ‗was‘.
2. Then the teacher asks the students to complete the sentence from their imagination and add
one more sentence.
3. Once all the students have added a sentence to their stories, the teacher gets them to stop
and passes the paper to the pair on their right (this means that every pair of students now has a new
character).
4. The students then read through the information and the beginning of the story and then add
one more sentence to it.
5. Once they've done this, the teacher asks them once more to pass the paper to the next pair
on their right. He/she continues to do this with each pair of students adding a sentence to each story,
gradually building up each story as the papers are passed around the class.
6. The teacher should continue with this until he/she decides that the students are starting to
lose interest or have written enough and then tells them to finish the story.
III Post-writing stage:
Follow up. Once all the stories are complete there are a number of follow-up options the
teacher can try.
1. The teacher puts the stories up around the class and gets the students to read them all and
decide which is best.
3. The teacher may give each pair of students a story and get them to try to find and correct
errors.
4. The teacher can get the students to write the stories up on a computer and then ask them to
add more description and detail to the stories.
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This activity is fun and creative and has always worked well for teachers both with adults and
younger students.
Stimulating and motivating factors were highlighted as the main factors in the following
activity too. It deals with writing activity that our class did for a special assembly we had. We were
to write a very simple story that had little detail (it was to be performed by a mime). When we say
about choosing a topic, traditionally students are given a topic to write on by the teacher. However,
with certain classes, students may prefer to nominate the topic themselves. This can lead to greater
interest in the task on the part of the student, as well as, perhaps, greater knowledge of the topic
under study. The mind map strategy can be used to explore almost any topic.
Activity #3: Short story writing
The aim: to write a short story
Objectives: to teach to formulate the topics for a short story, to teach to complete a graphic
organizer, to teach to write a paragraph.
Visual aids and materials: interactive white board, pictures of winter.
Procedure
I Pre-writing stage:
1. Warm-up: Teacher begins the lesson with asking the question: ‗What is the winter beautiful
with? Do you like snowy weather? How do you enjoy the snowy weather‘ (A mass of replies comes
from the students)
2. Presentation of the new material. Teacher displays on the interactive board the model of
writing a short story, so the students listen to him very carefully. Teacher presents graphic model of
how the short story should be written (Each story must deal with the setting, characters, problem
and solution).
3. Mind map: Students were preparing a mind map by discussing the theme ‗Winter‘ and they
contributed ideas while the teacher wrote on the board (teacher can suggest or assist students in
formulating the themes for the topics). The students can nominate several topics like Winter
vacation; Snowball fight; Snowman creation; Winter sports; Sledge racing; Winter holidays; Crash
on the road (sleet); Non-stopping ice storm.
The list of topics is prepared in this way. For this activity students are divided into four groups
consisting 3 children each. So the goal is to produce 4 short stories. The students are given a chance
to choose topics for their stories within this linear form (they had chosen ―Snowball fight‖, ―Sledge
racing‖, ―Crash on the road (sleet)‖ and ―Non-stopping ice storm‖).
3. Graphic organizer: For writing a short story that tells their reader about winter situations
students must describe in some detail - the more interesting the better - what students did, where,
and how it went. To begin their masterpiece the presented graphic organizer which gives the
directions in writing a paragraph will be helpful. The steps reveal: a) where the story takes place, b)
who was there, and c) what was the funny event that happened (the Scheme 1).
Scheme - 1. Graphic Organizer for writing a short story.
• Solution
• Problem
• Setting
• Characters
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