On the left hand side of the board write down four questions in short form (e.g. favourite food? best friend? have dinner? go last weekend?) to elicit the question words ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘who’, ‘what’ and 'why'. When the students tell you the answers, write down the four full questions, highlighting the form (e.g. what is your favourite food? = for a noun we use the auxiliary verb ‘to be’, when do you have dinner? =...

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Once you have your story sheets, elicit the meanings of the trickier words/forms students are going to encounter in the story (you can make up your own, or use the one in the tips section). At this stage it's a good idea to come up with some questions for students to ask one another that will get them practising that language (e.g. questions about their hobbies, families etc, depending on the content of your story.)...

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warmer - I usually start by asking if anyone has recently bought a lottery ticket and then asking if they won - the answer is always no! You can then ask them what they would have done if they had won. If there is no lottery make up another question and try to extend this to include more students and get the whole class to think about a hypothetical situation in the past. Give out...

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Tell the students they will read a story. Write the following words on the board and elicit the meaning (or you could pre-prepare a matching exercise – words to definitions): Shampoo (n) Lucky (adj) Gas (n) Late (adj) Keys (n) to Cut (v) Boss (n) to Smash (v) Ask students to discuss in pairs what they think the story will be about. Give an example on the board for Student A and B: A: ‘It...

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Elicit the sentence: "The dog ran for the ball." Ask students: 'How can you turn this sentence of six words into a longer sentence without changing the meaning? Is it possible to create a sentence of 50 words?' Put your learners in pairs or groups and let them work on it. Here is a sentence that your upper intermediate or advanced learners should be able to cope with: "The large, wildly excited dog, which was...

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Ask students ‘Is there a ________ near here?’ and ‘Where?’ Help students with directions (write them on the board with a picture as they are mentioned). Add/elicit any directions to the board not covered: Go straight, turn right, turn left, take the second right, take the third left, take the next right/left, at the traffic lights turn ____ , go over the crosswalk, go past the______ , it’s on your left/right. Show the map to...

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Ask students to stand up. Each student must say a verb in the past tense. They have five seconds to answer. If they don’t answer in five seconds or get a word wrong then they must sit down. Put students into pairs. Give one student Worksheet A (tell them ‘You are Student A’) and one student Worksheet B (tell them ‘You are Student B’). Worksheet A has just the even-numbered sentences with gaps for the...

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Class surveys are a good way to get larger groups to circulate. Allow your students to create questionnaires based on class material. Students must then interview X number of people in the class and record their answers. Afterwards you can talk as a class about the questions they made and some of the answers they received. This gives a little bit of structure to students who are intimidated by 'free-talking', and relieves the pressure of...

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