Lesson Break Activities - Language

LESSON BREAK ACTIVITIES - LANGUAGE

CONTENTS

Spelling Buzz

Stage 2 ……………………………………………………………………………….1

Chinese Whispers

Early Stage 1 & Stage 1 ……………………………………………………………2

Special Talking Time

Stage 1 & 2 ………………………………………………………………………….3

Special Visitor

Stage 1 & 2 ………………………………………………………………………….4

Category Challenge

Stage 2 ……………………………………………………………………………….5

Different Yet Similar

Stage 2 & 3 ………………………………………………………………………….6

Tell the Alien

Stage 1 ……………………………………………………………………………….7

The Budding Scientist

Stage 3 ……………………………………………………………………………….8

Yes or No?

Early Stage 1 & Stage 1 ……………………………………………………………9

Word Chain

Stage 2 ………………………………………………………………………...... 10

SPELLING BUZZStage 2

GOALS

Student will:

Develop phonological awareness
Develop awareness of letter and word structure
Increases skills in auditory listening and memory

Students can be split into groups or kept as one class for this activity. The teacher nominates a word that the children have to spell. The children take turns going around the circle each saying a letter. However, at the start of the game the teacher nominates a letter or letters that are the ‘buzz letters’; meaning the children are not allowed to say the letter in the word, they have to say ‘BUZZ’.

For example, if the word was ‘chocolate’ and the teacher nominated the letter ‘o’ as the ‘buzz letter’, the children would go around the circle saying ‘c-h-BUZZ-c-BUZZ-l-a-t-e.

If the child accidentally says the ‘buzz letter’ they are out of the game. To make the game really tricky, the teacher could nominate more than one letter to be ‘buzz letter’ within word.

-1-

CHINESE WHISPERSEarly Stage 1 Stage 1

GOALS

Students will develop skills in:

Recalling sequences of information
Retention of information
Hearing and focusing attention on the verbal message

The teacher or student comes up with a sentence and whispers it to their classmate, the story must travel around the circle until the last person must say what was said to him/her. The story should be the same from when the whisper began to the end. If the story is different, discuss where in the circle the story got muddled up.

To make this more difficult for older children, increase the length and complexity of the story. This way, more information must retained and focused upon.

-2-

SPECIAL TALKING TIMEStage 1 & 2

GOALS

Students will develop:

Listening skills
Understand which type of questionslead to the most interesting replies
The ability to maintain a topic within a conversation
Formulate questions appropriate to a person or situation

Pair the students up with someone who they are not familiar with. Get the pair to discuss for 5 minutes things that are important or special to them as well as favourite things. The students need to take notes on each other and report back to the class about what they have learnt about their partner.

Ideas for topics could include:

Favourite holiday spot
Favourite toy
Favourite person
Favourite food
Special memory
Favourite thing to do on the weekend
Special song/music

-3-

SPECIAL VISITORStage 1 & 2

GOALS

In this activity students will:

Recount events by using a familiar toy as a prop
Present information to an audience
Demonstrate how events and feelings can be recorded for others to share
Take another person’s perspective

Invent a character within the class that has come to share a year with the students. Every weekend this character gets to take his bag, diary and scrapbook and spend the weekend with a student. He stays for the weekend joining in with family activities. At the end of the weekend the student writes in the characters diary and may paste a momento of the visit in the scrapbook. When the student returns to school on Monday he tells the class about the adventures that they have gotten up to over the weekend.

Ideas for characters names could include:

Boris from Russia
Marcus from Brazil
Nicolette from France
Paddy from Scotland
Ricky from South Africa
Ping from China

It is useful if the first entry in the diary is written by the teacher to give students and their parents some guidance as to what to include. A letter can be pasted inside the front cover of the diary explaining to parents the concepts behind the activity.

The visitor could be from any culture. In discussion within the classroom, the teacher can make observations about how the visitor is adjusting to his new experiences and encourage students to reflect on, accept and value individual differences. Furthermore, students can learn about the country or origin, location, climate, language and culture of the visitor.

-4-

CATEGORY CHALLENGEStage 1 & 2

GOALS

This brainstorming activity provides opportunities for students to:

Explore their vocabulary repertoire within a given category
Discover strategies for rapid word retrieval
Classify words into categories and sub-categories

This activity provides practice in word exploration and retrieval. Split the class into groups of 4-5 students. Write a category on the board that each group must think about. Within 5 minutes each group must come up with as many things relating to that category as possible. After 5 minutes the groups read out the words they have come up with. The group with the most words wins the challenge.

Suggestions for categories:

Kitchen utensils
Furniture
Stationery
Ball sports
Girls names
Flowers
Toppings for a pizza
Things found in a fridge
Feelings
Things you take camping
Body parts
Wild animals

Make the categories more specific:

Things which are:

Pointy
Curly
Soft
Shiny
Juicy
Dangerous
Slippery

/ Things which:

Have a switch
Have a button
Have a handle
You sit on
Need a battery for
Run on electricity
You push
You drive
You eat

/ Things made of:

Glass
Wood
Plastic
Metal
Fabric
Leather
Paper

-5-

DIFFERENT YET SIMILARStage 2 & 3

GOALS

In order to perform this task, students will have to:

Consider physical features of both objects such as size, colour, shape etc
Think about what each of the objects is used for
Compare and contrast
Use specific vocabulary to express the differences

Write a pair of words on the blackboard that are different yet similar. Split the class into small groups for discussion as to what are the similarities and differences of the two items. Bring the class back together and get the groups to discuss their opinions.

Suggested ideas for word pairs:

Jumper/Shirt

Kite/Parachute

Tent/Caravan

Sandal/Jogger

Doll/Puppet

Beach/Swimming Pool

Door/Window

Handkerchief/Tissue

Gate/Fence

Knife/Fork

-6-

TELL THE ALIENStage 1 & 2

GOALS

This explanation task requires students to:

Give explicit information
Master specific vocabulary
Appreciate relevant versus irrelevant information
Evaluate the effectiveness of the instructions

Ask the students to imagine that an alien has arrived in their class and that they must explain to the alien how to performan everyday task. Engage the class in discussion around the topic. Nothing can be assumed and instructions need to be a concise and as relevant as possible. One student becomes the spokesperson for the group and instructs the alien (teacher) to perform the task. At the completion of the task the class can discuss the effectiveness of the instructions.

Suggested tasks for the alien to be taught….

Putting on a t-shirt
Reading a book
Making a phone call
Putting on a watch
Sharpening a pencil
Writing a specific letter eg m, b, s
Making a milkshake
Washing hands
Wrapping a present
Making a sandwich
Riding a bicycle
Having a shower

-7-

THE BUDDING SCIENTISTStage 3

GOALS

Students will need to:

Think about materials needed to perform an action
Identify steps to achieve a task
Practice specific language features

Choose an experiment or task and get the students in small groups to brainstorm about what they would need, and what are the steps involved, in performing the experiment or task. Students then play the role of the scientist and explain to the class the steps they think are involved in discovering the answer.

Ideas:

Test if a cork will float

Test to see if seeds will grow in the dark
Find out the most common coloured jelly bean in the pack
Find out what things are heavier than a bag of feathers
Find out how much milk a weet-bix will absorb
How to make pancakes
How to boil and egg
How to make a sandwich

-8-

YES or NO?Early Stage 1 & Stage 1

GOALS

While thinking about the questions and the possible ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response the students will have to:

Understand words for specific concepts such as colour, number, size, comparison, time
Consider the features of use, function and parts
Understand collective nouns

Tell the students to think carefully about the questions you are going to ask. The answer to the question must be ‘yes’ or ‘no’. If some students wish to argue a point, facilitate the discussion and listen to the students reasoning behind these however, explain that the focus is on listening to the question and giving the generally accepted answer.