How old are you?

Super simple activity for practicing HOW OLD ARE YOU? with elementary students. I usually draw first to demonstrate what I expect from them.

  Teacher´s                                 Student´s

1) Write the following on the board:

HOW OLD ARE YOU? I´m___________

2) Hand out sheets in blank;
3) Students draw and color their age (They draw a big number in the center of the sheet)
4) Students tape them on their chest;
5) Students walk around the classroom and practice Q/A;

February in Brazil

In Brazil, the number one holiday in February is Carnaval, which is deemed the largest collective party in the entire world. It´s a five-day holiday, that´s right, a five-day holiday in which people go away, relax and have fun. A traditional activity during this period is getting together to sing and dance. In different parts of Brazil, the musical style during carnaval ranges from regional folk music to the carioca samba.  " Foliões", which is how the people who participate in the celebration are called, either travel to the coast or go to Rio and Sao Paulo to see the samba schools´ parades. Each school presents a theme and parade accordingly and during the parade, a group of jurors analyse and grade every aspect of it, from the clothes they wear to the music they play. The parades officially start out in São Paulo on Friday and Saturday. The two parades take place in Anhembi and are broadcast live to all viewers. On Sunday and Monday, it´s Rio´s schools' turn to astonish the viewers with their costumes, props and ornamented cars. Sapucaí is the place chosen for such monumental event, which is also broadcast live to anyone who´s willing to see it. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the results come out and Rio and Sao Paulo´s winning schools celebrate their victory with the Winners´ Parade, also broadcast live. Every year, carnaval is held in February. However, this year it´s from March 1st to March 5th, which is pretty unusual. Still, brazilians love it because any reason is a reason to sing and dance, even when the date is not right.   

January in Brazil

In Brazil, January is usually a period for vacationing. After New Year's Day though, many people continue working normally. School term, however, only starts in February. This year in particular, because the World Cup will be held here, school term will start late January. Apart from New Year's Day and Peace Day, both on January 1st, there are no other significant celebrations this month.  

Happy Birthday!

After being introduced to vocabulary related to birthdays (gifts, party, cake, balloons, and names of toys) my students also learned to congratulate someone for their birthday and how to ask Yes/No questions with the verb TO BE.

S1: Happy Birthday!
S2: Thanks.
S1: This is for you. (a gift)
S2: Thank you very much! Is it a …….?
S1: Yes, it is.

S1: Happy Birthday!
S2: Thanks.
S1: This is for you. (a gift)
S2: Thank you very much! Is it a …….?
S1: No, it isn't. It's a ………

After being presented to the dialog and practicing for a while, my students were given a sheet in blank.

1) They folded their sheet in two.

2) They drew and colored ( ON THE INSIDE) a gift they would like to get for their birthday or a gift they have received for their birthday.

3) Then, they drew a gift like picture ON THE OUTSIDE of the paper. (wrapping paper patterned and a ribbon)

4) Monitor students, so you have an idea of the gifts there are because later on, they will exchange their gifts. Thus, it's important to mentally arrange them in pairs in a way everyone receives an appropriate gift.

5) After that, I chose the pairs and called them out and two by two, they acted out the conversation above and exchanged their gifts. Remember that during the dialog, they have to guess what the gift is by asking "Is it a ….?" In case the student doesn't guess it at all, you can encourage students to ask "What is it?" In my class, there was one student alone, so I participated by drawing one gift myself. During the dialog, students exchanged their gifts and sat down.

6) In the end, they glued their gift drawing to their notebooks and wrote a thank you letter.

                                               

The Benefits of Drawing

Check this out!

Let's go to the zoo

My students learned how to describe animals' physical characteristics and abilities. The structure  learned here was the verbs HAVE and BE. Among other words, they learned MANE, STRIPES, SPOTS, FEATHERS, TAIL, SCALES, FINS, HORNS, FUR, WHISKERS, TRUNK, WINGS,TEETH. Here is a fun task designed to consolidate the structure and vocabulary: 

1) Students drew, colored and cut out their favorite animal. (In order to prevent too many students from drawing the same animal, which is likely to happen, you can write the animals' names in slips and have students to draw one. That would also prevent arguments among them.) 

2) After they finished their animals, they taped them to brown pieces of paper and taped them to the board. 

3) We played a game.

Option 1- Q/A Practice: Students individually go to the board, point at an animal and asks a peer "What DO lions look like?" or "What DOES a lion look like?" or "What does THIS butterfly look like?" Yes/No questions can also be practiced such as "Do lions have a long tail?" 

Option 2 - Hot Potato: Students sit in a circle. When the music stops, the student with the ball answers a question based on the cut outs. There can also be two balls, one for the question and one for the answer. (Another option is to simply say a sentence such as "Lions have… or Lions are… or Lions can...". ) 

Option 3 - The Wacky Race

What's there in your island?

After learning the verb THERE TO BE, my students drew an island and described it by using the vocabulary learned (Volcano/ Forest/River/Waterfall/Beach/Valley/Mountain/Lake)

OPTION 2: The Island Song