Doodling for Complex Sentences

Are your students struggling with making sentences more complex?

Many students can write simple sentences, and run-on sentences, but they struggle with writing solid complex sentences.

This written activity is a fun way to get students to sculpt more complex sentences using relative clauses and transition words.

Before ANY of this, my students have learned different transition words, how to use them where to use them relative pronouns, etc.

Pre-Activity:  
I usually start by drawing a few random doodles on the board. describe what a doodle is. If students guess scribble, I also accept this word as appropriate.Then, I ask what they see in the doodles. Once they see how doodles can be changed into different forms, we are ready to start!

Activity: This can be arranged in many ways, but I like to have students sit in circles.

Step One Doodle on different pieces of paper and 

STEP ONE Each student gets a paper with a doodle drawn (Note: To make this a no prep activity, students may make the first doodle, but I find giving them a doodle tends to work out better.)

STEP TWO Each student expands on the picture. I know the picture below vague, but notice how the student turned the doodle into a rabbit!

STEP THREE (optional) Have the students write one or two words describing their picture. Again looking at the picture to the below, the student could write something like, "An animal," or, "A rabbit,"

Have a box of transition words and relative prnounouns

STEP FOUR The students pass the paper to another student. The student will form a sentence describing the picture: "The rabbit is tall"

STEP FIVE Pass the paper again. This time students also take (or are given) a piece of paper with a random connecting word.  They are told to find a way to make the sentence longer using that word, "The rabbit is tall; however, he is fat."

STEP FIVE  There are multiple ways to do this. I like having students pass the doodling paper to the right, and their connecting word to the left. The students then needed to add another word to the sentence, "The rabbit, who is furry, is tall; however, he is fat."

STEP SIX At this point you can continue having the students pass connecting words to the left and doodles to the right, or you can give out new connecting words.

STEP SEVEN Continue step six until students become bored you you have had them make at least four rotations.

STEP EIGHT Finally, the last time students don't add to the sentence. Their job is to read through the sentence, which at this point can be quite complex, and make it coherent.

STEP NINE Students present the final pictures to the class as well as the final description of the picture.

 Why it Works 
Students could get bored by this, but because the pictures are so random almost every time it goes like this:
Teacher: OK pass the paper to the next student please.
Student 1: What is that?
Student 2: What did you draw?
Student 3: Oh my god this sentence is ridiculous.

They are ALWAYS entertained!

This is also a great activity to use with adjectives or any other clauses. Basically, anything where students add onto a basic sentence. If you want students to practice speaking you can have them do this in partners.

This activity isn't directly humorous, but I PROMISE you that your students will laugh at some of the doodles created and sentences written.  On August 2nd the deadline for submitting your blog to be part of the ELT Blog Carnival on Humor will CLOSE! Don't miss out!

Group Collaboration- Crossword Puzzles

This is nothing new, but my students had so much fun on Tuesday, that I wanted to share a more dynamic way to use crossword puzzles in class (rather than making them and passing them out yourself). 

This can be used for almost any grammar point, but we were reviewing relative clauses on Tuesday, so those are the examples you'll see. We use Passages Student's Book 1, which teaches defining and non-defining clauses by discussing different cities and overall travel.

After my students and I worked our way through some grammar activities, it was time for them to produce some sentences, in a collaborative and (I hope) fun way!

My board work

Setting it up (5 minutes): I wrote some sentences/ phrases using relative clauses on the board.

1 Down Something that you use to eat

1 Across _________, which is the capital of Japan, is the birthplace of Joan Fontaine.

2 Across When in Japan, you speak _________

I asked students for the answer to 1 down. One student shouted, "Spoon,! At this point I drew crossword boxes to the side. We quickly solved the puzzle (Chopsticks, Tokyo, Japanese).

Dividing the class (3 minutes)

I have a small multicultural class right now. I have five Japanese students, three Taiwanese students, and one Brazilian student. I don't really love having nine students, but at l east in this case it made the decision to divide the students into groups of three easy. I "randomly" assigned each student a group (A, B, C) to be sure that each group had as many different nationalities as possible.

The Assignment (3 minutes): You can do this many different ways, but this is how it went Tuesday in class.

Teacher: "With your group you need to come up with a theme. What was the theme of my puzzle on the board?"

Students: "Japan."
Teacher: "Yes! You're all so smart! We have been discussing traveling, so what other themes could be select?"

Here is a student making her clues

Students: "Asia" "China" "Barcelona"
Teacher: "Good, you can also do other themes like: 'Things you pack in a suitcase,' or 'Different ways to travel.' The FIRST thing you need to do as a group is  agree on a theme. The SECOND thing you will need to do is come up with some clues. How many clues will you need?"

Students: "Ten" "Five teacher" "Twenty"
Teacher: "There are three of you so 15 clues, but only 10 of them need to have relative clauses" (Note: I thought this would take 30 minutes, but students took about 50 to complete their puzzles. Looking back I would change it to 10 clues.)

Students: "How many clues?"
Teacher: *Writes on the board* "15 clues 10 relative clauses"

Students: "Does it matter how many across and how many up?"Teacher: "Nope. You may do this however you like. When you finish, you must give me TWO blank cross word puzzles. Each group will receive a crossword puzzle from every other group" (With larger classes you could have them photocopy for homework, or just make it so they trade with another group).

Students: "Can we use our phones?"
Teacher: "You can use the textbook, or your cell phones to get information. Please TALK to your partners, but don't talk too loudly, or the other teams will hear your answers."

The Work:

As students worked in groups I heard a lot of English! Some of it was the grammar point (What about, "The woman who is the queen of England?") and some of it was the task based English, "No it doesn't fit there." "That question is too different. Not our theme." etc. I originally was going to give 15  minutes to create the questions and then 5 minutes to make sure everything fit on a crossword puzzle. Maybe with an extra five minutes to actually write out the two final copies for the other groups.... the groups ended up needing about 30 minutes to make the clues and another 15 to assemble the puzzle. However, they were speaking English THE WHOLE TIME! Because they were on task, I told them they could take as much of the class as they needed.

In the end they needed all of my class-time, but I feel it was well worth it!

Complete the Puzzles

Give groups a crossword puzzle(s) from another team. Allow them five minutes to work on it as a team WITHOUT CELL PHONES. Just see how many they know. 

Then, because this isn't the main aim of the class, give them the option of using cell phones or textbooks to find answers. 

The first group to finish both crossword puzzles wins! Since my students are just visiting America for the Summer I give them American paraphernalia (there was an after Fourth of July sale where I got tons of bracelets, pencils, necklaces etc. for less than $1.00 each!), but anything works! If nothing else they win bragging rights!

 

Alternatives:

• Provide each student with a different text from which to find their answers and clues (a short article about safaris in Africa for examples)
• Use this as a literature assignment. Have students each create a crossword for a different character, or chapter.
• Make it about the school, or the teacher!
• I know there are many crossword puzzle generators on computers, but part of the reasons I like doing it by pen and paper is because students get to talk about where to put the boxes. While you could have them use an online tool, I would avoid it.
• The options are pretty close to limitless :)

There it is! A simple, and dynamic way to get students to work together, practice the target language, and create a little fun for all the students. How do you use crossword puzzles in the class?   

You're Getting Old! (Verb Tenses)

Have you ever noticed that when you teach something, you see examples of the grammar all over! This summer I taught past and present perfect in a TOEFL prep class and the website: http://you.regettingold.com/ started getting passed around my Facebook pages.

The site is super easy to use. Simply go to the link and plug in a birthday, then  specify if you are doing this for you or for someone else.

In this case I am putting in what many people believe to be Harry Potter's birthday: July 31st, 1980. After I put in the birthday and name I press go and voila! Tons of great sentences:

Check out the AMAZING variety of sentences here. We have simple present sentences, present perfect, past perfect and past passive. We have irregular verbs (i.e. is, take, beat). If your students have been taught to identify different sentences, see if they can do so now. If you are the type of teacher who prefer that students understand meaning rather than grammar make sure they notice the different way.

The website goes on. It gives you plenty of examples of the perfect tenses as well as passive (Ronald Reagan was elected President. ET was released.)

I suggest you go through the site a few times with different birthdays: celebrities, student volunteers, authors, create birthdays for characters in books you read etc.

Are you this old?

After students get the idea have them create their own "website." I am really into using things like this for literature, so I would have them do it with a character from a story we have read. If you don't read stories in class have them make it for themselves. (Note: the website will not work for people born before 1900, so you'd have to use people from the 1900s on).

The website gives examples, but if your students need prompts:

• To see Emmy winners look at the Emmy website.
• To find heart beats and breaths taken you can go to the Bloodindex site.
• To find the date of famous people's deaths (by year) search FamousDeaths 
• Your students can find Olympic medalists (and the year) on Wikipedia
• You can find number one songs from different years on Number One In History
• You can find famous birthdays on History Orb 

I hope you ans your students find this website as fun to play with as I do!

Preparing for the August ELT Blog Carnival

Humor dosn't always mean acting like a clown!

The 41st ELT Blog Carnival is DONE! Check it out: http://eslcarissa.blogspot.com/2014/08/41st-elt-blog-carnival-teaching-with.html

Since my July and August are shaping up to be pretty busy, I thought I would announce the August ELT (English Language Teaching) Blog Carnival now and give bloggers plenty of time!

Are you unsure what a blog carnival is? The ELT Blog Carnival home page has examples from all of the past 40 carnivals.

The August ELT Blog Carnival will be filled with blogs about humor.

I am a teacher who strongly believes that humor makes classrooms better! This Blog Carnival is designed to let other teachers share how they use humor in the class, so that other teachers may be inspired from them!

How to participate?

There are three big ways you can participate!

• Submit your post
• If you have an amazing older post that you have written on humor in the ELT field (EFL, ESL, ESP, EAP, etc.) send it my way.
• Alternatively, if you feel inspired, you can write up a new post. There are SO MANY different aspects of humor you can touch on. If you are stuck, look at these questions for inspiration: 



Many students find mustaches amusing

• Do you have a lesson that revolves around a funny movie clip or a silly joke? Perfect!
• Do you have a knock knock joke you use in class that is an example of blended speech? We'd love to see it!
• Do you have a rewards system or class theme that is funny? Share it! 
• Have you read a book about using humor in the classroom and you want to review it? Awesome!
• Is there a website with funny quotes you use in class? Review it!
• Is there a tech tool you use that makes your students laugh? Explain it!
• How much humor is OK or When is humor not appropriate? Discuss it!
• Do you have a story about a time humor really brought a student out of his/her shell? We'd LOVE to hear it.
• As you can see there are TONS of opportunities! Simply find the topic that calls out to you!
• If you feel inspired to write but you don't have a blog, contact me! I would be pleased to host you as a guest blogger. 
• When you write a new post it would be nice to include a link to here http://eslcarissa.blogspot.com/2014/07/preparing-for-august-elt-blog-carnival.html so your readers can learn more and participate if they would like. 
• Share this post so others can get involved! (You can share this via Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, family board game night, your Nobel Prize acceptance speech, or anywhere else you think you could reach people who are interested). To make it easy for you, by clicking this link http://ctt.ec/qT9Oa you will tweet, "Im ready for the August #eltBlogCarnival on humor http://eslcarissa.blogspot.mx/2014/07/preparing-for-august-elt-blog-carnival.html Pls Join"
• Come back August 6th to read all the lovely blogs! You can keep track of everything via #eltBlogCarnival on Twitter! Or just go to the Blog Carnival.

Funny mug! (If you can't read it the text is here)

To submit your blog you have three options:
1. Tweet it to Carissa Peck (@eslcarissa)
2. Use the general ELT Blog Carnival submission form.
3. Leave your link in the comments of this post

Please try to get all submissions in by Saturday, August 2nd!

For those of you who don't want to participate, but are eager to see the results check back on Wednesday August 6th! You can also leave a comment here and I'll be sure to remind you when August rolls around.

If you have any questions or have a request for a specific blog leave it as a comment!

Catenation with Jokes!

I like to protect my iPhone:
Justin case

 I love connected speech. I love making English easier to hear (and pronounce naturally) and I think that connected speech is a big part of that. This blog won’t really discuss the whys of connected speech, rather it will cover one type of connected speech and give jokes that show it off. 

Catenation is something I talked about briefly in a different blog post on elision and jokes. This is essentially when the last consonant of the first word is joined to the first vowel of the next word. I took a little liberty with this definition when selecting my jokes; to be honest most of these are examples of other areas of blended speech. However, I think you'll see the main idea is there. This is very very common in English, and can be very confusing for students when listening. For example when saying, "Just in case" some speakers may hear, "Justin case."

I think that we can show catenation in two different ways. First by showing examples of jokes where we see that words have blended together

Who's there?
This work by Phillip Martin is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Ketchup. Ketchup who? Ketchup and I’ll tell you
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Issabelle. Isabelle who? Is a bell working?
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Haden. Haden who? Haden seek isn’t fair when you lock the door!
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Seymour. Seymour who? Seymour of me if you just opened the door.
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Gopher. Gopher who? Gopher help! Your house is under attack.
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Europe. Europe who? Europe to no good with all these questions.
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Eileen. Eileen who? Eileen down bang my head on your door and all you do is ask, “Who’s there.”
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Icy. Icy who? Icy you through the crack; let me in!
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Isabelle. Isabelle who? Isabelle not needed on your door?
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Doris. Doris who? Doris stuck –let me in.
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Albie. Albie who? Albie back I forgot something.
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Phillip. Phillip who? Phillip my candy bag or I’ll never stop trick or treating here.
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Leena. Leena who? Leena little forward and you can see me in the peephole.
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Mikey. Mikey who? Mikey is not working can you let me in?
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Watson. Watson who? Watson your TV right now that prevents you from opening the door?
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Albie. Albie who? Albie explaining later.

If you have an aversion to knock knock jokes don't worry! Lots of other jokes work too:

Mr. & Mrs. Hippie!

• What’s the difference between a piano and a fish? You can’t tuna fish.
• What do you call a hippie’s wife? Mississippi.
• Why did everyone like the mushroom? He was a fungi.
• What did the mother buffalo say when her son left? Bison.
• Why did the chef stop making spaghetti? He pasta way.  

We can also have longer jokes if you want to use the joke to introduce new vocabulary or work on verb tenses

• A magazine published that Cleopatra used to have a milk bath every day. to prevent the effects of aging. She quickly paid a visit to her local dairy and asked for enough milk to fill up a bathtub. The man was used to all sorts of requests so he just asked, “Do you want it pasteurized” and she replied, “No, just to my chest I think I can splash my face.”

The other way I think we can show catenation is by using jokes that take a word usually is one word but dividing it into two or more different words. This shows that even when we try to pronounce two words separately they often end up sounding like one word. For example:

• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Ben. Ben who? Ben dover so I can kick you for making me wait in the cold.   
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Norma Lee. Norma Lee who? Norma Lee I don’t make a habit of knocking on doors, but I really need to see you.
• Why won’t you starve in the desert? Because of all the sand which is there. 
• What do ghosts serve for dessert? Ice Cream 
• Where did Noah store the fish with wheels? In the carp ark.
• What makes the three eared alien similar to star trek? It has the left ear, the right ear, and the final front ear.
• Two peanuts walked into a bar. One was a salted.   
• A termite walks into a bar and asks, “Is the bar tender here.”   
• What do you call a camel with a flat back? Hump free!   
• Who made the best prehistoric clothes? A dino sewer.

As with the last category this one can also have longer jokes. These two were both originally "Walks into a bar" jokes. I changed one so it could be used without the bar (not appropriate for all cultures) For example:

*If you are the owner of this graphic please let me know
so I can attribute it or remove it per your request.

• A young boy comes to school every day with a lizard on his shoulder. Everyday the students point and stare but no one ever asks him about it. Finally one girl walks up and asks him, "What's your lizards name." He responds, "Tiny." The girl stands in silence before pushing the topic further, "Why do you call him Tiny?" The boy smiles and proudly responds, "Because he's my newt."
• A string walks into a bar. The bartender says, “I’m sorry but we don't serve strings here.” He goes outside, messes with his hair and tangles his body into a knot. He walks back into the bar and the bartender looks at him, “Hey aren’t you the string I just kicked out of here?” The string responds, “No, I am a frayed not.”

Even if you thought these jokes were lame, I am willing to bet that you cracked a smile at least once! I highly suggest you find a way to work jokes into your lesson. You can always adapt them to fit your topic, use them as an ice breaker, let students find new ones online etc. If you ever use any of these in class (or have a few more you think fit this category) let me know!

Elision with Jokes

I love bringing some humor into the classroom. Too often do students equate English with boring grammar they only use in the classroom. Jokes have a way of making things more fun and these jokes help them sound more natural when they speak (a great plus for many students)

You can use any sort of jokes when teaching. Some prefer longer jokes so they can interact with more text (verbs, vocabulary, etc.).

Since this blog is for the 34th ELT Blog Carnival it will focus on using blog posts for pronunciation. With pronunciation I prefer using shorter jokes so the students don't need to understand or follow a longer sequence. They can hear the unexpected answer and react almost instantly. This instant satisfaction makes learning jokes (or puns) fun.

I think jokes can be used for many many different things, but this post will point out specific jokes we can use to highlight elision in English language speakers. 

Elision- happens often in English speech. In short, this is when we lose a sound to make it easier for us to talk. I think (and this has no merit at all) one of the most common elisions is when we drop the H.

• So, let's check out these examples where we drop the H  



I suppose that is what an elephino would look like

• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Ada. Ada Who? Ada bad dream last night. (HAD a bad dream.) 
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Adder. Adder who? Adder lot for lunch, so I am not hungry now. (HAD a lot. In this case we also see a shwa ə make an appearance)Knock Knock. Who’s there? Ooze. Ooze who? Ooze in charge around here? (WHO’s in Charge?)
• How does the moon cut his hair? Eclipse it. (HE clips it)
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Betty. Betty who? Betty has friends who don’t make him stand outside! (Bet HE has friends.)
• It's OK if you hate knock knock jokes, we can use other ones too!
• What do you get when you cross an elephant with a rhino? Elephino. (HELL if I know)
• How do fleas travel? They itch-hike. (HITCH-hike)

Even though I favor examples of dropping the H sound, there are a lot of jokes that drop other sounds.

• We drop A
• What did one ball say to the other hand? Nothing he just looked round. (around)
• We drop D
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Stand. Stan who? Stan away from the door I’m kicking it open. (Stand)
• We drop T
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Juana. Juana who? Juana go to the mall with me?
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Iris. Iris who? Iris my case; I just can’t explain any more.
• Who do vampires tend to fall in love with? The girl necks door.
• We drop the Y
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Canoe. Canoe who? Canoe lend me some money I missed the bus and need to take a taxi. 

You can use jokes to teach more than one pronunciation concept as well. I'll be doing another post soon about catenation and jokes, but for now just know that catenaton is when one word merges with another word. These are jokes that have Catenation and Elision at once:

• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Alison. Alison who? Alison to all sorts of music, and you?
• We drop the /t/ in I listen and combine the two words.
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Thermos. Thermos who? Thermos be a better punch line than this!
• We drop the /t/ in must and combine There and must.
• Knock Knock. Who’s there? Howl. Howl who? Howl you know unless you let me in?
• We drop the vowel in "will" and combine How and l.
• When does a horse talk? Whinny wants to.
• Here we drop the /h/ in he and combine Whenn and e together to make whinny. (Note: This is one of those jokes where you may want to pre-teach the vocabulary first (that a whinny is a sound a horse makes) otherwise your students probably won't find it so funny.) 

So the next time you roll your eyes at a silly pun or knock knock joke. Stop. Think about what it is manipulating in the English language and how you could use that with your students.

I'd love to know if you've ever used jokes in your class to work on pronunciation, or what your favorite joke is! Just drop a note in the comments :-)