Teachers' Zone 10

Dear Teachers,

wow- what a year it has been! Totally unexpected, extremely challenging, with unpredictable twists and absolutely exhausting. Still, before we say “ Good-bye” for two long months and leave all the troubles behind us it is worth putting some effort into our last June lessons, just to finish the year with a difference. I have been greatly inspired by a great website: https://busyteacher.org/11604-last-lesson-10-more-ideas-end-year. It is highly recommendable but just in case you are too busy planning your holidays I have chosen a number of activities that seem to be attractive and are likely to involve our students during our last lessons. So, here they come:

Yearbook Nominations… Most likely to…

It might be a good idea to prepare the list of nominations that can be easily adapted to any group we teach. Those are some of the examples: best smile, loudest, most forgetful, most imaginative, most likely to be an English teacher, most likely to give next year’s teacher a headache etc. Then on the last day we can hand out the awards and enjoy listening to acceptance speeches! Needless to say, we need to make sure that each student gets awarded for something.

Group Reflection

That is a perfect exercise to practise writing as well as let our students slow down for a moment and think about everything that has happened throughout the year. Students are asked to finish statements- it can be short endings or the whole journal entries- such as: My favourite lesson was … The most difficult thing I have learned this year has been … Something I will never forget is … . Depending on the group or individuals we can ask students to read it aloud or we can collect it and draw our own conclusions.

Talk Behind Your Back

With a blank piece of paper taped to their backs students circulate around the room and write positive things about each other on each other’s papers. When they remove the papers from their backs and read all the wonderful comments. The activity is supposed to create a lot of good conversation.

Vocabulary and grammar review

This might require a bit of preparation- but I am sure we are all used to working hard. What we need to think about in advance are the tasks. We have 3 categories- or any number to be honest depending on the group- such as Grammar, Vocabulary, Situation ( we can add Translation, Culture, Writing Structures)- and behind each category there should be a number of questions. For example: in Grammar it could be a) give a negative sentence in the Future Perfect tense; b) answer the question: how is jam made? c)describe the day of your friend. In Vocabulary that could be :a) give 10 words describing ways of preparing food; b) give 5 synonyms of “ happy” c) give 8 phrasal verbs with a verb “ set” . In Situation it could be : a) how do you make a complaint?; b) how can you ask for advice?; c) how can you congratulate somebody on something?. Those are only the examples, the final list of tasks is totally up to you and to what your group has covered in a given year or what you wish to revise. So, having prepared the questions we divide our group into teams- again, that really depends on you and how many students you have- there could be 2,3,4, 5 teams. Each team chooses their name and then they choose category and the number of question. Following the time limits that you have discussed earlier, the group must answer the question. They get a point if the answer is correct, if they do not the question may be answered by the next team. Obviously, that question is crossed out . I suggest having as many rounds as there are students in each team so that everyone can enjoy the privilege of choosing the question. The winner is the team with the highest number of points. Well, actually everybody wins as the object was to revise vocabulary and grammar so I believe after such a competition everyone will feel satisfied.

So, those are just a few ideas that hopefully help you run classes at this busy time of year!

All the best-

Katarzyna Nowak