As promised here are some of the ideas I picked up from Hokkaido’s Yorozuya Sensei’s workshop the other day. I’ve added in some extra bits, but his main theme was to try and get some real exchange of information instead of simply practising the English. The latter is fine, but the former is of course the real definition of “communication”, if you can add it in all the better. So for example instead of getting the kids to run around saying “What would you like for breakfast?“, change it a bit..

The end of the world!

1. Play a video of the Sun exploding!
2. In the kids’ native language say “Oh no, the Earth is also going to explode tomorrow morning! Tomorrow is your last day on Earth. What would you like for breakfast?”
3. Kids have 5 minutes to interview 5 people asking what they would have for their final breakfast on Earth!

(Professor Yorozuya didn’t mention this, but the Sun isn’t actually big enough to explode. Make sure you explain this after the game, you don’t want to teach bad science! But this gets any worried kids off the hook and gets the curious kids asking science questions, which is really important everywhere.)

Anyway the paradigm shift of taking the question out of the classroom and into something so “urgent” really gets the kids thinking. You will need to allow time for them to really decide what they want (this is the imagination development part) but then instead of just “eggs” or “bread” they come up with “super double chocolate cake” or other things that they don’t know the English for. This is cool as you can then get a list of these words and teach then in the next lesson. As it’s English the kids really want to know, they just soak it up.

Birthday Paradox
As an alternative to asking your friends when your birthday is, which they probably already know, try this technique which is one of the staples of standard communication courses (even in the kids’ own language).

1. Get the kids to line up in order of their birthdays.
2. Of course they can only use English to explain when theirs is.

This sounds simple but as you don’t know everyone’s birthday then you really have to communicate the information using English.

Professor Yorozuya didn’t mention this either, but the reason I like this game so much is that you can also introduce a little Genki Maths. With any group of around 30 or more, ask them what the chances are that two or more of them have the same birthday. Usually they’ll say it’s very low. But actually it’s almost a statistical certainty, there will be at least two of them! Just try it, it’s amazing and works wonders at getting kids interested in maths. Cross curricula stuff is so important.

English book -> Show & Tell

Another idea was to use the English Book idea, which I never really liked and always used to use as something for when everything else failed in 6th grade classes, but make it into show and tell where the kids come to the front and present their book to everyone. As you are talking about you and your things then apparently even the shyest 6th graders get into it! That sounds really useful. Have a try and let me know how you get on!

There were a couple more ideas so I’ll write those up for you later…