Exploring and activating language through a remote story
1) Divide the class into two halves and within each half put the students into groups (or breakout rooms) of 3-5 people. Ask one half of the class to brainstorm all the positive adjectives they can think of to describe people and the other half to focus on negative adjectives.
2) After about five minutes, put all the groups form each half together so that they can pool what they came up with.
3) While they are doing stages 1 and 2 you need to write five words yourself for each category on separate pieces of paper. Now ask one student from one half to come up to the webcam (or turn on her camera) and give her a minute to try to guess what the five words you wrote were. The rest of the members of that half can make suggestions to help the person at the front but only count the words that are said by her. If she says a word that is written on one of your papers, then hold it up to the camera to show it. After a minute award a point to that half for each word that was guessed. Now repeat the process with a student from the other half. The half with the most points wins.
4) Now check that everyone understands all of the words. Start to describe a word, clarifying its meaning, and gradually pull it across the screen, revealing one letter at a time and asking people to say what the word is. A slightly adapted version of stages 3) and 4) can be seen in the video below.
5) Now tell a story which uses as many of the words as possible. This is a great opportunity for the students to appreciate how the words work in context. For the adjectives in this example Nick told the story below.
Follow up activity - making a mini-play
1) Now divide the class into pairs. Ask each pair to write down another number between 1 and 10 inclusive. Once they've done that show them the slide below.
2) Now ask each pair to write down another number between 1 and 10 inclusive. Once they've done that show them the slide below.
2) Now ask each pair to write down another number between 1 and 10 inclusive. Once they've done that show them the slide below.
4) Each pair now has a setting for their miniplay. They also have an adjective to describe each of the two characters. Ask them to go away and prepare a short scene. They should set it in the context they have been given and each of the characters should behave in the way that that they have picked.
5) Each pair perform their mini scenes in front of everyone on the main stage. Everyone watching and the teacher try to work out the context and the adjectives to describe character that were used.
Note: This type of activity sequence to present and activate a particular area of language can work well with a story which contains lots of examples of a particular lexical set.