Grammar poem

Teacher: Izzaty
Form: 2
Level: (Lower) intermediate
Related to: Grammar: parts of speech

This is quite a simple activity, and it’s actually taken from (I can’t remember his name right now).

Basically, it’s to test whether ss understand what parts of speech are. What you have to do is assign them a poetry-writing task, but with a catch: they HAVE to write it in a structure you have provided by substituting the parts of speech you give them with the appropriate words.

An example of a structure (and the text in blue is my own example)

Title: Noun
Title: Patience

Pronoun + Verb + Punctuation
You smile,

Conjunction
but

Pronoun + Noun
your fists

Verb + Punctuation
are clenched.

You can create any kind of structure you want, but of course, remember to follow English syntax (ie. SVO, adjective before noun, that kind of thing…). I forgot about the latter bit when I assigned the task… and I kind of confused the ss (and myself, lol) because of it. 😛

Here’s the lesson where I used this activity with: Parts of speech student presentation + Grammar poem.

 

Tim Burton and Halloween Town

Teacher: Izzaty
Form: 2
Level: Upper beginner/lower intermediate
Related to: Entertainment (movies) and literature (poetry)

This is a lesson unit I made about Tim Burton and his works. My intention is to expose ss to the fact that people who are involved with entertainment (eg. movies) occasionally express themselves in other art forms like art and poetry. Seeing as Mr. Burton is a director, artist, producer, poet (and the list goes on), he’s quite an interesting subject I think. Many of the ss are familiar with some of his movies, so it’s nice to hear their opinions about his work and art style.

For the original lesson, I focussed more on Burton himself, but in the ‘revamped’ version (which I used for my lecturer observation), I focussed more on Halloween Town from Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas movie (ie. I was a bit more specific). Lots of improvements can be made even further, but I think the kids had fun, and the poem they made at the end was really good.

Original version (upper beginner):

• Tim Burton LP + Material 1 + Material 2

Revamped version (lower intermediate)

• Part 1 (my observation lesson) + Material 1 + Material 2 + Material 3
• Part 2 (follow-up lesson) + Material 1 + Material 2