2nd year ESO

1. WORD BY WORD

Chemical substances, by Ana Belén Ríos

I would begin with a compound relatively easy, for example: sodium chloride or common salt (NaCl). 

The first time, my students should guess how many words they see in this compound, even though those words do not have to do with chemistry. 

Secondly, I would try to make it a little bit difficult in order to discover different compounds and chemical elements. For instance, sodium bicarbonate whose chemical formula is NaHCO₃. Inside this compound, you can work out chemical compounds as carbonic acid, sodium carbonate, carbon dioxide and elements as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and sodium. In this way, this activity can be as difficult as you want due to the variety of chemical substances.

               

Finally, with the original compound, in this case NaHCO₃, the students should explain a little bit about each element, physical and chemical characteristics and write chemical formulas they name in the paragraph above.

              

I think that this activity can help the students to stop being afraid to speaking in English little by little, as well as learning chemical compounds.


2. CRIMES AND CRIMINALS



by, Gloria Díaz

-        Working with pictures

This is an activity I have used with my Year2 ESO students to introduce unit 9 in our book, called “Crimes and criminals”.

As a warm-up activity I have shown them some newpaper headlines containing the key words of the unit (i.e. different types of crimes) as well as some pictures showing people comitting those crimes. Students then had to match the headlines to the pictures.

As a follow-up activity I have chosen one of these pictures (the one showing a shoplifter) and I have asked students to imagine that the person in the picture had been arrested after leaving the shop. They were police officers and had to interview this person.

I have given students some time to work in pairs to prepare questions (5minutes), and after that we have done a role-play where one student was the shoplifter and had to answer the police questions. (For a large group of students I would divide the class in groups and ask one student per group to be the shoplifter so as not to have one single student having to face the whole class). 

Students have found this activity good fun and what is more, everybody has participated, either preparing questions or asking them. They were all very interested in the reasons why the shoplifter had done so.

The most difficult part has been getting students to take turns to speak and listen to one another. The student playing the role of shop-lifter was quite fluent and has had no diffculty  answering the questions.

               Apart from helping students focus on the topic of the unit, the activity has been useful to practise question forms, which they find hard many times. After the role-play I have asked students to choose three questions and answers from the role-play, copy them and turn them into reported speech for homework.

               (Some writing assignments can follow the activity, like writing a news report about the story, writing an email to  friend explaining what happened to the shoplifter, writing an entry of the shoplifter’s diary describing the day…)

At the end of the activity I have asked “police officers” to agree on a punishment for the shoplifter. Before doing so, I have showed them the above picture whose meaning they had to explain.

(Another activity that could be done at this point is to get students to design signs to be put up in a shop or supermarket to prevent shoplifers from stealing. They must contain fun, original messages, like the one in the example)

Finally, in groups of four I have let students some time to discuss the following questions: “Is shoplifting a problem in your town?”, “do you know anybody who has ever stolen anything from a shop?”, “what advice would you give to a friend who steals?”

I have monitored the class walking around helping with vocabulary problems and making sure everybody was speaking English. After some ten minutes we have put answers in common.

3.  A PICTURE, by Rosa M. de Pedro

* Individual  work I gave them a  piece of paper.

* In this activity the students will write a story with the help of the picture and some questions and answers written by them about this picture.

1.-  I looked for a picture:

I chose this picture among the others because I liked it, and the students would be able to focus their attention on different things, people, vocabulary …

2.-  I explained the activity in 5 steps:

a) I told my students to watch the picture on the screen, to ask questions about the picture and to write them down. They could write 10 or more questions.

Time: 7 minutes.

They didn’t know exactly what to do, they were surprised. I repeated the same explanation again and I told them to focus either on the whole picture or in one of the things or people in it. They should think about all the questions they wanted to know related to the picture.

The students had a lot of questions about the vocabulary which they wanted to use in their questions.

Some of their questions were:  How do you say: cubo, cuadro, gorra, pulpo, pelar …?

               

b) Then  I told my students to answer their questions. Time 7 minutes.

They were surprised again and they told me that they didn’t know the answers, so I told them to imagine the answers. They asked me with surprise if they really could invent the answers.

               

c) The next step was to write their story with their answers. Time 7 minutes.

They were surprised again and asked: How can I join all my answers?

I told the students to be careful with the verbs and the tenses that they were writing, with the links that we have already learned… (Focus on Grammar)

They asked me questions such as:  How do you say “Había una vez”, mas tarde…?

               

d) I told them to write the title for their story.  Time: 30 seconds.

               

e) They had to read their stories to the rest of the class.

3.-  My students’ opinion.

They enjoyed the activity very much. They said that they had fun with it, and it was amazing and much better than using their student book.

4.- My opinion.

I am very glad with the result of my students’ work. They paid a lot of attention and they showed me great interest for the activity. I am happily surprised.

The stories were different and very good, with a variety of topics. Some of their titles were: “ My cousin Addison’s new life”, “Father’s restaurant”, “Elisabeth’s ordinary life”, “The onions”, “Alex and I in a sunny day”, “No drugs”…

The only problem was a talkative student who was interrupting constantly, and making comments about what he was writing… With this behavior and with his comments he got that the students who were near him, wrote their stories with the same topic as he did. These students couldn’t develop their own ideas.

When Shawn showed us this activity I knew that it would be a good theme for the writing activities in the class because a picture made you think about a lot of ideas, you can build the story easily and you are not aware of this, when you answer the questions you get your story, everything flows naturally.

4. ANIMAL RIGHTS, by Sara Acebes

Class: 2nd ESO BILINGUAL/ 10 STUDENTS

I have prepared an activity related to one the topics of the unit we are studying at the moment which is about cruelty to animals. 

Look at the picture and think of words that can describe it

NOUNS	VERBS	ADJECTIVES	ADVERBS

·       

    Use the words to write a short story about what has happened to the dog in no more than 60 words.

·    

      This photo is going to be used in a campaign to prevent the abandoning of pets. What title would you use?

How did I set it up?

As I have explained before, we have read a text about cruelty to animals, and I browsed the Internet to find a photo that was related to that topic. I liked the photo I have included because there was a story behind it.

I really liked the activity in which you had to think of the words to describe the picture. I think it’s great because students can describe a picture more thoroughly if they think about the vocabulary they need beforehand.

I first showed the picture to the students and asked them to describe it in a few words, then I told them to write the words they could think of which would help them describe it. (They did this activity in pairs.) Afterwards, I asked them to make up a story about the dog in the picture. They had to discuss it in pairs before writing anything. Finally, each pair told the story to the rest of the students.

And to finish the activity they had to write a SLOGAN for the picture, which was going to be used in a campaign to prevent cruelty to animals.

The students enjoyed the activity and were involved in the class.


5. GOING GREEN, by Cristina González

ACTIVITY: PHOTOGRAPHS

We are starting a new unit- Going Green- and I thought it could be a great starting point.

First, I wrote down on the blackboard the things we were going to do/ work for those 45 minutes.

Second, I showed them some photographs on the whiteboard:

Ø  A girl carrying a box full of plastic bottles.

Ø  Different recycling bins. ( blue, green, yellow and red)

Ø  A red double- decker bus

Ø  A girl riding a bike

Ø  A graffiti

Ø  Some sky- crappers beyond a park

I explained to them we were going to do a brainstorm exercise, just saying what they could see in a minute.

In the moment I set the clock at the corner of the whiteboard, their bodies reacted. It was as if they were ready for a race. Ready, steady, Go!

It was amazing to check how many different words they said.

Thirdly, I stood out the double- decker bus photograph. I asked them where they thought the bus came from. And the same method again: in one minute.

All of them said a place and I didn’t say if it was right or not. In the end, I said to them that four of them were right and I asked them to stand up. I asked them to tell me how they had guessed it:

Ø  The colour

Ø  The symbol of pounds

Ø  Two floors

Ø  The number plate (I had to helped them with this word)

Ø  The steering wheel (I had to helped them with this word)

After this activity, the students worked in groups of three. They had to tell why they thought there was a photo of a bike and a photo of a bus, and how they normally moved around.

I set the watch again.

While they were preparing it, I was going around the class, monitoring them, giving them some help if necessary.

After two minutes I asked for volunteers.

This part was not very quick at the beginning, actually. They were afraid or shy; however, after being encouraged, they started their short speeches.

I think they felt ok with that.

Finally, I asked them to try to guess the word I was thinking at that moment. It I gave them some clues, of course. They guessed it and we clapped like in a contest.

 I wrote the word on the blackboard.

Ø  PARADISE

The last word game: how many words can you see in PARADISE?

The watch gave the groups 2 minutes to find words, which later were scored if they were not repeated.

This activity was great for them too, although, to be honest, the words they found were not too long.

For homework, because we ran out of time, I asked them to think about what they have learnt: “Think about your learning”.

3 things you learnt today

2 examples of what you learnt today.

1 question you still have.

The experience with this session has been very positive. We all enjoyed a lot and they have learnt and reviewed a lot of vocabulary. This kind of cooperative activities allow them to speak without the pressure of being observed individually, which makes them feel so uncomfortable.