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    Teaching English Through Theatre Valido

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    David Turiño
    This document describes 5 drama activities used to teach English to 7-year-old students. Activity 1 was a warm-up game called "Two by Three" to motivate students. Activity 2 had students practice expressing emotions in English. Activity 3 was singing and acting out the song "Going on a Bear Hunt." Activity 4 was a version of "Simon Says" to review vocabulary. Activity 5 had students act out and describe a jungle story together. The activities built on each other and helped students associate words with actions in an engaging way to learn English.

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    Teaching English Through Theatre Valido

    Uploaded by

    David Turiño
    78 views5 pages
    This document describes 5 drama activities used to teach English to 7-year-old students. Activity 1 was a warm-up game called "Two by Three" to motivate students. Activity 2 had students practice expressing emotions in English. Activity 3 was singing and acting out the song "Going on a Bear Hunt." Activity 4 was a version of "Simon Says" to review vocabulary. Activity 5 had students act out and describe a jungle story together. The activities built on each other and helped students associate words with actions in an engaging way to learn English.

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    teaching english through theatre valido

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    This document describes 5 drama activities used to teach English to 7-year-old students. Activity 1 was a warm-up game called "Two by Three" to motivate students. Activity 2 had students practice expressing emotions in English. Activity 3 was singing and acting out the song "Going on a Bear Hunt." Activity 4 was a version of "Simon Says" to review vocabulary. Activity 5 had students act out and describe a jungle story together. The activities built on each other and helped students associate words with actions in an engaging way to learn English.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    78 views5 pages

    Teaching English Through Theatre Valido

    Uploaded by

    David Turiño
    This document describes 5 drama activities used to teach English to 7-year-old students. Activity 1 was a warm-up game called "Two by Three" to motivate students. Activity 2 had students practice expressing emotions in English. Activity 3 was singing and acting out the song "Going on a Bear Hunt." Activity 4 was a version of "Simon Says" to review vocabulary. Activity 5 had students act out and describe a jungle story together. The activities built on each other and helped students associate words with actions in an engaging way to learn English.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    of 5

    TEACHING ENGLISH THROUGH DRAMA FINNAL ASSIGNMENT

    Application context

    Class: 7 year old students ( 2nd grade). Number of students 26.

    Good level of English and really keen on learning and participating.

    This five activities I am going to describe, have been performed in an


    independent way and different sessions. At the end of the assignment I
    reflect on the experience of having put into practice a complete series of
    activities which build on themselves as Mike Plonsky advised us to do.

    Activity one: Two by three

    Type of activity: Warm up or ice breaker.

    This is the first activity of the course I used with my students. I chose it to
    start with because it is very similar to the games children play every day in
    their break time. In this way children wouldn’t see the gap between a fun
    pastime and an activity where they can use a little of English (or at least be
    in an English class context) in a relaxed and organized way.

    Aims:

    • To arise student’s motivation and concentration.

    • To help student’s to work in pairs.

    • To help student’s to focus on English class.

    I was very easy for the children to understand it. Then they formed pairs
    and started to play. In the beginning they count up to three doing an action
    instead saying “one” but quickly they get used to playing without words.
    Since the activity is quite simple and dynamic I didn’t have to adapt it or
    modify it.

    When the game finished they were concentrated and motivated therefore it
    was easy for me to engage them in more formal activities.

    Activity two: Progressive emotions.

    1
    Type of activity: Verbal, useful for routines and vocabulary review.

    I chose this activity because I realized that when I asked my students “how
    are you?” the always answered “I’m fine thank you“ like robots so I wanted
    them to explain and show any other real emotions.

    Aims:

    • To teach my students to learn the name of the different


    emotion and feelings in English.

    • To make routines funnier and review basic concepts in a


    different and challenging way.

    • To help students to express in English their own feelings and


    states of mind.

    • To show the students that English can be used to talk about


    themselves and their real lives.

    • To help them to associate different emotions with their


    corresponding gestures and tones of voice.

    As usually I asked of my students “how are you? “, “what day is it today?”


    and this kind of questions they are used to answer in a mechanical way.
    Then I said, “ok, now, tell me the day but happy” I started with happy and
    sad because are the ones students are used to, then I introduce many other
    ones such us: tired, bored, in love, hungry, angry, sleepy, fast, scary, slow,
    frozen and so on.

    Adaptations: Unlike what our teacher did I didn’t introduce in a formal way
    the idea of progression since in opinion children it cam be difficult and a bit
    boring to express something in a neutral or almost neutral way. Moreover I
    wanted them to gain in confidence in using English so I preferred to
    eliminate restrictions. What I did instead was to say “ ok now I want it
    happier (or more in love, more bored, …) who can say it happier?” giving
    everybody the opportunity to try it. I used this activity with the days of the
    week and “routine questions” but it can be done in many other possibilities.

    Activity three: Going on a bear hunt

    2
    Type of activity: Song with gestures.

    I think the best way to explain why I chose this song is that I was so good,
    gives us so many possibilities and Mike Schaupp explained it so well (video
    included) that I simply couldn’t waste the opportunity to put it into practice.

    Aims:

    • To motivate students and get their attention before starting a


    new class.

    • To help the students to learn adverbs of place(around, over,


    through) in a meaningful way.

    • To help them to associate English words with gestures as an


    important learning strategy.

    I usually start this kind of song with an imaginary “autobiographical story”,


    in this case I told them that before being a teacher one of my hobbies was
    bear hunting. I don’t really think they believe these stories but I think is an
    appealing way to introduce the song and gives it some mysterious
    atmosphere that students love. I have thought in introducing the song
    phrase by phrase and then present the gestures but finally I didn’t need to
    do it that way because children were able to repeat the song and the
    gestures at the same time.

    Adaptations. Given that Mike Schaupp adapted the song from the original
    “Going on a bear hunt” I didn’t need modify almost anything.

    Children really enjoyed the activity and the aims have been achieved
    successfully. However since this song has infinite possibilities

    Activity four : Simon says

    Type of activity: Total Physical Response (TPR)

    We had done this activity several times with good results but I in the Ctif
    course I learnt some new variations which I could introduce in the “game”.

    Aims

    3
    • Vocabulary review.

    • Physical response to commands.

    • To improve student’s concentration in the English class.

    • learn to play with their classmates and to follow some simple


    rules.

    Adaptations. As the game had new rules I preferred to play without


    eliminating children because they tend to be very competitive and also
    because early elimination discouraged some of them. I didn’t want be a
    referee, it’s impossible to see everybody at the same time and also very
    uneasy to tell a child that he/ she is cheating.

    Moreover I think keeping some students out of the “game” is in some way
    preventing them to learn for a while. Some students were disappointed with
    this decision but, since I used new tricks these students had the challenge
    to beat their teacher and at the same time it was a challenge for me to
    “force “ them to make mistakes.

    Activity five: Actions story .The jungle.

    Type of activity: Story telling and acting.

    Aims

    • To help students to associate words and actions.

    • To introduce students to activities related to drama.

    • To help student’s to realize that English can be used to discover


    new environments.

    • Vocabulary review.

    • Help students to realize that English can be used to describe real


    and useful actions not only for classroom purposes.

    4
    Adaptations

    Instead of creating a story in the 3rd person I decided to propose my children


    to travel to the jungle since younger student’s love to have and “ starring
    role” or be the stars. So I ask them to put on the necessary clothes, to get
    into the car, to look at the different animals we found ( we had just read a
    book called “ a trip to a Safari Park” ) and so on. They enjoyed the story a
    lot and it was really interesting for me because I could introduce new
    vocabulary and structures and a meaningful, contextualized and relaxed
    way reducing what Krashen called the affective filter which usually prevent
    students to learn a 2nd language in a proper way.

    Now I have explained these five activities I put into practice one of the
    sessions we did with Mike Plonsky because these activities built one on
    another. The activities I used were: the mirror, the echo, the mirror, the
    vocal mirror and the activity of the twins and triplets.

    This was the only time I have dedicated a whole sixty minutes session for
    these kind of activities and I am very satisfied with the experience although
    some students made a lot of noise and disturbed their classmates.

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