Activities for new classes
Some good news... After almost five months off school, children in Gaza are going back to their classes tomorrow. There's going to be a period of revision to catch up on everything that they've missed during lockdown and then the regular semester will start again at the end of August. There'll be lots of teachers in Gaza who are working with new groups of students and will need a bank of activities to do with these groups. So I thought it would be good to have a blog post about this.I'm only going to suggest one activity here though - please share your own ones in the comments. In fact the activity I'm suggesting isn't even mine; it was demonstrated by long standing HUP volunteer Helen Rountree in a training session for existing HUP volunteers a while back.https://youtu.be/ZPdl-I6nIxwIt goes something like this:-
Write a 'tic tac toe' grid on the board like the one above. The word in each square should be an answer to a personal question about the teacher (eg The Beatles - what's your favourite band?Yellow - What's your favourite band? etc)
Ask everyone to work in pairs and discuss what they think the question could be for each answer.
Divide the class into two teams - the stars and the hearts for instance. Invite them to take turns asking you questions. If the answer is on the grid they get to claim that square for their team. The first team to make a line across the grid in any direction is the winner.
Now students create their own grids and play the same activity in small groups.
Note: This a good activity for the students to find out something about their new teacher (and about each other) and as a way to revise and practise simple question forms. You could say for instance that they only get the square if they ask the question accurately.Please write a brief summary of one of your favourite activities to do with a new group in the comments below and let's start sharing ideas...