Page 35 - 447

You and your students may like the idea of having a regular five-
minute slot in your lesson called 'Amazing facts'. In this session
you or a student have five minutes in which to inform the class
about something they may not be familiar with and which is likely
to amaze them. An obvious source of information is the Guinness
Book of Records, available in most countries and brought up to
date every year. Books of statistical information from government
sources or from specialist institutions are another source.
Instead of trying to fill a five-minute slot, a single amazing
statement can be made. It might well provoke some discussion.
Here is a brief example: 'People often say that it is always raining
in Britain, but the annual rainfall in London is only 61 cm. In
Brussels it is 72 cm, in Lisbon it is 68 cm, in Milan it is 94 cm,
and in Geneva it is 86 cm.

Associations

Vocabulary review and enrichment through imaginative
association.

Procedure:
Start by suggesting an evocative word: 'storm', for example.
A student says what the word suggests to him or her - it might be
'dark'. The next student suggests an association with the word
'dark', and so on round the class.
Other words you might start with: sea, fire, tired, holiday,
morning, English, family, home, angry. Or use an item of the
vocabulary the class has recently learnt.

Variation:
If there is time, after you have completed a chain of about
15-25 associations, take the final word suggested, write it on the
board, and, together with the class, try to reconstruct the entire
chain back to the original idea.

Blackboard bingo

33