Bank of Activities

Detecting lies (To improve sentence structure, to develop the language,

to fix the features of some items)
In pairs. One student has to give information to his/her partner about 4
different tasks but one of the parts is false. The partner must guess which
one is the wrong one. Ex: Tell me 4 different things about:
a painter:

Name

a planet:

Name

a living
being:
yourself:

Name
Name

most famous
painting
average
temperature

year of birth

nationality

composition

size

What you want

to do for a
living

Favourite food

Number of
brothers
and sisters

Find someone who (To develop interaction, for kinesthaetic learners, to

change the pace of the lesson, review/introduction)
Every student moves around with a paper with characteristics of a
planet. They have to find people who has a planet:
with oxygen in its atmosphere
with no atmosphere
whose temperature is very cold at night and very warm during the
day

Find the mistakes in the sentences on the board (To clarify key
concepts, spelling)
Ex. Plants perform photosynthesis to produce their own inorganic matter
Adaptation: The students could create their own sentences.

Ask the right question (To foster communication, to review previous

knowledge. Creative thinking, miming. To develop fluency and thinking
skills)
The students get a card with a word. They have to explain it without saying
it and the partner must guess it. Ex: they get the names of different cell
organelles and they have to explain them until the partner guesses the
name of the organelle.

Back to the board (To improve asking questions, to develop the

language, to fix the features of some items, warming up, recalling)

One student sits back to the board. The teacher writes a word on the
blackboard (a students name, a planet, a living being, a painter) and
he/she must guess it with clues from the classmates or asking questions to
them (raising hands, in order). It can be used for the review of the
previous class, just remembering some concepts from the other day.

The three YES (To start a lesson, to prepare students to pay attention)
Ask for 3 questions whose answer is going to be YES. Eg.: Who can count to
ten in English?, who knows the name of an animal? They move their body
(raising hands) and get ready to work.

Game Question How well do you know your classmates?

(English subject and maybe with adaptation for others)
The teacher gives instructions and asks questions again about what he
ordered in order to make sure that they understood:

Fold the paper twice, it doesnt need to be perfect.

You cant read the questions (dont be naughty)
Write the names of the whole class randomly. Every name
corresponds to a question.
Unfold the paper.
Stand up and look for the answers asking your classmates.

Whats
Who in the world would
Whats

Lucy
John

s favourite possession?
most like to meet?
greatest wish?

Running Dictation (4 language skills: motivation, working language,

working content, group work) CLIL activity
Teams of 4-5 students.
One text for every group but placed a bit far from the group.
The first student must run and read the text. He comes back and tells
the next student to write what he read. He must dictate. If he does
not remember, he can go back and read another sentence. The rest of
the team helps the writer with spelling, remembering the words It
keeps until the teacher claps and the second student is the one who
runs and read while the third student writes. It changes again, and so
on during about 10 minutes, so that every group finishes the
dictation.
Correction: the texts are switched among the groups and read aloud.
The teacher can work on the content of the text later.

Memory warm up (quick recalling, short time, starter)

In groups, in pairs They have to remember 9 of the words that we worked
on yesterday. The fastest to remember these 9 words wins.

TPS (Think, pair and Share) (To work on collocations)

Every student gets a word. They have to stand up and look for their partner,
who has got the other part of the collocation. Eg: global warming, solar
panels, water supply. They explain the meaning of their concept to the rest
of the class.

Graph. (To work on controversy, to generate a debate, a discussion)

They have to go to the blackboard and stick (blutack) their word on the
graph depending on the damage that this effect causes to the environment
and on its usefulness. See document attached on pdf (ActCollocations).
There are not totally right or wrong answers. They must explain why they
put their word there and the rest of the students must give their opinion.

Mushrooming groups (To get confident, to order ideas, to reflect, to

foster communication, mixed groups)
For example, to prepare a debate:
Students start discussing in pairs. Then they talk in groups of four. Later,
they join together and talk in groups of eight

Ice breaker/warmer (To get active, review, introduction, to change the

pace).
These activities usually involve physical activity and movement. Students
think of a concept from the previous day (the teacher can tell them what
concepts, ex: types of schools in the UK). They must stand up and while the
music is on the move around. When it stops, they must speak to the partner
who is next. They have to elicit the chosen word. The other guess it and the
first student ask some questions about the word for making sure that the
second has understood the word. Then, the other student does the same
with a different word. The questions can be: Is it a fee-paying school? Does
it depend on the government? Can everyone go there? When music starts
again they move and look for another classmate. In the end they should
have found a certain number of different words.

Ordering cards (2 groups)

Students in groups get cards with different words (types of National tests in
England) and they must stick them on the board in the correct order
(following the line of educational life).

Controversial Statement (Warm up, introduction, critical thinking,

finding out)
The teacher writes a sentence on the blackboard and students must debate.
It is important to tell them that they should try to do a RGT strategy,
thinking from 3 different positions: myself, another one and the observer.

Brainstorming (in groups)

Every group has to write different words in post-its. Then, stick them on the
wall while explaining them. Eg.: What elements should we include in a
lesson plan?

True or false game (To review the vocabulary, warming up)

Students move to the music. When it stops, the teacher reads a definition
for something. If it is right, they move to one side (below the sign TRUE). If
it is wrong, they move to the other side (Below the sign FALSE). In case
there are confused students, the teacher explains asking them why they
chose that option.

Learning about neurons using CLIL (scaffolding language and

learning)

This activity can be used before a previous knowledge, as an

introduction, because the gaps and the activities can be deduced by
the grammar and the structure of the sentences.
Introducing vocabulary first is not necessary.
The teacher is not the main character in the class
Once they complete the activity, for example in groups or in pairs and
we have corrected it, they have all the new basic information there.
See documents attached CLILneurons and CLILneuronsSolutions.

Listening
Preparing students:
o Make sure that they have a reason to focus on the listening:
Show a picture to catch the interest, so that they know
what it is going to be about.
Give them the title and ask them to guess what it is
about.
Ask questions about something that they are going to
see in the video. Try to make a subject personal to the
children. Find a personal connection between child and
video. For instance: if the video is about an ecosystem in
Cuenca: Have you ever been in Cuenca?

Jigsaw listening (To help mixed ability classes, it takes up the pace of
the lesson, listening and speaking, to integrate listening and speaking skills,
to encourage collaborative learning)
o

Different students have to answer to different questions high

capacity students get more complicated questions. Or different
students focus on a different character. Then, they check their
answers As y Bs together. Afterwards, they speak together and
find out the questions that they do not have.

The students can create their own questions and pass them to the
others.

Pronunciation activity/Definitions activity (to review, to work on

pronunciation)
In groups, students get 10 cards with one word each. They have to order the
cards in columns depending on their first sound (j or y). When the teacher
says the corresponding word their raise it.
Variant: The teacher says a definition and the student who has got
the corresponding word raises it. The fastest team wins. Every
student can have 2-3 words.

Mind Map (To organize information)

Bend diagram

What makes a good presentation?

Effective organization (information, well-structured)
Visual, attractive
On topic
Uncluttered (simplified) slides
Slow reveal
Introduction including objectives and aims
With a punchy ending (a quote, a funny story), that leads you to
questions, debate, activities
The three Cs: Be Concise, be Cooperative and Compromise

Activity for working on prepositions (To work on prepositions, to

build sentences)
Every student has a different question containing a verb with preposition.
They have to stand up and ask as many people as they can. He must ask his
first question and then another one.

Look at the objects and decide how they relate to someones

life (It stimulates creativity, everybody gets involved, personalizing the
context, introduction to a topic, to develop cognitive skills, guessing,
hypothesising)
Variants:
Students must bring objects related to the topic and explain how they
are related
Teacher places a picture/object on the table before the students arrive
and they guess what it is.

True/false game in two rows with two chairs at the end (To
change the pace, to engage, to review, to form correct sentences)

There are two teams. Every member has a number. The teacher reads a
sentence aloud and says the number. Those students who have this number
have to run to one direction or the opposite (left or right) depending if the
sentence is true or false.
Adaptation to fewer space: The activity can be done 15 minutes
before the class finishes, going to the yard.

Jigsaw reading (Cooperative learning, to summarize information, to look

for specific information)

A and B students. They just read one part of the reading. They have
to trust their mates. There is one gist question first for everyone and
then some more specific.
It can be more complicated: Divide the students into A1, A2, B1 and
B2. As get the same part of the text. Bs get the other part. As discuss
their own questions. Bs discuss their own questions. Then, 1s go
together and 2s go together. They answer common questions
together everyone tells the information to the other.

Marking the stress of words with a box, beating the stress

with your hands, humming. (To improve word stress)
Choose 4-5 words of the unit. Practice their pronunciation before the unit
starts.

Mix-match activity (To control the amount of words that we are going to
work on)
Words on the left, definitions on the right. Match them.
Review of vocabulary (after doing a mix-max)
In pairs. One student asks for one word of the list. The other has to explain it
without reading.

Jigsaw competition for drawing a graph (Cooperative learning,

learning by doing)
In groups. Every group gets a different piece of information (blue, green,
red) Blue has the information for the percentage of water used in cleaning
a house, green the percentage for cooking, red, the percentage for having
showers. Everyone memorizes his data and then the teacher mixes the
groups, so that in every group there is one person of every colour. They
share the information and with all the data, students can draw the graph on
a paper plate. They have 5 minutes to represent the best graph. In the end,
they vote (they cannot vote their own graph) for the best graph. Checking
questions:
How many pieces of information have I got there?
How many colours are there?

 What are you going to do first?

Are you going to draw the graph on your own or in your group?
It is a CLIL activity:

Content (maths, sciences)

Cognition (people thinking how to develop, how to present the
information)
Communication (between students)
Culture (different uses of water, awareness)

Difficulties: giving instructions, control techniques, assessment (checking all

the time all the groups).
See documents: CLILwater and CLILwaterJigsaw.

Gap Filling Activity (To work on content, to work on language)(skills:

reading, listening, pronunciation, writing; sub-skills: spelling, checking,
understanding)
Students get a text with some missing words (blanks). There should be a
combination of easy and difficult words. They listen to the recording while
the fill in the blanks. To go deeper:

They could choose the right answer from a group of words.

They can highlight the words or write them in colours depending on
the type (verb, noun...)
They can look for new words which suit there (synonyms)
Students can design their own gap filling. The teacher divides the text
in two groups. They have to prepare the gaps for the other group.
Next day you can listen to the text and do it. The teacher tells them
the type of words they have to remove: two articles, to words related
to the topic...
The students can create their own text. The assistant can read the
text aloud. Every unit a group of students does it.

Creating sentences (review)

The teacher gives them some words and they have to create sentences.

Connecting sentences
Memorize a sentence. Walk around. Keep saying your sentence to other
students until you find the partner who connects with your sentence.

Song activity (to develop creativity)

A song will be played. Students must imagine the situation. They tell the
story that they have imagined or draw a picture.

Scrambled eggs (Thinking skills: Ordering, organizing, using information,

understanding, creating, deciding, analysing, evaluating. It develops logical
thinking)
Rearrange the instructions in the correct order. The content of the activity
are the instructions (for doing something/the steps of a process). In groups
(every group gets the same set) students order the sequence. They stand
up and can check others group. It can also consist of ordering words to
build a sentence. It is difficult if the sentences are controversial because our
mind is not prepared.
Eg.: the steps of the scientific method, steps to follow to conduct an
experiment, chronological order of a fact, animals depending on the number
of legs
Adaptation: Give slow learners clues (eg. first word with capital letter,
last word with a full stop).
Check Questions: how many sentences are there? Are you going to do
this together?

TPS
Find your partner. 10 words + 10 definitions. Everyone has one word or
definition. We they find their partner they sit down together.
-

To personalize they can use the language for themselves

To create an information gap they need to ask for getting this
information
To feel confident (1 to 1)

Wordle
In groups, brainstorming about something. Example: write 5 advantages of
CLIL in every group. Put the results in common. Write them in the Wordle.
The more often they write the word, the bigger it is.
Tell your partner your favourite type of music

Rally-Robin (Collaborative learning, review)

In groups of 4. They write one fact they know about something. They pass
the paper to the next one and he/she writes another idea and so on.

Do what I say but not what I do (to develop concentration and

listening skills)
The teacher says something but she does something different. Ex: she says
touch your ears while she is touching her legs

Dancing and calling back (To reflect, to take a quick energy break
(brain breaks), Kinaesthetic learners)
Students dance around the room. When the music stops they have to say
something they have learned this week and explain its meaning.

Role plays incorporating target language (To develop creativity)

Story about someones life to practise two problem sounds (To
improve pronunciation, Visual learners: illustrations, Auditory learners:
recordings)
The teacher tells the students a story about someone including many words
which have the difficult sound (she has dirty skirt and does not care).
Different lexical groups can be used: I went to the supermarket and I
bought.../ I went to the park and I saw...

Pronunciation activity (To identify sounds mimed by the teacher, to

work individually with slow learners)
Silently mouth the pronunciation of sounds to show how they are made and
then students hold up cards when they hear the correct sound.

Dance to music and then elicit a word or phrase when the

music stops (To have students come up with a word on their own; For
visual learners: flashcards; For older learners: mind maps)
Provide a definition and ask students to supply the correct word
Ask the learners questions that require them to answer using a
particular grammatical form
Act it out and ask

Order words on a timeline (To display information in visual form, to

help students understand the chronology of historic events. For visual
learners: illustrations. Cooperative learning: work in pairs)
Timeline of their own lives
Use realia and artifacts
Use templates