Page 30 - ELG2406 June Issue 490

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RESOURCES

Reduce (prep-time) Reuse (activities)

Recycle (paper)

Is the scrap paper piling up? Teacher Stephen Tarbuck offers his ideas

to reuse scrap paper in the classroom.

icture a scrap paper box in its natural • Next the students repeat the previous
habitat – the staffroom – where it fulfils steps with different people until they have
its purpose of containing the scrap all their own sentences. The first to get all
Ppaper with all the teachers’ mistakes. their own back sits down and is declared
The overgeneration of scrap paper is not the winner!
unique; you need only spend some time
around a school to witness the compiling This activity is adaptable for any language
of scrap material. This scrap paper is an point, by simply changing the form of the
exploitable resource and I will show you how sentence you require.
to exploit it by demonstrating activities which
use that paper. 4. Feedback Question Slips
We’ll start by turning the scrap paper into This idea is adapted from ‘Activities for
strips, with each strip having one clear side Task-Based Learning’ by Neil Anderson
for writing on. Once you’re ready, you can try and Neil McCutcheon. In it, they suggest
any of these student-centred and generated capturing spoken mistakes and returning
activities! them for self or peer correction.
My adaptation makes a minor adjustment:
1. Memory the mistake is put into a question, which
To play this game, students are given two students correct and then discuss. For
strips. On one strip they write a word, and example, during one class I noted down the
on the other, the definition of that word. mistake you can see here:
Students repeat this process with more words
and more definitions until they have the
desired amount.
For example: the students have studied
vocabulary for natural disasters. In pairs they
choose seven words. Next, the students copy
the seven words onto seven strips of paper word and definition match, then the first
and write the corresponding definitions for player to say ‘snap!’ takes the papers and
those words. scores a point. Play continues until all are
After creating their materials, students mix matched.
the fourteen papers together and lay them out
in a random order. 3. Churn and Burn
This is an activity for the productive stage Later, I asked two students to work together
of the end of a grammar lesson which to correct it, then discuss the question in
sees the students trying to get their own more detail.
sentences back. The activity goes as follows: This adaptation is something I use with
small, closed groups or one-to-one students
• Give each student five strips of paper. to make feedback communicative.
On these strips, students write some
example sentences using the grammar The big idea
that has been your language focus. These activities require very little preparation,
• As they write, monitor the activity are repeatable and student generated, but
and provide corrections on the grammar most importantly, they have a positive
form. environmental impact. I hope they will
• After writing, elicit example sentences and encourage you to consider how you might
Next students take turns to reveal two papers provide corrections. reuse scrap paper and repurpose old, printed
and try to match a definition and word. When • Next, students write their sentences in the material for future tasks and group work in
matched the papers are taken and a point is question form underneath the original. your classroom!
scored. Play continues until all are matched. • All strips of paper are put together into
one pile, and the strips are distributed
2. Snap! equally among the students. Make sure Stephen Tarbuck is an EFL
This can be played directly after memory, using they do not receive their own. teacher who is currently
the same materials. Two students make a pile • Students read the questions to a partner, teaching at International
of their own papers. who answers them. House Torun´ in Poland. You
Then, they play a game of Snap!, which • After the answer, students show the paper can find out more about his
is when each player simultaneously draws to their partner and if it is theirs that TEFL ideas at his blog.
a paper and shows their partner. If the paper is returned to them.
30 June 2024