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