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Materials design made easy! John Hughes proposes some practical procedures for you to do it yourself.
The attraction of chance and luck Dice seem to have universal recognition among students. When you bring out those little cubes with the numbers one to six on the six faces, students’ expressions indicate anticipation that something game-like is about to happen in class. Dice are associated with chance and luck and most of us can’t resist that in any form. Dice in action An obvious way to use them is for teaching numbers. Beginners can roll one dice and practise saying the number on the face. Roll two dice and add the numbers to say a larger figure; or multiply the two faces of the dice. Roll three and say a three-figure number; for example, the three dice below show the figure 421: Loaded dice Dice are also generative for other aspects of language and don’t need to be limited to practising numbers. For example, draw the six faces of the dice on the board and write the question words next to each face as shown here. Put the students into small groups and give each group a dice. The students take turns to roll the dice and ask a question to another player. For example, if the dice face shows five, the student asks a question starting with When …? The game is a good review of question forms and leads to plenty of conversation. The basic principle of this activity (having dice faces indicate a language item in order to practise it) will work with virtually any language aim. The faces could indicate topics for conversation. For example, 1 = food, 2 = sport, 3 = friends, 4 = family, 5 = travel, 6 = your weekend. The student rolls the dice and talks on the topic for one minute or has to ask a question about it. The same idea would work with stress patterns, names of tenses, prepositions, etc – the list is endless. Designer dice It’s usually easy to buy dice very cheaply from games shops. They come in different colours and sizes and are easy to carry around. This means they are handy if you need a quick warmer activity or you have five minutes at the end of a lesson. However, it’s also easy to make your own and target particular language points. As an example of this, there are some collocation dice on page 9 which you can copy, cut out and turn into two large dice. In class, a student rolls both dice and must decide if the verb on one collocates with the noun on the other. If the other students agree that it does, the student who rolled the dice gets one point. They get another point for saying a complete sentence with the two words. A question mark on a square means the student must suggest a new word to collocate. Over to you The blank dice on page 10 are for you to use to target any language point. Here are three more ideas to get you started: _ Faces Cut out six faces from magazines with different expressions and paste them onto the six faces (or draw them if you are a good artist). Give students a sentence to say. The student rolls the dice and says the sentence with the emotion shown by the face on the dice. This is fun for practising intonation. Alternatively, put more faces on a second dice. The student rolls both dice and suggests the conversation that might take place between the two people shown. This is especially good for one-to-one lessons where you want to generate a roleplay-type situation but can’t use pairwork. _ Phonemes Make two dice and write six different phonemes on each. Roll the dice and ask a student to think of a word that includes the two phonemes shown. To make it easier, put vowel sounds on one dice and consonants on the other. Alternatively, select the phonemes that cause your students problems so that they get focused practice. _ Word forms As new vocabulary comes up, dice are handy for making sure it is being revised. Write the following on each face: prefix, suffix, noun, adjective, verb, collocate. In class, give students a recently-taught word. They roll the dice and try to change the form (or provide a collocate) of the word according to the dice. So if the word is possible and the face of the dice shows prefix, the student might say impossible. Make sure you also have good dictionaries standing by to help! John Hughes is an author and teacher trainer. To read more of his articles visit www.johnhugheselt.com. |
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