ESL Activity - Speaking Exercise - Witness to a crime

Hello there educators! Welcome back to the ole blogski. I hope everyone is doing well!

Today I will be posting about an activity that worked pretty well in my ESL class.

Name of the Acivity: Witness to a crime
Student Level: Intermediate-Advanced
# of students: 6-14

Teacher's Part:

1. Explain to the students that they have witnessed a crime.
2. Tell them to read the roles that you give them carefully. Have them memorize their role.
3. Give each student a role.
4. Allow them time to read their roles.
5. Next, tell the students they need to mingle with the other people at a party later that night.
6. As they mingle they should explain their roles to one another. (What they witnessed)
7. Provide a witness information sheet to accompany their questioning. 
8. Follow up the activity with a report of what happened during the crime. I usually have them write a paragraph or two describing what they saw

Student's part:

1. Each student will randomly pick a role and memorize this role.
2. The students will mingle together and try to figure out exactly what happened during the crime.
3. At the end the student will compile their information based on what each witness said.
4. They need to play the role of a detective at the end. They should try to piece all of the information together.

Copy this into a word document then print and cut out:

You were standing near the drug store; you were talking to a friend who had just come back from vacation. You were listening to her tell you all about her time in Mexico. Suddenly, you noticed three people running from the store.



You were talking to a friend about your vacation outside the drug store, suddenly, your friend shouted, "Look!" You noticed three people running from the store; one was carrying a large bag.



You were waiting in the drug store for a prescription, you were angry because you had been waiting for a very long time. Suddenly, a man pushed in front of you and started shouting. It was 3.30pm; you knew because you had been waiting for your prescription since 3pm!



You were behind the counter in the drug store - serving customers. You were hungry and angry because the customers were being so impatient and you had missed lunch. Suddenly, a man ran up to the counter and told you to handover the money.



You were helping your friend behind the counter in the drug store, you actually work in the bakery next door but it was your break and so you decided to visit your friend – now you wish that you hadn't! Suddenly, a man shouted, "Give me the money!" You tried to hide but he saw you! He had blue eyes and was wearing a green shirt and a black sweater with a hat. Your friend gave him $2,000.



You heard a man shouting in the drug store; you were looking for headache tablets. Suddenly, you heard a man shout, "Give me the money!" It was 3.30pm; you were going home to watch Oprah Winfrey, she was doing a special program on violent children.



You were standing near the counter in the drug store, you saw a man wearing a casual pair of black pants and a sloppy sweater. You were surprised because it was the middle of the summer. Suddenly, he shouted, "Give me the money!"



You were holding the door of the drug store open for a woman with a baby. She had a lot of things to carry and so you tried to help her when suddenly two men pushed you; you almost fell! As they ran away, you saw that they were wearing black sweaters.



You were walking into the drug store with your baby. You wanted to buy some diapers. You noticed a man open the door for you, but as you walked through the door two men came out and pushed you out of the way.



You were standing by the mailbox near the drug store trying to mail some letters, when you saw three men running from the store. One had a bag and two were wearing black sweaters, the last man was following them, he was wearing a red shirt.



You were working at the front of the drug store putting cans on the shelves. You were wearing a red shirt and a black pair of pants. Suddenly, you saw two men running from the store with a bag. You ran after them to try to stop them.

You are a police officer. You were standing on the street corner. You suddenly saw three men running toward you; you knew that they were in trouble. You chased them but you only managed to catch the one wearing a red shirt and black pants. When you told him to stop he resisted.



You were watching TV at home; Oprah Winfrey was on - your favorite. It was about 4.15pm when the phone rang, it was the police, they said that John had been arrested for stealing money from the drug store. You couldn't believe it- not your son and not when your favorite program was on!



You own the drug store. The police called you at 5pm to say that they had arrested John. You have no idea what happened but you always thought that he was a problem.

The Witness Information Sheet can be copied from here:

Witness Information Sheet

Witness’ Name:________________________________________________________________________

Witness’ Job:__________________________________________________________________________

What they       know:__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Witness’ Name:________________________________________________________________________

Witness’ Job:__________________________________________________________________________

What they       know:__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Witness’ Name:________________________________________________________________________

Witness’ Job:__________________________________________________________________________

What they       know:__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Witness’ Name:________________________________________________________________________

Witness’ Job:__________________________________________________________________________

What they       know:__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Witness’ Name:________________________________________________________________________

Witness’ Job:__________________________________________________________________________

What they       know:__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Witness’ Name:________________________________________________________________________

Witness’ Job:__________________________________________________________________________

What they       know:__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Witness’ Name:________________________________________________________________________

Witness’ Job:__________________________________________________________________________

What they       know:__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Witness’ Name:________________________________________________________________________

Witness’ Job:__________________________________________________________________________

What they       know:__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hopefully everything stays formatted the same. Enjoy!

PS- Let me know if you improve on this activity somehow!

PS- I do not own any picture in this post. RAWR.

Post for my future kids? Best kids science books of 2014. Also a tiny earth rant. Where will the future go?

I stumbled across a yahoo article today that had some outstanding science books for kids that I felt will really teach them about this earth.

http://www.nsta.org/publications/ostb/ostb2014.aspx

For all you children bearers out there, go to this link, check out these books. See for yourself how you can influence your little one's life by giving him or her a unique intellectual upbringing.

I am always an advocate for learning as much as possible and experiencing different ideas or cultures. To truly be able to accept the world for how it is and not be so biased, it is essential to get the facts straight and not just a dampened view of them. Science will steer us in the right direction.

Science is the present and the future, so we must embrace in with open arms and open minds. Everything scientific related will not come as a benefit, but we must work through our errors and press on in the name of Science!

Sorry, that was a little rant about the future of our Earth. It's hard to tell where we will be in 50 years. I just hope humanity can come together as one and work together for the greater good with the help of science.

Could you imagine everything that is happening now, 50 years ago?

Another point in thinking: The internet.

The internet has brought everything together and has allowed us to share ideas and information that has ultimately allowed us to gain more knowledge than ever thought possible. Science has taken us in a whole new direction of life. A nuclear fission reactor has just been tested and was successful in creating a positive energy flow, meaning that they are literally extracting energy from nothing (well a reaction, but who's counting). This is a huge leap in scientific progress and can only mean exponential growth in the future.

The big question though: How can we sustain ourselves when the internet is lost? Eventually a huge magnetic wave from space will knock all communication offline and we will be back to the stone ages. When... is the only question.

Keep fueling your brain with new ideas. Push old deteriorating ideas out and pump new fresh ones in.


(More thoughts and ideas coming next post) 

-Keep it classy internet people. 

ESL - Part of Speech Review Game - Stephen Birk

Hello everyone,
but a special hello to all my ESL teachers out there!

Today I will be sharing with you a little Part of Speech Review Game that I put together that works pretty well as a warm up and as a review.


The reason I created this game was because my students were not practicing their parts of speech. I wanted each of my students, at any level, to recognize what part of speech a word is because it plays a role in the syntax(word order/sentence structure) of English. Parts of speech are very useful when teaching how and where words go in English sentences.

Here you can find the links to my old Part of speech review games:

Part of Speech Review Game 1

Part of Speech Review Game 2

If you do not know how to use prezi, I would advise signing up for an account through this link
http://prezi.com/recommend/stephenbirk/
You need to have basic knowledge of prezi to manipulate this game.


Prezi is a very useful tool that doesn't require saving your work to a computer/usb. You can directly upload and work on all of your presentations online, so it's very effective for saving time.

Rules of the Game:

1. Each day everyone will get a chance to look at one word and guess the part of speech. 

-If you guess correctly, you get one point.
-If you guess incorrectly or guess more than once, you get zero points.
-If a classmate shouts out the answer for you or gives you the answer, you get zero points.

2. The whole class is working together but individually at the same time. Each person should study parts of speech individually and be ready to help the out the class by knowing your part. 

3. You take the number of days you have to teach and multiply it by the number of students you have in the class. 

Example:      20 days to teach. 10 students.

                      20 x 10 = 200 points (total maximum points the students could receive)

So I usually aim for about a 75% accuracy rate, because I know some students won't always study their parts of speech and sometimes they will not know the vocabulary so it essential to give them some leniency.

That means, if you choose 75%, you take 0.75 x 200 = 150. So the class needs to get 150 points in 20 days to reach their goal. That's an average of 7.5 points per day.

4. If the class gets X amount of points in Y amount of days, then the class will get a SPECIAL SURPRISE.

You need to determine your amount of points and amount of days for each individual class because it will vary. I usually just tell them they will get a special surprise and depending on how the class acts throughout the session, I will vary my surprises to match their behavior and attitude. I have made rice krispies treats in the past and also given out multiple suckers and raffled large candy. So really you can get creative as you want for the surprise, don't limit yourself to just items, you could take a field trip or something.

Instructions for teachers:

1. You need to make a template, maybe something like the examples I have created in the past. 

2. Each day needs to be filled with the same amount of words as there are students. ex. 14 students = 14 words.

3. Each day you will need to create a different direction in the Prezi. Just like microsoft power point, you go through slides in a particular order, in Prezi you can change the order of each slide, pretty easily. So each day you will have to change the order if you put all your words up first. (I usually make up the words each day so my students don't have a chance to go onto my public Prezi account and look up the words before class ;)

4. Start with different students each day and never go the same way around the room, this seems to keep them actively engaged when they don't have a monotonous cycle. 

5. Enjoy yourself. Create fun words or directly link your words from the vocabulary you are teaching in class. In any case, pick words that are relevant to your students' lives. If you are teaching adults, don't pick baby words (and also vice verse) .

I hope you enjoy and use the game I created. If you modify this game in anyway to make it better, please tell me! I would love to know. 

Additional resources:

http://prezi.com/user/stephenbirk/

This is a link to my public prezi account, there is a lot of different grammar topics that ESL teachers may be able to use for their class. Also feel free to share you ideas with me, I am always looking for new ways to teach my students :)