This is a fun activity that's great for practising vocabulary sets, as well as helping students in a new class get to know each other.
Level: Pre-Intermediate
Time: 50 minutes
Aims: To practise vocabulary, reading, writing, and speaking and listening skills; to get students to think laterally and use their imaginations; great ice-breaker activity
Materials: Board and pens
Procedure:
1. Ask your students: "What would you be if you were a...
a) colour
b) food
c) animal
d) flower / plant
e) musical instrument
f) city
g) book
h) car
i) shape
j) adjective
"... and why?"
Write the above categories on the board and tell the students to write down the first thing that comes into their heads for each category.
2. Collect in the students' answers and ask ten questions like:
"Who would be RED, if they were a colour?"
"Which student would be SPAGHETTI, if they were a food?"
"Who would be a MONKEY, if they were an animal?"
The students have to write down their guesses. At the end of the quiz, lead feedback. Ask students to justify their answers:
e.g. "OK, but why would Ricardo be SPAGHETTI? What does this tell us about him; about his personality?"
Then reveal the correct answers.
3. Students choose a partner. Ask them: "What would your partner be if he / she was a..." The students write down answers about their partner, without showing them: colour, food, animal, etc. (Or you could get the students to think of some new categories!)
4. Collect in the students' answers and ask ten questions like:
"Who thought that MARIO would be ORANGE, if he was a colour?"
"Which student thought that OLA would be RICE, if she was a food?"
"Who thought that LISA would be a DOLPHIN, if she was an animal?"
The students have to write down their guesses, based on what they already know about their classmates. At the end of the quiz, lead feedback, eliciting the answers from the group. Ask the students who had written the answers to justify them:
e.g. "Why did you think that MARIO would be orange, if he was a colour?"
5. Using the answers given in part 3. above, students write sentences based on their ideas, giving reasons:
e.g. "I think that Ola would be rice if she was a food because she loves Indian food." ... or: "I think that Lisa would be a dolphin because she's a really good swimmer..." and so on.
6. (Optional) If your students are sufficiently artistically-orientated, you could end the lesson by getting them to draw pictures to illustrate their sentences. You could put on the wall a gallery of pictures showing students as different items (e.g. JAN is a red Ferrari), with the whole class guessing who stars in each picture.
[Note: if you try this lesson, do let us know how it goes. Also, let us know if you added something that worked well! Click here to contact us.]
