Warmers and Fillers - #Goal 2 - "Contribute to a Blog carnival"

I was intrigued with the idea of writing a blog about warmers and fillers to participate on

Eva Büyüksimkeşyan  24th Blog Carnival, which is actually my first one, and on the other hand, I will acomplish my first goal, Number 2  of  The 30 Goals Challange introduced by Shelly Terrell.

I wasn't thinking so much about warmers and fillers, but since spending a lot of time with my two sons while on holiday, I got some ideas that I will introduce to my students when we return from holidays.

 1. Who am I? What am I?

Image credit: http://www.squidoo.com

So, as I mentioned, this is not originally my idea, but I got it while playing with my sons.
We like to play this board game "Pogodi što si/tko si" or known also as "Hedbanz",maybe, you have heard of it.  I find it very interesting as it is not just all fun, but very educational and practices logic, but it can also be used in the English class for practising of asking questions in Present Tenses and for learning vocabulary. 
My sons and I have been playing it in Croatian of course, but this can easily be brought into the language class.

What is it about?

- You need to have a set of cards with the names of the items students will have to guess!

- You put Ss into groups 3-4, depends on a class and a time you planned for this. 

- All of the students choose a card and without looking at it put a card on his/her forehead (in the original game each of the players wears a headbend where the card is placed so that everybody can see their card beside them). The items on a card in the original game are usually vegetables (cabbage,potatoe, brocoli..), fruit (apple, banana, orange...),vehicles (boat, car, bike...) animals (dog, cat, lion...), furniture(desk, chair, bed...), food (sandwich, spagetthi, pizza...), but you can put whatever vocabulary you want them to practice. 


Since there is a hedbenz for adults and if you are doing this with adults or teenagers you can put the names of famous people, movie characters, cartoon characters, singers... 

- Each of the players/students have about 60 seconds to ask as many questions as he/she can to discover what item or a picture he/she represents. (You can give more time if you want)

- The questions must start from general to specific. "Am I an object?" ,"What colour am I?

- The other Ss in a  group just answer „yes“ or „no“ at first and wait for their turn. Later they can answer with few words depending on a question. (see example questions)

Some more examples of general questions: „Am I an animal/thing/food/vegetable/....?“ if, for example students gets an answer „yes“ for an animal, other possible questions can be:

                                                 

                                                    „Do I have 4 legs/ do I have feathers or fur?

                                                      Am I a vegetarian, do I sleep in a barn?

                                                      Am I a wild animal....? Am I a dog?...
                                                      ..............................................................
                                    or     
                                                    "Am I a cartoon character? Am I an animal cartoon?
                                                    Am I a hero? Do I save the world? Am I a boy or a girl?
                                                    Where do I live?, What do I like to eat.......?"

- After 60 seconds another student asks as many questions to try and guess his/her item.

The students who is the first to guess 3 items is a winner.

To make it more easier for the students you choose certain general vocabulary you want them to revise or practice. You can say: „you will have to guess which vegetable, food, fruit, furniture, cartoon character you are...?“

Then give them cards with either names of an item or even a picture if you find the time. 


Suggested age of the students who can play this game is from 6 to adults just be careful of the level of their knowledge of English. I would suggest this from pre-intremediate to intermediate.

2. Typical guessing game

 

The guessing game - Guess who/Guess what is very popular also and I use it a lot in the class. In this game one of the students remembers a thing, object, movie character or something similar that you agree on at the beginning of the class and the others ask him/her questions what he/she is!

Check the youtube example from the comedy serie I like to watch "The Big Bang Theory"

The below  link is even better, but I couldn't select it from Youtube,


Guess who-from "the Big Bang Theory"

3. A broken phone

Image credit:http://www.asthma.org.uk

"A broken phone" or in Croatian "pokvareni telefon" is a game we used to play as kids.


- One of the students whispers a word or a short sentence to another student and he/she has to whisper it to another until the word or a sentences comes to  the last student who has to say it aloud.


This is fun and competing, especially when you divide students into groups, they have to be as quick as possible, they can whisper the word only once, so sometimes the original word is not the one that was given in the beginning.

- Students have to switch places so, that the one who had to say the word aloud is the one who starts with the whispering of another word or a short sentence.
  - You as a teacher can pick words - it can be familar vocabulary, something you have done so far or totally unknown, in that way you present a new vocabulary that will be introduced in a particular lesson.
I really love this idea for a Vocabulary game.


So, if you plan to talk about moods you just give them mood adjectives  which you can explain later.

angry, crazy, naughty, anxious, exctited, lonely, scared, frightened, confused, cheerful.......


- The group who is the fastest and has more correct words is the winner.  You run the score on the board, and of course write down the words that  you can later use in a lesson.


I hope I have given you some ideas and they can be easily understand.

Let me know if you are familar of any of these games.

If you use any of the above warmers or fillers, please write in a comment later how it worked in your class.


I have several new ideas, but I will leave that for another post.

My student's Glogsters

Glogster - google search image

 
One of my students decided to make a glogster after I posted the The Black Eyed Peas Contest /Glogster in our Facebook group. She immediatly singed up, and created a Glogster not closely related to Black Eyed Peas, but more to music she is fond of. I love her creativity and her love for technolgy.
Here is her first glog Babies who love metal music - so cute!

Ogulin - part of the glog!

I am so happy she did this. I still can't find the time to make a glogster account. But,I will have to learn now since my student found it interesting and asked me to give her more tasks/projects she can do to explore the Glogster.  So, I asked her to create another Glog about our Croatian hometown Ogulin, mostly for our Uruguayan penpals, which we will later share on a very famous wiki Greetings from the world  created by my friend and collegue Arjana Blažić. 
 

Then, few days later I got the message that she is bored and would like to make another Glog but lacks the ideas. Since she loves music so much and our Uruguayan penpals too, I suggested her to make a Glog about famous Croatian bands that she likes to listen to. She was thrilled with the idea and this is what she created. BTW, she likes Rockpunkmetal bands. 

I am so happy that my students ask me to give them more work not less and I wonder if that is because I've started to use more technology in the class!? Now, we have more fun and they are all more engaged, and I must say we have just started using web 2.0 tools.

Before I wrote this post I got my student's permission to share her Glogs on my blog. She was happy about it. Now, I just have to get her to start writing blogs even though she says she doesn't have the time. She made all these glogs while on holidays, I hope she will make more when we start school and others too.

Well done!!!

Here is one more glog created by Antonia. Halloween!

The funny side of the world of #RSCON3

"Seek and you'll find, be persistent and you will succeed" - saying I heard by my closest ones

These are the words I try to repeat myself now and then since I started bloging and using web 2.0 technologies few months ago. I 'm not saying I haven't been Internet aware, but I was blind by the posibbilities it was  offering. Thanks to Webheads and Bawers I discovered the world of PLN, but wasn't really aware of it until I started using my Twitter profile more often and entered the world of #RSCON3. 

I found out about the conference on Webhead Evo Yahoo group posted by Vance Stevens, but wasn't sure if I would attend it. And then, I "bumped into" my friend Marcia Lima on Skype. She asked me if I was coming since she was also having a presentation, and I thought  "why not".

The three days of the conference were the most active days of my "newbie's personal digital learning life"! I really don't know what kind of a sentance have I just written, but I know that at first I tried to catch up with my collegues from all around the world who were obviously more familiar with so many things we'd heard about technologies, and websites, and tools than I was.  And, of course since not being a native speaker I really learned some new vocabulary.

I was thrilled to be there and had bookmarked so many webpages that my laptop "went crazy". It ended up broken by the last day of the conference and I had to "kidnap" my son's computer to be able to attend the #RSCON3  like I was addicted to it and to "tweeting" too. I don't know how many tweets or reetweets have I posted in 3 days, but I know that I only had about 40 tweets before #RSCON3 and 3 days later the number was 140. So, the conclusion was a "Twiter addict" also.

Maybe you will find this to be very funny and it is but, I am glad to have been a part of it, I am glad to have shared several feedbacks, I am glad I have been moving my laptop (until it had given up on me) "from kitchen to living room, from living room to bedroom", because you must be aware that the conference and presentations were happening every half and hour, with only few hours of a rest for a new day to begin.  It was a real marathon, and I know my husband and my sons thought "mum has gone crazy".  

I don't even know how many presentations I have attended, but for now I remember my three favourite: Marcia Lima's presentation"Unplugged"- fun activities for ESL studenets,  Dave Dodgson's  "Written feedback and error correction in the language classroom" and Bruno Andrade's  "Use of Skype in the class with native speakers".
 I personally loved all of them since I have a lot in common with the teachers/presenters. First of all, I love fun  in the class, secondly I have just recently started using Skype in the class and finally, I always try to do more to help my students in their writing.

These were just first impressions. I can't wait to hear the recordings of other great presentations that I coudn't attend.

Well done and a bear hug to all of the organizers, moderators, presenters, participants and great collegues I have met. It's a pleasure to learn from you and to share the knowledge and experience with you.

#RSCON3 was a real inspiration!

You can find the Elluminate recordings on RSCON3 presentations here