DECYPHER AND LEARN

Age: Any
Proficiency level: Any
Objective: To review vocabulary, to ask and answer questions, to learn new information about a topic, or anything you can think of that can be encoded in QR. 
Materials: 

• Printed QR codes created by the teacher for a specific task.
• a set of questions, answers, synonyms, etc, depending on the teacher's objective for the activity.
• Tablets or smart phones with an app that reads QR codes.  

 Place the printed QR codes on the walls around the classroom. Pair students up and give each pair a tablet, or ask them to use their own device. Tell them to figure out the message in all the QRs, paying attention to the information given. When they finish, they close their device and try to solve the task presented by the teacher (answering questions, matching vocabulary items, etc). They get together with other pairs to try to complete the task. They open their devices again and check ir they were correct. 

Although we can encode pictures, sound, and videos, the only kind of QR that does not need internet connection is the text message. Therefore, only encode the other items if you are sure your connection will work well. 
Here is an example of activity prepared as a warm-up for a lesson entitled "Amazing Nature". It talks about animals that migrate or hibernate during the greatest part of their lives.The grammar topic related to the unit is the use of future perfect and future perfect continuous, so we made a point of starting to present the topic.
     
The sentences encoded are:

1 – In its lifetime, the Arctic Tern will have made three round trips to the moon

2 – The Chilean Flamingos can travel up to 700 miles, or 1,126 km, a day.

3 – Male and Female Arctic Squirrels hibernate in different periods of the year.

4 – The Elephant Seal can travel 21,000 km, mostly under water, and keep its sense of direction.

5 – The groundhog’s heartbeat drops from 80 to 4 beats per minute, and its body temperature can go below zero.

6 – The Sooty Shearwater travels around 64,000 km in its migration round trip.

The questions students were supposed to answer after collecting the information were:

1 – Which animal will have made three round trips to the moon during his lifetime?

2 – Which animal can travel up to 700 miles a day?

3 – What can the elephant seal do?

4 – What happens when the groundhog is hibernating?

5 – How far does the Sooty Shearwater travel in his migration route?

6 – What is interesting about the Arctic squirrels’ hibernation?

We used the site www.qrstuff.com to create the codes, and the app SCAN to read them.

VOCABULARY CARDS

Age: Any
Proficiency level: Any
Objective: To review, reinforce, or assess vocabulary.
Materials: Many different sets of two cards, one with the vocabulary items and their definitions or synonyms, the other with only the definitions or synonyms, arranged in a different order from the other card.

Pair students up and give each of them a card. Tell them they cannot let their peers see their cards. The student who has the vocabulary items starts the activity by asking, "What does.....mean?" or "What is a synonym for....?" (Teacher, write these questions on the board for reference.) The other student chooses among the items in his/her card and says it outloud. The other student checks whether the answer is correct. When they are done, move the cards around the class.

PREPARING THE CARDS

Make a list of the items you want to work with. Then separate them into groups of five or six, let's say. The cards will look like this:

 Card 1

FOOTPRINTS  (noun) -  the marks made by a person's or animal's feet.
SOFTWARE (noun) - computer programs
VALUABLE (adjective) - something very helpful and important; something worth a high price
OUTNUMBER (verb) - to be greater in number than someone or something
 STRUGGLE (verb) - to make great effort to do something very difficult

Card 2 

• Something very helpful and important; something worth a high price.
• Computer programs
• To make a great effort to do something very difficult.
• The marks made by a person's or animal's feet.
• To be greater in number than someone or something.

CREDITS - This activity was suggested by Anna Lúcia Seabra Mendes, from Brasília-Brazil. Many thanks to her. 

Group Race

Objective - to practice or review any grammar point or set of vocabulary items you've been teaching.
Age - Any
Proficiency level - Any
Materials - as many identical sets of slips (with the tasks) as you want groups in your class.

1 - Prepare your set of tasks. You may choose to use the following kinds of exercises: fill-in-the-blanks; completion; definition; error correction; unscramble words/sentences; answer questions; ask questions to match the answers given; any other kind that may suit your purposes.

2 - Make one copy of the set of slips for each group.

3 - Cut the slips and mark each set with a different color (one group witll be blue, another red, another green, etc). You can draw a circle, a line, a heart, anything that will identify the set.

4 - In class, arrange the sets on your desks, far from each other to avoid mixing them up. Divide the students into groups of three. Number the students, 1, 2, 3. They will take turns performing three tasks: to get a slip with a task; to write the answer; to take the slip back for the teacher to check. The same student who returns the answered slip gets a new one (if the previous slip is correctly answered).

So, in the first round, student 1 will get the slip, student 2 will write the answer, and student 3 will take the slip back to the teacher. If it is correct, student 3 will get a new slip and take it to the group. Student 1 will write the answer and student 2 will take it to the teacher. And so on....

5 - You will check it and say "yes" (right) or "no" (wrong). If the answer is wrong, the student takes it back to the group and they try to fix it.They can only get a new slip if they answer the previous one correctly.

6 - Each group will work at their own pace. The group that answers all the slips correctly first is the winner.

FLASHCARD DICTATION

Proficiency level - Beginners

Age level - Young learners

Objective - To practice saying and writing vocabulary items

Materials - Flashcards with pictures of the items you want to practice

1.  Distribute the flashcards among students. 
2. Exchange roles with them. Now you are the student!
3. As they take turns dictating the items they have, write the words on the bb, purposefully misspelling them. 
4. Ask them if you have done a good job. They will immediately point out the problems.
5. The student who dictated the word goes to the bb and writes the word correctly.
6. When everybody is done, students grade the teacher. Be prepared to get a very low grade (they love this part of the activity!!!).

NOTE: if there aren’t enough flashcards for all the students, ask the ones who don’t have a flashcard to correct the spelling. This way, everybody gets a chance to participate.

VARIATION: Divide the board into three or four parts and call students to take turns writing on the space provided to them the words dictated by their peers. Again, peer correction happens as a wrap-up.

Making "art"

"Making art" is an activity for concrete learners, particularly for children, who like hands-on tasks.

Age level - preferably young learners

Proficiency level - beginners

Materials - a big piece of paper (like a chart), or space on the classroom wall; cutouts with pictures of shapes, food, animals, or any other vocabulary group you are working with, and slips with the nouns and colors or adjectives related to them.

Objective - To practice matching nouns and adjectives.

On the chart or wall, stick the pictures of the nouns.

Distribute two slips to each student, one containing the words for the pictures you've chosen and one with a color, adjective, etc, that can be attached to the noun.

Ask students to stick their slips next to the pictures on the chart/wall.

VARIATION: make the activity more challenging by giving students a bigger slip where they can write a sentence related to their picture. If your students like competitive games, divide the class in small groups (3 students, at most) and count points everytime they get the right combination and the right sentence.

Another possibility is to divide the class into two groups and have them work cooperatively, giving one group the slips with the nouns and the other group the ones with the adjectives. Looking at the pictures, they have to find their partners and write the sentence.

Example:

     GREEN      triangle

 It's a green triangle.

DELICIOUS apple

I love apples. They are delicious.

CUTE dog

My dog is very cute. His name is Banban.

MONSTERS!

Age level - Children

Proficiency level - high beginners

Material - slips of paper and a large piece of paper to draw the monster

Objective - To practice writing parts of the body

Divide the class into groups and distribute several slips of paper where students must write parts of the body (one part per slip). Collect all the slips (there must be a lot of them!), shuffle them and randomly re-distribute several to each group. The group must produce a monster with exactly the parts written on the slips they got. So, if they have eight slips with the word "eye", the monster must have eight eyes, and so on. The production of something so absurd and funny will probably make the new language memorable.

Variation 1 - Depending on the level of the students and on their interest in writing, they can produce a written description of the creature they've just created.

Variation 2 - After students draw the monster with the parts written on their slips, they can pair up with a classmate and describe their monsters while the other student draws it. They can compare their production.