Giving young learners a choice in what to say

I wanted to share an activity for giving young learners a choice that I’ll be using in my session here in Kiev tomorrow.

I’m going to use a short audio from Fun for Starters Student Book.

The task in the book is to guess which words are missing (jump, friends), then listen and check.

Fun for Starters Fourth Edition Student Book page 73

But there are so many things that we could do with this.

Let me share some ideas with you.

To make it clearer, I show the sentences on four lines and add numbers.

1 Hi! Our park is great!

2 I can run, jump and play with my friends.

3 Hooray! Let’s to to the park!

4 Let’s go today!

Then, I divide the class into four groups and give them each one of the lines to say. I give them time to rehearse their line.

Each group says their line, first in the same order as they are written: 1,2,3,4, then I vary the order.

But we can give learners a choice of what to say, for example:

– Each learner can choose which line they’d like to say and says it when I/other learners point to their number.

– Learners choose their favourite word and only say that when they hear it on the audio.  (What usually happens is that a lot of them will choose Hooray! or today.)