Stations

This versatile activity can be adapted for any lesson when you think your students need to get out of their seats and get some oxygen to their brains. It can be used for quizzes or tests with different elements, or as a course review with more than one focus, i.e. grammar, collocations or word fields.

Who it's for:
All levels

What it's for:
Review work, vocabulary practice and lots more

What you need:
Three or more quick, hands-on activities or exercises that all run for about the same amount of time; for example, a Spotlight language test.

What you do:
Before the lesson, decide on the different elements that will make up the game. As an example, you might want to do the quiz in Spotlight 3/2010 with your group.

Cut out and make copies of the different elements of the quiz or test. You can either make enough copies for each of your students, or make just one master copy. In this latter case, make sure you have given instructions that the students are not to write on it.

In the lesson, clear tables in different parts of the room and place one activity on each table. Tell your students that they are to visit each table in turn, and to do the activity they find there. It's a good idea to establish a route around the room, i.e. clockwise or anti-clockwise, and to explain how each activity works before students get their hands on them.

Divide the group into twos or threes, making sure that you have at least the same number of activities as groups of students.

Position one group at each of the tables, and tell them that they have a certain amount of time, e.g. two minutes, to complete the task at that table. When you squeak your squeaker / ring your bell / honk your horn, they are to put the activity back as they found it and to move on to the next one.

Run the activity for as long as you need to for each of the groups to have visited each table, then do feedback. Either get everybody sitting back down for this, or put the relevant answer sheet on each table and send them around the stations again to do their own checking.

The next Try It Out post will appear on 26 April 2010.