Milestones

Last month, we looked at an activity that works with the dates and numbers in a text from Spotlight magazine. This month I'd like to present a follow-up activity that centres on your students' own significant dates. I think this might be one of Mario Rinvolucri's ideas, but whoever came up with it, it always works well in practice, especially early on in a course, and conforms to one of my favourite criteria: no preparation.

Who it's for:
All levels 

What it's for:
Practising saying dates, talking about the past, group bonding

What you need:
Small blank cards, enough for three or four per student.

What you do:
Put your class into groups of three to five, ideally containing a mix of abilities and students who don't know each other that well.

Write on the board a significant date from your life up to now in the format "1 September 2005" and get students to ask you questions about it. Write "What happened on that date?" and add a few cues, such as "Where?", "What?", "Why did you...?" Remind students that they need to use "did" in past simple questions.

Each student will need a pen and three or four cards. Tell them to think of three or four significant dates from their own lives and to write each of them on a separate card. Tell them just to write the date, no other information, and stress that the students must be happy/able to say something about them. Dates of one's own birth aren't very interesting, and "the day I poisoned my mother-in-law" may not be appropriate.

When all the students have written dates on three or four cards, get someone from each group to collect the cards and put them in chronological order. The focus of each group is now the pile of cards. It's nice to have moved all other classroom material off the tables, or if students can meet somewhere else, such as in a corner of the room or outside.

Explain the game. It is started by one member of the group taking a card. It really doesn't matter what the procedure is here; you can say that students should lay the cards in a line and throw a dice to see which one to take, or just take the top card. It's up to you or the students. If the card is the student's own, he or she should put it back and take another. He or she reads out the date and says, "Whose card is this?" Having established this, the group can then ask "What happened?" The owner of the card can tell the story and the other students can ask more questions.

Although everything might feel a little forced at the beginning, in my experience the students really enjoy and appreciate this activity, as they often learn things about each others' lives that bring them closer together as a group. You can go around and make sure that you can hear enough "did you's" and irregular past forms, but I find it's also quite respectful to just keep out of the way for the 15 or 20 minutes you'll need for this activity.

*The next Try It Out will appear on 6 June 2011.