This lesson idea looks at how to deepen your students’ learning through creativity with content. 

Lesson Idea 7: Deepening learning: Experts in Grammar

Tools needed for this class:

Device: Laptop (one per group) and mobile devices (to play Kahoot on).

Other materials: Explanatory material, examples and exercises for the grammar area ‘the articles a, an and the’ (you can use a syllabus for this).

Useful websites:

Main activity: Create a quiz about grammar articles.

Time needed: 1.5–2 hours

Preparation: In order to create a Kahoot you need an account (free), but you don’t need an account to play. If your students aren’t familiar with Kahoot, either create one for them or use a popular ready-made quiz. It would be useful to spend a lesson/session getting used to Kahoot and creating accounts before starting this lesson. With regards to the grammar, it is useful if they have already had lessons on the ‘articles’, although they will also need access to explanations and examples.

Step-by-step guide

Step One (5 mins)
Explanation: Explain that rather than you testing the students, they are going to test each other on the grammar of ‘articles’.

Step Two (5–10 mins)
Put the students into groups of three of four. Each group must have one laptop. They are going to create a quiz of maximum 10 questions on the ‘articles’. They can make questions about the rules, they can create true or false questions, they can use example sentences with the articles missing, etc. There are three rules: 1). they must create a multiple choice quiz, 2). the questions must be their own work (no copying or cutting and pasting off the internet) and 3). they must be able to explain why the answers are correct and incorrect.

Step Three (30–40 mins)
Creating the quiz: The role of the teacher here is to stimulate the students and give help where necessary. Be careful not to change or correct the students’ quizzes – this will become apparent in the next phase.

Next Phase:

Step One (10 minutes) 
Using the Expert strategy, give each group a number. Create new groups in which each new group has a member of every old group. (So, if you have seven groups of four students, they should now make a group with someone out of group 1, group 2, group 3 and so on. You should now have four groups of seven students.)

Step Two (40 minutes) 
Playing the quizzes: Now, in each group, they need to play the quizzes – everyone should have a mobile, and there should be at least one laptop per group. (The different members can log in when it is their turn to play the quiz.) Now it should become apparent how well the students understand the rules and how ‘correct’ the answers are. This can lead to discussions, and as the teacher you can now help out if needed.

Extra activity: If you have time you could round this activity off by getting the students to write down what they have learned in the lesson. You could use the following questions:

  1. Explain what the rule is in your own words.
  2. When do you use … ?
  3. Why is it easy to learn this?
  4. Why is it difficult to learn this?
  5. Write your own sentence using the rule. 

Topics

Digital tool selection: Introduction