Teaching Ideas: My lovely friend`s advice

Hi everyone and dear fellow english teacher J Today I would like to share with you a teaching idea. Yesterday I taught about weaknesses. After having some reading and grammar practices, we made a circle and I made everyone say one of their weakness. Ben ( my student) said that he is indifferent. John said that he is forgetful and I said that I am messy hehehe.

Meet JOHN, BEN, and AMY!

Then, I picked three random cards, it happened to be ace, five and six hearts. So I shuffled it, I let them chose one. I got ace, Ben got five, and John got six. I told them that the game name is “MY LOVELY FRIEND`S ADVICE”. And I told them about the game rules.

1.       Each member has to take turn according to the card that we picked earlier. Since I got ace, I was first, then Ben, then John

2.       When it is your turn, you have to say this :

Hi, my name is ……………. My weakness is ……………………..

For example: Hi my name is Amy ( my nickname). My weakness is messy

Then, the other team member will give me advice. They will start by saying :

Amy, if you are messy, you wil …../ you can ……

3.       Each team member has to give at least three advices, then you can move to the next person

Hehehe, my students adviced me like this:

Amy, if you are messy, your room will be dirty and yucky

Amy, if you are messy, you will step on your stuff, then they will be broken.

Amy, if you are messy, your room will have a lot of cockroach

What an enlightment! Hohoho. I also gave advices to my students, and in the end, after everyone had said their advice, I asked them , “ Are they true?”, “ Have you got bad experience because you are …  ( their weakness)?”  All of them said that the advices were right, they got bad experiences. Then I said, “ You see, choices have consequences, if we choose to linger on our weakness, we might experienced all the bad things happened to our life.” I also encouraged them to change theirself, they can “cure” theirself by making good choices.

This activity will let your students to be more self – aware and increase their self understanding. They will know that everybody has weakness, so hopefully they can be more tolerate towards each other, even fill their friend`s weakness with their strength. That is what friendship is all about, isn’t it? This activity will also encourage self determination to become a better person.

Hmm, Now, talking about english skills, this will boost their confidence to speak more J. And this activity is appropriate to teach conditional sentences, future tense, simple present tense, and also giving opinion. I hope it helps J.