Group writing

I use various little methods for making writing less of a chore for Ss. The old classic, "It was a dark and stormy night...,"  is way more fun if you do it in groups of 4 or 5 writing a sentence at a time; it also offers writing and error correction practice in equal measure.
A Shaggy Dog Story is another way where Ss are given a list of words by one S and they have to hide them in a written piece from another S (groups of 3)
Writing as another person, a fictional character, or even an abstract concept: eg Write a letter from Monday to Friday (pretending to be Monday)
Dear Friday,
I'm writing to ask if you'd like to swap jobs for a while...

Elementary song writers

Ss focused,  in 3 hours class came up with song.  Bongo drum of word / sentence stressed introduced to wild pron success!

Is this seat taken?

A really easy no materials multi level speaking activity
Students (Ss) ask question above or opposite "Is this seat free?" "Can I sit here?"
elicit context: bus, train, new school
elicit possible conversation questions
Great for meeting / assessing new Ss.
Can be done once error corrected done again.
Then basic writing, Ss make an imaginary persona
Name:
Job:
Nationality:
Hobbies:
Etc.
And repeat speaking activity as above (every other student stands up and moves around when/where teacher says so)

Video: using movies in class

Video from post (below)

"Communicate"

I walked into the classroom with nothing in my head and very little sleep. My head was literally empty. I greeted the students (Ss) and wrote the word communicate on the board, having previously instructed Ss that their smartphones could only be used for an English Google search. One guy had let me down and changed his language settings back to Arabic (I have a multinational elementary level class) the day before but the rest had kept their Google search in English, I was very proud! One Thai guy said "Communication"....and I said "Yes, so where have you heard that word before?" (pointing at my ears and using body language *thumb over the shoulder for past etc.*) We had an elementary level discussion and decided that communication was a noun, "telecommunication" prefix "tele" was a bit different - Facebook, phones, Internet etc - and it was understood. television telephone etc. class decided communicate was a verb and looked it up on their Google to check.

They all got the Google definition right in front of them. One guy had forgotten his phone and was sharing. One Korean 30 yr old S asked, "What's the apostrophe?" As I had been trying to get them to make use of the phonemic chart in the front of their books, I punched my hand and said that's the stress of the word. comMUNicate!
I often do little intonation dances which Ss love. Pays to not care what they think. They respect that.
I asked "Shall we play a game?" They all agreed it was a good idea and I said to one student you asked me about "shall" on Tuesday; does this clear up the difference between shall and will? Can I say, "Will we play a game?" He said, "No, yes I understand, teacher, thank you." I then paid him the respect of explaining that very posh people sometimes use shall in 1st person (me, I, we) very old-fashioned.
They chose one game and were persuaded by the older students that "Hot Seat" was the best game. I asked them what type of thing we should use. We discussed type / kind of (music car person house etc.) (EXPLOIT!!!) We got back to the game and chose team names. I split the teams fairly by nationality / ability. They chose jobs as their first category. We played through with Banker / Lawyer / Doctor and more, practicing the schwa and relating it to everything (computer letter better smarter etc.) drilled pron as a class; some indv. focus without too much heat. I asked if anyone had seen The Terminator. The Korean girl 30ish had the rest hadn't really but when I got a picture they said oh yeah "I'll be back" (What tense is that?) We discussed the use of definite article The Terminator (and schwa). (How many Terminators are there? He is a robot. Is he the robot?)

The Korean girl I mentioned wanted me to use her job, as a taboo-word, in Hot Seat. She's a Kindergarten Teacher. We got there in the end by talking about chocolate eggs with toys and the thing behind your house but a German word and teacher (schwa). I said has anyone seen Kindergarten Cop? She had, no one else. We discussed vocab that cop is American slang for police and "undercover"... This was now 1.5hrs. We took a 15minute break. I was asking them the whole time what tenses we were using etc. After the break asked me the meaning of the word "second-hand." We again got a definition on the board and in front of all Ss on their phones. Discussed adjective/adverb difference. (and actually I told them about the second hand on a clock) and the Ss copied the example sentences into their notebooks and we drilled them. (With the intonation dance for different inflections!) They had learnt the verb "barter" when "market" came on Hot Seat earlier. I chose a partner and acted out selling my phone in an Arabic country, with lots of laughs as all Ss understood the process. We then played a bartering game where Ss had to sell something to a partner and agree on a price! (Change partners, repeat cos odd number and one paired with teacher)

Then I asked if they wanted to watch Kindergarten Cop. They did! I got it up on the IWB without subtitles and we watched it, explaining as a class who was good and who was bad. I only explained difficult vocab (principle of a school / to score with a girl / a junkie) . They understood pretty much everything without subtitles and were laughing and repeating phrases they had heard before and now were hearing again in the movie. We got halfway through. I asked at the end, "What are we doing?" Elicited: "We are watching a film." Stopped the film. Elicited: "We were watching a film." (Have we finished the film?) No, we haven't. Can we finish on Tuesday? (cleared up use of either on/ next, not both.)? (Yes of course!) (What tenses are we using? What have we done?) (We've used Google; learnt communicate / second-hand / to barter / we played a bartering game / we played hot seat / we were watching Kindergarton Cop but we haven't finished, we'll watch the end on Tuesday in the second lesson etc. - I was extremely proud of this exchange of full sentences and range of grammar / vocab in such a low level class) "Goodbye, sorry to keep you, go and have your lunch!"

 video to follow