7.

Song gap-fill

Songs are a great way to engage reluctant listeners, as they can be tailored perfectly to
fit the preferences of the students. Why not use the latest pop song? Lyric repetition is
welcomed here!

The game plan:

 Give each student/pair the song lyrics with some words missing. To make it
easier you can put the missing words in a box at the top of the page.

 Play the song, pausing if necessary. The aim is for the students to fill in the
missing words.

 Once at the end, go through the answers to see which student/pair got the most
correct.

Stand up/sit down

When working on individual sounds, give students a target sound and then read a script
out loud that contains multiple examples of this sound. For example, if you are
practicing the /ae/ sound (like in “cat,” “hat,” etc…, you could read the following script.
“Yesterday, my cat ate a plastic toy and swallowed it fast.” Whenever students hear this
sound for the first time (cat), they should stand. When they hear it again (plastic), sit
down. Read slowly enough for them to have time to stand up or sit down. This activity is
great because it gets them out of their seats and lets them get some excess energy out!

Vowel discrimination

Another good activity to do when you are studying specific vowel sounds is to give
students two different color note cards (e.g. one red card and one blue card). For a
review activity, assign one vowel to the red card (e.g. the /ae/ sound as in “bat”) and
another card to the blue card (e.g. the /ei/ sound as in “bay”). When you read a word,
have students raise the card in the air for the correct vowel/sound they heard. For a
more advanced game, give students several colors of cards to correspond with several
different vowels. Also, you could give the students several cards and read a sentence
where each word represents a different vowel. Students must recreate the pattern of
sounds they heard by lining up their note cards in the correct order.

RELAY THE MESSAGE