Extra (ordinary) Activities for Let’s Talk Courses

Starter 1
Unit 1: School items, this and these, review numbers.

-Activity idea 1: In pairs, students open their bag and show their partners what’s in their bag
while explaining. Ex. “These are pens. Four pens.” The teacher walks round class correcting
and asking questions. Ex. “Are these crayons?” “No, they aren’t”.

-Activity idea 2: Print out small signs with the name of an object and a number (Three
pencils). Put students in pair or small groups (this activity should not involve the entire class
at the same time, have the other half sit and wait their turn while watching or it will get very
chaotic!). Give each team a number of these cards as well as some blue tack or small pieces
of tape (make sure it won’t damage the walls!). Each team must put together the desired
number of items written on each card. First time to complete all of their cards, wins. Both
teams must then describe what they have to the rest of the class. Ex. “These are three
pencils.”

Unit 2: Toys, yours / mine, favorite toys.

-Activity idea 1: Show and tell. This activity requires some preparation. Ask your class to
bring some of their favorite toys a couple of lessons in advance. Make sure to ask that they
don’t bring anything too expensive or fragile! Students will take turns showing their favorite
toys to the class. Ex. “My favorite toy is a robot!”

This is also a great activity to review other vocabulary sets by asking students about colors
and numbers depending on their toy.

After the class is done presenting, carefully put all of the toys in a big box or bag. Then, ask
one student at a time to come to the front, take a toy from the bag, and ask whose toy is it.
The owner should reply “It’s mine!” at which point the student will approach their table and
ask “Is this your toy?” and the other student will reply “Yes, it is.”

-Activity idea 2: Similar to the activity above. Students spend a handful of minutes drawing
their favorite toy or the toy they wish they had before carefully sticking their drawing on the
board. After all the drawings are up, the Teacher spends a couple of minutes asking questions
about the drawings. The teacher will then collect the drawings, shuffle them, and hand each
student a new drawing. Students will then go around class asking “Is this yours?” until they
find the right owner.
Unit 3: Body parts, this is/these are

-Activity idea 1: Requires some preparation. The teacher will print out small strips of paper
with the target vocabulary (feel free to add more a couple extra words as long as you present
them to the students before the activity), as well as small pieces of double sided tape.
Working in pairs or small groups of three, the children will decide who in their tem will be a
mannequin. Then, the teams will compete to stick the vocabulary words onto their friend’s
body. After this part of the task is complete, the mannequin will present for the rest. Ex.
“This is my nose.”

-Activity idea 2: This activity will also require preparation. Enough pictures of different
characters so that each student can have their own. Then, cut the pictures into a few pieces
(works better if you cut to separate body parts). Place all the cut out pieces to all of the
characters on a table at the front of the classroom and give each student an extra sheet of
paper and some glue sticks. Students will have to approach the cut out table, chose a piece
and say “This is my arm” or “These are my legs” depending on their piece.

The more well known the characters are, the better, but you can always print a second,
smaller picture of the same character for the students to compare to.

Unit 4: to be / jobs

-Activity idea 1: Bomb! Draw a grid on the board. Each column will represent a job while
each row represents family members (good review!). You will need to prepare a grid with
answers previous to the game and I will be happy to teach you how to run this as well, but the
basic idea is that, to chose a square, students will need to speak full sentences such as “My
grandma is a teacher” or “ My dad is a pilot”. Students usually get really competitive and
excited about this game, so having a small prize usually works great.

-Activity idea 2: This activity is simple. The idea is to either call a single student to the front
who den needs to act out a sentence or job, or to write a vocabulary word on the board behind
the student while the rest of the class mimics the actions. A good way to spice up this activity
is to do it as pair works (works better for smaller classes) in which students take turn
guessing until their time runs out. A timer will help you keep this activity moving quickly.

Unit 5: Where’s the ball

-Activity idea 1: Hide and seek. Yes, I know it is difficult to arrange this activity in small
classrooms. That is why hopefully you can plan this in advance and make it a fun activity for
the class. If you are in center two and our class is small enough, you could even go to the
round floor and play the traditional game. If not, however, fear not! For the more compact
activity, give your students a couple of minutes to make a small drawing of themselves or a
small doodle that represents them (if you’re feeling crafty this could even be a more elaborate
part of the activity). Then, ask a few of the students to close their eyes (no peeking!) while
the rest of the class hides their doodles around the classroom. From under the table to in the
teacher’s basket, all is fair game. The seeker student will then look for a couple of minutes
and call out where they find their friends doodle. At the end of the activity, whoever didn’t
get found, must reveal where they were hiding. Might be a good idea to have some candy as
incentive!

-Activity idea 2: This one requires a little artistic touch. Draw a location on the board (a park
works great!). Then draw the same location a piece of paper or mini board you can keep the
other students from seeing. Separate the class into two or three teams. This activity is a
sentence relay. The first runners for each team will look at the picture on the mini board or
paper, and describe where things are (you will draw items in different places each round), and
then the second runners will repeat the sentence to their teammate at the board for them to
draw onto the big picture on the board. Students must make sure to whisper the sentences to
each other. First runners can only speak to Second runners, and second runners can only
speak to the students at the board. This activity is fun and usually ends with the groups being
very competitive.

Unit 6: Billy’s teddy

-Activity idea 1: Show and tell. This activity requires preparation. For this activity to work,
you must give your students a heads up. It is simple: each student must bring one or two
items from home that belongs to one of their family members. The students will then describe
the item (“It’s a purple umbrella”) and say who it belong to (“This is mom’s purple
umbrella!). Once each student has described their item, they will put them in a bag/box
provided by the teacher. After everyone is finished, students will pick a random item fro the
box and ask “Is this yours?” until someone replies “This is X’s X!”

-Activity idea 2: prepare some cardboard boxes to represent each character in the book (you
can place the corresponding flashcard in front of the box to help the students identify each
box). Bring an assortment of different items to class from home (any will will do, but it’s
better if these are items that cover vocabulary from previous units). Make a quick list on
whom which item belongs to but don’t show your students. Instead, have them guess by
choosing an item, saying who it belongs to, and placing it it the corresponding box. At the
end of the activity, check to see how many right guesses they had.

Unit 7: Are these his trousers?

-Activity idea 1: If you didn’t use activity 2 from the previous unit, now is the perfect time to
do so, but with clothing. That said, bringing a lot of clothing items to class is not ideal, which
is why I recommend that you bring cut outs from magazines or print a few pictures online
instead.
Activity idea 2: This is a simple activity that requires no preparation. Once the students have
taken off their shoes and enters the classroom, wait for everyone to be quiet before bringing
the shoe rack into the room. Put all the shoes into a pile and mix them around. Have the
students go around matching the shoes to the right person. You could have a couple o
students do this at the same time, but I don’t recommend the whole class does it at the same
time because it will get very messy. This is a good opportunity to have them practice colors
as well.

Unit 8: Where’s Grandma?

-Activity idea 1: This activity requires a bit of an artistic touch (or a bit of printing in the
absence of). Draw a big house on the board and have the students help you separate it into
rooms. You can also ask them to tell you what’s in ach room (perfect time to give them a
little extra vocabulary for this as well). Once the house is complete, take some small colored
magnets to represent family members (or small printouts work well too). Ask the students to
close their ayes and, once they do, move the different magnets (family members) to different
rooms. Once the students have opened their eyes, ask where the family members are. Once
the students have mastered this activity, you can try a few variations. For example, you can
have one student tell their friends where each family member is. If your are confident your
class has the vocabulary, you could even try asking them what they are doing in the room.

-Activity idea 2: prepare some print outs of a simple, empty house (I prefer to teach tithe
students how to make a quick origami house, but the print out will work fine too). Have the
students draw in and label some rooms. Make sure you go around the class asking them
questions about their houses like “how many rooms are in your house?” Once they are
finished, ask them to draw in some stick figures to represent family members. You can go
around asking individual questions about the whereabouts of family members or you can
have a few of your students present their houses to the class while explaining where everyone
is.

Unit 9: Lunchtime!

Activity idea 1: Prepare some small cardboard boxes. These will be your lunch boxes. 1-3
will do. Prepare a few print outs of food items as taught in the book. Multiples of the same
food is encouraged... Have 1-3 students come to the front of the class and blindfold them.
While blindfolded, the students will pic a few of the food items to put in their respective
lunchbox. They will then take off their blindfold and describe what they have and don’t have.

An alternate activity could have would be to have students instruct their friend on the
contents of their lunch box.

Activity idea 2: Go fish. This game works the same as the standard card game but will require
preparation. Print out sets of 4 cards of the same food. Shuffle and and give each student a
few cards. The goal of the game is to collect all the four cards of the same item. Students
must take turns choosing someone in their group to ask them if they have food item “Have
you got a biscuit?” If the answer is yes, then the second student must give all their biscuit
cards to the one who asked. If they say no, the student who asked the question draws an extra
card from the pile. This game is great because they can practice both positive, negatives, and
questions. I recommend d that this game is played in groups of 3-6 students. If you have a
larger class, you can print out more copies of the deck and have to games simultaneously
while you monitor.

Unit 10: A new friend!

Activity idea 1: Print out some color pictures of people. They can be small I find the portraits
from the “Guess Who” games work really well. Put the students in pairs and give one of the
students in each pair one of these pictures. They must then describe the person for their friend
to draw. After the finish the first portrait, the students switch places. Once both students have
ha a turn to draw and describe, they may share the original picture with their friend so they
can compare results. This is a good activity to practice adjectives like “big” an “small” as
well as body parts (face) vocabulary.

Activity idea 2: Remember how I mentioned the “Guess Who?” games? Well, this game can
also be adapted for this lesson. Have a reference sheet with all the pictures posted on the
board for students to see (or you could print copies for each pair, up to you. Then give each
student a card that corresponds to one of the individuals. Students must then ask and respond
questions about their cards and try to guess which card the other student has.

Activity idea 3: for the shapes section of this unit. I heavily recommend taking a look at
simple origami you can teach your class. Its fun watching them describes the shapes and
colors, and students love arts and crafts.

Unit 11: I like monkeys!

Activity idea 1: Hot seat. Call one of the students to the front of the class and have them stand
with their back against the board. Write a sentence on the board using “I like” and “I don’t
like”. The rest of the class will have to act out the sentence until the student at the front
guesses it. You can make this game more challenging by having a timer and seeing how
many right guesses the student can have before the time runs out.

Activity idea 2: If your students have the vocabulary for it or if you are spending extra time
with them to learn more animals, you can try this activity. First you will have to show the
students how to play this game. Start by describing a simple animal from their book, or
example “It’s big, it’s gray, it’s got four legs, and it’s got big ears!” Your students should be
able to easily guess the animal you are describing. After they understand the game, have them
take turns describing their own choice of animal (or you can give them a flashcard instead).
Unit 12: Dinnertime!

Activity idea 1: This is a simple activity. Bring two empty small cardboard boxes to class,
one for “I like” and one for “I don’t like”. You can use the flashcards from the book or any
other pictures of vocabulary you might want to include for this lesson. Place the boxes t the
front of the class and spread the cards on a table nearby. Have a student come to the front
and pick a few items. The must say whether or not they like the item while placing the
flashcard in the correct box. You can also do this activity by splitting the board into the two
corresponding sides and asking student to place the flashcards with magnets.

Activity idea 2: The interview. Prepare some printouts of an empty table or grid. Students
must go around the classroom asking their friends whether or not they like a particular food
item and making note of it on the handout. I recommend that you have only a handful of
students walking around the class at a time to avoid chaos. Once everyone has collected their
friend’s information, you can ask the class questions about individual students like “Does
Sofia like fish?”

Unit 13: Tidy up!

Activity idea 1: Spot the difference. I particularly like this activity because it will come in
handy when helping the students prepare for future Cambridge examinations. That said, I
think it’s important to play a more interactive version of the activity. This will definitely
require a little bit of an artistic touch. Draw a bedroom on the board. Make sure to ask the
student’s bout the different items as you draw. Once you are done, have everyone close their
eyes and add or change a few things about the drawing. The class must now guess what the
differences are.

A variation of this activity kids find particularly fun as well is to ask them to draw changes on
the board instead. For example, ask a student to come forward, give them a marker, and tell
them that there are two cats under the bed. The funnier the request (like an elephant in the
cupboard) the more fun the students will have.

Activity idea 2: Speed round. This is a very simple game that requires little preparation.
Designate a circle on the board or a table to be the “button” (any similar thing will o, I use the
cap from a bottle, for example). Two students will face each other and race to answer
questions to earn points for their team. Faster student to press the button answers. For this
particular topic, you can say a singular or plural noun and have the students race to say “there
is” or “there are” and speak the full sentence

Unit 14: Action Boy can run!

Activity idea 1: This is always a fun lesson! The best activity you can do is charades. Prepare
the various flashcards and have a student come to the front of the class. You can either have
the single student guess the card and the rest of the class act it out, or you can have the single
student act it out while the rest of the class tries to guess. It very much depends on the level
of energy and shyness in your class.

Activity idea 2: Bomb. Once again, I play an edited version of the game where student have
to make the correct sentences in order to choose a spot on the board. Please refer to my
explanation of this activity in previous units.

Unit 15: Let’s play ball!

Activity idea 1: This is a very strange unit that I don’t think fits very well with the rest of the
book. The only activity I’ve found that works well with this unit is a tweaked version of
Simon Says. Choose a student from the class, they will tell the rest of the students what to do
(this also works as great review for unit fourteen). The rest of the students must listen and
follow instructions *only* if the student leading says “Let’s!” at the start of the sentence.
Those who follow the instructions even when “let’s” isn’t said, lose and are out of the game.
It is a good listening exercise, but gets tiring quickly. Don’t spend too much time on it and
keep an eye on you class’ energy levels.

Activity idea 2: This is more of an over all review and vocabulary practice. In pairs, have the
students write ten different things they can do at the beach. They get one point for every
correct activity and 2 points if no one else in the class wrote the same activity. At the end of
the game, check to see who has the most points and make a list of all activities on the board
for further review.