Pinboards and Timelines - talking our way through their lives

The other day I promised Jason to take part in his meeting of the boards' challenge for English language teachers all over the world to share their white/black boards but in fact, while browsing through my photograph albums, found this one  of pinboards instead and as it's a real favourite for getting students talking and talking, thought I'd post it for you.  It's called ... the wonderous Pinboards & Timelines game.  And by the way, this is one of those games that really works whether you're dogme with virtually no materials or if you're a let's step out of that-coursebook-for-a-bit-shall-we teacher...on the hunt for a speaking activity to supplement the coursebook's review of the pasts or futures.

Step 1
Grab some coloured paper and write a set of dates or time periods on it (you can decide how many and which you want based on the mean age of your group).

Put these up on the pinboard* in order.

Step 2
Ask your students to write down bullet points or one-word answers to the things they've done or anticipate doing in their lives, using matching coloured card.

Step 3
Get them to pin their own cards up on the board.

Step 4
Once it's  full, encourage them to circulate around the room finding pairs or working in small groups to tell each other about their lives.  You circulate listening, correcting, providing feedback and encouraging them to focus on form and structures.

Step 5

thank you Andrew Wright for teaching me 
to draw stick figures :) in error correction

Once they are re-seated, then ask four or five random students: what was the most interesting thing you heard about one of your colleagues?  

Feedback consciously and emotionally (i.e. wow, that is interesting) and ask further questions or challenge them to say why it was shocking/interesting/just like them.


Write a list of the most common errors and elicit / provide correction.

That's it! Easy as pie...

Best,
Karenne
education

p.s. **An alternative when working with very large groups is instead of using a pinboard you can use blu-tak to temporarily stick the coloured cards to the walls - encourage the students to start at different points of the timeline...and circulate.


Interesting articles related to this posting:  

• Cecilia Coelho, What comes out of unsuspecting students
  
• Michelle Worgan, Babbling Blackboards
• Shelly Terrell, Unplugged student-interaction whiteboards
• Emma Herrod, All aboard the board-train
• Mike Harrison, How do you scaffold?
• Luciana Podschun,  The wanderous whiteboard
• Dave Dodgson, Additon to a board meeting

I love hearing from you! Please add your thoughts if you enjoyed this piece or you feel like there's something you would like to question, add or say about it - don't worry about perfection or agreeing with me: it's always a pleasure to hear from you and know your own opinions.