Teaching adjectives and the relative grammar has always been a headache for me and certainly not my favourite. Here are some ideas , in order to make Unit 3 more enjoyable and appealing for my students.
Step 1
Introduction
We start by introducing adjectives , using the imaginary characters from the reading text on page 26,27 as well as a google slide presentation of the vocabulary that you can find here (credits to my excellent colleague,Mrs Maria Doulgeri). Then we categorise the adjectives,using spider graphs, so that students can remember their meaning .
Step 2
Acrostic poems
We then continue in a somehow artistic and poetic way . I used to avoid this activity but last year my students enthusiastically participated in it.They created acrostic poems about the imaginary creatures appearing in the book …but not only those! We talked about monsters with disgusting appearance , but we also talked about the worst, most dangerous monsters of all…those that are “ordinary, human like” monsters, deceiving and capable of hurting others in many ways.
Step 3
Use your imagination
Although I didn’t do it last year, I strongly recommend to encourage your students to draw their own imaginary creatures – monsters! It’s a nice way to introduce the relative grammar and practise the degrees of an adjective by comparing and contrasting their monsters.
Step 3
Let’s sing
An inspiring colleague of mine Giannis Karalakos, suggested this song (Everything at once) and was kind enough to share his worksheet as well! You can’t imagine how much they loved singing it and how much they enriched their vocabulary with new adjectives! We also had the chance to talk about similes as well! you can find the worksheet here
Step 4
Self portraits
Enough about monsters though! Time to talk about us and the way people around us see us.Inspired by this site, my students created self-portraits , demonstrating their interests and hobbies , adding three to four adjectives that best describe their personality! Then each student presented her/himself to her/his classmates in class. Children initiated a discussion on the adjectives that their fellow students had chosen. They realized how unique everyone is and even resolved some misunderstandings that had caused conflict among some of them over the years. There were humourous comments and the necessary teasing . We laughed and remembered certain incidents from their school life. Finally we voted for the “most quite student”, the “funniest”,the “kindest”, and so on. During the lesson , it came natural to my students to use the FL and practised comparisons. A last minute idea of mine, was to invite the social worker and the psychologist of our school to attend the lesson and intervene, if necessary! They made their comments in … english,had a great time while children were pleasantly surprpised and enthousiastic about our guests!
