martes, 22 de enero de 2013

Learning vocabulary: Animals' descriptions

Knuthenborg Safaripark, Denmark
In order to improve our vocabulary, one of the best ways is to use new words or expressions in context. There are many activities to do so, I am going to present you one I like doing in my classes.

 When talking about animals, we can teach all the vocabulary related to where they live (geographical features, countries, continents...), what they eat (smaller animals, plants, insects...), the parts of their bodies (beak, tail, wings, legs, arms, feathers, fur, colours...), what they can or can not do (swim, jump, crawl, fly...), their colours and special features (endangered species, use for humans, superlatives ...) and then make our students use it in context.

 I really like to play guessing games with short descriptions of animals; that is, first you give them a model to write a short description of an animal. It is important to let them choose the animals. Then you give them some minutes to choose an animal and write down a short description following the model, then students read out loud and the rest guess the animals.
 
Model composition for oral expression game:

It is a/an (amphibian, mammal, bird, reptile, fish).
It is (colours) and it has got (parts of the body).
It lives in (place).
It can/ can not (verbs).
 
Do you know what is the name of the animal in the photo? Can you make a short description of it? Please try and send your description in a comment!!


4 comentarios:

  1. Ankole-watusi

    It's a mammal.
    It's brown and white and it's has very long horns.
    It lives in the savannas of Africa
    It can use their horns for defense, they can measure 2,4 meters.


    Anibal Brito Barrera 2ºB

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  2. Ankole-Watusi (bovine race)
    It is a mammal. It is brown, white and brown and white and it has got big horns. It lives in savannas in Africa. It can two metres in the horns and 410-730 kilograms.

    David Fernández Suárez 2ºB

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  3. Hello Ana, I´m Juan Carlos Agar for 2B.

    Ankole-Watusi.

    It´s mammal.
    It´s brown and white and it has got four legs and two long horns.
    It´s lives in plain.
    It can run but it can not run very fast.

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  4. Excellent!!! The three of you!!! There are some little, tiny mistakes that we will see in class ;9

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