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School subjects – speaking activities

  Speaking activities are the most important component of English courses using communicative   approach. However, it is very difficult to find quality speaking activities that would work. That is    why I would like to publish a speaking activity here once a week. 

 To be able to complete the task successfully, students will need the following sets of  language: the verb HAVE (or have got) and the names of the school subjects.

 If you have not taught the school subjects yet, it is necessary to do so before you start the  speaking activities. For the following tasks, your students need to know the following school  subjects:

                                   

   The other set of language your students need to know is the usage of the verb HAVE for              questions like “What subject has she got on Monday?” or sentences like “She has chemistry on     Monday at 11 o’clock.” You can find materials for teaching the verb HAVE GOT here. Once your     students know the vocabulary and grammar you can move to the next part. Please, do not skip       this step. Otherwise, your students might be either very quiet or use their native language to           accomplish  the tasks.
                          The first activity is called Information gap. 
                        In this task students trade missing    pieces of information to complete their sheet.

Information gap – in class

       Put the students in pairs.

       Hould up an example of the two sheets and explain that you’ll give each pair an A              sheet    and a B sheet.

      Each sheet has a school timetable, but each sheet has only part of the timetable. Pairs       need to work together to find out their missing information so that they end up with two       complete and identical sheets.

     Distribute the papers. Tell them not to look at each other’s papers. Let the students do        the  task.
     Once they finish they can show each other the sheets and compare them.

     Here are the two sheets:

                      

Pair speaking       activity School subjects sheets

           Battle: Find it first – in class         In this task, students work in groups of three and they take turns   asking yes/no    questions to identify the picture            that one student has in mind.

         Print out one copy of the sheet (all 9 timetables) for each student.

        Hold up one of the sheets and show everyone that the sheet contains nine timetables        that   are similar yet different. Students need to listen, think and then ask questions so         that      they can guess which picture the person is thinking about.

     Put the students in groups of three.

     Student A will pick a timetable and then students B and C will take turns asking yes/no       questions to try to identify A’s timetable. B begins with a yes/no question. If A answers       yes then B continues. If A answers no, then c asks a question. The goal is the to be           the person who gets a yes answer to the a question such as, “Is it Jane’s timetable?”

     After B or C has guessed A’s timetable, then A and C try to guess B’s timetable. Finally,      A  and B try to guess C’s timetable.

    The winner is the student who guesses most timetables.

     Here is the sheet each students should get:

                      

       I hope that you find the School subjects – speaking activities useful and that you will          use them in your classes. You can download the worksheets in pdf here. All the                 pictures  are in much better quality here: