60 Kinesthetic Grammar Activities: Teacher Tools, #7

By Alice Savage and Colin Ward

"[The book contains] a wide range of practicable activities that, in the words of the authors, 'connect language in our head to our arms and legs, eyes and ears." — Scott Thornbury, Author of How to Teach Grammar and Grammar Uncovered from the Foreword

Language is more than words. But too often, we teach grammar as a set of boring rules, best practiced by filling out worksheet after worksheet. 60 Kinesthetic Grammar Activities bursts this myth with a collection of activities that get students out of their seats and learning in a dynamic and active classroom. The benefits of kinetic language learning activities are many: teach gesture and non-verbal communication, activate our embodied mind, make grammar memorable, change the dynamics of the classroom, build community, and raise students' moods.

You'll find the activities inside are all low-prep or no-prep, easy to adapt to your classroom, and flexible enough to work with a variety of target language features.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alphabet Publishing
• Release date: Sep 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781948492515

Alice Savage

Alice Savage comes from a family of theatre people. Her grandfather was a professor of theatre arts, and her father is a playwright. The Integrated Skills Through Drama series has given her the opportunity to bring together this family experience in the theatre  with her love of teaching. In addition to the three plays in that series, Her Own Worst Enemy, Only the Best Intentions, and Rising Water, Alice has written many ELT books with Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Wayzgoose Press. Alice has a Master of Arts in Teaching from the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont. She is currently a professor of ESOL at Lone Star College System, in Houston, Texas where she also does some teacher-training. She is grateful for the opportunity to spend time with young people who are exploring their own decisions about career and life.

Book preview

Tips for Success

Between us, we have over 50 years of experience in the language classroom, and we want to share a few things we’ve learned while testing these activities with different groups of learners.

1. Expand vocabulary. When introducing a structure, consider new vocabulary that fits with the grammar. Try some words that are not in the textbook if you are using one. For example, if you are working on past participles, your book might have excited, interested, surprised. Try adding some that are a little less common, for example, impressed, annoyed, injured, beloved, or even spaced out. Students may be reviewing a grammar structure they’ve seen before, but in this way, the activity will feel fresh, and acting out these words will add to the fun.

2. Recognize students’ state of mind. Student energy levels can vary across a week and within a day. Some students just aren’t ready to jump up and start speaking English first thing on a Monday morning. They may need a little passive input before launching into a discussion or game. On the other hand, students who are restless may have trouble following complicated sets of instructions. For this reason, you may want to stage the activity. Start by setting context, introducing vocabulary, or creating suspense with visuals. By introducing language elements first and the activity second, you are also creating cognitive connections to the aim of the lesson.

3. Model activities. Many of the activities require acting or using specific vocal inflections, or movements. Avoid explaining an activity to a whole class and then having to go around to each group and explain it again by carefully staging instructions and modeling what you expect. Perform an activity yourself or partner with a strong volunteer. If students see that you are not afraid to mime riding a motorcycle or playing tennis, they will feel more comfortable doing it themselves. You can also check students’ understanding by eliciting the directions back, or even by having a couple of sets of volunteers do it in front of the class prior to small group work. That way you can clarify grammar if you notice anything salient in the volunteers’ performance.

4. Attend to pronunciation. The English sound system can influence students’ sense of grammar. English speakers reduce grammar words and emphasize content words, so the phrase I have done it can sound like I done it. Not hearing the have in spoken English can lead students to omitting it in writing. In the statement, I’ll get a pen, students may hear get and pen, but the schwa [ə] sound is reduced and linked to get, so learners may not recognize it.

Likewise, students’ pronunciation challenges may affect their accuracy. For example, a student might want to say, I enjoyed it, but it comes out, I enjoy it. They have not linked it to enjoyed as a native speaker would as in enjoy_dit. In fact, reductions and linking in spoken English can make it hard to know where an error comes from, so identifying and highlighting missing sounds can be a great service for your students who want to speak more