Young learners

In this simple activity, students write a poem using only a limited number of given words. The limited words are important - first of all, they oblige the students to use the target grammar form, and secondly, the constraint of having a limit actually helps their creativity.

1. The game is played in small groups. Each group has a board and dice and each player has a counter, which they place on the START square.

This activity is especially good for young learners, who can sing along and mime the actions in the song.

The school was big, really big

I didn’t want to go

There were lots of kids, tall kids

Kids I didn’t know

I saw some friends from primary school

But only three or four

How many kids were in this school?

A thousand, maybe more!

This song is based on a painting by Francisco de Goya in the Prado Museum in Madrid. The lyric refers to Goya as 'he', the girl in the painting as 'you' and the singer himself as 'I'. It speculates as to why the boy stands holding the parasol for the girl.

This is a fun rap activity for young learners, focusing on the vocabulary of odd jobs which kids might do. It will help them to retain vocabulary, practice pronunciation, and get a bit of movement into the classroom.

This picture story is from Pen Pictures 2. It helps students learn to structure their writing - each Part of the story corresponds to one 'step' in the classic narrative structure situation-problem-solution-conclusion.

This activity is based on one of the lessons in our book Pen Pictures 3 (Oxford University Press). In this version, the picture story has been made into a video to help insipire the students before they do the writing task.

The students read a holiday email which is full of nonsense and contradictions. They have to identify the nonsense and say what is wrong with it.