Poem

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.

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!

Here's a song/rhyme to focus on the pronunciation of the past tense ending -ed. There are three audio tracks to download: the poem read aloud; the poem read aloud with backchained drill repetitions for students to pause and repeat, and finally, the poem as a song lyric accompanied to music.

Students look at a picture and try to describe it from memory. They listen to a poem and relate it to the picture. Then they read the poem and decide on the points of view in each verse.