valentine

My latest New York Times post for English Language Learners is on Valentine’s Day and idioms. It includes a student interactive and teaching ideas.

And here’s a “video bingo” activity that didn’t get included because of space limitations, but I thought readers would find it useful so I’m sharing it here. It’s in four “steps”:

1. Tell students they are going to play a game. First, though, they are going to watch a video for a few minutes. The teacher should then show this video to the class.

2. Then, tell students to draw a graph on a piece of paper that is four boxes by four boxes. In other words, it will be an enlarged “tic/tac/toe” sheet with sixteen boxes instead of the usual nine. List these words on the board for students to write in any box of their choice: love, you, weak, home, I, very, want, only, smart, sorry, need, never, one, give, more, day, always, fly, wait, life, hello (Note that there are twenty-one words on the list — students just need to pick sixteen. The teacher should pre-teach any of the vocabulary that students might not know.

3. Tell students that the class is going to now just listen to the video, and that they are going to play a game of bingo. Every time they hear one of the words on their sheet, they should put an “X” in that box. The first five people to have four X’s in a row will be the “winners” (the teacher might want to offer a fun prize, like being able to go to lunch two minutes early or getting a healthful snack).

4. The teacher should play the sound of the video without showing it on the screen, and make their own notation of when words on the list are spoken (to safeguard against “inadvertent” cheating).

This kind of video bingo can be used with any kind of video!

You can see all my previous New York Times posts here.

I’m adding these activities to The Best Sites To Learn About Valentine’s Day.