Settling activities for young learners

Greetings to everyone! Do you remember this from our previous article “Stirring activities for Young Learners”? If you have ever taught young learners, you definitely know how loud and uncontrolled the classroom can get. Kids have a lot of energy and knowing how to channel this energy and make kids stop misbehaving is a real challenge. Many teachers have already drawn a conclusion that knowing when to ‘stir’ and when to ‘settle’ the little people in class will help achieve balanced lessons, avoid boredom and make learning more productive as well as fun. In the article “Stirring activities for Young Learners” we discussed a variety of stirring activities, which are about movement, action games, group and pair work and of course a lot of fun. They energise kids and keep them motivated. We now know that we need to have a healthy mix of stirring and settling activities during the lesson. For example, when your students are bored or are falling asleep, it is a great idea to start a stirring activity, but when they are misbehaving and are too active, you need to stop the stirring activity and carry on with a settling one.  Today we are going to talk about Settling Activities. Here is a list of such activities. Remember that settling activities need to be used when children are too loud, too energetic, when you cannot control them anymore, when they are running around, laughing, breaking the discipline and other unpleasant things. Match to pictures This activity can be done after some new vocabulary has been taught with the help of flashcards. In pairs students match the words to pictures (the same pictures as on flashcards, but smaller size) in pairs. You can ask students to go and look at how the other pairs have matched the pictures - this might encourage them to change their answers or just confirm that they are right. Following this you can check the answers with the help of big flashcards - show the card and elicit the word. Fill in the gaps This is a controlled practice activity which can be done after some new vocabulary or grammar has been presented. You can also do a fill in the gaps activity as part of revision or as a mini test if students were misbehaving. Students fill in the gaps on their own and then they check in pairs. Feedback can be different - either you collect the papers and check on your own, or give out the answer key and students check by themselves, or even ask them to exchange papers and check their partner’s answers. Draw on your head Students get a piece of paper and a marker. They put the paper on their head. The teacher says a word or a phrase (for example: Paris or have dinner), students draw on their heads. As feedback, you can ask students to vote for the picture that best depicts the word or phrase. Alias or Taboo Students get cards with words. They have 30 seconds to explain as many words as they can to their partner using synonyms, antonyms,  examples, etc. This game can have many rounds and you can keep changing partners. It’s great to play this game while revising vocabulary.  Tic-Tac-Toe Students play tic-tac-toe using whiteboard markers. You can either laminate the worksheet or put it in a plastic file, so it can be reused. Students decide who is ‘the cross’ and who is ‘the naught’. Students see the pictures and need to say the word or phrases to win the square. For example, if you were to teach this set of expressions: Dye your hair Pierce your tongue Recycle batteries Shave your head Tattoo your wrist Drop litter Borrow money Earn money Lend money You could have found Google images, saved them and put them together to make a tic-tac-toe activity like I did:

• Draw and Guess

This activity can also be done after some new vocabulary has been taught with the help of flashcards. Students draw the word or phrases one by one to each other, their partners need to guess the phrase or word.

• Memory Chaining

Depending on the level of your students, you can adapt this activity. For stronger students you may decide to use longer sentences.  For example, the teacher starts with the sentence: “People often lose their temper.” The first student has to continue, but repeats the beginning: “People often lose their temper and dye their hair.” Then, the next student carries on: “People often lose their temper and dye their hair and pierce their tongues.” And so on till it becomes too difficult. Following this, you can start over. Students can also do this activity in pairs or mini groups.

• Read and draw

Give children a text to read, for example, a description of a place or a short story and ask them to draw what they have read about. They can then compare with their partner.

Hope you will find our ideas useful and young learners will get the most of your classes. Stay safe and inspire to teach  

From Grade Education Centre