Activities:
- Invite the students to share their feelings about winning a sports competition. Encourage them to use vocabulary from the unit. They should identify the sport, provide some details about the situation, and then share the emotions that they felt. Help the students use “rich” vocabulary. Instead of “I felt good,” you could teach a student to say, “I felt amazing/special/important,” etc. Write new vocabulary words on the board and check for understanding.
Next, explain the writing task. You may do the activity as a full class or in smaller student groups. Given the prompt below, each student needs to provide a sentence that helps the group (or the class) build a relatively coherent paragraph. Feel free to alter the prompt to best fit the energy of your class, but it should be something that is sports related, obviously.
If students are working in small groups, then consider identifying different tasks that each member of the group is responsible for completing. Sample tasks could include:
- Vocabulary Expert – this student must have a list of vocabulary words and help the students use varied and rich language in their work.
- Scribe – this student should have legible handwriting as it is his/her job to write down the sentences that everyone says.
- Time Keeper – this student is responsible for keeping the group on schedule and working according to the time set by the teacher.
- Manager – this student needs to make sure that the other students are doing their jobs. It is important that s/he doesn’t do the work for others. The role is simply to remind the group members of their responsibilities.
PROMPT:
Imagine you have just won the gold medal for cycling in the 21st Maccabiah. Write a blog entry describing the event and how you feel.
*If this activity is done in small groups, be sure to leave time for students to share their blogs with the rest of the class.