Activity

Does your mother know...?

A group "write and race" to practice word order for indirect questions

One of my co-workers was very concerned about our 3rd Grade students practicing the word order for this grammar point,. So I put this PPT together for them.

I start with my usual greeting and ask my students how they are. They've gotten into the habit of asking me the question in return, so once they do that and I answer and then ask them "Do you know why I am..."

Some students seem to figure out what I'm asking them after repeating the question a few times, others may need it re-phrased to "Why am I...?" before they can offer and answer.

Once the students have answered why they think I'm feeling whatever way, I write the question on the board. I also write another example such as "Do you know what time this class ends?" or "Do you know what country I'm from?"

At this point I go through the meaning of the question piece by piece until the students have figured out what the structure correlates to in Japanese, and have given me a translation for both questions on the board.

Once they have done this, I start to break down the word order on the board (at this point the JTE may offer some help with explaining certain word classes in Japanese if you need help with it)

Once I feel like the students are starting to grasp it, I move onto the PPT. (I only do this once I feel they're getting a handle on it because the whole PPT is in English, and the grammar explanation may be a little difficult to understand if they don't already have some idea of what to listen out for or look for.

I start once again with a break down of the structure, stressing the importance of word order and of the need to use "know"

Once they're comfortable with that I move onto the sample sentences, and have them discuss in pairs. You can decide how long you give them to discuss it based on the level of your class, but I usually go between 45 seconds and 1min 30 depending on the class level.

When the time is up, I call on students to give me the answer, or elicit it from the class as a group if they are a livelier bunch. Once they have correctly given me the answer, ask them to translate it into Japanese and usually have some fun by either having the students ask me or the JTE the questions. Or I ask them.

Once they have that done, I put them into groups and move onto the game. Students make groups of 3 or 4 and each group has a whiteboard, a marker and an eraser. From here it works like any standard write and race. Students write the answer on the whiteboard, race to me, and read the answer. I usually start the points at 5 and have them decrease by one for the order in which the groups come to me. (If you have a large class with more than five groups, you can have the 1 point go out to any remaining groups.)

If groups don't come at all or take too long, they get 0.

This usually takes a full class between explanations, talking time and a few laughs during the game. But if you have a quieter group that flies through this, it'll be over quicker.

Files:
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  • I know where the local shelter is.pptx (2.12 MB)
  • 19
    Submitted by GaeilgeAmee September 16, 2022 Estimated time: 40 - 50 mins

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