Archived from Englipedia.
Originally submitted by Karmen Hvalec on October 6, 2008.
MATERIALS NEEDED:
- SmoochAndPooch worksheet: One for each student.
- Smooch & Pooch stuffed animals: These animals can be anything.
- CD player w/ lively music (optional)
DETAILED EXPLANATION:
Demonstrate a self-introduction with the JTE, each of you pretending to be one of the stuffed animals. Then, do the skit one more time using each of your real names. Also, this is a good time to point out that eye contact and handshakes are an important part of the introductions. To emphasis these two nonverbals, one suggestion is to demonstrate bad examples to your students. For example, when you’re introducing yourself, pretend to be shy and keep looking down. As for the handshake, a firm grasp and straight arm is the goal, not spaghetti arms or just using the fingertips to shake.
Go around the class and have few tries with the students. They should love it! Then, practice the dialog pronunciation and then move on to the activity. These are the rules:
- You can use music but it's not required. If you use music, while it's playing, have the students pass around two stuffed animals. If you don't use music have them start passing the animals around and turn your back so you are facing the chalkboard. When the music stops or you say "STOP!", the two students holding the animals, stand up, janken and the winner starts the dialog. You may need to explain/demonstrate what is NOT acceptable. For example:
- Avoiding the stuffed animals by not catching and/or dodging out of the way.
- Throwing the animals at full strength. If you see a student doing this, their punishment is they are the next student to do the dialog.
- Also, for more vivid reactions of what NOT to do, demonstrate it with JTE. The students get a kick out of this!
Do this activity for the full song and if they are enjoying it, don’t hesitate to play the song for a second time. When you finish this activity, you should have a relaxed and smiling class and it’s time to move on to Smooch & Pooch interview activity.
Hand out the worksheets, and have each student write their name on them. Then, demonstrate the activity with the JTE. The only difference between this activity and the passing-the-animal activity is that once the pair has finished their exchange, they sign each other’s papers in one of the ‘signature bubble boxes’. There are 10 boxes and their goal is to get a difference signature for each of these boxes.
However, before this activity starts, have each student turn their worksheet over and on the backside they have two minutes to create an original signature, but the signature CANNOT be their name written in Japanese or English block letters. Once they collect 10 signatures, they return to their seat.
VARIATIONS:
If you still have some time left after finishing PART 2, you can use just one stuffed toy, play the music and have the student holding it when the music stops, come up to the blackboard and perform dialog with you or JTE.
TEACHING SUGGESTIONS:
- This activity can also be used in a 'special needs' class or as an introductory class for Grade 6 in elementary school
- In my class I would use European pop beat music from a music group called O-zone and their hit song “Numa Numa Hei, maya hi, maya ho, maya ha ha….”. If you are not familiar with it, check it out on line. When using this particular song , one of shy students spoke up and since than never been shy again to speak out, even if he made tons of mistakes.
- I don’t introduce a time limit into this activity because I don’t want it to turn into a race to see who can finish first.
- When you will introduce the dialog for the first time with your JTE, pretend to be SMOOCH & POOCH, which is the first step to their meltdown and second time do it with your real names.
TIPS/CAUTIONS:
- I would use this lesson plan at the beginning of the school year, when students are still quite shy. It`s a good way to shake them up and forget all about their shyness.
- It is good to have different colored stuffed toys or soft balls because there have been situations when girls would not participate and if you have this problem, you can assign a certain color for the girls and boys respectively.
- This game does not work well with 3rd year students. They are too grown up for it but you can still use it at the beginning of the school year with 2nd year students to relax them and have them speak out in front of their new classmates.
I use this very often! Ever since the Englipedia days. Always goes well. Kids love it.