I made this simple excel sheet for activities for New Horizon 5th & 6th grades to replace the textbook's let's try activities.
You will need to hook this up to the projector or TV if you have one.
You could do without the excel sheet, too, if you'd like!
Rules
The basic rules are:
Students are grouped with their rows.
Each student has to write down a vocab word on their whiteboard/tablet/notebook or just a blank sheet of paper if you don't have any of these.
However, groups CANNOT talk to each other. No team talk/table talk. They choose a vocab and write it down without knowing what the other memebrs wrote.
After 1 minute (or however long you think your students need to finish writing), ask each group the key question & if every member wrote a different word, they get 5 points.
HOWEVER, if there are students in the same group who wrote the same word, it's -1 point for each same word.
↓
EXAMPLES:
house (〇), zoo (〇), supermarket (〇), station (〇), park (〇) → 5 points.
house (✖), house (✖), hospital (〇), zoo (〇), supermarket (〇) → This would only get the group 3 points.
house (✖), house (✖), house (✖), hospital (〇), zoo (〇) → This would only get the group 2 points.
5th Grade
For 5th grade (NH5, pg 53 Let's Try), they would write a Town word like "house" "hospital" etc. for an original town.
Q (You ask a group):
What do you have in your town?
A (students answer one by one):
We have a/an __________.
6th Grade
For 6th grade (NH6 pg. 50 Let's Try), they would write a fruit/vegetable/ingredient word for an original sandwich.
Q (You ask a group):
Tell me about your sandwich.
A (students answer one by one):
i.e. B for bacon. L for lettuce. etc.
6th grade variations
You could also give bonus points if you and the HRT would personally eat the sandwich they made.
My HRT and I voted no or yes (arms in an X or O after the count of three). A yes from each of us was another +2, only one of us was +1.
My kids had a blast doing this.
It was really funny watching the 6th graders make some interesting sandwiches.
My 5th graders who don't care much for English also got pretty heated up for this activity which was a nice change, haha.
Have fun!
I actually strongly dislike the Let's Try sections of these new books as do my students, so this is a nice alternative that I will try, thanks!