Activity

Busy Schedule

A simple Information gap activity where students ask partners questions using the future tense to find out what certain characters are doing when.

Archived from Englipedia.
Originally submitted by Vicki Nugent on Nov 14, 2011.

DETAILED EXPLANATION:

  • Introduce or review the grammar point. A short conversation with the JTE about your or his/her schedule this coming week is a good way to lead into this activity.
  • Hand out the Busy Schedule worksheets, dividing up the versions made (2-4) equally among students. Print the different versions on different colored paper to make it easier to notice.
  • Go over the pronounciation and meaning of the times (and, for good measure, the characters).
  • Explain that students will find a partner with a different paper, janken for first question rights, and ask a question that corresponds to a blank spot on their paper using the sentence structure, "What will (WHO) do (WHEN)?" and answer using "(WHO) will (WHAT) (WHEN)." Then they can fill in the sheets according to their partner's answers.
  • Have students find a new partner for each question - no repeats.
  • When finished getting all the missing information on their worksheet, students write out the information they found out in full sentences.

VARIATIONS:

  • Instead of meeting partners randomly, try groups of 4-5 students (especially if using 4 versions). The students janken to decide order, and student #1 will ask a question to the group at large. Students with the answer and the first to say "I know!" proceeds to tell the group. Those missing this information fill it in. Then student #2 asks a question, and so on.

TIPS/CAUTIONS:

  • When erasing 8 items per version, avoid using the example target sentence so you can use that as a model with the JTE for the class, and try to vary the verbs deleted so the students won't be writing the same old sentence with little difference 8 or so times.
  • In the activity, some students will just copy off each others' papers without speaking. I made 4 different versions of the worksheet, making sure out of the 8 missing items some were missing in others also, so students needed to speak to many others, which helps if you can't enforce the "one partner - one question" rule.
  • Make sure they're speaking English! I didn't have a problem with this, especially in the classes I used the group method, since they're more controlled that way.
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Submitted by Englipedia Archive July 9, 2019 Estimated time: 15-30 min

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