Activity

My Family's Rules

Students practice the modal verbs "must" or "have to" by writing about the rules of their household.

I start out by writing the words "My family's rules" on the blackboard and asking if students understand what it means. Next I write a few rules we had in my house when I was growing up. For example:

  • We have to clean our rooms on Saturday.
  • We have to wash the dishes after dinner.
  • We have to finish dinner before we can eat sweets. (this usage of "before" might be new or confusing to them, so you might want to use something else)

The more examples you can think of, the more ideas the students will have to work with. But at the same time, you want to give them some room to think of their own examples as well!

After that, I pass out the print and ask the students to write about the rules in their household. I use page 1 if we're practicing "have to" or page 2 if they're practicing "must." You can add in the negative ("don't have to" or "must not") if you want to practice it, but it might not fit in well with spelling out rules. Make sure to mention that they should be written using "we" and "our." Some students insist that they don't really have any rules in their house (you probably know who they are already) but I try and point out that they probably follow some standard rules that just about any Japanese household would have like "We have to take our shoes off."

If there's extra time, you can ask them to share their rules with each other and say "Me too!" if their household has the same rule.

Files:
Small files
  • Family Rules.docx (60.8 KB)
  • 3
    Submitted by Jake W September 16, 2018 Estimated time: 30 minutes

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