“Go Fishing” is an activity I came across on EFT Classroom 2.0 (posted by Victor Mejia). This activity is very similar to the board game “Let’s go fishing” where players have toy fishing poles and where they simultaneously try to catch fish to get the most fish in order to win. In this class activity, instead of fish and fishing poles, there are words written on fish shape pieces, a listening text (i.e. lyrics of a song) from which some words are blanked out and music of the lyrics in which the vocabulary or language is to be presented.
Upon reading the blog post, with some modifications and additions, I prepared a lesson on the ‘passive voice’. The song I chose to use for ‘Passive Voice’ was “I can’t be tamed” by Miley Cyrus. (This activity can be adapted with any other song to present other vocabulary or grammar items).
Procedure of the activity Stage 1: Lead-in
Display one part of a picture of a singer, in this case, Miley Cyrus. Start by displaying the top of her head (Picture 1) and ask the students what they think it is. Then, show the eyes of the singer (Picture 2) and ask who they think it is (the main purpose here is to generate some interest in the topic/lesson).
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[Picture 1] [Picture 2] [Picture 3]
[Picture 4] [Picture 5]
By showing some more cues, go on eliciting until they get the whole picture of the singer (Picture 5.) This stage of the lesson would cater for mainly the visual- spatial, mathematical (they would most probably try to build the shapes and make predictions accordingly) and intrapersonal (they would probably quietly evaluate their predictions), interpersonal (they would share their predictions/ reasons with others) ones.
Once they find out who it is, then ask them whether they know any of her songs to see whether they know the song. Young learners would know Miley Cyrus from the TV series Hannah Montana while not many teenagers would know about her. Therefore, if you teach young learners, it wouldn’t be a good idea to do this song with them as they would already know the song by heart; thus, would not create any need to do the activity.
Stage 2: Pre-listening
(a) Discussion to generate some background knowledge
Play the first part of the video (to be found on youtube) and stop at “…lady and gentlemen, in captivity….”, and tell students in groups to discuss which animals and birds are kept in captivity; the reasons why they are kept in captivity; and what they think about keeping animals in captivity. Then, go on by eliciting their ideas. Once some ideas have been collected, continue playing the video to have them see what animal it is. Stop the video once Miley Cyrus appears in a bird costume (Picture 6).
[Picture 6]
Then give them the title of the song- ‘I Can’t be tamed’, and ask them to predict what meaning it could have. Having done that, elicit their ideas and ask students to come up and write their ideas on the board.
Main Intelligences fed: visual-spatial, linguistic, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal and naturalist intelligences.
(b) Predicting the verbs to set a purpose for listening
Distribute the lyrics from which some active and passive words are blanked out, and tell them to individually think of possible words that would fit into the blanks. Without any prior idea, it is very difficult to understand a listening text; therefore, asking students to predict what the words might be, using the context, can help them listen more carefully as they are to compare their predictions, which subsequently gives them a sense of a purpose for listening. Main Intelligences fed: intrapersonal, musical, naturalist, mathematical and linguistic intelligences.
Stage 3: Listening
(a) Put students in groups of three or four Then, give each group the pieces of
paper on which the ‘active and passive verbs’ are written. Play the video, and the students ‘go fishing’ for the words they hear. The student who has the most verbs is the winner!
(b) Ask students to compare their predictions they made in stage 2.
(c) Have a whole class discussion on what is meant by “I can’t be tamed” in the
72 Main Intelligences fed: bodily-kinesthetic, naturalist, musical, mathematical, 73 intrapersonal intelligences.
Stage 4: Discovering the Grammar
(a) Once the winners are applauded, ask students to work in groups to put the
verbs in two different categories (as students have verbs like ‘be tamed’, ‘be jagged’, ‘understand’ they will easily put the verbs into two categories- active & passive verbs- even though they don’t know the structure).
(b) Ask the students some grammar related questions. For example, ask them
to (1) find the doer of each verb; (2) how the verb is formed, (3) if the doer of the action is stated, and so on.
(c) Once the students have discovered the use and meaning of the language,
go on with some controlled and freer practice from the available materials (i.e. from course book materials).
Main Intelligences fed: In the first part of this stage, mathematical and interpersonal ones would probably be more active here; thus, would help out the others in the group. During the practice stage, almost all intelligences would be involved as they all will refer to the previous stages.
With this particular activity, the intelligence left out is the existential one. However, if we happen to have a student whose existential intelligence is strong, we could ask them some ‘big’ questions, such as “Do you think keeping animals in captivity would give bad karma?” They could then, in groups, discuss and share their ideas. By this, the existential ones will have the chance to share what he or she knows or believes in; thus, allowing them also to be valued and ‘fed’.
Having shared the above activity in my workshop, I asked participants to share their own ideas. Below you can see the ideas they came up with:
• Before giving the lyrics, show the video in silence. Then ask students to write up a story about it.
• Ask students to stand up when they hear a passive structure.
• As a speaking activity, students can take on the role of a member of the audience and share their opinions.
• Have students write a different ending.
• Ask students to tick things they see in the video from a brainstormed list. • Have students watch a video without the music and they try to write the
lyrics.
• Silent movies- understanding and deriving meaning (for productive skills lessons)