Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Adjectives

What would you do if you lost something and needed help in finding it?

Well, the first thing you would probably be required to do is describe that lost something. This can be a mighty challenging task if you aren't familiar with descriptive words and don't know where to begin. That's where the Smith’s School of English Adjectives lessons come in handy. Whether it be a lost purse or dropped cell phone, these lessons will help you describe your belongings should you ever misplace them. Adjectives are equally beneficial for describing foods and objects that your new friend may never have seen nor tried before.

5 comments:

SJ said...

ET - There were two students in this lesson with two different one points so I focused on one at a time. The first one was "I've gone blank," and the student made a joke example of having forgotten her one point. The second student had a more difficult time using his one point so we reviewed, "You don't even lift a finger."

Item - We spent a large chunk of the lesson working on Adjectives 1. First, we started out by taking some example objects in the classroom to describe to test for weaknesses. After that, I wrote a good list of adjectives on the board, including size, material, opinion, shape, etc. so that they would have some structure to work with. Once we'd gone over the new vocabulary, we practiced describing new objects using as many of the new vocabulary as possible. Once both students had a firm grasp on the material, we played a guessing game where one student had to describe something to the other who would then guess what that 'something' was. They had a lot of fun with this game and competed to see how many hints they could guess it in.

Routine - We reviewed the questions from routine 6: the baby. One student pulled the questions from her notes and her classmate was challenged to remember the correct answers. This went very well because they had both pretty much mastered this routine, save for a few minor mistakes.

One point - "I'm (not) interested in (a) because (b)" The first student made up the sentence, "I'm interested in dramas because I like watching TV." The second student was more eager to share what he wasn't interested in. His example was, "I'm not interested in skating because I don't like the cold." They both agreed that the weather had been awfully cold of late and spent a few moments discussing snow.

Bananahead said...

I recently taught three orange level students the item 'Adjectives'. I couldn't find an item to do as they had all done different items at varied times so Samantha reccommended that I do this one.
It was a lot of fun to teach and I thought adjectives are a very useful thing to teach. I would also reccommend this item for someone to teach. You can have a lot of fun describing so many things.

SJ said...

The lesson for adjectives is both educational and loads of fun. Adjectives are the types of words that students grasp for when they try desperately to describe their emotions, opinions, and aspirations. So it's not surprising that when they learn new adjectives, they are exceptionally overjoyed to be able to express themselves in so much more depth and detail.

My last Adjectives lesson went superbly well with all three students diving into the new collection of adjectives that I gave them to play with. Once they had a firm understanding of the different adjectives and their meanings, we started to pick objects at random in order for them to describe. They took turns describing their bags, clothings, and shoes until we eventually ran out of interesting items to target.

Next, I placed some adjectives cards face down onto the table and instructed the students to choose one but not show anyone else what was written on their card. The students spent the next few minutes taking turns using adjectives to describe the object written on their cards, leaving the others to guess what was being described. This was probably the most enjoyable part of the lesson with the students blurting out frantic guesses and asking for more clues.

At Smith's School of English Kyobashi, we keep our lessons lively as well as informative and educational.

SJ said...

A very lively woman who I regularly teach at Smith's School of English Kyobashi often comes in wearing attractive accessories or snazzy looking hats. I sometimes compliment her if I notice that she's wearing something new but the conversation doesn't continue past that point because she has a weakness for describing objects. I surmised that this was due to a lack of appropriate adjectives.

This lesson focused largely on introducing new adjectives that pertained to clothing, food, vehicles, and accessories. She delights in being creative and describing things so she was very eager to learn some new vocabulary and put it into use. She dutifully took notes as we went over the new adjectives and the proper way for using them. She got a bit stuck on describing colors because she had a bad habit of sayin, "It's color is black," or, "It's a black color." I told her that black is already understood as being a color so she could simply say, "It's black."

Once we had finished going over all the new vocabularly, adding a few unplanned words as they cropped up, we moved onto the adjectives flash cards. We spent the remainder of the time allocated for the item on describing the cards and trying to use as many adjectives as possible for practice.

al bundy said...

Students learn adjectives in high school. But they rarely are given opportunities to use them in real life situations. So this lesson allows them to break the ice so to speak. 45 minutes is a short time but I try to give them lots of practice describing as many sizes, shapes, materials, and opinions as possible.

Most students don't initially understand some of the vocabulary used in this Smith's School of English lesson. But their memorys can easily be jumpstarted by recalling their high school learning days. I like playing a guessing game at the end where one student has to guess what another student is describing. This re-enforces their learning process and allows the students to build on the vocabulary they already know. I finish this lesson reassured that the students will retain their adjective knowledge for a longer time now than their recent forgetful days.