Life is a beach
Well, looks like the sun has got its hat on at last! Why not get your students in a summer mood with this beach lesson (includes compound nouns and vocabulary related to the seaside, conversation questions + writing a review of a beach)?
Step One : Seaside compound nouns
- Go through the grammar of compound nouns with your students. I usually point out the difference between horse race (type of race) and racehorse (type of horse), focusing on the adjectival function of the first noun.
- Show your students the Wordle below and ask them to make as many compound nouns as they can. Note : Tell them that the modifying nouns (i.e. the first nouns) in the Wordle begin with capital letters.
Seaside compound nouns
- Optional Wordle : Before doing the speaking activity in Step Two I usually feed in some more vocabulary connected with the beach. Here’s another Wordle you might like to use.
Beach vocabulary
Step Two : Conversation
- Ask your students to discuss the following questions in pairs or small groups.
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Step Three : Write a review of a beach
- As a follow-up activity ask your students to write a review of a beach on a web page called Beachionary.
- Watch this quick tutorial and then have a look at an example review.
- Here are some things your students could mention in their review: description of beach, facilities, sports and other activities, suitability for different types of people, quality and temperature of water, type of sand, how crowded, why it is special to them etc
Beachionary
Hope you enjoy this lesson!
Posted in: App Lessons
tefltecher 
vecttra
April 12, 2011
Hi Ian,
Thank a lot for an interesting lesson plan. I have made it a rule to always follow your tips.
I have started using Wordle in my classes as well. The only difference is that I print Wordle word clouds out in black and white, colour ink is way too expensive. But my students find them useful and embarrassing at the same time.
The reason I think is that I just upload a Word text and create a Wordle cloud. Somehow I have not been very careful about using collocations in Wordle, and using a maze of words makes it difficult for students to form the necessary word combinations.
I will try to make amends.
Sincerely,
ij64
April 13, 2011
Thanks for visiting again, Vecttra! :-) If you want to keep collocations together in Wordle, use the ~ symbol. For example, if you want to keep “swimming costume” together as a single unit, post “swimming~costume” into the Wordle text field.
Thanks again,
Ian
kylieliz
April 12, 2011
Very fun lesson plan! Thanks for sharing!! Makes me want to take off this week and head to the beach – minus the snow we had this morning!
ij64
April 13, 2011
Thanks for the postive feedback, Kylie! Hope that snow is melting! :-)
Sandy Millin
April 12, 2011
Hi Ian,
Really like the summery colours in the wordles. Not sure if I’ll be able to use the lesson any time soon (since the Czech Republic is slightly short of beaches) ;) but have bookmarked it for summer school use.
Sandy
ij64
April 13, 2011
Thanks for dropping by, Sandy! True what you say! Maybe I should’ve added a rider: “If you are teaching in a landlocked country, skip this lesson!” :-)
Sue Lyon-Jones
April 12, 2011
Nice activities, Ian!
Could see this being a lot of fun to do in class… thanks for sharing & roll on summer :-)
Sue
ij64
April 13, 2011
Thanks 4 dropping by, Sue! Hope all’s well with you! :-)
Pascal
April 14, 2011
Ta Ian. I shall be using this in my conversation classes. As usual, good design, good fun and quite funky…..you will need to do a class on songs and music and include your fav singer, Ron Sexsmith somewhere.
Pascal
Ed
March 19, 2012
Hey Ian,
A google search on the used of Wordle is what brought me here. You seem to have a good command (and inspired pedagogical use) of Wordle, so I was wondering if you knew any way to include only words with capital letters while creating a Wordle chart from a Word file.
Thank you in advance and congratulations for all the blog awards!
ij64
March 23, 2012
Thanks for dropping by! :-) Unfortunately, I don’t know of a way of doing that. Will keep you posted if I discover anything! Ian