Five-Minute Activities for Young Learners

3.12 Three wishes
Level
**
Language focus
Using hypothetical would
Skills focus
Speaking
Thinking focus
Making judgments
Teaching approach
Promote creativity – accept errors
Interaction
Individual work, pairwork and group work, suitable for large
classes
Procedure
1 Tell the children that they have been granted three wishes.
2 Ask each child to write down three things that they would wish for, using
the sentence stem I would like . . . or I would like to . . . Write these
sentence stems on the board.
Five-Minute Activities for Young Learners
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3 Now ask the children to work with a partner. This time, they can have
only three wishes between them. Each pair should compare their wishes
and choose the three most important wishes to keep.
4 Finally, join two pairs together to make a group of four. Each pair shares
their three wishes and then the group must decide which three wishes
their group wants to keep.
5 Ask the groups to tell the class about their three wishes.
Follow-up
There are a few interesting fairy tales about people who, when granted three
wishes, waste the opportunity. One such story from Sweden is The sausage.
See the Website appendix on page 148 for other fairy tales. Read some of
these fairy tales to the children.