Five-Minute Activities for Young Learners

2.15 UFO
Level
***
Language focus
Personal recount, simple past tense, past continuous
Skills focus
Listening and speaking
Thinking focus
Paraphrasing and retelling
Teaching approach
Promote creativity – accept errors
Interaction
Group work or pairs, suitable for large classes
Procedure
1 Tell the children that they are going to do a mini dictogloss activity.
2 Read the personal recount aloud at normal speed. See Box 40.
3 The children listen for the gist of the text, but do not write at this stage.
4 Read the text at normal speed again.
Five-Minute Activities for Young Learners
48

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5 This time, the children write down key vocabulary while you are reading.
These words are usually nouns, adjectives, adverbs and action verbs
rather than words like the verb to be, pronouns or prepositions.
6 In small groups, the children reconstruct the original text. Note that this
is not a dictation. The aim of the activity is to create a text which
paraphrases the meaning of the original text, so children may use
synonyms, or may omit parts of the text which are not particularly
pertinent to the overall gist.