Best Lesson Poll

[Scott]

I thought I would start a poll to ask all of you fine teachers what the most successful, fun, interesting, useful, educational, etc... lesson of all time has been.  Basically, choose whatever parameters you want and name your favorite lesson to teach.  This might help me make a fun summer camp schedule.

[kwingo11]

Is it OK if I bump this?

I have the same question!

Some lessons that my students and I have enjoyed are
-making poems (small ppt attached)
-idioms
-riddles/jokes
-fables

How about everyone else?
I see bomb games galore, and they're great, but how about other types of lessons that students have really enjoyed?

[klorptar]

I also did a lesson on poetry and sounds with students. The bomb games are fun, and I like to do things from time to time to get them excited about English, but I don't like to rely on things like that. When I'm planning lessons, I tend to think about what skills they haven't worked on in my class in a while, then make activities around that.

By the way, the alliteration with the 'v' was a joke. I had students volunteer to read the next slide, then I clicked it to that one. I also don't think I ever made it past the haiku part.

[vitamin-d]

My students love quizzes. Also, making and presenting posters has gone down surprisingly well; as did doing a short drama performance. 

[#basedcowboyshirt]

The best lesson I ever had was using Vitamin-d's Zombie Survival powerpoint.

It was in my 2 hour long after school class, and the students were stoked on it.

[Darkeru]

Best ever with the Mario bomb game, only letting each student answer once (but getting them to help other students on their team). Lots of fun and kept everyone awake and energetic.

After that, high level 2nd grade with the zombie powerpoint already mentioned.

Most the other I've only had parts that have worked really well, like certain videos (Britains got talent, the Gaston song from Beauty and the Beast, The origin of Small Talk by Armstrong and Miller) and as soon as it gets back to the prescribed expressions and conversation from the book, it's back to normal.

[peasgoodnonsuch]

Two games that have worked like charms, especially with my older middle schoolers, are pronunciation baseball and sentence auction. I stole both of these from the idea list on Dave's although I have built up the pronunciation baseball rather more than what's on the site.

I'm attaching my word lists and rules for pronunciation baseball. For the sentence auction, you can choose whatever grammar point you're teaching them. I chose to do articles because forgetting to use them or using them incorrectly is a frequent problem for my students.

Here's the link for sentence auction: http://www.eslcafe.com/idea/index.cgi?display:913441548-3364.txt

[thefrownclown]

My best lesson so far was an activity based on inventions. I developed the task based lesson plan while enrolled in class to earn my TESOL Cert. Basically the lesson introduced the Rube Goldberg machine as an imagination trigger and then asks the students to develop solutions to a list of problems. The results were hilarious! I recommend it for high level middle school and it can possibly stretch over two classes. I had a hard time fitting it into one.

This is the link to the video I used.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w&feature=player_embedded

[DevilMogun]

Sentence Auction have been some of my most successful lessons. 

I haven't actually used the Christmas one yet, but I made it on request of Grade 3 who reguarly ask for 'one dollar, two dollar' 

[GreenFloyd]

Mario Bomb by Jennifer Yong,
Turkey Attack and World Quiz games by Vitamin-D,
Choose Your Own Adventure Exploding Dog by DaryIM

[negacoca]

This is not the most practical lesson, but it is very fun.  I bought a set of playdough from a daiso (a set with purple, pink, yellow, green, and orange).  I played the Walt Disney "Spectrum Song," which was a big hit. I talked about how many colors there are with the power point.  Then I gave each students two small balls of different colored playdough.  I used every possible combination of colors from my set of five colors.  I left the powerpoint on the last slide, then asked students to guess what color they would get if they mixed their playdough together.  Then, they got to mix their playdough together and see if they were right.  The colors on my powerpoint were based on the colors I got when I mixed the playdough in my set together.  You may have to change the colors to match your playdough set.

Here is the youtube video of the spectrum song that I used:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQgiqMjysFc

[merle]

This might not be the most spectacular and educational lesson but I love teaching sign language because it's fun, gets all the students involved, and you can use it with any age as long as they know the alphabet.
Just hope that you don't start introducing the sign for the letter "T"* when a POE supervisor walks in to observe your class.  Almost happened to me.

http://waygook.org/index.php/topic,878.0.html

* The ASL sign for "T" is an offensive hand gesture in Korea.  Somehow the kids never have trouble remembering this letter.

[fishead]

Peer Dictation from Andrew Finch's book "Tell Me More" more suitable for high level students in an after school program
You basically paste the page on the wall and have students in groups copy it using peer dictation. Only works with hightly motivated students

[kdm04y]

My middle school boys LOVED the 'if you were stranded on a deserted island' lesson. 

[Darkeru]

...riddles...

Do you have any riddles you could post? Some of my students love these, but others suddenly go quiet and confusing because they're difficult even for the better students.