Teenagers' creativity - a dreadful holiday

Teenagers’ creativity – a dreadful holiday

It is a well-known fact that the teenagers at the lower-secondary school (gimnazjum) level are really creative and full of bright ideas. Therefore, it is advisable for their teachers to plan the lessons in such a way that the students are given the chance to make use of their abilities.
I would like to share the plan of the 90-minute lesson conducted with my lower-secondary level students on the topic of holidays and the use of should have done.

The procedure of the lesson:

• a short brainstorming session – what could make a holiday dreadful? – the students work in pairs or in groups of three
• feedback – students’ examples: bad weather, lost luggage, stolen money, stolen passports, terrible accommodation, noisy neighbours, disgusting food, crazy hitchhikers on the way, no computer, etc.
• reading the beginning of a story about a dreadful holiday in the books (D. Strange, D. Hall, Pacesetter Intermediate, Oxford University Press, Unit 8, page 56).
• group-work (3-4 minutes) – the students think of a possible ending for the story, making use of any ideas they can come up with
• retelling the story – the students share their ideas with the whole class
• jigsaw–reading – each group reads one of the three versions of the ending in their books (pages 110, 111 or 112), after that the groups rearrange and the students tell their peers the stories they have just read
• listening to the actual ending of the story – the students have to guess which of the three endings it is
• identifying the speakers – the students listen to the ending of the story again and try to make out who says three sentences with should(n’t) have done that are written in their books (page 57, ex. 7)
• working out the form and use of should(n’t) have done, the students try to analyse the examples and work out the form and the use of the given expression
• doing Workbook exercises on should(n’t) have done
• further examples – the students think of some other situation in which they could use should(n’t) have done
• writing a story about a really bad holiday during which a lot of things went wrong, using students’ own ideas
• swapping papers – the students pair up, exchange their stories and criticize the actions of the characters in their mate’s story using should(n’t) have done
• the worst holiday ...