A Word Monster

I also had my Starters group today. I wanted to jazz up their vocabulary learning a little, and remembered an activity I'd used with the pre-school class. The Word Monster. Which was perfect for  today's lesson, as we were doing body parts (having done colours, numbers and "how many..." over the last few lessons.)

I had a sheet of brown paper already stuck to the board when they came in, so they were very curious about what we'd be doing. I went over the body parts with them, eliciting face, head, eye, ear, nose, mouth, body, arm, hand, leg and foot.

Then I got a big pen, and said...This is our Word Monster. He has a BIIIIIIIGGGGGGG head (which I drew). Then I asked how many eyes does he have? etc etc etc....

Once we'd drawn and coloured our monster, and talked about him, they gave him a name (apologies to Alex Case - it was the students' idea, really!), and we put him back on the board. 

Now, this is a Word Monster (idea taken from "Very Young Learners" by Vanessa Reilly and Sheila M. Ward), so he 'eats' flashcards. I forgot the blu-tak today (will forget head tomorrow). Usually I would blu-tak the flashcards they know to the monster's mouth, and then check again at end of lesson - if they remember, then the monster eats the words which end up in his BIIIIIIIGGGGGGG STRIIIIPPPPPPPYYYYY BOOOOODDDDDDDYYYYY. :-) Today he got to munch on those words immediately, and the flashcards sat on the ledge of the board. Ah well. It was fun and creative.