One of the great hells in life for teachers who use comprehension based methods is knowing that we are responsible for thematic units that are just boring. One of the worst of these is teaching classroom objects. How can we make that interesting? How can we fit them into a rockin’ story and have it not go suddenly lame?
One thing I do every so often is I look my kids in the eyes and in a robot’s voice I tell them in L2: “I am not a robot. You are not a robot, you are not a number, you are a person, your name is so and so. You are not a piece of paper in a binder. You are not a binder. You are not in a binder. You are not a pencil. You are not a grade. You are not a pencil sharpener. You are not a marker. You are not a ruler. You are a person, and you are very important to me.”
Of course, the first time I do this I have to establish meaning by writing down on the board whatever words they don’t know, as usual, so:
- robot
- number
- binder
- pencil
- grade
- sheet of paper
- pencil sharpener
- etc.
It’s an activity for no more than ten minutes, bc even in the robotic voice it’s boring. But it’s one way to teach that crap.