Grab the bell

Purpose: oral practice, accuracy.


1. Divide students into groups of about 4.

2. Place a bell (or some other easy-to grab object) in the center of the room. The reason I like the bell is that it makes noise, so it's clear who is holding it.

3. Have a set of sentences or exercises ready. Give each student, or each group, a copy.

4. Call out a random sentence (for example, "exercise 2, sentence 3"). (Alternative: this can also be done with brief listening tracks, which students listen to and try to remember)

5. Someone from each group must memorize it and grab the bell before he/she can say it to you. It he/she says it correctly, the team earns points.

Note: Let students know that, in each team, the same person cannot participate twice in a row. This will give others in the team the chance to participate.

Woman throws away million-dollar mattress

This article can be used for introducing the past perfect.

1. SS read it as a class, individually or in groups, or T reads it aloud (up to T).

2. Discuss vocabulary and details of the article. (This article elicited a lot of participation from the class I used it with. I guess they find money issues interesting!)

3. Use it as a springboard for presenting the past perfect and its meaning:

"When she realized her mistake, the mattress had already been taken away."

"She threw it away because she forgot that her mother had hidden money inside it."

(I really wonder what happened after that? I hope she found it! Haven't heard anything on the news yet though).



From Times Online
June 10, 2009

Woman throws away million-dollar mattress

Philippe Naughton

An Israeli woman who bought her elderly mother a new mattress threw out the old one unaware that it had $1 million hidden inside it.
Israeli newspapers reported today that the woman was left scrabbling through landfill sites in an, as yet, fruitless search for the mattress which contained her mother's life savings.
The woman, identified only as Anat, a resident of Tel Aviv, told Army Radio that she bought the mattress on Monday as a surprise for her mother and got rid of the other one without telling her. When she realised her mistake she rushed outside to look for the mattress but found it had already been taken by the rubbish collectors. Subsequent searches at three different landfill sites turned up nothing.
The Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot published a picture of the woman searching through refuse at a dump in southern Israel.
Yitzhak Borba, the dump manager, told the radio station that his staff was helping the woman, saying she appeared “totally desperate”, but the mattress was hard to find among the 2,500 tonnes of rubbish arriving at the site every day.
Mr Borba said that he increased security at the site to keep would-be treasure hunters at bay. For her part, Anat is displaying an admirable stoicism. “People have to take everything in proportion and thank God for the good and the bad,” she said.

World's heaviest man

1. Ask the students how much the heaviest person in the world might weigh, if it could be a man or woman, or which country he/she might be from. You could even discuss how overweight people are treated in your country (or think of any other lead-in that won't offend any of your students)
2. Get the students, as a class, in groups or individually, to read this story (if you like, you can read it to them, too).
3. Go through unknown vocabulary
4. This article lends itself to practicing conditionals. You could give sentence cues below and ask students to complete them:
5. As a follow-up, you can get students to look on the Internet for more information on this man, since this article is from 2008. Has he been able to reach his goals? Another possible follow-up could be to read/discuss/write about obesity or any other health issue, or even about prejudice.

Sentence Cues:

1. If Manuel hadn't tried to lose weight, ______________________

2. If he loses more weight, _______________________________

3. If Manuel decides to have a wedding cake, __________________

4.If Manuel's girlfriend hadn't encouraged him, _________________

5. If his girlfriend ever breaks up with him, ____________________

6. If Manuel is able to walk again, ___________________________

Source: http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/0810/081003-weight_loss.html

World’s heaviest man plans to marry

Love conquers all. This is certainly so for the former heaviest man in the world. Mexican Manuel Uribe used to be the world’s most overweight person. He was in the Guinness Book of Records in 2006 after breaking the human weight record. Special weighing scales showed he weighed 560kg. He was so enormous he could not leave his room. He spent his whole life living on his bed, eating huge meals and watching TV. He decided enough was enough and that he wanted to change his life. He also wanted to marry his longtime girlfriend Claudia Solis. Uribe went on a crash diet and lost almost half his body weight. He lost a whopping 250kg and has slimmed down to a lighter 310kg. He still has a long way to go before he can once again lead a normal life.
The secret to 43-year-old Uribe’s success is his love for his fiancée Claudia. The two plan to marry on October 26 in his hometown of Monterrey. Manuel said he owed a lot to the love of his life. He said she encouraged and supported him non-stop to lose weight. After they got engaged two years ago, Uribe promised Claudia he would get into better shape for their wedding day. He went on a diet called the Zone Diet, a special combination of carbohydrates and proteins. His diet was created and supervised by a team of weight loss and obesity specialists. He is still too big to walk on his own and said his dream is to be able to walk again. Manuel told reporters that he will have a big wedding, but the reception would have a “low-calorie banquet”. He added this meant no wedding cake for him.