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What Have You Got?
This very simple activity has become one of my regular routines for revising vocabulary with small primary classes.
- Focus: Young Learners, Lexis, Speaking
- Level: Beginner
- Age: Primary
- Target Language: Concrete nouns, What have you got?/I've got..., indefinite article and plurals
- Time: 5 minutes
- Preparation: Small pictures of target vocabulary cut up in a carrier bag
Procedure:
PRE: Find a good strong bag to bring to lessons. Cut up pictures of vocabulary that students have previously covered.
1: Write the question on the board “What have you got?” Drill the question with students.
2: Ask a student to take an item from the bag. Student should tell the class what they have using “I’ve got …”
3: Repeat with a new student. Don’t let the student take anything from the bag until the other students have asked the question.
4: When all the items are gone, put them back in the bag and save them for the next lesson.
5: Keep adding new pictures to the bag as students learn the words. If there are a large number of pictures, you can decide to only use some of them each lesson.
Example:
Class: What have you got?
S1: I’ve got an apple.
Variations:
1: Ask students to take more than one item to get them to practice the use of “and.”
2: If you have a large class, have several bags. Demonstrate the activity with the whole class, and then get students to do the activity in smaller groups.
3: You can get one student to take a picture and have the other students say what that student has, in order to practice different forms of the same question.
Example Language:
Animals (e.g. cow, sheep)
Food (e.g. pizza, milk)
Toys (e.g. doll, ball)
Classroom objects (e.g. pen, chair)
Clothes (e.g. hat, trousers)
Body parts (e.g. head, arm)
Transport types (e.g. car, bus)
Rooms in a house (e.g. living room, bathroom)
Don’t Miss A Thing!
photo credit: Jeffrey Beall Brown Bag (with staple) via photopin (license)
