1. Write the following on the board:
If cats could talk, what would they talk about?
2. Brainstorm your students and make a list of possible cat conversations on the board. Examples:
- Mice
- Their owners / family members
- Other cats in the neighbourhood
- What they did the night before
- Their kittens
- Their favourite brand of cat food / tuna fish
- Dogs
- Famous cats (Shrödinger’s cat, Garfield, the Pink Panther, Heathcliff, etc)
3. Show students the following clip:
4. Put students into pairs and ask them to do the following:
- Give the cats names
- Decide what they are talking about
- Write out a dialogue which should last approximately 1 minute
5. Offer students linguistic support as they write.
6. Tell students that they are going to recite their dialogues. Give everyone a few minutes to practise and prepare for this.
7. Ask for a volunteer student pair to sit beside the computer screen. Play the video clip with the sound turned down, and ask them to provide the cats’ voices. Do not ask students to synchronise their lines with the cats’ silent meows. I tried this and it became very complicated and didn’t work.
8. Let each pair take it in turn to act out their dialogues.
9. Take in dialogues for marking.
brilliant lesson ideas jamie!
of course my favourite is this one…. here´s a model dialogue you could show students either before or after their dialogues….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JynBEX_kg8&feature=fvw
Left by schpleff on November 14th, 2009