Introduction
"Full-Body Hobbies" is a teaching idea that aims to engage the learners to move, be creative and learn about their hobbies as well as their body parts all at once.
Target group and Time
Target group: Students from 4th to 6th grade
Time: 10-15 minutes
Learning objectives
Learning new vocabulary for the topics "Hobbies" and "Body Parts", moving/acting, being creative, defending one's own ideas.
Instructions to set up the activity
To prepare the activity, draw the shape of a person on a large piece of paper - it doesn't have to be life sized, but the closer to it, the better. The most important parts are the head, arms, legs, and optionally eyes, ears and a mouth (a perfect drawing isn't necessary). Additionally, prepare post-its with different hobbies written on them, e.g. badminton, playing the trumpet, playing video games. The number of post-its can vary according to the length of your lesson. I used sixteen hobbies for a twelve-minute lesson. Depending on the learner's English level, you can prepare vocabulary pictures to help with some new words.
Letting it run
- Tape your paper-person to the wall and explain that this is a person with many hobbies. Then, ask the students what name they would give to this person. (This is, of course, optional, but my group had fun choosing one).
- Let the students come up one by one and give them a post-it with a hobby written on it. The student then has to place it on the paper-person's body part with which they would do this activity (e.g. football → foot) and show the movement, in this case, kicking the ball, to the class.
- When all the post-its are stuck to the paper-person, ask the students if they can think of other body parts you do these activities with. (It may be that students have brought this point up during the first part of the game already.)
- Let them come up one by one again to change the location of one post-it (e.g. football: foot → hand, because the goalie uses their hands) and then show that movement to the class again.
- When every post-it has a new spot, you are done!
If you want to include multilingualism in your teaching, you could give the students a choice of either acting out the hobby or saying the name of the hobby in a different language.
