Introduction

The forest theme seemed a bit blasé to me at first glance since talking Talking about animals and plants has been done to death. I was looking to do Looking for something that had some sort of a twist and , I remembered the children's book book The Gruffalo. For those unfamiliar, The Gruffalo is a story about a mouse walking along the forest and narrowly dodging dangerous encounters by with the likes of snakes, owls and foxes that all want to eat him by saying he has a dinner appointment with a Gruffalo. The mouse describes the Gruffalo as a gruesome creature which scares off the larger animals. This was all a trick by the mouse who made the Gruffalo up. He then meets the Gruffalo which matched matches his exact previous description from earlier. The mouse is later able to outsmart the Gruffalo by leading him down the same forest path where the animals from before run ran away in fear of the Gruffalo who believed they ran away from the mouse; . Of course, at the end of the story, the Gruffalo promptly runs away as well. I thought it would be a great idea to play around with these unorthodox descriptions and recontextualize how the students deal with vocabulary they might may have already learned.

Target group and Time

The activity is primarily aimed at younger groups of students (age group 4th-5th grade). The setup time takes about 2 minutes and the activity itself lasts ca. 10-15 minutes.

Learning objectives

The goal of the this activity is to teach practice vocabulary and surrounding about body parts and forest animals. It 's also good for teaching the students how also encourages students to improvise and get become more comfortable with the language by deviating from what they have been taught before (e. (i.e body parts are taught by using the example of a humang., using human examples for body parts). Encountering vocabulary in contexts where they might not be used to using helps with broadening that are unfamiliar helps students broaden their use of the language.

Instructions to set up the activity

The game requires a blackboard or a sizeable surface to draw on along with chalk /or other drawing materialmaterials. Group size should be from five and up. Before the game starts, ask for a volunteer ; the volunteer who will be the one responsible for drawing on the board. Depending on the skill level of the group, you can ask them to name the animals they know as a hint system for later. If the group size exceeds 8, it would be is a good idea to employ 2 two drawers and then also break up the template sentence into two parts where the first student can mention the body part, and then the student next to them can say which animal it belonged to. 

Letting it run

You can do a short intro where you explain to the group that they're in a dark forest (it helps if it's done in which they see an animal. (Doing this activity outside on a sunny day so they have fun with invites learners to enjoy the irony of it) in which they see an animal.the situation.)  After that, you can tell them that they are visiting a sketch artist and are trying to describe the animal. Since it was dark, no one is sure what exactly they saw so they can start naming body parts and to what animal they belong belonged to. The participants can then follow the template sentence: "I saw an animal. It had ______ (body part) like a/an ______ (animal). The drawer is then supposed to follow follows what the rest of the group is saying says and draw draws based on what's been said. The product will hopefully end up with Preferably, you'd want the drawing to be kept for a surprise reveal at the end. The drawing ends up looking like a Gruffalo-style monster with body parts belonging to different animals and not necessarily a correct number of them. It would also be a good idea to show the group what it looks like and then give it a name.number that is assumed an animal would have (e.g. 8 bear-sized legs). After showing the group what the animal looks like, it is  a good idea to give the creature a name.