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Zoo Animals | Diddy Kong Macarons |Eren

This activity teaches students zoo animals in a playful manner. The target group is ideally young and in an early stage of learning English since it is a rather playful activity that still requires some basic understanding of English. It should take around 10-15 minutes.

The students will learn new vocabulary (animals and their features and environment), it will promote their activity and kinaesthetic memory as well as their movement.

The activity requires pictures of zoo animals (for sustainability reasons I painted them on scrap paper). Furthermore, the teacher needs to prepare questions related to the animals. It is important to hold up the correct pictures while asking the questions. The questions are answered by the students imitating the correct animal. For example, if the teacher asks: Which of these two animals has orange fur? While holding up a picture of an elephant and a tiger the students would all roar like a tiger. At the end the teacher will state the correct animal and the students will repeat the name of the animal. The questions should not be too hard for the participants to answer, or it won’t be fun. It should definitely be introduced properly so there won’t be misunderstandings.

Unfortunately, I could not join the Drama Lab; however, I imagine this method to be fun since the students shouldn’t feel overwhelming pressure of being in the spotlight on their own. A possible difficulty might be that students will not know the answer or how to imitate certain animals for which case the teacher or assistants will have to be prepared to help out. 

Rescue the Zoo Animals – Ufuk 

Introduction: I wanted to help the students learn new vocabulary on the animal kingdom. A quiz with animal pictures and scraps of paper with the name of the animal and its natural habitat. 

Target group: Grade 5 and 6. The teacher can adapt to the English skill level of the students and insert more difficult animals names for example. 

Learning objectives: Learn new vocabulary by playing the quiz. Learn mnemonic. Put the paper stripes in the right order. Besides those primary learning objectives. Naturally the students need to collaborate with one another. Pay attention to pronunciation etc. 

Setting up the quiz: The teacher needs to print out pictures of animals and sentences with their names and their habitat. The sentences need to be cut in scraps of paper. The students work as a team and help each other to find the correct animal name. After finding the animal’s name the scraps of paper need to be put to the right picture and in the right sentence order.

• April Hochberger Teaching Activity – Zoo animals – Taboo/Charades cards

Introduction: 

Each player picks a card and imitates or describes it. The other players get to observe and guess the animal. The cards depict zoo animals and other interesting/important information (habitat, food, if endangered).

Target group and time:

Learning objectives:

The players need to figure out how to describe the animals with words they know or how to mime the animals so other players can guess the correct animal.

The pictures on the cards help the students connect their thoughts with pictures and get the opportunity to ask for new vocabulary words. The players can decide if they want to explain a zoo animal card just verbally (taboo) or act out the animal (mime).

Instructions to set up the activity:

• Make and print out cards (what target group? – cards can be adjusted)
• zoo animals: the giraffe, the frog, the tiger, the horse, the pig, the cat, the duck, the chicken, the flamingo, the penguin, the snake, the crocodile, the fish, the monkey, the lion, the elephant

Letting it run:

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This set of activities has to do with zoo animals. It can be interesting to talk about zoo animals in school because they unite the community of animals and their habitats. Students might enjoy playing different games related to this topic and because they having fun, they may even learn about the topic without noticing.