Fill in the gaps with a bit of fun

I’m absolutely thrilled, because Sandra asked me to write something about gap filling exercises and tasks – I really like this kind of activity as there are so many things you can do with gap filing: revise vocabulary, sure, but also add elements of fun and creativity.

Crazy story:

That’s one of the most favourite activities ever – works with any level, any age, believe me. First, the students write nouns, verbs, adjectives without looking at the story (I usually give them separate pieces of paper, it’s a nice way to revise parts of speech, by the way) and then they write the words down to make a proper story. Like here:

My students love this activity, it’s a great warm-up and you can design your own story with the vocabulary you want to revise. Like here 🙂

Pictures, pictures!

In this activity I use pictures (like the ones in Scaredy Cat story) – only I cut them out and hand them out to the students working in groups. I ask them to put the pictures in the appropriate order and then tell the story. It’s not important whether their story is the same as the original one, what counts is their creativity and vocabulary.

Music

Whoever thinks that the only way of incorporating song in the classroom is a typical fill in the blank option, couldn’t be more wrong. One of the activities I’ve prepared (and it’s one of the evilest ever) is based on And Then There Was Silence by Blind Guardian. I give my students chunks of lyrics and ask them to put them in a correct order while listening to the song. It looks like this:

And the song is 15 minutes long. Without epic guitar solo:

Told you that’s evil 😉

Miming

You can use miming as part of a fill in the gaps exercise – simply give one student text, and the other student things to show. That may be great fun while working with directions – I give a list of directions to Student A and a text with blanks to Student B. Now, student B reads the texts, stops at the gaps and then Student A mimes the correct direction.

I hope you’ll like the ideas and have fun using them – and if you want me to write about something specific, just let me know!

Enjoy 🙂