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TeachingEnglish Young Learners Activity Book
Activities
Alternatives
• You can use the activity to practise or revise vocabulary sets by choosing a theme for the
tree, rather than allowing the children to choose any noun. For example, a transport tree, a
furniture tree, a shops tree. The children have to choose nouns related to the chosen theme.
• If you have a large class, this activity can be done in groups following the same procedure.
• You can have a verb tree or an adverb tree too.
• You can use this activity to review work; instead of asking the children to think of nouns,
tell them which nouns they must write.
• Elif Olcay Bozdaş (Turkey) sent a variation on this activity called ‘New Year Tree’. For this
activity you need green and brown card. Before the class, cut the green card into squares
of about 15cm x 15cm. Make sure you have one square for each child. Cut the brown card
into a rectangle of 20 x 30 cm. This will be the tree trunk.
Notes
1. Stick the brown card to the wall or board.
2. Give each child a square of green card and tell them to trace the outline of their hand
on the square.
3. Tell the children to cut out the outline of their hand, so they have a hand-shaped piece
of card.
4. Ask the children to write their name in one of the fingers on the hand and their wish
for the New Year.
5. Ask each child to say something about their wish and come up and stick their hand
above the ‘tree trunk’ to make the tree.
This activity does not have to be limited to New Year – you can do it at any time. You can use
the activity to practise a number of different expressions, for example, the children write their
favourite food/subject/singer/person/sport/place and so on. They could write a sentence
about their town/their family and so on.
Acknowledgements
Elif saw this activity done by Suzan Öniz from Middle East Technical University.
No resources?
Trace out a large tree on the classroom floor using a stick. Ask
the children where the trunk is and where the branches are.
Proceed as above, but instead of writing down a noun, the
children think of one. When they are called up, they become
the leaf or fruit and stand on one of the imaginary branches.
Draw a tree trunk on the board and ask the children to come
up in turn, draw a branch and write their wishes in the branch.
© British Council 2012
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