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My grade 7 students need strong stimuli to actually engage and do some work. Of course the strongest stimulus they can get is hearing "take your mobile phones out" đ Every lesson which involves them using phones is automatically more interesting.
We've just started the topic of gerunds and infinitives and I wanted to make the process of note-taking a bit more attractive for them. I wanted them to create something which later they could use while completing activities. This is what I came up with:
Each student got their graph. In the hallway outside our classroom I had hang up QR codes with different verbs. Each QR code has a sentence with the verb hidden in it. Students need to scan the code, read the sentence and put the verb in the right circle: blue for gerund, yellow for to+infinitive, green for both (if a verb takes both gerund and to+infinitive the code has two sentences hidden in it).
The QR code with "stop" has a different font colour. I've pointed it out to the students asking them to try and work out how this verb is different from the others that take both gerund and to+infinitive. What I mean is of course the fact that sentences "I stopped smoking" and "I stopped to smoke" have slightly different meanings đ
It took my students 20 minutes to fill in the graphs. They pasted the graphs into their notebooks and used them while filling in exercised in the book. They'll be able to use them throughout this book unit.
So if you feel like decorating the hallways with QR codes and making your teens run around download the activity below đ
I also now realise that you could use this activity as a race. Instead of giving your students the graphs to walk around with, leave them in one place. They have to run around and check the QR codes, remember if the verb takes gerund or infinitive and run back to their 'station' and write it in the right circle. If they work in pairs they also have to communicate about which verbs have already been checked.
Have fun creating,
Ewa :)