Did I accidentally plan a writing lesson?!

We’re all familiar with the drill. You consult your Scheme of Work for some idea of where you should be. You open a blank lesson plan and then get a cup of tea while you actually decide what you’re going to do. And then… eureka! The ideas come crashing down out of nowhere and you've got your lesson sorted.

Or at least it goes something like that.

For this lesson, my eureka moment came when I started to think about the exciting world of vocabulary. I've been covering Speaking and Listening with my E3 Functional Skills group, and I needed to think of a way to get them to use more interesting words. I decided to use the warmer activity Tonia showed us - the star with 'I can', 'I like', 'I used to' and so on. They really enjoyed this and were openly discussing facts about themselves and engaging as a group. There was a lot of laughter when I asked them to state something about their partner (they were keen to spill all of their partner's deepest secrets to see who they could embarrass the most) but overall the lesson got off to a great start.

Next, I decided to recap the skills of a good speaker and listener. For this I used a DVolver some funky cartoon characters and asked them to identify the skills they saw as well as discuss any that weren't included:

Katie's DVolver 

This worked well - good stuff. But the next part is where it gets really crazy. I read them a story and asked them to think about the way vocabulary was used. Was it interesting? Could they identify any words that they would change? Why? They responded well to this (although the story I chose wasn't great - I'll rethink that for the future) and seemed excited when I asked them to write their own stories...

However, I didn't just tell them to write. I gave then a blank cartoon strip (see below) and asked them to use it as a basis to write their story in groups. We talked about synonyms and common words that were banned from the task (nice, great, good, boring, big). Can you guess what happened? They loved it! The stories they came up with were simply fab, and there were constant shouts of 'Miss, is there a better word I can use for (insert word here)?'

So, where's the problem, I hear you ask? Well, my original aim was for them to have a chance to use vocabulary creatively, and then apply the process of using more imaginative words to the context of a group discussion. This is where they struggled. When I started to bring them back round to the idea of speaking and listening, all of their enthusiasm for fun, exciting words had disappeared. Perhaps I should have foreseen this. Looking back, what I had planned for was a writing lesson, and I'm not disappointed with how it turned out. It was great to see them so engaged with a writing task and actively seeking better ways to write things.However, I'm still on the hunt for a way to use better vocabulary in group discussions!