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9-12: Star for a Day Name Fun

Learning outcomes

Students will learn the following in a foreign language:

1. greetings

2. asking names and introducing each other. (Hola, ¿Cómo te llamas? Me llamo… or the same conversation in any other language)

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

25 minutes

Materials/resources

1. flashcards with well-known people or TV characters (cut out from magazines)

2. names of famous people on cards (each name should be written on two cards and there must be a card for each student)

Make sure that the students are familiar with the persons you choose, and that some of the flashcards (or all) are the names that you put on the “twin” cards. (By this, I mean choose celebrities relevant to their age, such as cartoon or TV characters.) Pre-activities

Greet your students as you do everyday, and make sure that they know the different ways of greeting in the second language you are teaching and that they use the gestures used in the target culture (handshake, or whatever applies).

Show the pictures, one by one, and make them ask one another the celebrities’ names. Students find it fun if you uncover the pictures little by little as they try to guess who is in the picture.

You can do this in teams (i.e. one group asks the opposite ¿Cómo se llama él/ella?

Activities

1. Once your students have reviewed asking the names in the first and third person, tell them that you are going to pass out some cards with famous people’s names (they should not show the cards to anybody), and that they are going to pretend that they are that person. If students still don’t know the person’s name on the card, tell them they can ask you for help.

2. Explain to them that they are in a very big celebrity show, and that they have “twins” that they have to find. Before the students start the activity, choose one student and model what language you expect them to use. (Pretend you are a famous star and they should introduce themselves and ask you your name.)

3. Students will circulate around the class, greeting and asking each other’s names until they find their twins. Make sure thay they use the target language.

4. Once they find their twin, then they sit next to that person.

Assessment

After all of the students have found their partners, choose some students to act out the conversation with a classmate in the same way they asked while walking around the class. They will be using the “fake” names which makes it really fun.

Comments

This is a fun and communicative way of practicing greetings and introductions, since it is dull to ask each others’ names when we know each person in the room.

It can be implemented with any second language.

Here are some variations:

You can give out half of the pictures and have them to find their other half (would work better with younger students).

You could give them one picture and a description matching it (if they already know how to describe people).

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