Adapted Activities ⚖

In this Task, we have adapted some activities found in an English text-book to our students' needs. They have been changed taking into account gifted students, students with AHDH, and students who have repeated a grade. We have also improved the activities of the book as we thought they would be more engaging and attractive for our students.

UNIT 8 – STORIES WE TELL😊

VOCABULARY: Embarrassing events

1. In pairs, work with the flashcards playing a memory game. Shuffle all the cards – the ones with the written expressions and the ones with the pictures all together. Lay out all the cards face down on the table. Play in turns, choose a card and carefully turn it over. Then, select another card and turn it over. If the two cards are a matching pair (the picture of the action with its written expression) then take the two cards and start a stack. You are awarded another turn for making that match, if not, it is your partner’s turn. The player who collect more matching pairs will be the winner.
Materials: Cards with VocabularyCards with Vocabulary - Gifted Students

• Students with AHDH: Classify in two stacks the cards with the written expressions and the cards with the pictures. Lay out the flashcards face up on the table. Put the cards with the written actions on your left and the cards with the pictures on your right. Match each expression with its own picture until all the cards are matched.

• Students with High Capacities: Individually, work with the flashcards playing a memory game. Lay out the cards face down on the table. Turn over one card and then select another one and turn it over. Choose the word missing in the written expression. For example, “arrive late/soon”. Explain to your classmates why you have made this choice and why it is an embarrassing event.

• Repeat students: In pairs, work with the flashcards playing a memory game. Classify in two stacks with the written expressions and the cards with the pictures. Lay out the cards face down on the table. Put the cards with the written actions on your left and the cards with the pictures on your right. Take one card from the left and read the expression trying to guess its meaning, then select another card from the right and turn it over. If the cards are a matching pair, you have another turn, if not, it is your partner’s turn. 

READING: a story.

• Gifted students: in order to make this activity more engaging for these students, theteacher will give them an envelope which will contain several pieces of paper. A wordwill be written in each piece of paper. Students have to order these words so as to come up with the five comprehension questions. Then, they should answer these questions. Also, they should write two more questions on their own about the text and then answer them.

• Students with ADAH: in order to focus the attention of these students in the task, the teacher will give them an envelope which will contain five pieces of paper, and in each piece a paragraph will be written (the paragraphs of the reading text). Therefore, students have to order the paragraphs so as to build a coherent text. Then, they should answer the questions, but to do so, they should underline with colours the lines of the text where the answer appears. Then, they should do a poster. They will write each question in a flashcard and the answer in another. Later, they will paste in the poster the flashcard containing the questions next to the flashcard containing the answer. Therefore, in the poster will appear the five flashcards with the questions and next to these flashcards, the flashcards with the answers.

• Students repeating the year: in order to make this exercise more attractive for these students, they should read the text carefully (the teacher will help them with the vocabulary they may have problems with). Then, for answering the questions, the teacher will give them five pieces of paper. In each piece, the answer to each question will be written. Thus, students should associate each answer to the corresponding question. They will also do a poster in which they will write the five questions and then paste the pieces of paper containing the answers next to the corresponding question.

• Average students: for these pupils, the activity will remain as it is in the textbook.

LISTENING

The listening activity that we have created and adapted for all the students who are in the classroom will consists on watching and listening to a video with subtitles in English. Therefore, students with ADHD will pay more attention to the activity since they can watch both the images and the subtitles at the same time. Moreover, that will allow teachers to avoid distraction which is really complicated during the listening task.According to this, both pupils with ADHD and those who are repeating the course and have problems with the listening task will need to answer short questions which will be formulated in a clear and direct way in order to avoid distraction. In addition, ADHD students will do this activity orally. However, the teacher will show them flashcards with the questions written on them in order to catch their attention. On the other hand, gifted students will also do the activity mentioned before. However, as they are supposed to finish earlier than the rest of the pupils, they will need to continue the story of the main characters which will appear on the listening activity by writing four or five short sentences individually. Therefore, they will be developing their imagination as well as their creativity whilst practicing their skills regarding grammar and vocabulary.

WRITING

Regarding the writing activity, the whole class (except gifted students, ADHD pupils and those who are repeating the course and have problems with writing) will need to write about a general topic which is related to the reading activity they have done: “Write about a legend of your country”. (100 words)

Nevertheless, gifted students will do a more complicated writing task since they will need to write about a more specific topic such as the following one: “Write about a legend related to a traditional festivity in an English speaking country.” Thus, gifted students will not only need to write about a more specific and complicated topic but they will also need to search for information, acting as researchers while doing this writing exercise. Moreover, they will need to write 150 -200 words.

Paying attention to ADHD students and those who are repeating the course and who have problems with this skill, we have also adapted the writing task for their necessities. According to this, the teacher will give them a scheme which the different steps they must follow during the creation of the writing exercise as well as some connectors they may use. Furthermore, ADHD students will need to show the process of their task to their teacher. That is, when finishing the first step of the scheme, the student will show it to the teacher. Then, the teacher will correct it and the student with ADHD will be able to go to the second step of the scheme. Therefore, they will be more focus on the task.

GRAMMAR

• Gifted students: For this type of Student, a good modification would be presenting the words in the sentences in an incorrect order so that they correct them. Moreover, the verb to be transformed into its gerund or infinitive form would be left untransformed so they write its correct form (as in the original activity).
• ADAH: the verbs to be transformed and the elements to be added (i.e. “to” and “-ing”, as many of them as will be needed to complete all the sentences) would be presented in cards that students would have to match and include in the sentences, that would appear as in the original activity. This would allow them to complete the task in a more active and visual way, as they have to use instruments (i.e. the cards) to complete the task, something that helps with the focusing of attention and the memorization of the content. 
• Repeat students: in this case, students would have to correct some of the sentences (not all of them would be incorrect, so they have to analyse each of them in order to decide it) and give a justification for the correction, thus revising the grammar rules and observing its application. 
• Average students: the original activity would be helpful for the practice of grammar in the case of these students. 

ACTIVITIES:

AVERAGE STUDENTS

1. He admitted ________ (copy) the story form another book.
2. Have you finished _____ (read) that book I lent you yet?
3. I thought the story seemed ____ (end) a bit suddenly.
4. Traditional stories sometimes teach people ____ (behave) in the right way.
5. Why do so many Young people dislike _____ (write)?
6. I hope _____ (become) a full-time writer by the time I’m 30.
7. My parents advised my sister _____ (take) that job.
8. I want to avoid ___ (work) full time as long as possible.

GIFTED STUDENTS:

1. Story / another / he / book / the / from / admitted (copy)
2. Lent / that / have / book / I / you / yet/ you / finished (read)
3. The / I / a / suddenly / bit / a / thought  / the / story / seemed (end)
4. Sometimes / in / way/ traditional / teach / stories / right / the / people (behave)
5. So / Young / why / do / people / many / dislike (write) ?
6. Full-time / a / writer / the / I’m / by / I / time / 30 / hope (become)
7. Advised / that / my / job / parents / my / sister (take)
8. To / time / possible / as / as / long / want / full / I / avoid (work)

ADAH STUDENTS:

COPY	ING
READ	ING
END	ING
BEHAVE	ING
WRITE	TO
BECOME	TO
TAKE	TO
WORK	TO

REPEAT STUDENTS:

1. He admitted copying the story form another book.
2. Have you finished to read that book I lent you yet?
3. I thought the story seemed to end a bit suddenly.
4. Traditional stories sometimes teach people behaving in the right way.
5. Why do so many Young people dislike writing?
6. I hope becoming a full-time writer by the time I’m 30.
7. My parents advised my sister taking that job.
8. I want to avoid working full time as long as possible.

SPEAKING

The speaking activity about embarrassing moments would be noticeably changed because when people are asked to tell anecdotes, the anecdotes usually vanish from their minds. Thus, the teacher would provide the students with cards which give ideas about embarrassing situations. Having the main idea clear, they would have to invent a context with details to tell the anecdote as if it had happened to them.

The order to tell the anecdotes would not be clockwise. The teacher would bring a tennis ball that the students would have to pass to each other. The student with the ball would have to tell his or her anecdote. This way of giving turns is especially designed to keep the attention of students with ADAH in the game.

On the other hand, the teacher would have extra cards in case students who have repeated the course found their anecdotes too difficult to explain. If this happened, they could choose one of the remaining ones and with the help of the teacher (if needed), devise a story to tell.

Gifted students would be given the option to try and mix two different anecdotes into one. It is a very demanding task because they have to come up with a way of combining them so it requires a special effort. Besides, it can end up being very funny for everybody to listen to the result of the two anecdotes.