While giving class at Wizard, I sometimes get free time in the output classes and where as before I would create large activities to use with my groups, here I need something a little smaller to use. Almost all of the activities I have can be modified to something smaller, but there are also many activities that only require short amounts of time and preparation to work with in class. The story rebuilding activity has been in many books and sites and I like it a lot.
First of all, I needed to find a suitable text, it needs to be long enough to cut into chunks but not so long that it will take all of the available time to just do the reading part. A nice site to find texts is Breakingenglishnews, it has many short current news stories that can be easily modified and also the site provides many activities to go with each text. You only need to cut and paste the ones you want to do, and there are many to choose from
After I had chosen the text, the next part was splitting it into chunks, depending on how many students you have, you might have to make more than one copy of the text chunks and divide the class into two or three groups. I cut my text into six chunks, the size of which you can see below.
The boy, then 14, was repeatedly hit on the head with the 3kg weight. He was left unconscious and rushed to hospital. Students who witnessed the attack said Harvey’s anger seemed to give him extra power.
After dividing the text, I cut the text into strips, on strip containing a chunk of the story. As mentioned above, if you have a lot of students, you’ll need more copies of the strips. Either number or letter each strip and make yourself a copy of the text with an answer key to make it easier for you to keep on top of things once the activity starts.
To use the activity in class, Divide your students into group(s). My classes tend to be small enough to do in group, I average about ten per class. After dividing the students into pairs, etc., give each pair one of the chunks of the text, making sure that they are mixed out of sequence. Ask each pair to look at their chunk and then ask them to read out their chunks in turn. You’ll need to allow time for vocabulary questions, but if you chose a text good for their level this should be down to a minimum. After all of the chunks have been read out, ask the students to tell you what the story is about, the students can ask pairs to read their chunks again if needed. After they have settled on what the story is about, ask them to rebuild the story from the chunks, putting them into their correct sequence. Remind the students that A, B, C or 1, 2, 3 won’t give the correct answer
After they have gotten the correct sequence, read out the text in its correct form. If there is still some free time, you can ask some questions to see how much of the story the students understood or some other activity, such as a homework activity about the text.
You can use the activity I created for my students by downloading the zip file from the link HERE.