I recently sparked a great deal of interest in one of my classes by walking simply placing a potato on my desk as the class walked in.
"Teacher, A potato?" questioned a rather befuddled Alfredo.
"Yes, Alfredo, it's a potato. Very good but what else could it be?" I asked the teenager usually nattering away in Spanish as he walks in.
He stopped in his tracks and respond it could be a Spanish omelette if we just added a few eggs and some onions.
After getting a few of the more obvious answers I got students to sit down in groups and try and write 10 unique uses of a potato. We got a few good ones. A door stop. a pencil holder, a paper weight and one particularly strange students felt it would work well as an instrument of death as you could destroy the evidence in a delicious fashion. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. Or run to my car.
It's a great way to upgrade lower level students' language. I had my kids 4 (10 year old) saying things like:
"Well, it's a potato but it could be used as a toy."
For my B1 adults I created a quick conversation template that I put up on the board to get them to use language slightly above their level.
A: "Well, It's obviously a potato, but it could be used as a............ or even a........... not to mention a............."
B: "I see you're point. They're all great ideas. However, I'm pretty sure it would be best used as a............ . What do you reckon?"
My favourite idea from this class came from a lady in her early fifties who suggested the best use of a potato would be as a fake breast.
I've also found with my higher level students, teens in particular, it's a great way to get them using their mobile phones in class. Words like doorstop and bookend don't tend to pop up in everyday language, so after they've described what it could be used as:
"It could be used as the thing that keeps doors open."
I get them to take out their phones and ask Google exactly what it is. They type in, "What's the name of the thing that is used to keep doors open, in English."
As a warmer I found this really worked and got the students thinking straight away. I went on to try it with other vegetables and then on to other household items. By the end of the month students were disappointed if they walked in and there wasn't a foreign object sitting on my desk waiting to be analyzed.
Another fantastic item is the eternally useful paper clip. Which can be used as practical things such as opening your iPhone or other more surreal ideas like the zip on a zipline for small beasties. I was particularly fond of that idea.
Yesterday I ended the activity by telling my students that potatoes could be anything, which meant they were potatoes. I then went rouind and each students stated loud and proud. I AM A POTATO.
Give it a try. Get your students thinking outside the box as soon as they walk into the room. It'll go down as a class that lives long in the memory. That's for sure.
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