Categoría: Christmas

Surveys are one of my favourite activities. And my students probably think the same. They really enjoy them!

They can be used for just about any level as a warm-up activity, to have interesting conversations about the topic we are learning or a way to collect information for writing about our partners. They are ideal because they can cover the 4 skills in a single activity. Students not only have to listen and speak, but also students have to take notes on answers or write their own questions.

We use them once a week in our classes, for a huge variety of topics: sports, hobbies, subjects, routines, food, Tv series,… As Christmas was around the corner, we decided that this would be the topic of our survey.

Preparation

Before the class I spoke to the school staff and arranged for my class to survey the different primary classes and the staff. I tell the teachers that we were going to do a survey on Christmas and arranged a time to go into their classes.

Moreover, we read a text about surveys and methods to collect information and instruments to represent the data. We learnt lot of interesting things.

Procedure

I told my own class we were going to do a class survey at school. Firstly, we had to think of the topic, the method and the instrument for our survey. We brainstormed topics on the blackboard .Once there was a list of topics on the blackboard, we voted and chose “Favourite part of Christmas”.

Then, I asked them the Christmas survey question “What’s your favourite part of Chirstmas?” and wrote their answers on the blackboard and thought of other possible answers. They selected six of the options for our survey.

Finally, they sort themselves into pairs and chose a class for doing the survey. Besides, they decided that it would be important to have any kind of visual aid(pictograms) for the youngest classes.

Rationale

Before doing the survey, I did the following things:

• Give out the survey worksheet
• Read through the survey and check pronunciation.
• Ask the class to prepare themselves for the survey.
• Go to the other classes and carry out the survey

After the survey, each pair drew a pie chart based on their results and wrote a brief report. Finally, we collected all the reports in a book. That was a good way to bring the activity to a close.