ESL Classroom Activity: Rewriting a Classic

The first time you teach this lesson, be sure to choose a story your students already know well: a fairy tale works well, e.g. Cinderella.

If their English is good enough, ask the students to tell you the story as they remember it. If not, you should read aloud to them. Ask a few questions as a comprehension check.

Distribute a printout of the story. Students should read through and ask about any unfamiliar words or phrases.

Check that the students understand what a noun is and what a verb is. You may want to do a short exercise on these at this point.

Either in pairs or working alone, have students pick out all the nouns and all the verbs from the story. They should write them as a two-column list: / NOUNS / VERBS / It is important that they keep them in the same order as they appear in the story.

Take away the printout. Students or pairs must now try to retell a part of the story using the nouns and verbs they have listed. They can, of course, add extra details, but they should try to use as many of the words they have listed as possible. You could make this into a game, scoring points for each word reused.

When you teach this lesson a second time, try a not-so-well-known story or one which will be completely unfamiliar to your students. Challenge them to tell it exactly as the original. See how close they can get!

Don't be shy about using fairy tales with adult learners: the lower level students can feel confident about knowing the story and the more able may enjoy adding in fancy flourishes.

For a second or third lesson, you could use this idea with newspaper articles and then lead into a discussion of the topic concerned.