OBJECTIVES:
- To increase speaking fluency.
- To practise past tenses and descriptions of people.
- To structure and sequence a story using appropriate expressions.
- To develop writing skills.
PROCEDURE :
• Before the lesson, cut several A4 sheets into 8 squares of paper. The number of squares you need in total is 6 x the number of students in your class. So, if you have 11 students, you need 66 pieces of paper.
• Introduce the topic of TV. In groups, ask them to discuss their favourite TV programmes. Write any new vocabulary you hear on the board.
Ask students :What is a soap opera? What examples can they give? A soap opera is made up of episodes normally shown daily or several times a week, and continues to run throughout the year. Elicit ‘cliffhanger’ and ‘flashback’ / ‘flash-forward;
• Divide the class into six groups and give each group one of the topics below – suggest the examples but do not control their creativity.
1) event, such as funeral, wedding, coronation, etc.
2) place, such as New York, library, on a boat, etc.
3) job, such as architect, builder, astronaut, etc.
4) name & age, such as Vera 43, Tom 17, etc.
5) verb, such as laugh, write, misunderstand, etc.
6) object, such as knife, pencil, cup, etc.
• Give each group the same number of pieces of paper as you have students. So if you have 11 students, give each group 11 pieces of paper. They must write one example of their topic on each square of paper.
• One person from each group must hand out one of their squares to each student, so each student ends up with six pieces of paper, one for every topic.
• Put them into groups of three or four and explain that they are going to create a soap opera: they must work together to invent one episode each which must contain each of their six topics, and these episodes must fit together to produce a soap opera.
• Each student must write their own episode – this prevents one student taking over the group.
• They present their soap operas at the end of the lesson and the winner is decided by a vote of hands.
• Homework: inventing the following episode ,which students can later compare with each other.
ADDITIONAL IDEAS:
• Ss could also prepare comic strips and illustrate the most important event in their story or you could prepare the strips and ask the ss to write down the dialogue
• You can include additional topics, such as linkers, or encourage use of a recent grammar point
• Bring pictures of people to class as it helps to visualise the characters
• Ss could vote for the soap opera, present the other teams with only the first episode and the rest could predict what happens next (language of prediction)
• The teacher could act as a TV producer and ss have to convince you their soap opera is the best to invest in
• Ss could also briefly present their pilot episode to the rest and others could suggest five things they would like to see more of if the show were to be successful
• Later other groups could write a review of the pilot episodes
P.S.Big thanks to my lovely friend Alex for her constant encouragement and feedback.
Related posts:
Time to keep up with the times
Summary of past or recent events
Karola' s English Blog 
One thought on “Soap Opera”