Part 1: Lesson Description

Lesson Title

Oral Communication: An English Conversation Board Game

Abstract

This board game combines practicing conversational English for adult ESL students with using the various purposes for oral communication (informing, entertaining, persuading, and honoring/inspiring). It will also develop foundational reading comprehension skills through game participation and will develop professional communication and interpersonal skills by allowing discussion of different social subjects that students could encounter in daily life, academic, and career situations.

Learner Audience / Primary Users

This lesson is for adult ESL students who have Grade 3-4 English reading and speaking abilities. It is for students who wish to practice conversational English speaking and reading.

Educational Use

• Curriculum / Instruction
• English as a Second Language
• Career Prep

Language

• English
  

Material Type

• Instructional Material
• Activities and Labs, Games, Interactive

Keywords

• Designers for Learning
• Adult Education
• ESL
• Conversational English
• Games

Time Required for Lesson

2 hours (game can be repeated)

Targeted Skills

Key skills covered in this lesson include:

• Conversation
• Social skills
• Career knowledge and preparation
• Problem solving

Learning Objectives

By the end of this lesson, the learner should be able to:

• List the different purposes for oral communication.
• Describe the areas in your life in which you use the different purposes for speaking.
• Use the purposes of and definitions within oral communication to complete the quests in the board game.
• Demonstrate reading comprehension by reading the steps and cards of the board game out loud, clearly and with expression, repeating  if necessary.
• Judge the answers given by your classmates to determine their forward progress in the board game, assisting with their speech and reading if asked.
• Describe the areas in your life where you might run into the real-life scenarios described in the board game.

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  College & Career Readiness Standards (CCRS) Alignment

• Level: Adult Education
• Grade Level: B
• Subject: English Language Arts/Literacy
• Domain or Strand: [Type the CCRS Domain or Strand information]

• Domain: If you want to design a Math lesson, what is the domain?
• Strand: If you want to design an English Language Arts / Literacy lesson, what is the:

• Speaking and Listening

• Comprehension and Collaboration
• Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas

• Reading: Foundational Skills

• Fluency

• Standard Description:

• S.L. 3.1: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 3 topics and texts , building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly.
• S.L. 3.4: Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking clearly at an understandable pace.
• S.L. 3.6 Speak in complete sentences when appropriate to task and situation in order to provide requested detail or clarification.
• R.F. 3.4: Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.

• A. Read grade-level text with purpose and understanding.
• B. Read grade-level prose and poetry orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings.
• C. Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.

Prior Knowledge

Learners should have a basic knowledge of the English language.

Required Resources

• Communication Infographic
• Board Game Template
• Game Cards
• Dice
• Game pieces

Lesson Author & License

• Lesson Author: Heidi Kirby

• License: Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license

Part 2: Lesson

Instructional Strategies and Activities

Warm-Up/Introduction

Time: 15 minutes

Whole Class Discussion: Discuss with students the times where they use oral communication in their daily lives, in school, and at work.

Discussion Question Ideas:

• When do you speak to others in your home? What do you talk about?
• When was a time you had to speak with someone out in public? What were you talking about?
• When have you had to talk to someone at school? What did you talk about?
• Give an example of a time when you spoke to someone at a job. What did you tell them?
• Have you ever had trouble speaking to someone? Why? Did you have trouble finding the right words to say? Were you nervous?
• Have you ever had to speak in front of a group of people? How did it make you feel?

After the class discussion, explain how practicing these conversational skills can improve both speaking and reading skills and make learners less nervous.

Presentation / Modeling / Demonstration

Time: 20 minutes

Lesson: Please use this infographic to share the lesson on purposes of oral communication. Ask students to provide their own examples of each type of oral communication, in addition to those given.

Infographic

Guided Practice

Time: 70 minutes

Board Game:  This board game can be played with the game board and printed cards (found below) and dice and game pieces (the teacher must provide). 

Rules:

• Each player rolls the dice to see how far he or she can move.
• When the player places his or her game piece on the correct square, he or she will draw a card with the corresponding color and read the card aloud.
• The player will then complete the oral communication task on the card. If the teacher and/or other students are satisfied with the communication, the player can stay on the square. If they decide the player needs more practice, he or she will move their game piece back to the square from which they moved.
• If a player lands on a space with an arrow and correctly performs the communication, he or she may jump ahead to the square indicated by the arrow.
• The first player to successfully reach the finish square is the winner!

Evaluation

The teacher will evaluate the students’ performance throughout the game. The teacher will provide immediate feedback while the students play the game and give their answers, but he or she can also take notes on each student’s performance, depending on the size of the class.

Application

Time: 15 minutes

Whole Class Wrap-Up Discussion: In a brief wrap up, the whole class will have another discussion about whether or not they think they might encounter situations similar to those they encountered in the board game.

Discussion Question Ideas:

• Have you ever had to speak like you did in the game in a real-life situation?
• Can you think of other situations, like those from the game, where you might need your oral communication skills?
• Do you think that it is helpful to practice speaking with other students?

Key Terms and Concepts

• Informative communication- used to share information
• Persuasive communication-tries to convince the audience that your opinion on an issue is the best and most correct opinion
• Entertainment communication- just for fun and to make someone feel emotion
• Inspirational communication- attempts to move people in a positive way

Part 3: Supplementary Resources & References

Attribution Statements

This work, Oral Communication: An English Conversation Board Game, is a derivative of ‘Speak Up! It is your life!’ by Suganthi Nadar, used under a "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International" license. ‘Oral Communication: An English Conversation Board Game’’ is licensed under "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International" by Heidi Kirby.

This course content is offered by Designers for Learning under a CC Attribution license.
Content in this course can be considered under this license unless otherwise noted.        Page

(Design Guide effective September 12, 2016)