Five whiteboard-based tasks (Secret Hobbies, Post-Pandemic Travel, Zootopia, Lord of the Flies, The Big Leak) show how a shared board, breakout groups and clear staging support meaning-focused speaking.
Tasks
- Secret Hobbies: the teacher models graded clues; students give 30-second to 2-minute talks with distractors; others guess.
- Travel: shortlist destinations; groups research them against criteria; present and vote.
- Zootopia: design a zoo for animal well-being and visitor excitement; early finishers add facilities.
- Lord of the Flies: list 8–12 items each → agree on 8 → whittle down to 5 for the lifeboat; follow-up report.
- The Big Leak: order jumbled pictures → listen to the teacher’s story → retell → notice tenses, collocations, linkers.
Setup: duplicate a board frame per group, named to match the groups.
Apply in my context (Claude)
- Lord of the Flies (whittle-down) and Zootopia work face-to-face on the smartboard with 6-B/7-D. Both are genuine decision tasks with outcomes, i.e. TSLT tasks for Prepare units.
Connections
The task cycle - pre-task, task, language focus, repeat · Why pairwork fails - fix the task, not the students · Design lessons for the teenage brain