offer fun ways to help students begin to formulate ideas for their writing assignments,
are particularly useful in General English, exam prep and academic English classes,
encourage creativity and teach students how to expand on, exemplify and critically judge their ideas,
can help students who struggle with coming up with ideas quickly, both during written and oral exams.
Type in how the object can be used. Be creative! There are no wrong or silly answers. When the time is up, be sure you can explain the concept behind each use to the rest of the class.
This is an easy warmer or brain break. It can be a fun, low-stakes way to get students used to coming up with ideas under time pressure. If you'd like to give students more time than the timer allows, simply take a screenshot of a few of the objects and remove the timer. Be sure to get students to actually explain their ideas after. You could take this further by getting them to prepare a more detailed design for a chosen idea.
This interactive task was designed by Dave Birss. He has some great interactive tasks for encouraging creativity. Check out his website: https://davebirss.com/free-resources/
Come up with ideas for your next essay or writing assignment. First, read through the task carefully. Then, set the timer for 5 minutes. Type in a brief idea for something you could discuss in the essay (it doesn't have to be a whole sentence, it can even be one or two key words), then hit enter. Keep going until the timer runs out.
Then, read through all the ideas you've come up with. Compare with your partner. It is likely that some of your ideas are very similar to each other, or simply provide examples or further explanation for another idea. Gather them together until you have no more than 4 key ideas altogether.
Which of your ideas are the strongest? Which would be the easiest or most useful to write about in your essay? Which are the weakest? Why?
This is a very versatile task that you can modify to suit your purpose.
I find this is particularly useful for getting students to understand the difference between a key idea (argument) and an example. When brainstorming for their essays, I find a lot of students get stuck on a single idea, and keep coming up with variations and elaborations on this, not realising it's still essentially the same idea.
There is a further activity down this page that can encourage students to come up with more key ideas.
The local council for your neighbourhood is discussing new projects to implement in the area. Draw a card. Imagine you are this person. What would be the advantages and disadvantages of each project from your perspective? Think of at least two ideas for each role. Then, draw another card.
Installing CCTV cameras in every school.
Demolishing a local parking lot and building a park in its place.
Building a new open-air gym on a small grass area by the main road.
Organising a small summer music festival to showcase local talent.
Introducing penalties for people who leave electric scooters where they block walkways.
Can you come up with one more project idea that you think would be particularly beneficial for 3 individuals from the cards? Explain your idea.
You can use this as a warm-up to a lesson on brainstorming and planning out an essay. When working on the actual essay topic, you may want to run a similar activity, and get students to come up with ideas of 5 different groups the given issue could affect, and in what way. Encouraging students to consider different perspectives will help them come up with more varied ideas and arguments.
You could also use the cards alone to brainstorm advantages and disadvantages for another topic (maybe based on the essay the students will write?).