Numbered Sentences

This activity was taken from Borja Uruñuela at The ACEIA Conference in 2013. It has been a favourite and I still use it today. Each word in a sentence is given a number. After seeing and memorising the sentence a few times, hide it from view and ask yourself or a partner: What's number 4? cars What's number 9?

Remember

This is a simple writing activity inspired by Joe Brainard's book which results in a poetic list of past things by simply completing the sentence:
I remember ___

The topic could be the past in general or something more specific, which i felt would be better in class, like one of the school holidays.

To assist:

What things

What people

What actions

What feelings
What nature

What fun and games

What sights and sounds
What tastes and smells

do you remember from last summer?

Try to expand on sentences rather than just I remember going to the beach. Why did you go? Who with? What happened? What did people say? How did you feel?

Disappearing Sentence

Read the text. 

One grey and rainy morning in The Big Apple (New York) in the cold and snowy month of January, Fran, a chatty but grumpy taxi driver, ate a very large and tasty breakfast as usual and then drove her passengers around and around the wonderful city that never sleeps.

1, Each time you have read it eliminate five words. Then read again remembering the words you eliminated. Keep going until there is no text to see but it is all in your head. Recreate the text on paper.

Or

2, Look at the text.

Eliminate words in the text so that the text still makes sense. You can eliminate one, two or a maximum of three words in a row on one turn. You receive one point for each word eliminated.

For example in the sentence: One grey and rainy morning you could eliminate 'grey and' for two points or 'grey and rainy' for three.

You may end up with just one word left.