Hi French lot! Hope all is going well? Just thought I would share a 2hour lesson that went really well the other day. I can't take full credit- Fozia, Amelia, Jocelyn and I came up with it during our training at Denbigh. It's great for adults and I'm sure teenagers will love it too.Works best with even numbers (over 4) but sure you can wangle it with odd numbers. I think we called it A Famous Scandal or something. Anyhow, it goes a little something like this:

• Handout post-its and ask students to write a world wide famous person on it, but they have to keep it a secret! Put it on a partners head.
• Students ask yes/no questions to find out who they have on their head. For lower level groups I elicited then modelled a few "Am I....." "Do I have...." questions on the board.
• Tell students they are now this celebrity and in their pairs they need to make up a scandal that's happened between the two celebrities. (I had a pair who had Homer Simpson and the Pope!)
• Before I set them off making up the scandal we together went through the difference between rumour, gossip and scandal on the board. I mimed gossip and asked some CCQ's for rumour and scandal (has this definitely happened?) I also went through some possible topics that a scandal might be about i.e relationships, sex, affairs, murder, money, an accident, drugs and drink, morals and religion (The Pope!), debauchery etc etc and where this might appear (tabloid/ radio/ TV/ magazine) It's also key that you get across that although there's one scandal they need two sides to the story (I put this on the board and asked what they thought it meant- they said two different opinions) for lower levels I used a model of a fight in a bar "Tom Cruise started the fight" said Brad Pitt, "NO! Brad started it!" said Tom Cruise.
• Gave them quite a long time to get their stories straight (good phrase to teach also), helped with language and put any new vocab on board. I also gave them What, When, Who, Why and Where on board so they could get lots of info in their stories.
• Then I told them that they would each take it in turns to be newsreporters trying to find out the truth about this scandal through interviewing the celebrities (let them know one person will be interviewing the two celebs at same time). When it comes to it, split up one pair at a time and get them to interview a celeb pair so more than one interview is going on at a time. Then another pair is split and become interviewers etc.
• Put beginning of interview on board (elicited it) and said you can't just start asking questions about scandal straight away, you have to be natural and subtle about it. So start to conversation like: "It's a pleasure to meet you..."etc etc and after they have asked a few questions I then linked back to the idea of rumour by giving them the phrase "rumour has it/ there's a rumour something happened between you two....can you tell me more?" to find out about the scandal. I also told them to use the wh words to ask questions and find out as much as possible in the middle of interview. Tell interviewers to take notes on what they think really happened.
• I elicited the end of the interview (ending conversation in natural way) and elicited phrases for the celebs to disagree with each and give opinions i.e "I'm sorry, I have to disagree" or "I think your wrong" or "In my opinion" etc etc. My students came up with some really good ones ranging from very polite (above) to "You're a liar!" (accompanied by slamming of fists on tables) and "Look here!" etc- there's loads.
• Listen to interviews (each could have lasted 10mins a piece so give them a time limit), note down good and not so good language for delayed correction at end.
• When they've done all interviews tell them they they are going to write a news report detailing the real story of celebs they interviewed- BREAKING NEWS!!!! I mimed a TV news report on a juicy scandal "News just it that Homer Simpson and the Pope were caught..."
• Help with language, then hear news reports. Some of them were hilarious and really creative (I kept telling them be as creative as you can)
• If you want to extend it further you can have the celebs writing a reply (a facebook or twitter feed for teenagers) defending their reputation (I put this on board and elicited meaning).
• Et voila! 2 hours easily. Cheers Joss Fozia and Amelia, was a fun lesson. :)