SMS Pandemic!

Our pursuit of screen-sharing excellence continues with a mini adaptation of a much bigger resource that will soon find its way into the shop. For now, use and share this free screen-sharing resource in your online lessons 🙂

The concept is simple, share the image with your student(s) during your lessons and have them respond to different messages in the chat.

It’s quite convenient as it allows your student to practice their writing (and spelling) skills without the need for a large homework assignment. It also takes less time for the teacher to correct and gives the possibility for students to correct one another.

Two images and one PDF are made available to you. There is one poster that is geared towards A1 students and another for your A2 and above students. The PDF is there in case you are one of the lucky ones who still has real human contact!

Does it look familiar? It just might because it’s an adaptation of our much bigger resource The SMS Game.

We offer two ideas for how to use this activity:

1. You (or a student) choose a message and have your students respond to it in the chat (private or public is your up to you)
2. You (or a student) write a response to one of the messages in the chat and have the students guess which message you are responding to.

Take the time to correct errors. There are always a lot of them in this type of short writing exercises because it’s difficult to express oneself precisely in only a few words. The lack of context also complicates the exercise, obliging students to be precise with their responses.

There you have it. Simple and fun. It won’t take up a full 60-90 minute class but it will definitely give your students something original to practice with.

I would recommend you use only a handful of messages at a time rather than the whole page in one go! You can always return to this activity during a different lesson.

Happy teaching!