Top ten
(Elementary and above)


Aim of the activity:

To refresh and revise vocabulary from the previous lesson.

Procedure:

Ask students to think about the previous lesson and to write down the ten (or five, for a lower level) most important words they learnt in that lesson. Don't allow them to open their coursebooks or notebooks.
Variation: to make it faster, you might like to allow your students to do this in pairs.
Pick a student to be the secretary, who comes up to the blackboard and collates the results. First, they should write down their own list.
Each student then reads their list, which the secretary adds to the main list on the blackboard. (Make sure they don't cover the whole board as you will need space later on.) If items have already been included, the secretary should put a tick next to them.
Keep going until everyone has contributed their top ten.
In a larger class, change the secretary halfway through, so that they don't have to spend too much time up at the front. Pick another student from the ones who have already read their lists.
Count the number of votes each word receives and write up the Top Ten in descending order.
Quickly check with the whole class whose individual list was closest to the class consensus.
If you want, you can now ask students to write sentences or a story with the Top Ten words, or simply to define their meaning.