Take a Seat & Make a Friend

This listening and speaking activity is based on the video below -and great powers of imagination as it's very unlikely that you can have a ball pit in your classroom if you teach adults-. ;-) It may be well used at the beginning of the course as part of the presentation activities or at any time during the year with large groups of students which tend to flock together and never really get to know everyone in class.

Tell them that when you're a kid, you can connect with almost anyone. But as you get older, friendships can be harder to find. Get them to imagine they’re walking down the street when they find a ball pit with a banner inviting them to get inside and meet a complete stranger. Would they do it?

Tell them this is exactly what people here in this video do. Let them watch it while they take a note of all talking prompts written on the bigger balls for them to speak about life’s big questions.

Play it again and conduct feedback while asking comprehension questions and going through some of the answers. Once done, encourage them to find at least two classmates in their group to go into “the ball pit” and try to make friends with by working through the issues together. Conversation practice guaranteed and a good laugh while handshaking, believe me!

Talking Prompts by Eva Gutiérrez