This document provides instructions for a "Musical Dictation" activity to help young English learners improve their spelling and listening skills. The activity involves students being organized into groups that pass a pen around as music plays, and having to write down words or sentences dictated by the teacher when the music stops. The difficulty of the dictation can be increased from single words to phrases to full sentences. A variation involves groups writing phrases for a class contest.

1. Children's ESL - Musical Dictation
Helping young learner's spell can be made fun by introducing music into the mix. This simple
dictation exercise builds on the idea of musical chairs.
Aim: Dictation, improving spelling skills, improving listening skills, review recent grammar and
vocabulary work
Activity: Musical Dictation
Level: All levels
Outline:
• Choose a piece of music that you are sure students are sure to enjoy.
• Have students break up into groups of three or four students each.
• Explain the rules to the class:
1. Take a pen and quickly pass it to each other as the music plays.
2. When the music stops, the student who has just received the pen needs to write down
what the teacher says.
3. Students get a point for each correctly word, or correctly written sentence.
4. The team with the most points at the end of the dictation wins.
• Put the music on and go! Here is a suggestion for how to build up the difficulty of the
dictation.
d
Start with single words
S
Build to short phrases
B
Expand to full sentences
E Review English by using grammar forms or vocabulary that you have just been
working on in class.
• Variation:
Get your students to write phrases to use in a class contest. When you read a phrase
written by one group, that groups sits out and receives three bonus points if no other team
manages to write the phrase correctly.
Tic-Tac-Toe - Time Expressions
Tic-Tac-Toe games are a fun way for students to practise their English while enjoying some
competition. The exercise is rather intuitive:
• Distribute the tic-tac-toe sheet.
• Students complete the sentence.
• Students score an X or O for each sentence that is grammatically correct and makes sense.
• This game is best played as a class with the teacher checking answers. However, with
larger classes, the game can also be played in pairs while the teacher goes around the
room checking answers