I got inspired on February 13 to make a video for Valentine’s Day. By staying up late, I managed to get my vocabulary lesson posted on the morning of February 14. I think it was worth losing a bit of sleep to make a new lesson in honor of such a fun holiday. My video from 2008 presented expressions related to love and marriage, for example, pop the question and exchange vows. This time around I wanted to focus on word parts. Key words are presented and practiced in groups:
- Love – lover – lovely
- Romance – romantic – unromantic
- Sweet – sweetly – sweetness
- Changed – exchanged – unchanged
- Friend – friendly – friendship
- Thought – thoughtless – thoughtful
Here are two ideas to test students’ comprehension of prefixes and suffixes. I’d recommend them as a follow-up activities to my 2010 video on Valentine’s Day.
ACTIVITY 1: Word Parts Through Photos
STEP 1 – Bring in a supply of old magazines and make scissors available. Place students in pairs. Their first task is to find images to illustrate the following:
- A romantic gift v. an unromantic gift
- An unloved person or pet
- A loveless relationship
- Loveliness of art
- Romantically involved
- (You can add your own concepts)
STEP 2 – Once they have images for each concept, they may present their photos to the class or within smaller groups of 4 or 6. Pairs will take turns explaining their choices. Provide a model: “We chose this photo of a flower because we think it could be a romantic gift. We found a photo of a vacuum cleaner, and we decided that it would be a very unromantic gift.”
ACTIVITY 2: Group Poll
STEP 1 – Prepare questions that include words from the video as well as new words formed with the highlighted prefixes and suffixes. Suggestions:
- Can a loveless marriage still be a happy marriage?
- Are you a romantic?
- Is friendliness a characteristic of your hometown? / Your neighborhood?
- When it comes to politics, are you interested or uninterested?
- (You can add your own questions.)
STEP 2 – Have students work in small groups of 4-5. One person will record all answers as each question is discussed.
STEP 3 – Come back together as a whole class. One representative from each group will share their answers. Collect data from each group on one question at a time. Ask the class to comment on the data. Model: So less than half of you are interested in politics. Do you think that’s true of people in general? Does it depend on age or a country?
