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TeachingEnglish Young Learners Activity Book
Activities
Activity 45: Walking the words
Mustafa Mohamed El sayed Ahmed El shamy – Egypt
Age: 4 –12
30 minutes Large classes? Yes Mixed level? Yes
Materials: Board and pen/chalk
Organisation: Whole class
Aim: To learn and practise stress patterns in difficult words.
Description: Children practise the stress patterns in difficult or long words by walking the
word (small, light steps for unstressed syllables; long, energetic steps for stressed syllables).
Preparation: There is no preparation needed for this activity, but you should decide before
the lesson which words you are going to practise.
Procedure
1. Tell the children they are going to learn an interesting way to remember stress patterns
in long or difficult words.
2. Choose a long or difficult word like Alligator. Ask the children to watch you. Stand in front
of the class and walk the word by taking a short, light step for unstressed syllables, and
a long, energetic step for stressed syllables. For information, you should take one long,
energetic step and then three short, light steps. As you walk, say the word.
3. Demonstrate with a few more words.
4. Write some long or difficult words on the board and then elicit the stress patterns from
the children, perhaps like this (the ‘a’ has the biggest box as it is the stressed syllable):
Al li ga tor
5. Put the children into pairs or groups.
6. Tell the children they will take it in turn to read the words off the board or walk the word. In a
pair, child A first of all chooses a word from the list on the board, and child B walks it, saying
the word out loud. Child A checks if child B has the stress pattern correct by looking at the
stress pattern on the board. Then they swap around.
7. At the end of the lesson, the children can record the words and their stress patterns in their
vocabulary note books.
Notes
Choose words that the children know the meaning of so that they can concentrate on the
pronunciation only.
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© British Council 2012