A Long and Growing List

Students take turns adding items to a growing sentence, repeating all previous items before contributing their own.

Procedure

1. Seat learners in a circle (or multiple circles for large classes).
2. Give a sentence frame such as I went shopping and I bought... Each student adds one item and must repeat all previous items before adding theirs.
   • Learner 1: I went shopping and I bought a shirt.
   • Learner 2: I went shopping and I bought a shirt and a skirt.
   • Learner 3: I went shopping and I bought a shirt, a skirt and a sausage.
3. Each player mimes each item while speaking. The rest of the class can mime along. Encourage creative and humorous ideas.
4. Stop and restart when the list becomes unmanageable.

Tips

• Other sentence patterns allow different vocabulary/grammar focus: adjectives (The teacher's cat is very old, rather fat...), alphabetical adjectives, past tense (This morning I swam across the lake, and I read Shakespeare...), animals with have/has.
• Allow preparation time with dictionaries if students need it — this also involves everyone.
• Class members naturally help the current speaker remember items, which keeps everyone engaged and lowers stress.