Cliffhanger Activities: How to Keep Students in SuspenseBy Hall Houston(Articles for ESL/EFL Teachers)
In the next few paragraphs, I'm going to define what a cliffhanger activity is, give you some examples you can use in class today (and next week), and make a few suggestions on how you can develop your own cliffhanger activities. First, a definition. A cliffhanger activity is an activity that ends abruptly as the bell rings, only to continue when the class meets again. It is a cliffhanger activity by design, not because there wasn't enough time to finish the activity. The advantages of doing it this way are myriad: maintaining suspense, keeping students looking forward to the following class, piquing students' curiosity. The first type of activity is the closest to the traditional idea of a cliffhanger. Here's how you can carry it out: To Be Continued Prepare a story that will take a few minutes to tell. Begin telling the story a couple of minutes before class will end. At a crucial plot point, end class and promise students you will tell the rest of the story next time. You might encounter some degree of frustration and disappointment from the students, but assure them the story will continue next week. In the next class period, begin by asking several students to review the story so far. Then put them in pairs to predict the next part of the story. Now finish the story. Give them a few minutes to reflect as you write these sentence starters on the board: I didn't expect that... I was surprised that... It was inevitable that... I predicted that... The ending was... Overall, I thought the story was...
The next few cliffhanger activities involve a homework component. They require more work of the students in the period between classes. Practical Solutions Just a couple of minutes before class ends, write a practical question on the board such as: How can you stop hiccups? What's the best way to deal with a hangover? Is it healthy or unhealthy to crack your knuckles? Call on students to answer the questions. Write their answers up on the board, then assign students to research this topic. You can direct them to specific websites that contain the answers, or let them find the information themselves. In the next class period, tell students to come to the board and write what information they found. Have a class discussion about the answer. Pooling Information Near the end of class, give students a topic you think they will probably know little about. Ask them to write what they know about the topic, then turn in their papers after only 3 minutes. For homework, ask students to research this topic. You can give each student a different periodical, or a different area of the topic. At the beginning of the next class period, put them in small groups to pool their knowledge. Ask each group to do a presentation. Then return the students original papers to them. Ask several of the students to comment on the difference between what they knew previously and what they know now. Venn Diagram At the very end of class, write 3 columns on the board. Write a big Venn diagram (two overlapping circles) on the board. Above the first circle write, Things We Do In Class. Above the second one, write Things We Do Outside Class. Call on students to give you some words and phrases for each column, and a few to put in the middle (things we do both in and out of class). When you have 5 answers, stop the discussion and give each student a handout with a blank Venn diagram. For homework assign students to fill in the diagram with as many answers as they can think of. In the next class, have students put their diagrams up on the board. Have everyone stand up and read them over. Then put them in pairs to discuss these questions. What did you notice about behavior in and out of class? Is there anything you wish you could do in class, but can't? Is there anything in the "outside class" category that you don't want to do? Predictions During the last few minutes of class, give each student a piece of paper and an envelope. Ask them to make a prediction about the next class period. The prediction can??t be about themselves and must be about something that is observable. For example, Billy can't predict that "Billy will wear brown shoes to class". Nor can he predict that 5 students will be thinking about lunch during class. Here are a few sample predictions: Exactly 3 students will be late. 2 students will be wearing blue shoes. Everyone will turn in their homework. The teacher will be wearing a new shirt.
At the end of the next class period, read out the predictions to see how many were correct. Changes At the end of class, ask students to suggest one change you can make next class period (examples: put up a painting, play some music, study another unit from the coursebook). Put them in groups to brainstorm, then call on each group to read out their ideas. Get the whole class to choose one idea. When the next class period comes, make the change happen. Close to the end of class, put student in pairs to discuss the change. Do they think it was a good idea? How did it affect the class period? Memory Test Just before class ends, show the class a picture (on the overhead projector) for just a few seconds. The picture should have a lot of detail. Make sure students pay attention, but don't take notes. Then, in the next class period, give students a quiz about the picture. Reconstructed Reading Three minutes before class ends, pass out copies of an article you think your students would be interested in reading. Then abruptly pick up the copies as class ends. In the period between classes, prepare a copy of the article that is drastically altered from the original one. You can change word order, insert or leave out words, distort words and images, play with fonts, or anything else you can think of. When class starts, tell students that there was an electrical storm in your office and it caused some damage to the readings they were working on last week. Pass out copies of the distorted text and challenge students to write the article back the way they remember it. Once they are finished, you can give students back the originals to compare with their own work. Improve This Game Play this bare-bones game with the class: Make 20 review questions with answers. Call on students to answer the questions. Each student who gets a question right gets a point.Stop the game after 5 questions and apologize to the class, telling them that this game is just too boring. Put them in pairs and challenge them to come up with 3 rules that will improve the game greatly (Examples: students are in 2 teams, students must run to the board to write answers, students must write answers in complete sentences with no mistakes or their answers don't count. Give them a few minutes to discuss, then ask each pair to read out their ideas as you write them on the board. Students then take a quick vote on which 3 rules are the best. Then you promptly end class. In the next class period, start by reviewing the 3 rules of the game. Play the rest of the game with the class. Here are some considerations for preparing your own cliffhanger activities: How should time be organized? Think about the time for each part of the activity, as well as the time in between. Should students do homework? Consider how assigning homework might influence the second part of the activity. How much control should students have? You can ask students to produce handouts, choose topics, even create their own cliffhanger activities. What other possibilities are there? Use your creative powers to produce cliffhanger activities even more innovative than the ones described here. This article appeared in Modern English Teacher in 2008. Back to Articles for ESL/EFL Teachers by Hall Houston  |