The teacher writes "Small Talk" on the board and then the class brainstorms to define small talk. Two examples of questions to help the students to get started are "Do you know what small talk is?" and "When do you use small talk?". The teacher writes examples on the board and discusses the importance of small talk skills with the class. After that the class is ready for some small talk activities.
Here are some examples of small talk activities.
Here are some examples of small talk activities.
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What Do We Have in Common?
In this fun activity, students use small talk to find out what they have in common with their classmates. The teacher gives each student a copy of the worksheet (you find the worksheet here on the right) and gives the students some time to answer the questions on the worksheet. When this is done the students walk around in the classroom speaking to their classmates about the various topics on the worksheet. When two students find something that they have in common with each other, they write the classmate's name down. The students then move on to speak to another classmate. Students have to find a different classmate for each topic on their worksheet. |
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Find Someone Who
The students will get a piece of paper listing different characteristics, a copy of the paper for each student (you find the paper here on the right). The students walk around in the classroom trying to find a classmate who has a certain characteristic. When the students find for example “someone who can swim” they write that person’s name on their checklist and move on to the next person. The goal is to meet and talk to as many classmates as possible. When the exercise is done, the teacher can as a follow up ask the students to introduce someone and say something about that person. For example, Kim could say, “I’d like to introduce Marc to you. I found out today that Marc is Santa Claus.” This game can also be done with a bingo twist! When a student finds a match, he or she writes the name of that person in the box. |
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Both of Us
In this fun activity, students use small talk to find out what they have in common with their classmates. The teacher gives each student a copy of the worksheet (you find the worksheet here on the right). In the left column on the worksheet are all the names of the students in the class. The students now walk around in the classroom and use small talk to find out one thing they have in common with each student in the class. They can talk about various small talk topics, such as school, sports, family, food etc. When two students discover something that they have in common with each other, they write it down on the line next to their classmate's name. The students then move on to speak to a new classmate. The students are not allowed to have the same common thing with more than one classmate. They have to try to find a different thing they have in common with each classmate. After this activity interesting findings can then be discussed in the class. |
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