What Do We Have in Common?

Purpose:  To practice questions and statements in simple present tense and to practice the use of both and neither…nor.

Prep time:  10 minutes

Materials:  copies of Report Sheet for students

Prep:  Make copies of Report Sheet and think of questions to use in modeling the activity

Procedure:

I do it:

1. Use the board or a projector to show your examples.  The examples should look like the ones on the Report Sheet:

______________________ and I both _____________________.

Neither ______________________ nor I ___________________.

1. Ask questions of a higher level student who is fairly comfortable with speaking and listening.  Use the present tense.  When you find something that the two of you have in common, either positive or negative, fill in the blanks on the board.  For example:

Maria and I both like fish.

Neither Maria nor I like eggs.

1. Point out to the students that you can state what you have in common with affirmative sentences using both or with negative sentences using neither…nor.  Do a few more examples, demonstrating with the same student.

We do it:

1. Ask for two volunteers to model the activity.  As they discover commonalities, elicit the sentences from the class and write those on the board. 
2. Encourage students to think about things they like and don’t like, things they can and can’t do.

You do it:

1. Hand out the Report Sheet.
2. Students circulate and ask questions of each other until they discover commonalities.  They write what they have in common on the Report Sheet.
3. At the end of 20 minutes, students report their discoveries to the class.