KS1 Lesson 2 Main 2: Communicating with the Alien

Time:  10 mins

Group size: Whole class – into pairs

Tag words: alien, communication, understanding, practice, talking, nonsense, situation, scenario, perform, imagine

Ask the class to imagine that an Alien who didn’t speak English came into our classroom and spoke to them.  “Would they understand what we were saying?  Would we understand them?  How would we communicate?”

Explain to the pupils that we are going to practise talking to people we don’t understand.

The Teacher and LSA then model talking complete nonsense to each other in a really obvious situation e.g. one person has a toy the other one wants.  Ask the pupils if they can work out what was going on?  Talk about the importance of gestures, facial expression, tone of voice and actions when people interact.

Give the pupils the simple picture scenario cards showing various situations and ask them to act it out with each other.  If they are confident enough, ask the pupils to then “perform” their scenario to the rest of the class, and see if they can they work out what was going on?  Record this work for evidence, and for assessment.