How Animals Speak?
How Animals Speak?
In step one, the students practice (I have them work in pairs/groups) reading the animal sounds out loud and try and guess which animals make them using the English word bank at the bottom. Some are obvious, especially because students already know собака and кот. Those are nice confidence builders.
Then I have my students listen to the two songs the lyrics come from and make adjustments to their guesses as necessary. I like to preface these videos with a warning that they are intended for children and acknowledge that it's below their intellectual level because I've found that sometimes high schoolers feel like Russian 1 materials are condescending.
Once students fill out their charts, I'll project the Russian part of the chart and ask questions like "Как говорит цыплёнок?" (and go down the list of animals in order) and have students respond in complete sentences (Цыплёнок говорит пи-пи-пи!). Then I go to the next column and ask questions like Кто говорит пи-пи-пи? (and again ask for complete sentence responses like Цыплёнок говорит пи-пи-пи). I have student names on popsicle sticks and pair them up randomly to ask each other questions too.
You can use the powerpoint with pictures of animals attached to create an additional practice exercise.
