Would it be possible to make a list of solid gold lessons?

Some lessons just work on every class ever I think

1. Who get's the heart?
I nicked this from here because the lesson I designed last week was so rubbish, the situation is that 8 people need a heart transplant but you only have one heart to give. Break students into groups and they have to decide in their group who gets it and then the groups have to go up against each other
The characters that I used were

top student age 14
pregnant girl age 16
boy with very rich parents age 7
world class heart surgeon age 52
father of 3 young children age 40
Yao Ming
Famous actress age 23
Famous scientist age 75

I did this with 8 conversation classes and in every single class they disagreed with each other and had a lively debate (which was pretty incredible considering some classes)

2. Grammar Auction
Really nice little game lesson where you just make 20 or so sentences, some are correct, some are incorrect (base it on their level but have a couple of really easy ones to build their confidence and a couple of ones that would trip you up to smack them down )
Put them in teams and auction off the sentences


If we can get 40 lessons in this list then we may never ever have to plan a lesson again!

Would it be possible to make a list of solid gold lessons?

You just did!
And well done...post 'em if you got 'em!

As preparation for debating, put a bunch of common items on slips of paper and have them in a hat or whatever. Pairs of students draw an item each, debate which is more important in life. Quick, maybe two minutes per mini-debate.

It is so silly arguing about whether bicycles are more important than washing machines or whatever that this can work well to loosen them up.

I once had a boy who drew "computers" trying to debate a girl who had drawn "chocolate". He started off rather seriously, but she interrupted:

She: Do you have a girlfriend?
He:  Uh, ... no.
She: Well, if you paid more attention to chocolate and less to computer games, you might.

That reduced the class (all about 18) to hysterics and of course won the debate.

There is some discussion of useful games http://raoulschinasaloon.com/index.php?topic=5291.0

My favorite easy lesson, running dictation, is described in that thread.

As preparation for debating, put a bunch of common items on slips of paper and have them in a hat or whatever. Pairs of students draw an item each, debate which is more important in life. Quick, maybe two minutes per mini-debate.

It is so silly arguing about whether bicycles are more important than washing machines or whatever that this can work well to loosen them up.

I once had a boy who drew "computers" trying to debate a girl who had drawn "chocolate". He started off rather seriously, but she interrupted:

She: Do you have a girlfriend?
He:  Uh, ... no.
She: Well, if you paid more attention to chocolate and less to computer games, you might.

That reduced the class (all about 18) to hysterics and of course won the debate.

I tried this today and it really didn't fly. The students found it too abstract I think and didn't really get into it

Any tips?

Pashley, God bless you. My public speaking class ends next monday night and I had worked with project based lesson plans for the duration, I needed a one off that would give each student in a class of 120 a chance to et up and have a spruik. Mini debate, great.

I kept them busy for three weeks with an election special. We declared our city an independent republic and needed a governemnt, made groups, named them as parties, they had to identify improvements that could be made in the city, name their group's focal campaign issue and choose a candidate for President of the Republic.

Each candidate had to give a campaign speech and answer questions from the floor, question time became a little bit intense at times as they were all competing for the government positions.

These were three period lessons on a monday night so some light relief was necessary, I included art appreciation and musical comedy relief.

Each campaign speech was followed by other party members displaying the new city flag and explaining the symbolism and colours and whatnot, then other group members had to present the newly written city anthem.

I made ballot papers, we held a secret ballot and we awarded the new president with a sash, flowers and key to the city, then we all learnt the new anthem. It was a hoot. I saw some of the best powerpoint presentations of my life, and heard some old favourite revolutionary songs sung with new lyrics that could bring tears of laughter to your eyes. A good time had by all.
Rx

Deck of Conversations  (requires one deck of cards per group of students)

and

Romance Quiz  Seems a bit complicated but it's fine once up and running. (this seems to be blocked unfortunately)

Two great throw-away speaking lessons that have legs.  You can adapt the general idea pretty easily, but be warned that half the fun for students is simply the novelty of using the cards or filling in the questionnaire, so don't over-use.

Lots of good stuff here, but special kudos to rattie for a great Project-based Learning plan. I have a single TBL plan on elections, but you've given me a great idea to turn it into a project. 3Q   

One that always works as a intro to other things is picture->story generation:

Draw a simple picture on the board.  (For reasons of the long lost origin of this activity, I always draw a simple sail boat on the ocean--a wavy line--with a stick figure boy on the deck.)  Elicit a description.  The class decides what subject-verb-object, but you can prompt them by starting the sentence yourself.  Write up whatever they suggest, leaving blanks for missing grammar and underlining bad grammar.  Signal heavily that some correction is needed.

Once the first sentence is writ, correctly, alter the picture.  (I usually set the boat on fire.)  Elicit a sentence to describe the new situation.  Repeat the grammar procedure.

Repeat until exhausted or the story finishes.  Then move on to something else.  At various times I've moved on to a story-telling tenses lesson, a modal verbs lesson that needed some initial scenario to talk about, and some other thing I forget, something about interpreting pictures and discussing action.  As an introduction to other things, it's often good to stop in the middle of the story (or what you judge to be the middle, where a turning point is needed) and go on to the rest of the lesson.  This works well for classes on giving advice--you get the class to go into groups and decide how the story should end and then produce advice for the characters.

If you have an imaginative class, you can do it without the pictures--start by saying, "how many people in this story?"  If you have a class that can't cope too much with making up plot lines, use the pictures and over the second picture write "unfortunately", and over the third picture write "fortunately" and so on, alternating fortunately and unfortunately.  Soon enough they get the idea and start making storylines.

I have a pretty solid idiom class for my uni students.

First I talk about idioms and explain them using ones like "break a leg" for an example. They already know what an idiom is, but a refresher never hurt.

Then I break them into 2 teams and we play 2 online idiom games (One of which uses the Chinese zodiac and can be found here: http://www.cambridgeenglishonline.com/Chinese_Zodiac/Chinese_Zodiac_English.html )

The first part takes up one 50 minute period. Then in the second period I give them a list of 9 idioms and give them time to work with a partner to try to figure out the meaning just looking at the words. (Cell phones and internet not allowed.)

Then, we do them all together and I get to hear what they think the meanings might be. This is usually really funny with answers like "a little baby" for the meaning of 'Nest Egg.' Of course I tell them the real meaning.

Then, because I do this in writing class I make them write a sentence using each idiom we just discussed. But for oral class you could do it spoken or something.

Anyway, the students are into learning idioms and there is really no other way to learn them besides being taught the meaning, so it is a good way to make it a little fun for them, and hopefully they will retain the meaning longer. Actually in the lesson after the idioms I noticed a few students using some of the idioms (correctly I might add) in their writing so I'm happy. 

Lots of good stuff here, but special kudos to rattie for a great Project-based Learning plan. I have a single TBL plan on elections, but you've given me a great idea to turn it into a project. 3Q   

I'd forgotten we had written up a whole Election Class aout 3 years ago. Rattie's post above was gold, and only in trying to work it in to my original lesson (which I had forgotten we had written about), did I stumble across this previous Election Lesson. Hers is a significant addition, so I resurrected the  original lesson and added her stuff which makes it much more lively, interactive and fun. Let's take it all here:

http://raoulschinasaloon.com/index.php?topic=2941.0