The Claw: the Language Grabber!

Here is another simple activity that can be used in a large group, small group, or even one-on-one that isn't hard to prep and for some reason, the kids love.  The only material you will need that can be an investment is a plastic arm-extension grabber.  The kids version of what they use to pick up trash on the freeway.  I've seen them range from $5-$10 depending on the store, but honestly I bought mine at the 99 cent only store.  I got it in case I needed a really great prize for a student, but then came up with this idea.
You can start out the lesson with different vocabulary options, such as: machines that help us, cleaning up the community, or prepositions (open/close).  I decided to do a pragmatic lesson and talk about hands, and pretended that the grabber claw was my hand.  I then would give the students scenarios on what would be appropriate for me to do with my hand (claw).  I asked if I should keep my hand (claw) to myself or be touching my neighbor.  Then we talked about good places to put our hands (pockets, lap, on our desk, folded, etc) and bad places (in our friends desk, on our friend, in our mouth, etc).  That took only about 5 minutes then it was on to letting the students actually use the claw.
I photocopied some pictures to elicit N+V sentences and then crumpled them up like the picture below.  At this point you just need to call on a student and then have them pick up a piece of paper.  To work on teamwork within the classroom, I would have one student pick it up with the claw and then have to pick another classmate to give it to.  That classmate would open up the paper and then tell the group what he/she sees.  I made a big deal about how "I can't see what you have" so it would encourage the students to be specific and give details in what they saw.
This particular lesson was with a moderate-severe classroom with 2nd and 3rd graders that needed to work on past tense sentences.  So they would open up the paper and would say something like "running."  From there, I would encourage the student to tell me more, like "who is running" etc.  Once a full sentence was produced, we would practice it as a class.  From there, I would tell the students to replace the word "is" with the word "was" to make it happen in the past.  Then they would give me examples of "was" sentences (i.e. "I was sleeping").
You really could do anything you want with this lesson as long as you had the correct picture to get what you want out of the students.  You could have them work on prepositions, pronouns, adjectives, articles, really anything.  It just takes a little creativity to modify this.

The crumpled pictures just teasing the children to be picked up.  

My 99 cent claw that provided multiple activities for my students.  

It was quite easy for my students to use the claw to pick up the paper.  The only student that couldn't do it has dysarthria and couldn't keep the paper 

One of the pictures that I used to elicit language.  

Age of interest (in years): 3-12 years

Level of motivation (with 10 being the highest): 6-7 

Level to maintain attention of a group (how long until they get bored): 15-20 mins

I would say that if I could go back this week and redo this lesson, I would have had an interactive break after about 15 minutes to not cause the kids to get bored.  The ones that didn't have a turn yet were still engaged with the activity, but the ones that did have a turn knew they wouldn't get picked again and weren't participating as enthusiastically.  

Even with a couple of the students losing attention after a while, it was still a surprisingly effective lesson that encouraged a lot of language, multiple repetitions, and everyone had a good time.  

As always, I ended with a high give and stamp on their hands.  

Good luck!

--- Speech Teacher Lisa :)