Wanna Buy A Duck?

Do You Wanna Buy A Duck? This is one of my all time favorite and highly successful lessons to use in any classroom, be it ESL or regular learning.

Why is this lesson so good? Oh only because it works on just about everything in one fun filled 45 minute lesson. We're talking about group work, questions and answers, slang, thinking of appropriate verbs to go with selected items, selling and buying vocabulary, pronunciation and buying and selling sentence structures....Sounds to good to be true right? Or at least too good for them to enjoy? WRONG....They eat this activity up, they really love it.

 I first came across this activity on the "Ultimate Camp Game Resource" site. I'm all about taking great games and converting them to useful and fun lesson activities. This one in particular, works amazingly well.
Check out the camp Game Resource team running the activity here Wanna Buy A Duck Ultimate Camp Resource Video




Then I took it a few steps further and designed my own animated video and lesson material (the snip of the animated video you see at the start of this post being  a part of the pack) to make it the most super powered, A1, best ever (in my opinion) ESL activity that in 7 years of ESL I have taught. The added material also now makes this suitable for younger age groups...challenging, but certainly doable. Buy The Pack Here.

After watching the videos, the kids are usually ready and rearing to have a try, so I like to get a team of 5 to come up the front of the class and give it a whirl. This is really useful because it highlights to the rest of the class watching, what mistakes to watch out for. When the first "sitting ducks" have finished I get another team of 5 up front for another demonstration. The second group has usually watched enough to really get the hang of what is happening, and "mostly" put on a good show for the class to laugh and enjoy.

• I get the whole class to split into smallish groups of about 5 and get them to spend about 10 minutes practicing. Each time they do a run through, they should try and think of different things to sell and the appropriate responses for what they are buying. The cards in the activity pack are great for this (there are also worksheets to prep them for the dialogue)


• I usually play this activity in a line (like on the video) not a circle (like they suggest). Make sure that the line (or circle) is not too big otherwise some kids will become bored waiting.


• The last thing I do is organize a time trial race and get kids to compete in their teams to see who can complete the whole sequence the fastest....BUT, make sure that the dialogue is not so rushed that it becomes impossible to understand. I threaten to add 5 seconds for every person who doesn't speak clearly!

SUGGESTION : An extra thing you can do to make sure your lesson runs smoothly is to write or show the basic dialogue up on the blackboard or smart screen for the students to refer to if they forget the sequence...or purchase the Flashcards with prompts and worksheets which are all a part of the Wanna Buy A Duck? Lesson Pack.

Now... do you Wanna Buy A Duck Lesson Pack? :-)

An example of the Dialogue

Round 1
S1 - Do you wanna buy a duck?
S2 - A what?
S1 - A duck.
S2 - Can it quack?
S1 - Of course it can quack, it's a duck!

Round 2
S2 (to S3) Do you wanna buy a kangaroo?
S3 (to S2) A what?
S2 (to S1) A what?
S1 (to student 2) A duck.
S2 (to S3) A kangaroo.
S3 (to S2) Can it jump?
S2 (to S1) Can it quack?
S1 (to S2) Of course it can quack, it's a duck!
S2 (to S3) Of course it can jump. it's a kangaroo!

and so on down the line...

Have Fun!