Like the preceding exercise you can find many variations of this activity in many books. The key to making it successful is good organization. At its most basic level, students have to decide through discussion what 10 items they would choose to take with them if they were stuck on a desert island. They can, if you like, also list these in order of importance. Each student initially produces his own list.
Students then pair of and defend their choice of articles and listen to their partners arguments.
Each pair then joins another pair to make a group of four and again they discuss and defend in order to produce another list. This can be continued until the whole class has arrived at a conclusive list. Or at your discretion you can stop earlier. A lot of language can be produced during this kind of activity and it is the teachers role to go round the group and occasionally provoke if things are getting a little flat. For this activity students are put into groups of about four.