Hello and thank you so much for the excellent first session yesterday!
Hello and thank you so much for the excellent first session yesterday! I am already looking forward to subsequent meetings with Penny and everyone else on this course. Excuse the long post, but I have so much I want to reflect on! (Maybe best to put the kettle on at this point...:-) )
First of all, the discussion about the use of activities like Hangman and whether we are making good use of the limited learning time students have really hit home. I tend to use that particular game as a warm up, such as a lead-in to the topic we are focusing on today, to wake them up, a 5 min filler if there is leftover time at the end (because I think it is important to finish on a high note and many students don't get to play such games in their regular English class - the perks of being the assistant teacher!) or simply to change the pace of the lesson at moments where focus has been lost, but I think it is vital to question the relevance of every activity we plan because it is extremely easy to get carried away and let the activity rather than the aim(s) lead the lesson...
Many of my students need regular justification as to why they are doing something I have prepared for them anyway, so with this and that diagram showing how little learning time there actually is in lessons will no doubt help to properly embed this thinking process into any future planning. On the subject of Teacher Talk Time, I think it is invaluable listening practice for students so that they are exposed to the sound of the language, which they might otherwise have only read in a text/grammar exercise. It is often a request by many of my teens, so I try to use it wisely. I'm not very good at telling stories (yet) but I tend to chat to them when they come in (observation/something that was in the paper/on the internet) and sometimes a story about someone I know just comes from nowhere...
I really liked the Recall and Share activity and will try this out in one of my classes at some point. A couple of methods that I did have the chance to experiment with in one of my literature classes today were the "do as much as you can" when writing notes on questions about a certain part of the book, and "choose which question to answer" during whole class feedback - these worked brilliantly considering the class is normally quite quiet. Will definitely use these again at some point.
(In reference to what Claudie said about slower students still looking unhappy - I suppose you can't please everyone!)
Another excellent way to spruce up an exercise is personalisation, as Penny mentioned. Could this also be adapted to other parts of the lesson, such as discussions or vocabulary explanations? I try not to ask my teens too many direct questions sometimes or they go mute/get embarrassed/have nothing to say, but when I ask about something general/radical - what's the worst... best...explain something using their friend/sibling as an example, it makes them laugh and hopefully resonates!
There are a few issues with asking some of my (Maths or Science) students to be creative because they often struggle with abstract ideas, but I keep on trying because it’s an important sub skill.
Finally, I was so surprised about not pre-teaching vocabulary before listening activities because it was something we had to do during our CELTA, but I like it! Brainstorming associated vocabulary is a good idea so that they are prepared for what they might hear. As I mentioned in the session, it is an ongoing battle convincing my teens that they don't need to understand everything, but alas, they feel insecure if they don't and many share perfectionist traits. I always tell them max. 10 words (they think will be useful to them) at a time and get them to personalise it to make the selected vocabulary more memorable. Learning through context is a fantastic way to work out the meaning, it just takes some training. I'm not against students using L1 to fully understand some words (in their own time) as you often find that that precision or succinctness is lacking in one language or another. Schatten in German, however, means both shadow and shade, but these are quite different from each other so I tell them translate with caution!
Right, that's enough from me! Have a good week and looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
First of all, the discussion about the use of activities like Hangman and whether we are making good use of the limited learning time students have really hit home. I tend to use that particular game as a warm up, such as a lead-in to the topic we are focusing on today, to wake them up, a 5 min filler if there is leftover time at the end (because I think it is important to finish on a high note and many students don't get to play such games in their regular English class - the perks of being the assistant teacher!) or simply to change the pace of the lesson at moments where focus has been lost, but I think it is vital to question the relevance of every activity we plan because it is extremely easy to get carried away and let the activity rather than the aim(s) lead the lesson...
Many of my students need regular justification as to why they are doing something I have prepared for them anyway, so with this and that diagram showing how little learning time there actually is in lessons will no doubt help to properly embed this thinking process into any future planning. On the subject of Teacher Talk Time, I think it is invaluable listening practice for students so that they are exposed to the sound of the language, which they might otherwise have only read in a text/grammar exercise. It is often a request by many of my teens, so I try to use it wisely. I'm not very good at telling stories (yet) but I tend to chat to them when they come in (observation/something that was in the paper/on the internet) and sometimes a story about someone I know just comes from nowhere...
I really liked the Recall and Share activity and will try this out in one of my classes at some point. A couple of methods that I did have the chance to experiment with in one of my literature classes today were the "do as much as you can" when writing notes on questions about a certain part of the book, and "choose which question to answer" during whole class feedback - these worked brilliantly considering the class is normally quite quiet. Will definitely use these again at some point.
(In reference to what Claudie said about slower students still looking unhappy - I suppose you can't please everyone!)
Another excellent way to spruce up an exercise is personalisation, as Penny mentioned. Could this also be adapted to other parts of the lesson, such as discussions or vocabulary explanations? I try not to ask my teens too many direct questions sometimes or they go mute/get embarrassed/have nothing to say, but when I ask about something general/radical - what's the worst... best...explain something using their friend/sibling as an example, it makes them laugh and hopefully resonates!
There are a few issues with asking some of my (Maths or Science) students to be creative because they often struggle with abstract ideas, but I keep on trying because it’s an important sub skill.
Finally, I was so surprised about not pre-teaching vocabulary before listening activities because it was something we had to do during our CELTA, but I like it! Brainstorming associated vocabulary is a good idea so that they are prepared for what they might hear. As I mentioned in the session, it is an ongoing battle convincing my teens that they don't need to understand everything, but alas, they feel insecure if they don't and many share perfectionist traits. I always tell them max. 10 words (they think will be useful to them) at a time and get them to personalise it to make the selected vocabulary more memorable. Learning through context is a fantastic way to work out the meaning, it just takes some training. I'm not against students using L1 to fully understand some words (in their own time) as you often find that that precision or succinctness is lacking in one language or another. Schatten in German, however, means both shadow and shade, but these are quite different from each other so I tell them translate with caution!
Right, that's enough from me! Have a good week and looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
Well, I didn't put the kettle on as you recommended - but certainly lots to respond to here! I'll just respond to one of your many thought-provoking points: the one about teacher talking time. You're absolutely right about its value. That was something I wanted to include in the Listening set of tips, but didn't have time. Some teacher trainers try to convince you that TTT is a 'bad thing' and that the teacher should speak as little as possible... rubbish! Well, of course we also want to activate the students, but there's a lot of value to our own input as well: particularly in situations like mine and many of yours where the students simply won't hear English much outside the classroom, so we are the main source of understandable English speech. The thing is to make this speech not only comprehensible but also pleasant and interesting to listen to - which is where the stories come in. Nice that you use all sorts of other ways of talking as well, but don't give up on the stories, you get better and better at it as you go on!
ReplyDeleteI guess activating schemata before reading/listening (Top-down) and pre-teaching blocking vocab (Bottom-up) are useful in many contexts. It's up to the teacher to decide whether to pre-teach vocab or not depending on the needs of the SS. However, training them to decipher meaning from context is also a necessary skill. So you might want to try pre-teaching in the first semester and guessing from context in the second :)
ReplyDeleteWhy do you make your SS make sentences containing the blocking vocab? Do they write these? How do you check?
Guessing from context is a rather 'iffy' procedure, if your aim is to get at correct meaning. I'll be talking about this in my 'reading' session.
ReplyDeleteHannah, thank you for sharing your experience. I can relate to the issue of 'muttering teenagers'. Have you tried asking them to ask you questions? I have found that it's a useful tool of establishing rapport. I suppose, the teacher stops being this unattainable ideal in their eyes, but becomes a fellow human being. What's your take on this?
ReplyDeleteJulia Blinova I’ll admit it’s not quiet all the time nor does it occur in every class, and I think we have quite a good rapport generally (considering I teach 30 classes over a 2 week period!) Giving them the chance to ask Qs is a great idea - if some of them don’t do this spontaneously already. I ask Qs after certain parts of the lesson, or as I’m explaining a grammar/situation/vocabulary, giving them time to write them down if that’s easier for them. I’ve also used post-its in the past where they have to write down something they’ve learnt, something they’re not sure about and anything else they’d like to know or say before leaving the lesson.
ReplyDeleteRuslan Filimonov I get them to write personalised sentences using new language because it is often more memorable when it’s related to your life rather than that of Tim or Tammy or whoever features in a lot of grammar and vocab books, plus it shows that they have understood how it is used. I go around and check in class where possible and ask them to bring examples for next time.
For example, I taught some proverbs today and have asked that class to write their own example sentence for homework to help them remember at least 3 of them, after we looked at meaning (example stories and a matching exercise) form and pronunciation (proverbial summarisers and intonation used) reviewed the vocab itself (finishing each other’s chosen proverb with a pack of uno cards) and having them create conversations where the proverbs would fit.
Great ideas! Can I remind you all to post your tips and ideas on the 'Sharing tips' list so that later people can access them easily without scrolling through the entire 'Session 1 discussion'?
ReplyDeleteHannah McCulloch I love your post-its idea. Did you address what they wrote in any way in class?
ReplyDeleteJulia Blinova Thanks! I got that idea from a tutor on my primary teaching degree but it can work in all contexts, shy adolescents especially. I don’t directly address the issues in class, rather add their idea to future ones without referring to the student who suggested it. (similar to error correction: I rarely refer to those who had made a mistake or used good language by name to save the embarrassment or mocking of other classmates!) You could also chat to them alone after class, or before the next one, and failing that, I sometimes email them.
ReplyDeleteHannah, Yes, can't please everyone - and people have a right to be who they are.
ReplyDelete