Search results matching tags 'reading' and 'advanced'

First Lesson or First Week Ideas

Anonymous — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 09:30:14 GMT

Back in July I posted a selections of 20 ideas and activities that might be worth trying out as you get to know your new classes this school year – and since then there’ve been a couple of additional ideas to throw into the mix:

Recently, the 24th Edition of EFL/ESL/ELL Blog Carnival : A Journey in TEFL got posted on Eva Buyuksimkesyan’s “A Journey in TEFL” blog. I strongly recommend taking a look here if you’re in need of inspiration – Eva’s collated over 40 (I lost count) posts from different contributors.

The Lesson Plans Page also has a wide range of back to school resources and materials, though these are aimed more at native speaker young learner classes than a language learner class – and I’ve not tried any of them, so can’t vouch for them personally!

The Vortex Game

Anonymous — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 09:30:40 GMT

The Vortex Game. This is a game I’ve created that can be used with any age or level – for pretty much any purpose. It came out of a conversation with a colleague (thanks Sarah!) who was looking for an idea to help learners with minimal pronunciation pairs, but it can be used with pretty much anything!

I can’t claim complete originality here though – this game was inspired by a very old BBC tv show called “The Adventure Game“. Now this is going back almost thirty years to a time when special effects were…. well a bit shoddy really. But truly amazing by the standards of the time! If anyone wants to look at the amount of progress the human race has made in the last quarter century, you only have to look at clips of the adventure game – of which more later…

Anyway – for game board, rules and different ways to play it (there’s a TPR style method) etc – read on!

At the end of every episode of the Adventure Game, as far as I remember it, the contestants had to cross “the vortex”. This was basically a diamond shaped grid. The catch was that “the evaporator” was also moving on the grid and… you know what – just watch the clip:

So the premise of “The Vortex Game” is relatively simple. The game board is available to download here: teflgeek – The Vortex Game

Versions and Rules:

In it’s simplest form – each team has to get to the other side of the grid. They can only move along the lines, from node to node or star to star, and can only move when they answer a question correctly. In this scenario, you would need a minimum of 15 questions, before one or both teams achieve their goal.

However – the catch is – that if one team steps into a space occupied by the other, then the team occupying the node initially get sent back to their starting base. Thus turning the thing into a lengthy game of cat and mouse, back-tracking, chasing and quite possibly nobody winning at all…. You are almost certainly going to need double the number of questions, if not more.

An even longer version can be played as a “capture the flag” style game. Teams have to make it over to their opponents’ base, capture the flag, and then make it all the way back again….

It probably works best with the game board displayed on an Interactive whiteboard, with virtual counters moved over the top of the board. But it also works well enough printed out and enlarged onto A3 paper. If you have access to an outside space, like a playing field, sports hall, garden or local park, it should be easy enough to recreate the game board in the real world, and have learners nominated to be the game pieces – if a learner gets sent back to base, another player can take their place for the next attempt. I’ve not tried the physical version of this – so any feedback greatly appreciated!

As an alternative to the teacher coming up with all the questions, why not ask your class to do this for you? You could collectively think about different categories, which could extend beyond the language learning context (geography, history, celebrity gossip, partical physics – the list goes on…) and allocate each category to a group of two or three learners to generate ten questions (and provide the answers!!!) – which could then all be jumbled up together and the questions asked at random.

Or there’s always exam practice classes…..

Anyway, let me know how it goes. I’ve only used this once so far and it went down really well – though apparently my questions were “too difficult”…. but they enjoyed the game! So I’d be really interested to hear how it’s worked elsewhere – or in any more variations or developments that you come up with!

Working with Project Classes

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:02:14 GMT

This is an entry for everyone currently working at an ELT summer school somewhere in the world! It’s not always easy and there’s a lot of hard work – hopefully this post will help out a bit! I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy my summer school experiences immensely over the years and one of the things I’ve enjoyed doing most has been the project classes. This post takes a look at what’s important to remember before the project class kicks off and gives some ideas for different projects and how to stage them.

There are a number of advantages to doing project work with learners – projects can be (if done right):

Collaborative – they encourage learners to work together to generate something personal and meaningful
Communicative – by their very nature they put learners in a situation where communication is necessary in order to achieve the goal.
Cross-Curricular – they don’t have to be based solely in the language classroom but can draw on learner knowledge from other areas
Cross-cultural – they can be used to develop learners intercultural awareness and intercultural communication skills, both towards the target language culture, but also across the classroom cultural spectrum.
Task-based – there will inevitably be a set of linguistic items that learners need to perform the task successfully. Projects can provide a “real” need for language in order to successfully accomplish the goal.

For me, any project needs to follow five main stages: OUTLINE – PLANNING – GATHERING – CREATION – OUTCOME.

OUTLINE: obviously in a summer school context where the projects might involve more than one class, the decision as to what type of project or what topic area to be investigated might be taken out of the learners’ hands. The OUTLINE therefore needs to be discussed amongst colleagues or decided by the teacher in advance of the class. If you’re only doing a project with one class, then you can involve the learners in this discussion stage, thus making it a bit more relevant to their lives, a bit more consensual and less imposed. At this stage te.achers will also need to think about what the OUTCOME of the project might be, to make sure that they have the relevant materials or technologies available. Sample OUTLINES for six different project ideas are given below.

PLANNING: Once the project outline has been decided, it can (if not already) be handed over to the learners for further development. With younger learners, or in the summer school context, the main role of the teacher is one of restraint! You need to make sure that what your learners are planning is achievable in the time frame or with the resources available! In essence, you need to make sure someone thinks about the practicalities. Keep asking those questions like: ”That’s a brilliant idea! So where are you going to find the elephants for the parachute display?”

GATHERING: Most projects will involve a degree of information gathering – but not all. So depending on the project, this can be an optional stage. But you could also see this stage as a deeper exploration of the ideas generated in the planning stage.

CREATION: Where it all comes together. Break out the scissors, glue and cardboard. Book out the computer room, make friends with the art department. Throw the relevant supplies at the class (making sure there’s not too much glitter) and stand back. If you have identified learners in your class with tendencies towards perfectionism – make sure they’re working together so that you only have one unfinished group at the end of the class and so that everyone else is more likely to contribute!

OUTCOME: It’s worth remembering that not every project needs to involve glitter and glue – in fact the more memorable projects might not involve any. Arts and Craft is great, but at a summer school the kids get arts and crafts lessons separately – they probably don’t need more of the same. In other words – the primary outcome of the project should be linguistic. One of my proudest TEFL memories is watching 150 students do a whole school survey mingle (details below). A colleague recalls watching a student shine during a poetry recital (the student in question is now part of the administrative staff). The most important thing about the OUTCOME is that somebody else should see it. Not just the class that made it – but everyone else in the school! Or the teachers’ room, or parents. But somebody and that these people should have the chance to provide feedback in some way. After all – what’s the point in spending three days making a poster on global warming if it just stays up in the classroom? The students know what it looks like – they made it!

So the outcome should be primarily linguistic and highly visible. If possible, some sort of competition or vote by and amongst the learners on the work performed by their peers?

So finally – here are some of the ideas that I’ve worked with over the years:

PROJECT:	LESSON 1:	LESSON 2:	LESSON 3:	OUTCOME:
Interclass Surveys	SS decide what they will survey and generate a questionnaire	Whole school mingle (somewhere!) and SS ask and answer each other’s questions	SS collate the data from their surveys and prepare their displays	SS poster displays are put up in the corridors etc. Other SS view the displays.
PhotoStory	SS plot their stories and decide which scenes need pictures taking	SS take their pictures out and about. (NB – need sufficient digital cameras?) Teachers print pictures	SS organise their images and write text captions / plot synopses.	SS poster displays are put up in the corridors etc Other SS view the displays.
Performance Poetry Festival	SS research some poems they like and choose one	SS dramatise the poem into a mini play?	SS gather to watch and perform	Performance based
Board GameBattle	SS plan and design a board game (on any topic / idea) and request materials	SS use the materials to create their board games. T feeds in “game” language etc	The SS and the games gather somewhere and play each others games and vote for the best one?	Demonstrations and playing of different games
Class Newspapers / Magazines	SS research news stories, either from their own country or elsewhere	SS incorporate / edit their stories into a single “newpaper” / magazine.	SS gather somewhere, swap their efforts and read each others – vote for the best?	Written / typed newspaper (copies to take home?)
Shopaholics	SS spend half the time finding out how much they can buy for 50 pounds and half their time planning and designing their own shops	SS actually create their own shops (online pictures of items / shop catalogues?) T teach polite requests & Shopkeeper argot.	SS then go shopping. The idea is to buy the highest number of things for 50quid without buying more than one of the same item	Whole school roleplay / “controlled” language practice

If there’s any clarification needed of any of these ideas – let me know!

First Lesson Ideas / Warmers

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:32:28 GMT

For many teachers, though the school year might have just ended – the joy of summer school classes is about to start. Or may have already, but I think lessons at my habitual summer haunt are due to begin on Monday morning – I’m not there this year, so not sure.

In any event this post contains a collection of getting to know you type activities / ice-breakers or first lesson warmers for you to choose from. If you started teaching summer school last week – sorry about the delay – but you can probably use these or adapt these as warmer or lead in type activities – so it might still be useful!

A little guidance: the activities listed towards the top are intended more for younger learners and the ones closer to the base are more for older learners.

Acknowledgement: This is a collection of stuff drawn together from the last nine years so my thanks to all those colleagues who shared ideas in that time. Two in particular need a special mention – James Lambie gave an input seminar on “first lessons” in Katowice in 2004 at which I took copious notes – Sarah Robbins worked with me on running a seminar on the same topic in Coimbra about two years ago and provided many of the younger learner based ideas contained within.

So – here it all is!

Baseball Cards: Learners draw a picture of themselves and write their name and age on one side of the card. They turn the card over. The teacher asks them some questions and they either write or draw the answers on the back. Stick the cards up around the room face side down (and numbered?) Learners read all the cards and guess which answers are which learners’ (and write answers on a worksheet?). Higher levels can interview a partner and make cards about them.

Shields: An old favourite. Learners have a “shield” outline divided into quarters. Teacher dictates a question e.g favourite colour/dream job depending on level etc. Learners fill in shield with their ‘answers’ to the questions. Either put up round the room for people to guess who is who and/or get another learners to write a profile of someone else based on their shield. You could make flags instead just to vary it a bit…

Hands: The same idea but learners trace round their hand on coloured paper. As in the other ideas they write the answers to questions on their fingers. Use to make a “class tree” to display them.

Name Poems: Learners write their name vertically and write a word beginning with each letter of their name. Alternatively they can draw a pictorial representation which the other learners can then “decode”.

Rabbits/Wizards: Learners write their names on a picture and colour, decorate etc. These then all get put in an envelope and each lesson one is picked out to decide who chooses the magic word for the class. Remove from any chosen names from the envelope so that everyone gets a turn. Can also pick more than one name to decide who gives out papers, presses play on the tape recorder etc. A very simple idea but cuts down on bickering and the kids really get into it. Especially useful with primary age children / larger young learner classes.

Interests Faces – Learners create “faces” by drawing /collaging things they like /hobbies etc. Other learners can guess what the pictures represent etc.

Ordering –Again not very new but works as a quick warmer/ice breaker. Learners in two teams race to order themselves according to age, shoe size, number of letters in their names, alphabetically by best friend’s first name etc. Can be competitive or not.

TPR – You’ll probably be using lots of TPR to practice classroom language and objects but this is another variation for higher level classes. You ask q’s and s’s respond by doing the action. However, they need to watch the other people in the class to see what they do. At the end the you put learners in teams and quiz them based on their observations e.g name one person who can play the piano…Suggested actions: If you have a brother, clap.” If you have a a dog put your right hand on your head.” “If your favourite sport is football, stand on one foot.”

Snowball Fight - Learners write five things about themselves on a piece of paper. Then they crumple the paper up into a ‘snowball’ and have a one-minute snowball fight. At the end of the minute, everyone grabs the closest snowball and has to try to find the person who wrote it. They could then introduce that person to the rest of the group, sharing the facts/ask more q’s and write about the person etc…..

Memory Quiz – Learners stand facing a partner and remember everything about their appearance for 30 seconds then one person turns around while their partner answers questions about them e.g What colour are his eyes…

Guess Who – Write 10/12 facts about someone famous on different pieces of paper as if they were answering e.g I have two children. I used to live in America but now I live in London. (Obviously difficulty depends on level). Learners in teams. You hold up an answer and they race to write the correct question on a piece of scrap paper and hold it up…. 3 points for the first team 1 point for every team with a correct question. At the end of the task put all the answers on the floor the first team to correctly identify who the answers are for wins a bonus 5 points Go through any errors with question formation ….this leads nicely into any interviewing/profile writing activity as they can use the questions to interview each other or….

Interview the teacher – Good for classes who’ve been together for ages but don’t know you. Put s’s in teams of 3. Learners think of a question, one learner races to the front and asks you the question, runs back to their team and tells them the answer. They write down the answer and tell the runner the next question which they were thinking of in the meantime. To speed things up I usually say that the first team to get 12 facts about me wins. The proviso is that I will only answer each question once so every team should have different facts. After they have their 12 facts they then write a profile of you including 15 facts. 3 of which are lies. (At this point you might have to go around letting the slower teams who didn’t get 12 facts, ask you a couple more questions). Number the profiles, put them on the wall and the s’s walk around reading them and writing down the 3 lies. S’s reveal their guesses and the authors tell them if they are correct the people who spot the most lies “win”. (With Guess Who this is a whole lesson).

Find someone who Bingo - As for “find someone who” but you write the categories on a grid. 1^st person to get a line of 6 (or, if you’re feeling evil, complete the whole grid) wins. NB make it clear you have to have 6 different people!

Guess the Question - Stick an icebreaker question on everyone’s back. As learners mingle everyone else answers the question on their back without telling them what it is. They have to figure out what the question is.

What do you know about…? Again good for learners who know each other or in the second lesson as a follow up to the getting to know you activity you did in the 1^st class. One learner at the front. Everyone in teams.You ask everyone a question about that person. The learner at the front secretly writes their answer and everyone else writes what they think is their answer. The teams reveal their answers then the learner at the front reveals the “correct” answer. One point for every “correct” answer.

Crossword Names – Either student created in the first lesson or, if you’re feeling keen, teacher created later in the week / course. Basically learners ask questions and then write clues to create a crossword for and about the class. Or the teacher uses what they know about the learners to do the same. e.g 1 down – a student with 6 brothers who hates cats. Obviously watch out for things like: 5 down “a fat student who smells”

Knowledge Races – Cut up a load of questions from a workbook at a level below the level of the class or just create questions they should know. Divide learners into teams, they take one question, answer it, show you the answer, get the next… Just like a reading race. Quite useful way to find out gaps in their knowledge early on and can be very confidence building….

Clouds & Questions: Learners draw six cloud shapes on a bit of paper. Get learners to tell you topic areas you might talk to someone about when you meet them for the first time (e.g.hometown, job, hobbies etc). They write down the areas in the cloud shapes and put their names at the top. Learners then swap papers. They then have to find out about the person whose paper they have, BUT are not allowed to talk to that person directly and can only use one intermediary per question. For example: Sarah must find out about Dave, and needs to get Alexis, Neil, Jamie, Regina, Lidia, Jane and Anna to ask Dave her questions and report back to her.

Self-Directed Interviews: write up five (fun / funny) questions on the whiteboard that you’re happy to answer. Nominate random learners to ask you the qus. Give out some scrap paper and get learners to write down five questions they would be happy to be asked. EITHER pair them off and let them ask each other OR carousel the class (inner & outer wheels)

Mix & Match Identities: Like a consequences / round the room story writing task. You ask learners a series of questions and they write short answers, passing on the answer paper after each question. Ask the same number of questions as you have learners and they should get their own paper back with some interesting biographical information! They can then find out who wrote what on their bit of paper.

OK – I think that’s all for now. Any questions of clarifications needed – let me know!

The disabled access friendly world blog challenge: Creature Discomforts

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:30:31 GMT

Following on from the recent blog challenge on raising awareness of disability access issues, I came across the Leonard Cheshire Disability campaign whilst watching Shaun the Sheep dvds with my daughter.

The campaign is called “Creature Discomforts” and has very similar aims to the blog challenge – namely to get people to think about the way they see disability.

If you go to the Creature Discomforts website, there are eight short video ads (about 20 – 30 seconds each) and nine short radio ads. Both of these have tapescripts available, so would be relatively easy to adapt into short listening tasks – the ads are very visually appealing and would be great with young learners.

There is also a “fun and games” section which contains a quiz about disability in the UK. It could be interesting to do the quiz (which is multiple choice, one question at a time – questions change each time you do it) and get learners to compare the answers with the situation in their country. For example, apparently only 50% of train stations in the UK offer step-free access to the platforms – what’s life like where you live? The section also offers four different games that put the game player in the position of having a disability – in the Callum the Chameleon game, you can play with or without sight as you try to catch the flies buzzing around. Sonny the Shrimp attempts to rescue fish from their hooks – from his wheelchair. Tim-the-crutches-using-Tortoise attempts the long-jump, and finally Millie the mouse attempts to feed peanuts to her elephant friend. I like the way the Chameleon game makes you think about the difference between playing the game sighted and unsighted – the other games are not quite as educational, but fun to play for the younger classes.

Leonard Cheshire Disability is also running a campaign called Action for Access from which you can download access survey forms for shops, organisations and buildings – there are separate forms for transport options. If you work in the UK, then a class project could contribute to developing the access map on the site and making a positive contribution to the local community. If you work outside the UK, then you could adapt the access survey forms (they’re available in pdf or word) to fit your surroundings and develop a class project to survey the area around your school. Some thoughts anyway!

Summer school teachers – have you considered that this could be a handy project to work with one week? You could even incorporate some of the work into one of your trips out and about in the UK?

Habitat for Humanity: Lesson Plans

Anonymous — Fri, 13 May 2011 10:08:49 GMT

I’ll be honest, I don’t really know much about Habitat for Humanity. I’m mentioning them here because they posted a comment under one of the blog posts and I just went and took a quick look at their site.

They have quite a wealth of lessons (detailed plans, learning outcomes, materials etc), categorised by age ranges. The bad news is that these lesson plans are not aimed at foreign language learners. So the stuff in the 5-8 category might be a bit beyond the non-native speakers, though there are a couple of colouring tasks which might work?

I think adaptation is going to be the name of the game here. I think there’s quite a lot of stuff here that is likely to be of interest to learners and some things that might make some nice end of year/term projects. It should appeal to the cross-curricular / CLIL crowd….

Habitat for Humanity operates in a large number of countries around the world, so the chances are you’ll be able to find a local office, which might make things a bit more relevant to the learners?

Habitat for Humanity lessons — Habitat for Humanity Int’l.

State of the World’s Mothers 2011 Statistics and Facts – Save the Children

Anonymous — Tue, 10 May 2011 23:54:20 GMT

State of the World’s Mothers 2011 Statistics and Facts – Save the Children - thanks to Greg Fuller for posting this on facebook…..

There’s a lot of information here and obviously the most interesting thing for any class to do would be to pull out all the statistics that relate to their country and decide whether or not they agree with them, why, and what could be done to change the situation….

Who knows – we could start a social revolution right here?

But information transfer tasks are good ways of processing information and creating a meaningful context for language learning to occur in, so designing tasks around the huge pile of data that Save the Children provide would all give a good reasons for learners to develop their linguistic resource. Poster tasks, presentations (with or without powerpoint), charts and graphs all spring to mind. Of course for IELTS candidates, there are a lot of graphs and charts just waiting to be described in the data!

There’s also a documentary available on the website which could provide the basis for both listening tasks and discussion afterwards (though maybe not a good idea to watch if you’re expecting, or have just had, a recent addition to the family).

These are all just some initial ideas – if you have any plans, materials or ideas you’d like to share to develop this topic, please let me know!

Oil Stories

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 08:52:16 GMT

The Guardian newspaper recently ran a series of short stories related to oil, as part of a project to commemorate the one year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster – (see BBC story for background).

Called “Oil Stories“, the Guardian project contains eight short stories from different authors that seek to examine our relationship with oil. The stories aren’t particularly long and one of them comes in the form of a graphic novel.

This would be a useful opportunity for learners to access an authentic text (with all the implications relating to vocabulary etc that this carries) – perhaps more than that, it is a good opportunity for a group of learners to access a range of texts on the same topic (albeit, in one or two cases, somewhat obliquely). If the texts were given out as a homework reading task, then perhaps learners could peer teach any useful vocabulary at the start of the next lesson, as well as sharing the perspectives on oil as apparent from their texts and of course their reactions to it.

The teasing out of the themes, ideas and perspectives contained within the short stories and the sharing of these within the classroom could also create optimal conditions for a summary type task, where learners work together to create a single text summarising (and possibly directly referencing) the eight short stories.

Having had the discussion in their groups of eight, learners with the same texts could work together to create a brief 50 – 75 word summary highlighting the main points in their texts. They could then work back in their groups of eight to co-ordinate and organise the ideas into a cohesive whole. This might be a good opportunity, for those with computer room access, to try one or more of the synchronous editing tools I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.

The Oil Stories project contains work by the following authors: China Miéville, Alain Mabanckou, Tim Gautreaux, Joanna Kavenna, Mohammed Hasan Alwan, Simone Lia, Robin Yassin-Kassab and Rose Tremain. Even if you decide not to use these with your classes – they’re all well worth a read. Enjoy!

Brave New World among top 10 books Americans most want banned

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 21:41:20 GMT

Brave New World among top 10 books Americans most want banned | Books | guardian.co.uk.

This is a slightly misleading and somewhat patronising view of American life, when you consider, as the article states, that this list is based on a total of 348 “attempts” to remove books from American libraries. But it still makes interesting reading – at least the article does – not sure about the books as I’m a little disappointed by the fact that I’ve only read one of the books on this list!

This could lead into a very interesting discussion with learners. And quite possibly a very emotive one, so a certain amount of judgement needed as to whether this would be s suitable issue for your class! But if learners wanted to express views on what was or wasn’t suitable to discuss in school, or topics that are inappropriate for the local library, then why not? Or of course if they want to defend freedom of speech?

It is interesting to think about what is acceptable to talk about in the classroom and what isn’t – Scott Thornbury has an interesting perspective in “T is for Taboo“, it might be fun to use some of his themes as a lead in with the class – challenge them to find a picture of a mother comforting small children, young hispanic people working on a car or an old lady with twenty cats. And then ask them to think about why they might not have been able to find the images?

The alternative to choosing which books to ban, is to choose which books to select in….

David McCandless from informationisbeautiful created the visualisation below, of 100 books everyone should read (taking a composite ranking from a variety of sources).

Why not divide up the books amongst the learners in your class and send them off to wikipedia or amazon or even the local library, to take a quick look at their set of books and decide which ones to keep and which ones not to. When the class reconvenes, they can, as a whole, decide on a top 50 books that everyone should read.

Help with Homework

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 09:54:30 GMT

“Teacher No!” “Teacher, I have three tests this week!” Chances are, you’ve probably experienced the chorus of protest and dismay as you blithely announce the homework task of the day. Or alternatively as you ask your learners to present the task you set last lesson, you find that half the class hand it in while quarter of the class hand in something approximating what you asked for and the remainder present a litany of excuses: “I’ve done it, but I didn’t bring it.” “I didn’t understand what to do.” “I had no time.” Or possibly even, “I did my homework but I was kidnapped by aliens who took my homework to help with their intergalactic language comprehension project.”

Homework is a tricky area and I think if we’re all honest and think back to the days when we were in the learners’ shoes, we can perhaps identify with the way our learners feel when they get given yet something else that takes them away from their busy lives.

As a language teacher, I’m acutely aware that the homework I set is in fierce competition with a whole range of demands of my learners’ time. There are of course the non-educational demands: learners’ interests, from basketball to surfing, music to art, chilling out, socialising, facebooking, texting and gossiping all play vital roles in their lives, as indeed they do in ours. Equally, learners who work have to find the time in the schedule when they aren’t juggling sales orders or invoices or preparing for the meeting on Thursday. And those poor souls still in school have it even worse: a vast range of subject teachers who all set their charges weekly homework tasks that must be completed sometimes on pain of failing the grade.

There are any number of reasons why learners might not do their homework – Alex Case lists 14 reasons in an article for UsingEnglish.com. The trick of course is in finding ways to try and make sure they do it.

Purpose

The biggest question is why bother setting homework in the first place? Generally, I would expect most homework tasks to fall into three categories: Consolidation / Development / Assessment.

Consolidation – you set the task because it helps learners get a better idea of something you did in class (or helps you figure out which learners don’t have a better idea).
Development – the task helps the learners to improve their knowledge or skills in some way.
Assessment – particularly used with writing tasks (I suspect), you set tasks that will in some way contribute to learner grades or reports.

The question then becomes – do the learners know why they’re doing the task? Just as you might choose to communicate your lesson aims to the class via a lesson menu, why not do the same with homework tasks? Generally, if learners understand why they’re doing something they are more motivated to do it. Or if they choose not to do it, at least they will have made a more informed decision! Either way, informing learners that the task they’re doing will help them understand better something they did in class, or that what they’re doing will be used in the next class, might help underline the need for them to do it. Of course, it might also underline to them the pointlessness of any task that hasn’t been thought through!

Involvement

Get learner input on the homework process. Learners are often very aware of their strengths and weaknesses and talking to them or doing needs analysis with them might help you to tailor the homework tasks to them. You could also get a better idea of what external time commitments they have and find out how much homework they can realistically cope with in any given week. Working with learners schedules and negotiating homework quantities with them can help them realise that you are taking their needs into account and thereby make them more willing to take yours into account. Learners are often informed when their tests are scheduled, in some cases their homework tasks too, and by giving you this information, you can help avoid overload during particularly busy periods, thus increasing the likelihood that your tasks will get done.

Integration – Routines & Consequences:

Integrate the homework process into your classes more effectively. If learners know that you are always going to check the homework, they are more likely to do it. If they see that your commitment to homework checking and marking wavers, theirs will too. A routine check at the beginning of lessons, where whether the homework has been done is seen by the learners to be noted down may help here.

This leads onto the consequences of doing it and of not doing it. Many teachers employ a carrot and stick approach where learners who do the homework consistently are rewarded and those who do not are punished in some way. There are any number of ways in which you might implement such a system and in many respects these are probably best left to individual teachers in their different contexts to decide. Your school might well have views on this, or already have such systems in place. Reward systems I’ve seen used have ranged from star charts, computer room tokens, stamps and stickers, or the ever popular “homework pass”. I’ve even heard of one teacher who took the best homework contributors out for pizza! Punishments vary equally, though in schools I’ve worked in, homework is either treated as one aspect of misbehaviour in a wider discipline system, or is basically ignored until report card time when the student gets a “0” and the parent then comes storming in to find out what’s going on… but more on this last aspect in a moment.

Activities, warmers or lead in tasks that borrow from homework tasks (but do not duplicate them) when used at the start of lessons can reinforce to learners the benefits of doing the homework as those who’ve completed the homework will perform better than those who did not. For example the target items from a vocabulary homework exercise can be used as part of a revision game.

Organisation

It might be worth finding out from your learners what approach they take to doing their homework. What, for example, are their study habits? Do they do it on the bus on the way to school? Do they just copy from the one student who actually did it, just before the class starts? Do they have an organised rota system in place with answers being emailed or texted to everyone else? Or do they have a quiet place at home where they can sit and focus on the task in hand?

Getting this kind of information from your learners and having a discussion about what constitutes good study practice and how they can help themselves might be useful. Suggesting, however abhorrent the idea may be, that they turn off their mobile phones while they study so as to avoid distraction could be useful. Allocating a specific study time to their days for however long they need and organising a study area for them to work at might also help. Many learners might already have something like this in place, others might not. Opening up a discussion in the class would allow for the sharing of experiences and the working towards some form of “best practice”.

Parents

From a teacher’s perspective, getting the parents involved can be a tricky proposition. Some parents are heavily involved in their child’s education and others feel that this is the teacher’s responsibility alone. The general view amongst teachers, from what I’ve read, seems to be that parental involvement is a welcome thing – in moderation. As far as homework is concerned at least, it should be possible to set up a framework for the parents to best support the way their children do their homework. If you and your class have a working system in place, it can be worthwhile communicating that system to the parents so that they can contribute meaningfully to the process. For example, giving learners a “homework planner” which they can stick into their folders or into the front page of their coursebook, gives them a place to write down the tasks (which you can then check for accuracy) and which the parents can then check for completion.

Bringing parents into the dialogue that you’ve opened up with the learners about quantity, quality and organisation of homework can help them understand what and why you use homework for and how they can best help – even if that help only extends to leaving their kids alone for an hour or so a week! And it might help prevent the irate father showing up in the school reception to demand an explanation for the “zero” on that report card.

I hope this helps!

There is quite a lot to take on board here and quite a wide range of different things to try, some of which will work while others will not and some might not even be necessary. The key, though is the dialogue between you and your learners as to what you all think will work best for your situation. Try having that conversation, because if you do, the worst thing that will happen is that you’ll all understand each other a little better, even if you still don’t get much more homework handed in. Best case scenario? You’ll have a lot more marking to do!

Search results matching tags 'reading' and 'advanced'

First Lesson or First Week Ideas

The Vortex Game

Working with Project Classes

PROJECT:

LESSON 1:

LESSON 2:

LESSON 3:

OUTCOME:

Interclass Surveys

SS decide what they will survey and generate a questionnaire

Whole school mingle (somewhere!) and SS ask and answer each other’s questions

SS collate the data from their surveys and prepare their displays

SS poster displays are put up in the corridors etc. Other SS view the displays.

PhotoStory

SS plot their stories and decide which scenes need pictures taking

SS take their pictures out and about. (NB – need sufficient digital cameras?) Teachers print pictures

SS organise their images and write text captions / plot synopses.

SS poster displays are put up in the corridors etc Other SS view the displays.

Performance Poetry Festival

SS research some poems they like and choose one

SS dramatise the poem into a mini play?

SS gather to watch and perform

Performance based

Board GameBattle

SS plan and design a board game (on any topic / idea) and request materials

SS use the materials to create their board games. T feeds in “game” language etc

The SS and the games gather somewhere and play each others games and vote for the best one?

Demonstrations and playing of different games

Class Newspapers / Magazines

SS research news stories, either from their own country or elsewhere

SS incorporate / edit their stories into a single “newpaper” / magazine.

SS gather somewhere, swap their efforts and read each others – vote for the best?

Written / typed newspaper

(copies to take home?)

Shopaholics

SS spend half the time finding out how much they can buy for 50 pounds and half their time planning and designing their own shops

SS actually create their own shops (online pictures of items / shop catalogues?)

T teach polite requests & Shopkeeper argot.

SS then go shopping. The idea is to buy the highest number of things for 50quid without buying more than one of the same item