Search results matching tags 'reading' and 'listening'

960. My students like stories

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 10:54:00 GMT

Yesterday I implemented the following activity with my adult students – all of them are retired people that wish to learn English for traveling and visiting different countries.

Basically it was a listening activity, but it also had speaking and reading parts. It requires several steps. We have not finished yet – I expect tomorrow or on coming days. We’re enjoying the activity, and they like stories I invent.

Yesterday I started by writing some words and phrases from the text of a worksheet, so as to do a pre-listening exercise. On the whiteboard I wrote some words like: Katherine Stinson, sailboat, around the world, alone, dangerous, dangers in the ocean. We were discussing them so they could make kind of an idea about the story.

After that I read the story aloud, number by number.

After that step I handed out worksheets with the story, and again I read the story aloud, and we discussed and clarified some points of the story. They were writing notes of vocabulary. And they asked me many questions about some words that were new to them. I got amazed they had understood the story while I was reading it aloud for the first time.

I would say this was learning and even something of acquisition.

Of course you can use the worksheet if it’s any useful. / Photo from: sampedrosun com. Painting-by-Terryl-Godoy-Man-at-Work-4

Worksheet # 145

The Unbelievable Story of Katherine Stinson

February 4, 2013

1. Katherine Stinson is a courageous and brave woman. At 23 she has been the first woman in sailing around the earth completely alone. She states her guardian angel has been an allied friend though.

2. She sailed off from Hawking Harbor, on January 2, 2013, close to New York City.

3. Her sailboat / sailing boat was about 80 ft (24.38 meters) long.

4. The mast was around 20 meters high.

5. During her trip around the world she has faced two strong storms, waves 10 yards high, but on the other hand she had to suffer some dead calms.

6. The firm Lucky Strike has been the main sponsor: they have invested $ 6,000. Its logotype was painted on the big sail.

7. She could keep in touch with her manager, Ray Branson, all the time, by radio and with the help of communication satellites.

8. She could count on him.

9. In case she was in a dreadful situation, up to the point she could perish because of a storm or a crevice in the skull for example, she could call Ray Branson, and this person would send powerful large motor boats to rescue her.

10. There were about 50 points along the route where those large motor boats could set off at once.

11. Moreover, in other hazardous or dangerous circumstances for her, Mr. Branson would send a helicopter to rescue her. She had GPS (Global Positioning System).

12. It’s a relief she achieved the harbor of New York after 28 days. She has suffered diseases, storms, fog… but she says the most dreadful thing is solitude.

13. Oh, I’ve got to say that Ray is her husband. He was one of the people that received and welcomed her, together with their kids / children, Kevin and Sarah and many other people.

949. People talk

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:02:00 GMT

One day teacher of English A said to teacher of English B, “We’ve been talking a lot about teaching and learning English in this blog – which can be applied to any other modern language.

Have you ever thought that language is something between two people – at least.

I guess it’s sound to focus on this point now. Two people at least, ok, but, what about a person that is reading? The answer is so simple, as many of you may have thought of: that person is reading what someone has written: two people again.

How can a person learn English, or even acquire it, on his own? He can learn a lot on his own, but coming to the head, that person will need at least one person who talk with. And in the clasroom obviously there’re many You’s to talk with.

Any person needs a You with whom to talk to, in other terms – I mean, a person cannot live with anybody else, as a principle, tentatively.

You and I as teachers of modern languages should think of all this, I would say.” / Photo from: simplebeachay72 blogspot com. average people talk about things

905. A way of practicing the four skills

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 09:30:00 GMT

One day teacher of English B said to teacher of English A, “When we communicate with one another we do it by using the four skills of a language: listening, speaking, reading and writing. So it is sensible you make your students practice those four skills. Your students will be gaining experience by using them. Our students don’t only read and write in English. Try to balance those four skills in your classes. Sometimes one single activity will demand using several skills along it or at the same time.

Those four skills, natural skills, should be assessed and evaluated by you and by your students.

Now I’m trying to think of an activity that should combine different skills in a naturalistic way – it isn’t complex at all to think of one. Well, you can work on an article about the formation of the mountain ridge of Sierra Nevada, near Granada, south of Spain.

Those mountains are ‘young’ and ‘new’: as far as I know they are growing in altitude; they aren’t mountains that are only being eroded like any other mountain in the surface of the earth.

Briefly. It's just an example. First you all can discuss about the fact that this ridge is going up, and you present an estimation of how high the peaks were millions of years ago, by means of diagrams projected by a video projector.

After that they can listen to you reading an actual article about all this.

Then you all can shortly keep on discussing about this phenomenon. Then you teacher hand out copies of the article among the students.

They’ll have to present a summary of the article. So they read the article, while they’re writing notes about important facts and points. Don’t do this activity very long.

At the end one student will present a summary of the article, and you could ask for further points from the other students, so as complete the information or make predictions for the future.” / Photo from: antonioboveda blogspot com. Recursos Didácticos de Ciencias Sociales. Formación geológica de la Península Ibérica. Los grandes períodos de la historia geológica de la corteza terrestre. Sierra Nevada should be in the southern side of Sistema Bético. Península Ibérica is Portugal in a rather small part of the west and Spain is the rest of the peninsula, the larger part of it.

877. It was like discovering a new landscape

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 13:48:00 GMT

One day teacher of English A said to teacher of English B, “I know a young man with a bit interesting story about learning English.

He had been learning English since he was around 11 years. When he passed to the secondary education, 14 years old, he pretty soon noticed that the subject of English now was harder. In fact, he wasn’t able to get higher grades than mere pass. He didn’t know what to do to get higher grades and gain some capability to understand and speak in English in class.

One day at home he opened up his course book, at some dialogs they had studied that day, and began to read those texts again, carefully, attentively, slowly. He then realized he was able to understand more than in the morning classes that day.

Those texts had some message, some meaningful messages from one character to another. He could understand pretty well then.

Once he told me that those moments were very important to change and face the texts, either by listening or by reading, more intelligently. Today he’s a teacher of English too. He told me that since then the course book of English turned into something interesting, with nice stories about the characters and simple funny situations.” / Photo from: friendlyplanet com. norway fjords

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!

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?

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!

Giving Feedback – 20 ways to do it!

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 18:56:44 GMT

Giving feedback on classroom tasks is a tricky thing to come up with ideas for. Broadly, I think methods can be broken down into Collaborative / Competitive / Partial / Full. The four methods can interact, so you can have competitive partial feedback, followed by collaborative full feedback – or vice versa.

Collaborative methods might involve learners checking specific answers with you and boarding correct versions – or you can monitor and ask stronger students to board the odd correct answer. Thus all the learners eventually, by a process of deduction and copying, end up with the right answers. Or they might involve giving learners specific answers and asking them to show the answers to each other (as per the silent mingle).

Competitive methods will inevitably involve a certain amount of movement, energy and the occasional broken limb. Board races, team games and points allocation all play a part.

Partial feedback methods will often involve allocating points, but not actually correcting the answers. With multiple choice, you might say “you need 4 As, 2 Bs, 1 C and 3 Ds”. Or my favourite is “you’ve got six wrong”. Partial feedback methods should ideally be used for one of two purposes – either to provide additional support for a difficult task, or possibly to slow down the faster finishers, or those learners who focus more on task completion than on accuracy.

Full feedback – essentially this is making sure everyone has a correct set of answers. It does however go a little beyond that, as you might want to check that learners understand why the answers are correct. Concept questions and checking questions are useful here.

The twenty different ideas listed below all arose from contributions made by everyone who was at a seminar I ran at International House Coimbra on March 22^nd 2011. My thanks to the participants (Jo, Jenny, Dave T, Kate, Jessica, Vera, Alexis, Dave C, Anna, Neil, Stella, Judy, Patricia, Marta, Michael, Daniel) for their contributions.

The notes given are my understanding of the different methods that were described – if I didn’t get any of it quite right or if you have an alternative way of doing it, please let me know!

A pdf version of this post is available to download here: teflgeek – giving feedback

1. Horse Racing:

Learners are in teams, each team has a “horse” (picture cut out) stuck to the board along a “track”, presumably with the same number of squares as there are questions. For every question a team gets right, their horse moves further along the track to the finishing line.

2. Gambling:

Learners are in teams, each team allocated a certain number of points / amount of fictional cash to gamble with. If they get the answer right, they win more cash – if it’s wrong they lose their stake!

3. Connect Four:

As with the popular game (which you could use if you have it available), the object is to get a horizontal or vertical line of four. The size of the grid can vary depending on how many questions you have to answer. A correct answer allows a team to “drop” a token into a column that they choose. A full explanation of the original game can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect_Four. An online version of the game can be found here: http://www.fetchfido.co.uk/games/connect_4/connect_4.htm

4. Board Race:

Learners in two or three teams, which line up in files. A relay race then ensues with one learner from each team running to the board and writing up an answer before giving the pen to the next person in the team and going to the back of the line and so on. Points can be awarded for the fastest team to finish, then for correct answers and deductions made for spelling mistakes and so on. I’ve found it useful to have a chair marking the “start” line, beyond which only the learners with the pens are allowed, so as to prevent crowding and cheating at the board.

5. Group Comparison

A peer-teaching method where learners compare and correct their answers in groups. This also means that it allows the teacher to focus on the really difficult questions as most of the easier ones will have been dealt with at the group level.

6 Changing Pairs

Similar to group comparison, but done in pairs, though different pairs to any pairwork that occurred while learners were completing the task. A thought I just had was that you could also do this by allocating A and B to the learners and every two minutes the A’s stand up and move clockwise or the Bs stand up and move anti-clockwise. Thus all the learners would interact with each other eventually.

7 Answer Votes

Learners vote for the answers they think are correct.

8 Read out loud:

Learners read through the text one sentence at a time, providing the answer they think is correct as they get to a gap.

9 This many wrong

When examining a completed learner exercise, don’t tell the learners which questions they got wrong, only how many questions they got wrong. An extension of this – when a learner has got all the questions right, they can become the teacher and tell their peers how many are still incorrect.

10 Stand Up Sit down

As the teacher reads out possible answers to the question, learners stand up if they think the answer is correct and remain seated if they think it is incorrect. Possibly easiest to run this with multiple choice tasks.

11 Mini-boards

By laminating blank A4 paper (pastel shades or white paper work best for this), you can create mini-board which learners can write on with standard board pens. Pairs or teams can then write their answers on the boards and hold them up at the same time to show their answers. If you don’t have laminated mini-boards available, this is a good way to make in-roads into the scrap paper pile by the photocopier.

12 On the board

You can give learners the answers on the board in a number of ways – either just writing them up in order, writing up the number of different multiple choice answers (e.g. “there are 3 A, 2 B, 1 C, 4 D”), or you could just write up the answers in random places across the board. You could also include some distractors here, wrong answers that learners try to avoid!

13 Noughts & Crosses / Tic Tac Toe

Simple enough – learners in two teams and a correct answer wins learners a chance to take a square!

14 Round the Room

Put the answers up on the walls of the classroom, learners mingle and work out what goes where. A variety of this might be to put the answers on the learners (post it notes / sticky taped to their backs).

15 Jenga

If you have this game available, it can be a fun way of doing feedback. Teams with a correct answer can either elect to remove a block or make the other team remove a block. A full description of jenga can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenga. An online version (requires FLASH) can be found here: http://www.unoriginal.co.uk/jenga.html

16 First Letter Last Letter

As a partial feedback technique, give teams the first and last letters of each answer.

17 Bin Basketball

Teams with a correct answer win the chance to throw a paper ball into the rubbish bin. Make sure they don’t through away the handout! An alternative for multiple choice tasks might be to have four bins, marked A, B, C & D and learners throw their paper balls at the correct basket (might need different coloured paper balls?).

18 Coloured Tick method

Learners are in different teams, allocated to a different colour board pen. Question numbers are on the board. As learners think they have a correct answer, they check it with you and are either told right or wrong. If they are right, they get a tick in their team’s colour next to the relevant question. That question is then gone and can’t be answered by other teams.

19 The square game.

For this you need to put a dot grid (i.e. three rows of three dots) on the board. Each team is allocated a different colour board pen. On giving a correct answer, each team gets the chance to connect two of the dots in their colour. The object is to complete a square. Squares can be made of different coloured lines, but the team that draws the line which completes the square gets to colour the square in their team’s colour.

20 TPR answers

Give each learner one of the answers and learners put themselves in the correct order for the text.

If anyone would like any further clarification of the tasks or actitvities listed, please let me know.

A pdf version of this post is available to download here: teflgeek – giving feedback

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First Lesson or First Week Ideas

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

Whole school roleplay / “controlled” language practice

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