Search results matching tags 'writing', 'grammar', 'speaking', and 'upper intermediate'

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!

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!

A lesson on Learning Goals – Ken Robinson TED Talk

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 18:07:45 GMT

I first watched Ken Robinson’s TED talk – “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” some months ago – a thought provoking examination of the aims of the educational establishment. It has influenced my thinking about the aims of teaching quite heavily, though perhaps more on this in a later post.

It occurred to me that this would be a nice talk to use with a class…

A basic lesson outline is included below the talk – it is primarily a discussion based lesson, so any language input would be reactive and immediate (i.e. when learners want to know how to express their views in a particular way) rather than pre-planned – though I would suggest following an output-feedback model and making careful notes on language use throughout the discussion period, so that a corrective feedback / reformulation stage can follow at the end.

This also functions as a class needs analysis, so you might also want to take some detailed notes on the content of their ideas! By the end of the lesson, your learners may have arrived at a set of learning outcomes or, at the very least a set of more general goals they would like to try and achieve by the end of the course. This may well guide your thinking when planning out the course or individual lessons, and by relating the lessons to the goals the learners decided for themselves, it might help increase learner motivation and participation in the classroom.

Lesson Outline:

(1) Lead In Discussion: three questions on the board: (a) What’t the point of education? (b) Does education achieve it’s aims? (c) How would you change the system to make it better?

(2) Video Task – play Sir Ken’s talk (as above) and ask them to make notes on his answers to the questions and whether they agree or not. Do some reactive content feedback.

(3) Ask the learners to relate these ideas to your lessons – be prepared to receive some harsh criticisms! But, at the same time try to direct these into constructive criticisms… Some guidance questions: (a) what do you think the aims of our classes are? (b) What do you think the aims of these classes should be? (c) What do you think are the best ways to achieve these aims?

(4) Pyramid discussion. Ask each learner to try and arrive at ten specific goals they want to achieve within the remaining classes of their course. Then pair the learners, who must then agree both on a set of ten and rank them in order of importance. Then put the learners into larger groups of four or five, to do the same task – agree on ten goals in order of importance. Finally, bring the whole class together and hand over the classroom to them – get them to nominate a “scribe” to collate the feedback and to get the list of ten goals up on the board.

(NB) their initial goals can be as frivolous as they wish – mostly the more humorous goals will be winnowed out during the discussion stages. But it is important to guide to into phrasing attainable goals, otherwise frustration looms large!

(5) Let them know you’ll use these ideas to guide your planning of the rest of the course.

(6) Provide a language correction / reformulation as appropriate.

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