Well... I finally got brave enough to try this today with my lower level E1s. We had a bit of a Valentine's Day chat... much shorter than with my higher levels and then did a live reading. They struggled quite a bit with this in comparison to the E3s but they did manage to produce a pretty impressive text for their level ( I may be biased!)
Anway I decided to take the plunge and have a go at the disappearing text described by Jason Renshaw in Going, going gone in so removed the prepositions and some of the adjectives, which they managed fine. Then I removed the verbs, they did struggle a bit but managed! Then I removed everything except the nouns. Then finally I removed the whole lot ( well actually I wish I'd been brave enough) ... I left them with the first word of the first and fourth sentence but they didn't need it. Between them they came up with the whole text.
Absolutely unbelievable... they didn't think they could do it... you should have heard them when I said I was removing it all ( I did leave them with the red underline marks). But they did it! To be honest I still can't quite believe it worked! But it was a lot of fun :-) I guess my only concern with this was the weaker students didn't get to contribute as much. Although one of my very weakest ( who really shouldn't be at that level bless her!) several times came up with the right preposition when the others were struggling.
Oh and whilst we're on the topic of live readings etc.. I did my follow up session with my E3 class and they told me that last week's class was their favourite lesson so far. That it was a great way of learning and that normally reading is boring but when it's a reading that's "ours" it's much better! They also loved the word swimming.
Well I can't get enough of this whole approach at the moment! I'm so grateful for how willing people are to share these ideas and thoughts it's really magical.
Here's the final fully remembered reading from today. But again please excuse the horrendous handwriting... it had been rewritten about four times by this point!
You are so inspiring by how you share your integration of new methods. Your descriptions help clarify how Jason Renshaw's awesome ideas can be used. Keep sharing, please!
Posted by: Naomishema | 02/16/2011 at 03:19 PM
Thanks Naomi that's actually really encouraging ... I was wondering whether it was worth putting up some of my attempts at new stuff from this week ... but now I will :-)
Thank you!
Posted by: Anna Rose | 02/16/2011 at 07:13 PM
Another great activity. Please write to me at [email protected] , I'd like to share some language plant activities with you. One activity is exactly the same as the one you describe here, but because it's interactive, you click the word on and off instead of rubbing it off by hand. With coloured backgrounds, in the end you're left with just empty spaces for the learners to read. As you say, it's amazing what can be remembered.
Posted by: DavidWarr | 02/18/2011 at 09:59 AM
Thankyou for your very kind and encouraging comments today I will definitely email you about those activities. It's half term next week so I'll have a bit more time to get inspired and think about using some new ideas!! :-)))
Posted by: Anna Rose | 02/18/2011 at 06:10 PM
I linked to this post but I can't see that your blog shows this! I had a shot at this yesterday and will try again next week. Your explanation gave me the oonfidence to start experimenting with it!
Thanks!
Naomi Epstein
http://visualisingideas.edublogs.org/2011/02/25/comment-on-going-going-gone-in/
Posted by: Naomishema | 02/26/2011 at 11:13 AM
Hi Naomi
Thanks so much for letting me know. I had a look into linking and apparently typepad only does trackback for its pro bloggers... which I am not :-/ so I can't enable that feature unfortunately.
Very interested to hear how it went for you... I will pop across now :-)
Thank you
Anna
Posted by: Anna Rose | 02/27/2011 at 11:53 AM
Wonderful to hear how well this has worked for you.
Like you, I'm absolutely amazed at how well the learners internalise and recall the language through this activity (and like your learners, mine have always started out saying it's an impossible quest, only to really surprise themselves later).
Cheers,
- J
Posted by: Account Deleted | 03/12/2011 at 07:26 PM
Yeah... I actually haven't dared to try it again yet despite it working so well but I'm planning to have a go with my higher levels because if it works at this level it would certainly work for the learners with even more language at their disposal.
Thankyou :-)
Posted by: Anna Rose | 03/14/2011 at 11:07 PM