Butterflies and Bowties...

 
by fox kiyo 

The idea of un)-plug-(un lessons is one that has been hovering in my subconscious ever since I read it on Jason Renshaw's  site. There's something about the idea that seems to maximise creativity and uses all a teacher's skills. You have to manage an emergent moment, guide it into something on the spot and then on reflection create a piece of material that captures the heart of that moment.

However, unlike the horrendous art of butterfly pinning, after capturing the moment, you take it into class and let it take flight again in anyway it likes. There are many ways of doing this (and I would like to learn some more!) but the one I'm enjoying at the moment is Live Reading. So when my barely literate and barely speaking Early Entry Burmese came into my class last week desperate to tell me all about their trip to the caves in Clapham, I couldn't carry on with my planned 'directions' session!

It took awhile for me to even figure out what they'd done but their excitement was infectious so together we found the words to express their experiences, first as a discussion, and then on the board. In hindsight there was too much language for their level but it was all stuff they wanted to say and I'll learn to be more concise next time!

Then, while they practiced reading it, I nipped next door and put it on card so they could order it in groups. It was easy to differentiate as I just cut it into more pieces for more able learners.

Next, a bit of pronuncation and word practice and using their magnetic letters they practiced spelling some of the key vocab.

 

The following class I had a go at inputting the text into a template by Jason with a few simple word level practice activities and ended up with this.

Download Class Trips

There was definitely too much text, even though I edited it down, but the reaction was postive. My learners respond well to professional looking resources, especially when those materials contain their work! 

We played around with the text again, the learners took it in turns to read the sentences, and despite the text being way above their skill level, they made another really good stab at reading and understanding. When it came to matching the pictures, the task was challenging but possible, and lent itself to differentiation, as the faster learners completed harder anagrams on the board.

The materials led easily into a discussion about class trips in general. We chatted about when and where we were going for our class trip :-)

Since that class, the learners have taken the reading home with them, practiced it, written it out for themselves and tried the tasks alone, without me asking them too. I think they thoroughly enjoyed all aspects of the session, subsequent material and discussion despite the difficulty level!

I really believe there's a lot of mileage in this approach for learners and it creates a high level of job satisfaction for me so thanks as usual to Jason Renshaw :-)

Any tips or ideas for how to improve this lesson or how to handle a similar situation differently would be very welcome! :-D

 

Comments

[Jason Renshaw]

Seriously wonderful stuff going on here, Anna. It's a real delight to see the way you orient things around your learners and their lives, and breathe so much fresh air into your teaching approach and reflection.

There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that this was a very rich learning experience for your learners. And, personally, I'm glad to see someone else try the butterfly bowtie approach and have it work well for them. To me this makes the most of both unplugged and plugged approaches, with better results than either one on its own.

Keep up the fabulous work!

- Jason

[DavidWarr]

Fantastic, both of you. I think Jason has found a technique here, and the materials to support it that help learners create highly professional work. I do believe, and your class supports this, that the quality of the end-product affects the process. In a product/process dichotomy, product always (usually?) gets brushed off, but you can't have a process without a product in mind. When you're working on the text, do you find that learners come up with a number of possibilities, e.g. we like trips, we love trips, we really like outings etc.? Who ultimately decides on the final draft? What happens to the unused language?

[Naomishema]

Anna, you took advantage of their motivation completely!
You said "there was definetly too much text" but when the students are working with the story THEY want to tell the extra text is needed and doesn't get in the way of the work at hand. I'm very impressed with the number of ways you "milked their story" for all its worth!
I like the way you individualized the task for different levels of learners while having them all do the same task. Do you keep a folder for these stories? Interesting to have them read it again a month from now!
Loved the way you related the title of the post to the lesson!

[Anna Rose]

Thankyou for all your wonderful comments. I will respond properly after work. Just wanted to say that I did not mean to narcissistically favourite my own post! Unfortunately I cannot figure out how to unfavourite it :-/

[Anna Rose]

Thank you Jason you are such an encouraging person to "be around" :-) and as Anatole France says, “Nine tenths of education is encouragement.”

It's as true for me as for my learners so thank you once again for taking the time! I especially value the "fresh air" comment as this has been my feeling in classes that I've experimented with. When I haven't had time and fallen back on old habits and ways of teaching "stale" would be the best way to describe much of the session!

I agree that the 'both and' works well. My attitude in the past to material creation has been fairly lazy. I spent my time looking for resources rather than cre-apting them ...not that much has changed. Even now the learners do most of the work ;-p A lot more fulfilling though and totally impossible for me without the forward thinking of people like you experimenting with open source education! :-)

David Another lovely comment to receive - you are right and the product is something I do want to work on. Something to remember the lesson with that isn't pieces of throw away scraps, something the learners can look back on with pride, that they've invested in, that means something to them. A learner from that class brought me a piece of writing she'd done with another teacher. She'd painstakingly typed it up and proudly showed me the printed results. I was very impressed, having that particular class do that must have been a real labour of love for this other teacher, but the result was a piece of paper that really held value to that learner.

With this particular class I don't know all the possibilities they came up with. A lot was negotiated in their L1 together as they scrambled to find words, any words! A lot of the grammar was added by me, however, the vocab was all their own. Hence the long, rambling and slightly random sentence in the middle where they painstakingly found each word in the back of their minds to express what they saw! (I was very impressed that one of them knew garlic!) There was unused language though, even with this level... I guess in the end I was the editor, although with higher groups, they've had the final say.

It's an interesting point you've raised. Makes me think a nice activity would be to brainstorm all the words, sentences , phrases and then let the learners choose to put them together how they like, as individuals. Including the aspects of the trip that were more special to them. Hmmmm.... I wonder if that would have worked and I think it might!

Of course a beautiful language plant is always a wonderful way to go! ;-p

Naomi you write such beautiful comments. There's a real depth to the way you read and respond that makes it all feel worthwhile :-)

I did get completely caught up in the story which is why it was so long. However, when reading it together it was clear that despite the ideas coming from them the length of text was a stumbling block.

They all have their own folders where they keep their class work so we can refer to it at a later point. (I'm not always terribly good at doing this.)

Thank you for taking the time to share your comments with me.... so appreciated :-)

[DavidWarr]

Very interesting follow-up comments.

[Anna Rose]

Thank you I do my best ;-p

[Alan Tait]

Great to hear of such a productive and meaningful lesson.

Just as a tangential afterthought, I wonder how many teachers are tied to the coursebook or syllabus, and will have little time to actually facilitate real learning.

[Anna Rose]

Hi Alan - thanks so much and yes an interesting tangent. Although in many ways ESOL is EFL's poorer cousin one clear advantage is that there's rarely a set coursebook / schedule that we're forced to follow. It's more of a make do and mend sort of environment very conducive to teaching unplugged. I'm really lucky in that respect :-)

Thanks for your comment!