Magpie Moments

Doing Dictogloss with E1s (elementary)

Dictogloss is one of those ideas I've been aware of for a number of years but never tried. However, reading about other people's experiences recently inspired me to have a go. After reading the English Raven's blog on the subject, I found David Dodgson's excellent post here, where he provided a very interesting, detailed and helpful description, especially the way he scaffolded the task to make it accessible to his lower level learners. (Do go and read it if you haven't already but in brief it was wordle of text -discussion, look at pictures, listen to text, fill in table, listen again, fill in second part of table, listen again, anything else? Recreate!)

My first attempt was not hugely successful. I tried it with my Early Entry Twos ... (very pre-entry, illiterate in their own language, refugees) They enjoyed the wordle and talking about my family and to be fair the task was quite challenging and helpful for them in terms of filling in the table. But it took too much time and they just didn't have the language to do the next stage. I think my text was too long... although I did think it would work with E1s!

Here's my materials if you want to have a look :-)

Download Dictogloss family

I passed the idea on to another teacher and she took it a step further by creating a text based around her house and 'there is/are' that her E1 learners had been working on. She didn't get to the actual text recreation either but she really enjoyed the lesson. This was mainly because her learners loved the task so much especially the personal nature of the text.

Her version is here:

Download Dictogloss katie

Then inspired by this I wrote a text about my neighbourhood to do with my E1s and wahoo it worked! They enjoyed the discussion, they enjoyed working together, they found it challenging and didn't think they could do it but... every single group recreated a great approximation of the text. Even better it led straight into some fun speaking and then personal writing on their neighbourhoods which I can use to try out the next WriteWays Unit found here next week!

Materials here:

Download Dictogloss Anna

I love this idea. It's infinitely adaptable and personal... especially if you write the text about yourself or something meaningful to the learners. Certainly with lower levels you could pretty much write the text on the spot if need be.

So thanks to everyone in the blogging world who wrote about their experiences of Dictogloss ... and in particular David Dodgson! :-)

Rose lesson...

Ok so for anyone who is interested this is the lesson I'm going to try out next week. Please see previous post for details of how I was inspired by various pages on the English Raven's blog as many of the teaching ideas below are his.

Image – Show learners image of rose and ask them for words that come to their head. Brainstorm onto the board.

 Follow up conversation: When I see a rose I think of….  etc…See where the discussion goes…

 Depending on how the discussion goes etc.. other things might happen but then I am going to tell them that the image made me think of a song by The Safires called Sweet Rose.

 Wordle – guess as a class about the song based on the vocabulary (and vocabulary size/frequency)

Listen to the song….  Discuss any meaning issues… do songs need to make sense? etc…

 Sight and sound – divide the class into two halves, listen again with one group listening to the words, the other half concentrating on the music. Each group should write down adjectives to describe what they hear (feelings, mood, etc.) and then share as a class, making lists for poet and music on the whiteboard. How does it make them feel? Do any lines jump out that they liked particularly? Why? 

Gap fill Ask learners to listen again and fill in the gaps (I’ve removed all the verbs)

Download Song-gap-fill

Language focus: Once they’ve got the completed lyrics in front of them I’ll ask them to identify what the main tense is (present simple). Then think about why. (It’s trying to convey a sense of now, how she currently feels, describing a moment, wanting it to feel immediate etc..) Look again at the verbs are they positive or negative? Why?

Language focus 2: Ask them to try to locate which places the singer goes to? E.g. within your eyes, through shards of light, within your sighs, to this earth, in the secret of your smile, in the sand, the palm of your hand, the ocean so blue below etc… See if they notice the prepositions of place and discuss this.

Depending on time maybe …

Dictogloss Place the students in teams and play the performance up to trace, (with the teams writing down what they hear/remember during the interludes between each stanza), with students pooling and discussing their notes (without referring to the original) and then attempting to reconstruct the song as accurately as possible. Have them refer to the original version of the song to self-correct their answers (as notes alongside their reconstructions).

Then…

Speaking follow up 1: Which place would you go to if you could? Why?

Speaking follow up 2: It’s time to tell one of your stories – where do you like to go to when you can? Use your imagination. Tell your partner and listen to their story. Tell the group.

Writing follow up: Individually or in pairs write a true or fictional story about a place they go to or would like to go to and why it’s special.

There are many other things I could do I'm sure but that's what I'm going to try out! I'm looking forward to it!

If anyone happens to want to try this as well here are the teaching notes in downloadable format:

Download Song Teaching notes

Download Song-gap-fill

 

Any feedback on how I could improve this, any additional ideas or any other thoughts would be most welcome :-)