Came back after my lesson today to discover something seriously exciting! David Warr of Language Garden fame has just released his plant maker - along with a challenge to review a lesson and make the highlights into a plant.
So, the above plant is some of the words we came up with in class today when we thought of Bradford, as per the lesson I wrote about here. There was obviously a variety of opinion, some of them opposing, but we had a great time chatting about it. The materials were actually a bit too hard for them - they are more towards the low end of E2. However, they still found the session interesting - at least they seemed too :-)
Anyway, thank you very much Mr Language Gardener - you've made my day. If we ever do get our promised interactive whiteboards it will be a lot of fun to use in class!
Edit: Below is my second slightly more complex attempt with the Churchill quote: "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But I'm hoping it is the end of the beginning." Which applies just as well to my language plants as to WW 2 I'm sure ;-p This plant was a real labour of love as it crashed twice when trying to save it but I got there in the end :-)
Often tickets are used for very practical activities in classrooms like role-plays etc… which is great. However, after seeing a ticket on Sandy Millin’s wonderful infinite ideas website a few creative ideas were sparked in my head. I’ve posted there as well but really like the Teaching Unplugged framework. After reading Mike’s excellent post, where he also used that framework very effectively, I felt inspired to have a go. Do check out both blogs and obviously the book. I've already used Mike's travel recommendations lesson with great success :-)
Anyway, here's my lesson. Not sure if it fully qualifies as unplugged but it's certainly materials light and myself and several colleagues have had really fun lessons with it.
Think about it
Tickets open doors. Think back over your life experiences. A magical afternoon at the zoo, the concert of a lifetime, a trip through snowy and unfamiliar landscapes on the way to your first job in a foreign land. These are just a few examples of experiences made possible by a ticket. If you’re doing a topic like transport, journeys or events why not take a bit of time to find out what your learners’ experiences have been. Do they have any stories to tell? Or can they imagine some?
Get it ready
Bring in a bus ticket, football match ticket, plane ticket etc… Also different shapes and sizes of coloured paper cut into the shapes of various kinds of tickets.
Set it up
Pass your chosen ticket round the class. Ask learners to imagine what the story of that ticket might be. What happened to the person who bought it, what did they experience whilst they were using it? Allow time for discussion. Ask the learners if they have ever had an interesting experience whilst using a ticket? What kind of ticket was it? Discuss the different purposes of tickets.
Let it run
Pass out the slips of paper. In pairs or small groups, ask the learners to create their own ticket. It can be any kind of ticket.
Ask everyone in the class to exchange their tickets with the group sitting next to them.
With their new ticket the groups decide on the story of that ticket and write a short narrative.
Round it off
Each group shows the class their ticket, reads out the story and answers any questions. Tutor feeds back on emergent language as appropriate.
Follow up
Learners discuss where they would go/what they would do if they had a magic ticket to anywhere. Possibly creating a WEG style table .
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.
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
So... lots to reflect on after today - some real highs and some areas to work on!
Highs!
The moment when a Polish, male learner could not stop laughing. I have no idea what set him off but it looked like he was laughing at his Asian, female partner whilst she was speaking. I'm sure he wasn't! But dynamics in a class of boisterous, flirtatious Polish guys with strict Muslim ladies isn't always the easiest and it could have gone oh so wrong! But we were using what came up in the classroom so I taught them got the giggles. Up it went on the board. We chatted about what to say in similar situations to avoid offense e.g. "so sorry I've got the giggles". By the end my Asian ladies were laughing and thanking him for teaching them new language :-)Later one of the ladies also got the giggles, which everyone loved pointing out.
The creativity and variety of stories that came out of the reverse reading on Saira's Day ... from Valentine's Day surprises and a house decorated in celebration of a birthday to a special trip to the seaside and the return of a long-lost sister.
The noticing that went on when I let them be the teachers whilst they were correcting eachother's texts. For example, "Anna they've spelt morning wrong haven't they?" "No, no that's right." "Ohhh ... I've spelt mornign wrong haven't I?" "Yep... but it's great that you noticed!!"
The level of engagement and activity as they started their own coursebooks in their notebooks, used texts they were genuinely interested in, checked new vocab with me and eachother, wrote their own questions and had a laugh correcting their partner's mistakes and successes.
Areas to work on!
Language feedback! I love the principles and ideals behind Teaching Unplugged and the many many ideas contained within. Including the one I tried today. I can 'set it up'... I can 'let it run'.... but I need to get so much better at 'rounding it off'. Orally taking in what they are saying, how they are saying it and how I can move it forward is a real area of development for me. I can focus on content, I can focus on form and I can focus on ways to improve but not all at the same time. Not yet anyway. So in the first class... we just did content feedback. In the next class I did write up some good examples of language I'd noticed and then we fedback onto the board some more ways you could keep a conversation going e.g. follow up questions, appropriate contributions, discourse markers etc... But I have a long way to go in terms of developing that vital teaching skill!
Making time for vocab! Recycling vocab is so important and I don't give enough time for it... and again we ran out of time before I could try out Cecilia's great ideas! So first thing next week... ;-p
Overall impressions of the day...good... the learners were engaged and enjoying the activities and once again... I was left wishing we had more time. Instead of scrambling to fill the time with anything and everything, letting the break drag on a little too long etc... we were really using the time and there's always so much more that could be done. With the notebooks as coursebooks session they only got as far as answering eachother's questions in the books. The listenings, the dictogloss, the projects... haven't even got there yet.
There's a lot to learn and I'm a long way from where I want to be but there were more than enough moments to feather my magpie's nest with today. So thanks again ELT bloggers you're transforming my teaching world :-)
Edit: After reading the comments on Jason's post regarding using disasters as a teaching prompt I would just like to say how deeply sorry I am for any offense this post has caused. My enthusiasm was related to the techniques and approach not the terrible events in Japan. What happened and is happening in Japan is clearly a tragedy. If the learners had indicated uneasiness or an unwillingness to continue I would have taken the lesson in a different direction. Instead it seemed to me they wanted to express their thoughts and feelings. Whilst I do believe the classroom is an appropriate place to address world events... even tragic ones... I will try to be much more sensitive in the future when talking about it in such a public space :-(
After my first Scene it! lesson failed I wanted to try again with that class. They've been asking for another Live Reading session ever since Valentine's Day. (That never happens!) So I decided today to do a session following the recent disaster in Japan. We started with an image of the Tsunami... using Jason Renshaw's great Scene It! templates.
This was followed by some vocab brainstorming and a discussion. They were all quite deeply concerned and distressed by the recent events and wanted to talk about it.
We then created a Breaking News report using a Live Reading. Once again they thoroughly enjoyed this task. One learner said "this work makes us feel alive". Well I've never had a response like that in class before!
Here's what they produced.
They copied it down onto their SceneIt sheets and by the time they'd done a bit of WordWise work the time had gone. However, it gave me several ideas for some follow up project work and I remembered another amazing template that the English Raven has shared here.
So this afternoon I adapted it, typed in their own class created reading as the text (yay :-) ) and hey presto... another learner created piece of content that looks professional, is topical and only took a little extra time to produce.
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)
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 …
DictoglossPlace 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:
A very natural addition to my collection today... a language flower
I was wandering around the delight that is the Language Garden blog and felt uplifted by what I saw and read there. It just made a connection in my brain and was so fresh and ... well enchanting.
Then today in class as they were trying to make sentences out of word cards I'd given them ... they started to connect the days of the week words and the afternoon, morning, evening words and something in my head clicked. The next thing we were growing the bloom you see before you and I loved it! I always clean my board after a lesson. I think it's rude and inconsiderate not too but I was too proud of this... so I confess I left it for the next person to use that classroom!
...so will see how they get on with it tomorrow. They really are a very very beginner class with few study skills so I'm interested to see if they've managed to practice. :-)
Now these don't look all that pretty and to begin with when I saw them on the English Raven's blog I wasn't too sure what to do with them but I've since tried them twice. Once with my Burmese absolute beginner refugees and once with my mixed nationalities Entry One group. It was a learning experience that didn't work 100% with the beginner group. However, the E1 class was amazing.
I've really struggled with this group... none of my go-to ideas work that great... however, since trying a more unplugged approach I've really began to enjoy teaching this group.
So the lesson: Well the syllabus and exam does not require more grammar of them at this state than present simple and continuous so this activity was a bit risky.
I started by just chatting as they came in. I asked them what they did at the weekend. What they like to do normally and what they will do next weekend. Some great conversation ensued including teaching one of my Polish learners that the word he was looking for to describe how he felt after a fairly heavy weekend of drinking was rough. Then I handed out the grids and demoed on the board what I wanted them to put.
Then off they went... finding out from eachother. I've done FSW / grid activities before but the questions have already been provided. This gave them the freedom to ask a question in the past, present and future and it was easy for me to monitor and correct slips e.g. "you work last weekend?" "Oh sorry I worked last weekend" Despite not being on their syllabus it was well within their ability as we were not massively focusing on the form but rather communicating about their lives.
Loved it! Could easily have developed into a writing activity if I'd had time but "letting it run" worked so well that it lasted way longer than anticipated with all my learners fully engaged with eachother despite language, cultural, religous and gender! barriers!
One of the first ideas I stumbled across online was Teaching Unplugged by Scott Thornbury and Luke Meddings. It made so much sense and despite having a department budget I decided to buy the book personally. It felt important for some reason and as I read it my lungs began to expand even further. The ideas these guys were expressing and quoting were like someone putting into words a fuzzy feeling you had from time to time after a class had gone well or when you'd taught a lesson without a brick load of photocopying.
The students asking the questions, relying on your interactions to direct the class, content being decided by them, language emerging organically, providing a safe and rich space in which you and the students can play. It sounded amazing. But then on top of that there were pages and pages of ideas ready to go. What more could you ask for?
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