Magpie Moments

Moments from an unplugged day...

                                                                                                Image by Dan Belton

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 :-)

 

the return of a long-lost sister,

 

More WriteWays experimentation...

The thing that I'm finding hardest about trying out some of these new teaching approaches is giving more detailed language feedback. So I am so grateful for the template that Jason Renshaw made available here.

It's funny I was thinking about this yesterday. Whilst this resource is great for learners in its own right in many ways the resources and templates Jason's making available are kind of like scaffolding for teachers. In the same way that I make worksheets simpler or create boxes and grids to encourage my learners to try new things... these templates do the same for me!

So whilst the learners were on their break, (following the adjectives session I described here)  I rushed to the staff room, typed their errors into the template and printed it.

It's here if you're interested...

Download WritewaysA'sE1errors

They then corrected all their spellings as a group without too much trouble (we've done this before) and we went on to the sentence errors.

However, they found the sentence errors much harder to correct. As did I! I was desperately trying to think of how to explain some of the rules off the cuff while they tried to figure out what the mistake actually were. I must admit I didn't do all of them. Below you can see my attempts at some.
I actually tried to convince them to delay the rule and pattern section till next class to give me time to prepare but they really wanted to do it there and then. Which in itself is encouraging! What was also encouraging was that for the first error they just could not see the missing article but after we'd gone over the rules/patterns they immediately spotted a missing article in the third sentence.

Well by the end of this whole session I was exhausted... but... it made me realise how much I do actually know and how useful that is for the students especially when delivered in such a focused way to meet their individual needs.

My plan is now to brush up on my grammar knowledge using this great book by Scott Thornbury! ;-p

Giving Feedback...

One of the things that I keep coming back to with this whole teaching unplugged thing is collecting and giving feedback. I don't feel like I do it particularly well or regulary.

I watched this the other night about some people unplugging their CELTA intial teacher training course.  It does take an hour to watch but it was fascinating for all sorts of reasons! I'd love to go on some kind of two day CELTA update course along those lines... with regards to feedback (which starts about 26 minutes in) I loved how they listened to their trainees and demoed giving feedback on their language before asking them to listen to their learners and helping them give feedback in the same way to their learners.

The other thing that struck me about feedback recently was what Cecilia Cohelo said here about words and their power. What struck me in particular was the examples she gave of comments e.g. we often  respond to learners with

“Great!” “Perfect!” “Good job!”  instead of really listening and personalising the comment e.g. “Great! I also like going to the beach on my holidays Julia!” or “Yes! And what was the last film you’ve watched Lucas?”.

Both these kinds of feedback - the form focused and the content focused require that I really listen to my learners and I find that quite challenging.  However, one of the things I like about the whole unplugged approach is it does seem to free up a lot of time to do this. So I'm going to make an effort to begin regularly giving my learners feedback that is genuinely helpful and affirming not just a surface response that maintains rapport without any real substance.