The Gift of the Magi

first Christmas present by Mike Harrison for eltpics

A simple lesson plan for Christmas, based on the classic short story by O. Henry.  You can find the original story here (and on many other sites too) and an audio version with accompanying worksheets here at onestopenglish.  The original text works well with advanced students, but it is a bit dense and archaic, so here’s another version, which can be adapted for almost any level.

Last year I used this story for a lesson with a group of mixed level teenagers.  I had planned to used a simplified, modernised adaptation that I had written as a reading text. If you know O Henry, then you’ll know that all his tales have a twist in the tail.  My plan was to get the students to read the story up until the twist and then write the end themselves. But I realised as I started to set up the lesson that the mood wasn’t right, that the class need energising and that the story wasn’t going to do it for them unless I injected some life into it.  So I decided to “perform” it instead.

This is, more or less, as far as I can remember, how the class went.

Step 1 : setting up the story

I explained that I was going to tell them a story. I wrote the names of the main characters on the board, Jim and Della, and gave some background information about them.  They’re young, they’re newly-married, they’re very much in love.  But they’re poor.  They live in New York, it’s the turn of the 20th century, it’s cold and snowing and very, very Christmassy.  I did this in story-telling mode, hamming it up quite a lot. (once upon a time there were two people …. they were very, very much in love … ).  I then explained that two key themes in the story are treasured possessions and perfect gifts. I explained that Delia’s most prized possession was her beautiful, long, red hair and that Jim’s most treasured possession was a pocket watch that he had inherited from his father. I asked them to think for a moment about what their most prized possessions were, prompting and giving examples until blank faces filled in. I asked them to quickly tell each other what they’d thought of. There were a lot of Blackberrys and iphones mentioned!  But also a couple of pets, or a best friend.

I then asked them to write a sentence on a strip of paper explaining their idea of the perfect gift.  I monitored and prompted and corrected where necessary and then we pooled ideas.

Step 2:  story-telling

I explained that I was going to tell them the story and that they could interrupt and ask questions whenever they felt they wanted to.  I referred to this text (The Gift of the Magi O. Henry) as I told the story, stopping to explain or embellish where necessary, paraphrasing and editing and miming to keep the students’ attention focused on me and the story.  I twirled with Delia in front of her mirror, hesitated before opening the door to the hairdressers, stopped for a quick aside to explain that wigmakers bought real hair, shed a mock tear as I looked down at Delia’s imagined shorn locks on the floor. You get the idea!  I’m not a performer outside the classroom. I’m quite shy of attention and the public eye, but in the classroom, performing and interpreting a story is different. And fun.

Step three: the twist in the tail

I stopped telling the story when it came to the crucial twist, when Jim hands Delia her present, when Delia hands Jim the tiny parcel she’s so carefully wrapped up for him.  I handed out the copy of the story that I had been “reading” from, without the final paragraph ( separated by a line in the text in the link).  I ask them to read the story so far and then to write the closing paragraph.

I must admit that at this point there was a slight dip in the attention, a small collective groan, but as they got into the writing the energy picked up again. As they finished their closing paragraphs I handed out the closing paragraph from my version and asked them to compare. They were generally pleased with the similarities.

Our time had come to an end. The one hour class was over.  I wish I’d had time to ask them to read out their endings in story-teller mode. Maybe next time.

So, please feel free to use my text, or adapt it, or perform it. And if you do, I’d love to hear how it goes!

A book review from a six year old

[this post has been languishing in my drafts for some time ... since the spring in fact ... but then a few days ago the books were back on our kitchen table after I'd lent them out to a friend ... the enthusiasm and interest were still there as my daughter scooped them up again and claimed them as her own]

Macmillan Natural and Social Sciences for primary (Spain)

Today a couple of books arrived in the post.  They were inspection copies of CLIL books for primary schools in Spain.  I was interested in them for personal reasons as well as professional ones.  I left them on the table in the kitchen to see what reaction I’d get from a potential end-user – my six year old daughter!

What’s this? she asked enthusiastically when she arrived home from school. Is it for me?  I explained that they were presents from some people I work with sometimes but that she could use them, in fact that I’d asked for them for her.

She opened the book and started a flick test.  The book fell open on a unit called My body.  There was a picture of a face and words to match the various parts. Eyes, ears, mouth, nose –I’ve done those in class, she said.  Then she stopped to mouth the letters, eyelashes – a little laugh – eyebrows – another little laugh, we haven’t done those. Chin, cheek – they’ve forgotten lips.

On she flicked. It’s just like my books in school she said. This was obviously a good thing.  Where’s the unit on animals?  She looked for the index, mouthed her way through the colour-coded topics. It’s blue, as she fingered the pages looking for the blue corners.   Hey, what’s this?  Stick?  A quick flick to the back of the book and she’d found the stickers.  The exercise required her to categorise nocturnal and daytime animals.  She didn’t need to read the instructions.  She started straight in, choosing the ones she knew.  Bat, owl … what’s a fox mum?  I’ll do the day time ones first.  Sticking finished she noticed the instructions, with all the nocturnal animals listed.  Ah, I got it right without reading! Big smile of satisfaction.

More stickers, more flicking and she stopped at a page with a map of Spain.  We’ve done this! This is Spain! Where are the stickers?  (what do you have to do, I prompt, not able to keep the teacher in me at bay!)  Colour the coast yellow, colour the mountains … off she went for her pencil case and the crayons and set to work, immersed, engaged, loving it.

So, what made the book such a success for her?  I think it was the familiarity. It looked like her Spanish school books, it had the same kind of exercises, it covered the same information, she knew what to do with it.  She found the CD as well and insisted on listening to the chants and the songs.  She tidied the four books in a neat pile. Gave them a proprietorial pat.   One satisified customer.

Hopefully it’ll help us bridge the gap between English at home and Spanish at school.  But would it work just as well for a kid whose L1 isn’t English?  I really think it could.  I think mirroring the learning that’s happening in their L1 in the English book, bringing it to life with the tricks of the ELT trade (stickers, songs, stories and chants) might well be a good direction for EFL classes as well.

post-script: the friend I lent the books to has ordered copies for the school where she works and is incorporating some of the ideas and materials in her mainstream classes. It’s a bit too early to report back yet. Maybe I can persuade her to write a guest post later in the year

(PS a big thank you to Macmillan Spain for the inspection copies.)

Let it snow …

snowman by erin & camera on flickr

This lesson plan is an old-favourite of mine.  It’s based on a poem by Carol Ann Duffy and is great for a winter’s morning, afternoon or evening – especially if it’s been snowing.  But it works just as well if it doesn’t snow where you live – it never snows in Cádiz! – images of snowfalls on the news can be context enough.  The text is fairly challenging lingusitically but the structure is quite simple and the themes appeal to most students, especially older teens. It works best with upper-intermediate or advanced students. I’ve used it with teens, young adults and, once, with a group of older business people. It’s gone down well each time.  (I also adapted it for use in the first edition of the Inside Out advanced student’s book).

I first used it with a group of students in the UK. They were all young adults on a nine-month language course. Many came from countries where it never snows. One day we were in class when snowflakes started to float past the window.  A huge gasp went up and shouts of “snow”, “I’ve never seen snow”.  It was only a flurry really, but enough to turn the hedgerows white in the street outside. We abandoned the classroom and went outside to learn about making snowballs.

A few days later we looked at this poem together in class.  Here’s the step by step lesson plan.

1  Group Discussion(s)

This works well with three separate groups, but can work fine as whole class as well.

Each group is given a card. On one side is one word:

group 1: snowman

group 2: boredom

group 3: stealing

The groups do not know what cards the other groups have. (If doing this as a whole class activity, introduce the cards one by one – the danger of doing it whole is that the activity may become a little repetitive.)

The first instruction is for the students to look at the word on the card and, individually write down five words they associate with it (you can cut this back to three if you prefer – I have done with classes that are slower “givers”). Give them a time limit. Two or three minutes is more than enough (With my teen classes recently I’ve been using the timer on my phone for timed activities – appeals to their smartphone mindsets!).

At the end of the time limit, ask the students to compare and explain their choices, then ask them to turn over the card.  When I first taught this lesson I supplied the questions. Two or three simple questions for each word, but in later versions I’ve asked the students to write their own questions, sometimes using prompts, sometimes just leaving the card blank.  I think this reflects a change in my teaching style (I first used this lesson plan in 1997) giving more and more space for the students to write the materials, growing into a “less is more” philosophy of sharing the building of the lesson.

Here are the original questions:

• have you ever built a snowman? if yes, where were you? who were you with? how big was it?
• have you, or anyone you know ever stolen anything or had anything stolen from you? if yes, what?
• what do you usually do when you’re bored? do you have any “defence mechanisms”?

Again I set a time limit and ask the ss to discuss the questions. I set time limits because I want all three groups to discuss all three topics.  We establish at the beginning that when I call an end to a discussion whoever is speaking at the time gets to finish what they’re saying and then the attention focuses back on the “centre”, on the whole class.

As each mini discussion ends, the cards circulate and the activity is repeated: brainstorming, comparing, discussing. Once the three topics have been discussed in groups, as a whole class we talk about which topic was most interesting, lead to most discussion, was most difficult to talk about and why.  This usually throws up quite a lot of language that’s worth stopping to look at.

2 Reading the poem 

I then tell the class that the three words are all themes in a text they’re going to read and very quickly field any off-the-top-of-their-heads predictions. I’m always cautious about over-predicting before reading a text. I think it can often be counter-productive. It’s often better to let the text speak for itself.

I then give each group the five verses of the poem, cut up on separate pieces of card and ask them to decide on a) an order b) a title.

You can see the full text of the poem here on a BBC website where there is also a recording and slideshow (more about that below).

The lexis is dense and colloquial.  You can choose to pre-teach some of it if you want.  I prefer to monitor and help as and when the students ask me to, I think it causes less disruption in the reading and processing.  A written glossary can help too ( Glossary)  The key to the activity, for me, is that there is no clear right answer. Of course, there’s the original poem, and we will listen to and look at that at a later point, but at this stage of the lesson, the students’ chosen order, whatever it is, is totally valid as their (re)interpretation of the poem.

Once they have decided on the order, the groups compare their versions and discuss any differences. We usually pause and look at the informal language too at this point, making a note of it, promising to come back to it later.

We discuss which word, snowman, boredom or stealing, is the best title for the poem and why.

 3 Listening to the poem 

The first few times I used this lesson, I read the poem out myself.  I’ve since discovered various recordings online. The BBC site I mentioned above has a very good recording and an accompanying slideshow. The students listen and confirm or change the order of the verses.  I keep back the slideshow for later.

4 Further discussion

We discuss any differences in the order and if it changes the emphasis of the poem at all.  I ask the students to build a profile of the person who is speaking.  Is it a man/woman, girl/boy?How old is he/she?   Why?  Where does he/she come from?  Where does he/she live?   To encourage individual answers and responses I ask the students to think about their answers first, to visualise the person. I read the questions aloud and pause after each one, prompting if necessary. I give them time to write short notes about their visualisation before they share the details with their classmates.

I then ask them to choose two or three lines they particularly like from the poem.  They can explain why if they want – but that’s not always that easy! the lines often speak for themselves.

My favourite (and often a favourite with at least some of the students, especially teens) is, “ Mostly I’m so bored I could eat myself.”  I think it speaks for itself.   Instead of asking students to explain why they like it, I ask them to practise reading it out loud.  In the original plan, we left things there, once the students had shared their favourite lines around the class.  Sometimes we made posters of the quotes.  And then we’d go back to explore the new vocabulary a little further.

5 Possible add-ons

images and slideshows:  ask students to draw up a “storyboard” of images to accompany the poem if read aloud. They can compare their ideas with the slideshow on the BBC site or look for clips on youtube. I like this one by a class of school kids in the UK , the snowman doesn’t quite live up to my personal visualisation, I’m not so sure about the background music, but I like the way the students have made it their own.

the poet talks about her poem :  As I was writing this post, I had a look online to see what other resources might be out there. As well as the BBC recording and slideshow (see links) and various study notes (the poem is part of an anthology for GCSE exams in the UK)  I came across this great text by Carol Ann Duffy, talking about how the poem came about.  The text is simple and accessible and would make good follow-up reading to the discussion of the “voice” or “face” behind the poem.

#eltchat summary : dealing with failure

This is a summary of the #eltchat that took place at  12pm GMT on November 30 2011.

How to Deal with Students who are about to Fail

Chatters from a range of backgrounds and contexts, business English classes, private language schools, universities, mainstream secondary and primary school, offered a variety of different perspectives on the topic and on evaluation and failure in general.

The chat opened with an attempt to define the parameters of the topic.  Firstly we looked at the importance of pinpointing why students are failing: is it because they aren’t working or because they aren’t ready or struggling to meet the level?  We also tried to pinpoint what we mean by failure, is it a failure to get the right grades or meet a satisfactory level for established criteria? Some chatters suggested it could be widened to cover students who were struggling to follow the pace of the classes or possibly not coming up to their own expectations(@theteacherjames). Each different context had a slightly different take on failure, but it was certainly perceived as a universal problem.

The whole idea of failure disturbs me (@tamaslorincz)

Fail is a horrible word but it is real life (@Marisa_C)

Different responses may be required for different contexts.  If students are studying towards an exam and the date of the exam is not fixed (e.g. one of the Cambridge exams) then chatters agreed that the onus was on the teacher to identify students who they felt might not pass, and counsel them about the exam, recommending that they wait until they are ready.  Some chatters talked about situations where the students were given a “pre-test” to establish their level which were then followed up by tutorials.  Others talked about systems which allowed students to do remedial work in order to gain a pass (@billpelowe).  A system by which peers help struggling classmates met with a lot of interest.

When students were having difficulty grasping ideas I used peer tutors to get them up to speed (@cybraryman1)

And one chatter uses student response cards to track progress.

@billpellowe: Keeping my students involved via low-tech student response cards has helped me identify students in danger

Progress tutorials were generally accepted as a good means of helping weaker students avoid – or prepare for – failure.  The importance of letting students know how well/badly they’re doing was also stressed, as well as making it clear to students what the consequences might be of not putting in enough work.   Continual assessment and portfolios were suggested as “early warning systems” for failure, allowing teachers to intervene in time to help the students draw up  personalised study plans and suggest remedial work, maybe, for example, on a wiki. It was agreed that it was important to make students aware of their (potential) failure.

It is our job to help them diagnose the problems and give advice and extra help. (@rliberni)

It was suggested that many students who are failing need help with study skills, organizing and studying and that this is an area where teachers can be proactive. One chatter described how she suggests personalised plans based on the students’ strengths & weaknesses for extra work outside class (@ljp2010)  It was also agreed that clear guidelines for exams should be set out well before the exam so that students know exactly what is expected of them.

Set ground rules and reminders at the beginning of the course works 95% of the time. Some ss wait until the last moment to work (@alhen)

Nobody should ever be ‘in the dark’ about their progress and readiness for an assessment if they are then we’re the failures! (@rliberni)

But of course, the end result depends on the student:

some do the work & get the benefit … you can lead a horse to water… (@ljp2010)

Attention was also paid to the psychological effect of failure on students. It was suggested that failure can become a label, a very unfortunate label, that demotivates and sets off a negative spiral, just as success breeds success, so failure breeds failure.  There was some discussion of how this can be combatted by making progress visible, by celebrating small successes, by encouraging students to think beyond the exams and beyond the system to more global aims.  With younger learners it was suggested that parents should also be brought into the equation (@ljp2010 @mattkendrickelt ) and that at times failure is inherent in the system (@tamaslorincz).

hate to see students sinking in the spiral – failure, no motivation, more failure. It can be you who can help, but not always  (@Tamkirja)

The chat moved on to discuss what we can do to avoid failure in the future. Asking questions about why students fail and making changes to course content, assessment design and tracking systems were all suggested as possible solutions.

Why are they failing? -Motivation? -Inability to keep up? -Bad course design? -Bad assessment design? Knowing this will help you (@yearinthelifeof)

A lot of time is often spent on success in the classroom – is equal time spent on why some Ss fail , e.g to get the right answer? (@Marisa_C)

Failing Ss should always make us reflect and go back to evaluation of course, materials, methods (@Marisa_C)

It was good to finish on this positive note, looking ahead to more success and less failure!  It reflects very positively on the optimism, enthusiasm and commitment of  #eltchat and all #eltchatters!

The following links were shared:

@riberni : I wrote a piece yesterday on what to do after you fail to get the result you want  http://t.co/ZxV669Wy #eltchat
@cybraryman1 :  many students who are failing need help with organizing & studying.  My Study Skills page: http://t.co/C0uS773G
@cybraryman1 : My Tutoring & Mentoring page: http://t.co/qLdgHjzw

Back to the drawing board

This is a very simple lesson outline that worked well for me.  It grew out of a lesson plan prepared by a colleague for the team of teachers teaching supplementary skills classes in a local state school.  For me it was part of an on-going challenge to work my way around the physical and psychological obstacles of a traditional, fixed-seating classroom.

Students: 14 teenagers aged 16-17, mixed level

Global aim of the lesson : to build confidence and fluency in writing

Original focus: describing people

Step 1

I drew an empty egg shape on the board in chalk.  I said it was a person and confessed to being a terrible artist. The students eagerly agreed and sat up in their chairs, looking over their classmates’ heads rather then hiding behind them in the back rows.  I asked them if they thought it was male or female and when they said he was male, I drew a second egg shape and told them that that one was female. I then asked them to prompt me to draw the facial features.   We labelled new words as they came up, (bushy) eyebrows, (long) eyelashes, wrinkles/laughter lines and slowly built up a kind of old-fashioned police identikit meets Frankenstein’s monster  on the board.

A late arriver came in and was promptly announced to be a great artist.  I immediately surrender the chalk and sat down among the rows.   The class continued to prompt the late student to draw the girl’s face.  I joined in at times, but on the whole the class had taken the activity and were giving it their own momentum. The student’s artistic abilities didn’t really make up for my initial clumsy egg shape and both faces were deemed badly drawn caricatures (another new word) with great pleasure from the class.

At this point I stepped back in front of the class and asked the students to give the two people a bit more flesh and blood. I used this stage to quickly focus on the language that had been chosen for the class, the three questions, what is he/she like? what does he/she like? and what does he/she look like? We drilled the questions and then used them for the next stage: character building.   The students gave the egg heads names, ages, interests, likes, dislikes and personalities.  The energy was still good and the suggestions flowed, bouncing back and forth across the rows.

Step 2

In this step we moved away from the board and to paper.  The students worked in pairs. Each pair took a piece of scrap paper and created a new egg-head, prompting each other on features etc as they did. The language we’d used originally to draw the eggheads on the board was still there.  There was quite a lot of referring to the vocabulary and more chat and interaction than usual.  I think the activity worked well partly because we’d set the bar for the drawing very low – and the standard for the character building pretty high.

I went around, joining each pair in their row, or in the row in front or behind, listened in, and as they finished asked about the people they’d created. At this point each pair was working at their own pace.  I monitored to keep the ball rolling. I didn’t mind what stage they were at so long as there was activity and momentum.

As each pair reached the stage of having a fleshed out person in their minds, I asked them to imagine that they had met that person recently. I asked them to imagine where they met them, what they were doing and how they got talking.  I asked them to think about what they said to each other and whether they became friends or not. The next step was to write about their first meeting with this person, and at the same time describe them, as fully as they could.  As each pair got to this point, they all put pen to paper and the writing flowed.  The class was by now totally out of synch … and working pretty hard.

Step  3

Possibly the most difficult thing to engineer was a kind of closure to the class.  What I did was ask each pair, as they finished, to show their person and share their story with another pair. We continued swapping stories until everybody had finished. The last pair to finish told the whole class about their encounter and that’s where the lesson ended. I collected the texts to get an idea of where they’re at with their writing, but I’m not going to do any direct correction. We worked a lot on the texts as they grew. The final product was a final product that the students were happy with.

Drawing conclusions …

All to be taken within the context of a mixed ability teenage class:

• it’s OK to front at the board if all the students are engaged and involved
• it’s good to start off with a whole class activity that allows everyone to contribute, and where every contribution is equally valid, be it basic (a big nose) or a little more advanced (bushy eyebrows), before branching off into smaller groups or pairs
• I can get into the rows, monitor and move around among the students, almost as easily as in the traditional EFL horseshoe
• being out of synch is good, letting everyone work at their own pace, so long as everyone’s absorbed and that we can draw it all together at the end

Echoes of Paris

Paris by 60mls on flickr

Last weekend I was in Paris for the annual TESOL France conference.  It was a fantastic experience, such a great atmosphere, an impressive line-up of talks and so many people to meet.  Back home again and in class, there have been so many echoes of so many moments and so many conversations. Here are a few.

teaching in rows

On Tuesday morning as I taught a class in a room with fixed chairs and tables, laid out in rows facing the blackboard, I thought of Willy Cardoso and his comments on space and environment and emergence – the emergence of a group dynamic where conversation flows and learning is nurtured.  And that lesson flowed, for the first time we seemed to be working with the rows, between the rows, not against them.   I think I’ll come back and explore this further when I’ve had time to think it through.

turning your back on the board

Today I was teaching in a circle, with a table at the centre, our backs to the board.  The only thing I’d written on the board was “please work in pairs”, for the rest of the class we worked with bits of paper moving around the table, from pair to pair, from me to student, from student to me and I remembered an exchange in Valentina Dodge‘s session about teaching without boards.  I remembered someone mentioning how his students write on the windows when there is no board.  It made me think how liberating it can be sometimes to improvise with your surroundings, do things a little differently, shake up the physical shape of the lesson.

reflecting on reflection

Before I headed into class today I was thinking back to last week’s classes, remembering the problems, the challenges, talking through a new approach with a colleague and my mind was flooded with echoes from Dale Coulter‘s thought-provoking session on reflection.  And reflections on reflections. It heightened my awareness of myself as teacher, as presence, as person, as I went into class. The focus really paid off.  I felt in tune.  Thank you Dale!

back at the chalkface

And as I thought back over today’s classes, I remember how I felt at the beginning of the day.  As I’d walked down to my classes I’d felt drained, stressed, worklogged (thank you Tyson for giving me such a wonderful word!).    You know that feeling when there’s so much to do, so many things that need your attention, that the mere thought of the workload paralyses you?  But once I was in class it all melted away.   Today was one of those good days.  One of those days when things click and the lessons flow.  And it felt that all the echoes from the conversations and the reflections and the sharing and the learning from last weekend fell into place.

There’s a first time for everything

Today I gave my first webinar for the first Macmillan Online Conference. And it was a fascinating experience. (Click on the image to see the links for the slideshow – I’ll be adding the recording once it’s online).

I was surprised by how nervous I felt beforehand, but then I guess it was like most firsts, your first class, first conference presentation, first time you meet your partner’s family …

But I was even more surprised by how comfortable I soon felt in my new “classroom”. Thanks to everyone who was there for creating such a great atmosphere.  The combination of voice and text is strange to start with, but it didn’t feel like I was talking to a void. There was a definite sense of an “audience”, lots of feedback and interaction. The chat in the five or ten minutes before we started really helped to put me at my ease, and the hour flew by!

There are a couple of things I wish I’d done differently – or better, things I’d like to be able to do next time (and I’m already looking forward to a next time!).

I wanted to be able to use  the virtual pointer, marker and highlighter, but I found that I was already juggling enough with the slides, the commentary and trying to keep my eye on the back channel chat.   I’ll work on that for next time.

The slideshow I’d prepared had simple animation features – nothing fancy, just revealing bullet points one by one rather than as a complete list. I didn’t realise this feature wasn’t going to work in Blackboard Collaborate.  I guess I’d cater for that next time.  I think it might have made it easier to follow the flow, keep everyone on track.

There were things I enjoyed doing – being able to pick up on and incorporate comments from the text chat – comments that enhanced and improved my word cloud for example.  I liked being able to handle the pile of books at my side, show them to the webcam, read out of them.  I wish there’d been more time for more examples, and more books!

There was one thing that I really wish I’d thought through more carefully.  I wish I’d set up a turn-taking system for the questions and comments at the end (raising your hands for example and then taking it in turns to write your questions).  I know I missed a lot.  I’m really sorry if your questions and queries went unanswered. I also wish I’d set up a forum – like this blog page – beforehand where people with questions could have gone to there and then, where we could have continued the conversation and I could have had a chance to pick up on more of the points that were being made, clarify things that maybe weren’t so clear.

So, anyway – a little late I’m afraid, but here is the “forum”.  And to kick it off I’m going to add a couple of questions and comments that came through to me by twitter and email shortly after we closed the session.

From Dan, in Cadiz. We’ve been working together on  audio worksheets for readers for Onestopenglish recently and have been chatting about reading, and extensive reading in particular, over coffees for some time:

I had a thought about extensive reading in class during the webinar that might be worth mentioning. I’ve always been very against ‘extensive listening’ in the classroom (in the form of movies) as it seems a waste of valuable lesson time to just stick a DVD on or whatever. Why don’t I feel the same about reading? A student (or more likely a head of studies) might argue that if a student wants to read, they can do it at home. I know that the answer is to see any reading we do in class as a means of encouraging more home reading, and that extensive reading needn’t take more than 5 minutes, but I still think it’s a question for the mix.

An interesting thought – one I’m going to mull over and leave for the “forum” for the moment.

and another question from Edith in San Sebastian on twitter:

 I wanted 2 ask abt allowing 4 “choice” but w/in a “theme” (e.g. vampire stories) so U cn draw comparisions. wht do U think?

This was my initial reply:

sounds great – I’ve worked on short story collections with Macmillan that group authentic stories by theme – horror, SF, love … seems to be popular – it’s easy to pick out common threads like atmosphere, setting etc

What do you think?

Whether you were there, or maybe you’ve seen the slideshow, or maybe you just fancy joining in, please use the comment box to ask questions, leave replies, make comments, or extend the webinar conversation in any way you want.

Take a photo and …

introducing the new #eltpics blog 

Eltpics is an ever-growing gallery of creative commons licenced images for teachers and learners of languages.  It has its home on flickr.  For the last year it has been collecting photos by teachers for teachers for use in class, on blogs and wherever they fit in to learning and practising languages.   To celebrate its first birthday the curators have set up this blog as a place to share ideas for using images (and more specifically images from the eltpics collection) in the classroom.   New ideas and lesson plans will be posted every week.

This week I was honoured and delighted to be invited to be the first guest blogger and I’d like to invite you to come over and find out more …

eltpics … an open door 

An amazing experience

This post is a long, long overdue thank you to my twitter based PLN (personal learning network) who are also my teaching and writing support network and a constant source of inspiration and new ideas.

I was looking around for a new twist to a tired topic a few weeks ago.  I had been staring blankly at a blank screen (repetition intended!) when I realised that inspiration was most definitely not going to come from within. So I reached out for twitter and posted a simple question.

Minutes later I received my first answer.  It was from Alice (who was also the inspiration for a past post on weather reports), with a beautiful description of the clouds outside her ninth floor flat.  I live on the ninth floor too.  I love watching the clouds disappear over the horizon at sunset. It is an amazing experience, a special moment, but I hadn’t thought of it till Alice mentioned it.  I’d got caught in a tunnel and my thoughts just weren’t flowing on their own, but as soon as I started getting answers in on twitter so many new directions opened up before me.  And each tweet made me want to start a conversation, ask for more details, chip in with similar experiences of my own, go off on interesting tangents. This was exactly what I’d been looking for. Exactly what I wanted to capture.

There were tweets about kids …

and tweets about being a teacher  (no surprises there!) …

Tweets about finding beauty in the world around you (like Alice’s clouds) and this one from Cecilia Lemos.

It really caught my imagination and made me dash off to find an image on flickr – I hope it does it justice!

by Charlie Philips - a creative commons image from flickr

There were also tweets about big experiences, important experiences, life-changing experiences.  What they all had in common was that each and every one started a conversation, each one struck a chord and helped me remember amazing experiences of my own, big moments and small moments.

And another strange thing happened. I don’t know if it was a coincidence, or a kind of noticing.  You know how when you learn a new word or expression you suddenly start hearing it everywhere?  Well the same thing seemed to be happening in tweets and blogs all around me that day.

Cecilia Lemos talked about the “small” (in quotations marks ‘cos I really think they were pretty big) victories in her class.  Keiran Donaghy posted a lesson plan based on two beautiful short films both of which celebrate the amazing in the every day.  And this took me back to Naomi Epstein’s post about her holiday in Alaska (and her amazingly beautiful photos) and how sometimes the teacher’s wow factor – the teacher’s “sense of awe” is too big, too removed, for the students to be able to identify with. (Please read her post, it expresses the concept so much better than I do!)

All these thoughts, all these experiences went so much further than the momentary block I’d experienced in front of my computer screen.  It brought to the surface an incredibly important truth  that I’d lost sight of in that writing tunnel. Materials have to talk to the students, they have to offer up stories and images and experiences that strike a chord, that bring the language and the lesson closer.  So, thank you everybody.  No-one’s story made it into the final lesson, but it was  coloured by each and every tweet.

I’m going to try and repeat that tweeting experience in paper, in class as soon as I can – and I’ll be sure to report back on how it went. ( I hope it won’t take quite so long this time!)

[A footnote:  I almost forgot to add that calling out to my twitter PLN and getting answers from all over the globe is always an amazing experience ]

A tale of two lessons

(of circles and squares)

Customs O by AdamSelwood on flickr

Last Thursday I taught two lessons, back-to-back, with two classes from the same school, with students from the same year, following the same syllabus and studying for the same exam. Not surprisingly, I guess, I used the same basic lesson plan for both groups. But (and again probably not very surprisingly) the two lessons turned out to be quite different.

The first class had thirteen students on paper, eleven in the flesh. There’s a shortage of classrooms at that time, so we were seated around a big table in a small room. When I say we were seated, I should say the students were seated. There was only just room for eleven seats around the table, which meant I kind of hovered around the edges.

I had planned some physical, up on our feet activities to kick off. The logistics weren’t ideal. I certainly wasn’t going to be able to get the students mingling and arranging themselves in alphabetical order according to their mother’s surnames as I had planned. So I had a quick rethink, and asked everyone to shuffle back a few inches, enough not to bang their knees as they got to their feet, and set them the task of working on the order for a “Mexican wave” with each student standing up in alphabetical turn, announcing their first name and sitting down again.

It worked very smoothly, with only a few knocks to knees on table legs. It got a few laughs and focused the attention on the group, on the circular table as the centre and the shape of the class. The rest of the lesson went smoothly too, with some discussion of family names passed down the generations, of those who liked their names and why, of those who didn’t and why not. Of names they’d give their children and whether they’d ever change their own. The students wrote about the discussion and we read a text about a father who named two of his many sons Winner and Loser and the consequences of the naming (a supposedly true story taken from Freakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner).

The table, and the fact that all the students faced each other, and none of them faced me; the fact that we had no board, but pieces of A4 paper that I wrote on and placed in the centre of the table when necessary (not very often); the fact that I stood at the edges, never at the centre, all added up to create a special atmosphere. Throughout the lesson, the communication flowed around and across the circle, kind of like a dodgems ride, nudged on at times by me from the edges with a long pole.

The second lesson was far more conventional. There were nine students in a classroom designed for thirty or more. The chairs and desks were fixed and arranged in rows. The blackboard was enormous and I had an abundance of chalk. We kicked off with the students up on their feet, mingling and arranging themselves alphabetically as planned. There was plenty of room to move, but somehow there was much less energy. Maybe it wasn’t the room, maybe it was because we were one hour closer to lunch time, or just one room away from the cooking smells of the canteen, but somehow the group dynamic just didn’t work as well.

Maybe it was because they chose to stand in a row in that first activity, rather than being forced into a circle? Or maybe they needed the dynamic of the wave? Standing up turned out to be, ironically, more static than sitting down. When we got back to our seats, the class all sat in the front two rows, looking ahead, paying attention, listening, focused, but there was an aisle that cut the class in two, and the whole lesson was much quieter. The conversation seemed to need to bounce back and forth off the front wall, off the blackboard, off me, not in a circle around the class, from student to student in a constant, flowing wave.

We followed the same plan, discussed the same topics, wrote similar texts, read about Winner and Loser, just the same as the first time round, but it was a completely different lesson. There was more quiet, individual work, hard work, good work, but less spontaneous, independent conversation. It was far more teacher-led and far less student-generated.

Was it really a question of rooms? And our reactions to those rooms? Or was it simply two different dynamics in two different groups? Whatever the answer, I’m looking forward to the round table again this week and to the challenge of softening the straight lines of the fixed rows.