September has arrived again! The summer is almost over in this part of the world and many teachers start their classes with new students. It is time to build new relationships, a relationship of confidence between our students and us, but between students and their peers as well.
No significant learning can occur without a significant relationship. James Comer.
After many years of teaching English to students of different ages and levels, I must admit that I still get butterflies in my stomach on the first day of class. However, thanks to all those generous teachers who are online and share their successful activities on their blogs or on Twitter, I have learnt a lot on how to create an atmosphere of trust, respect and learning from day one. Now I would like to share some of those activities with you:
A Personality Test is a lesson plan created byJames Taylor. I think it is an original and useful idea mainly for Intermediate level groups, but it can also be adapted for lower levels.
Powerpointing Me is a lesson plan that I like a lot. It has been created by one of the most active teachers on the net, Karenne Sylvester. It includes different kinds of activities so that your students know you better and you know them as well using different tools or just without technology.
A Map of Me is an activity that Sandy Millin shared in her blog some months ago. I tried with my adults students last month and it worked perfectly. At the beginning they were a little bit puzzled because it was not an activity they were used to, but after a while they started to enjoy it because it is quite interactive and useful to review question formation.
I hope you find these ideas useful for your first day. If you would like to share your own ones with other teachers, don't forget to leave a comment!
In most subjects and in any grade level, teachers and, therefore, students are expected to use a textbook as a resource in their classes. However, we have to bear in mind that although those textbooks are produced by experts, experienced teachers and teacher trainers, they are created to be used by teachers who work in different teaching contexts, in different countries and with students who are in the same class, but whose level is not exactly the same. Therefore we need some things that the book doesn't provide: CREATIVITY to adapt the textbook in order to address our students' learning needs. SELECTION CRITERION to choose just those activities which can be useful, meaningful and suit your students' needs. SUPPLEMENT the textbook with other kinds of activities which could work for our students and can help them develop their speaking skills and fluency. ADAPT the activities so that they are interesting, motivating and meaningful for our students. This is an example of an activity I adapted from the coursebook for one of my one-to-one classes with my 9 years old student. I was supposed to create a short theatre play with a group of students, but it was just her and me in the classroom. So, I decided that she could create a very short piece on her own including some of the new vocabulary and other expressions she had learn during the school year. She wrote the script and then we recorded it. This is the result. I hope you like it! The search (Part 1) by inmaav on GoAnimate
Being interested in knowing new ways to motivate students, it was a pleasure to listen to Deborah Bullock talking about Projects to Motivate Teenagers. Her session was really dynamic. She encouraged teachers to participate and share our views and experiences on working through projects in the English class. We brainstormed some advantages and disadvantages of working on projects, thought of topics which teenagers could be interested in and draft a project idea in small groups.
These are two of the projects which were successful for Deborah:
The second session I attended was Michael O'Brien's talk on Grammar 'Goodies' or better said 'Rules'. His talk was brilliant and quite thought-provoking. He pointed out that teaching students grammar rules or recommend them to use a grammar reference to learn English is sometimes pointless. These kinds of books include unnatural sentences, dialogues and longer responses. That's not the way native speakers talk!
It is clear that there are differences between written and spoken grammar. Surely spoken grammar cannot be taught through written grammar rules and within rules, there are always exceptions. So, what kind of grammar should we teach to our students? Shouldn't we teach them some rules to guide them through their learning process? In my humble opinion, if students' main objective is to pass an examination, then by all means, - they will definitely need to study grammar! Although I'm not a big fan of constantly repeated grammar points course after course, I think grammar is necessary, is a means to master the language, not an end in itself.
An interesting point Michael O'Brien brought up was that grammar is much more than context and much more than objective time. There is also a time called psychological time which refers to the way speakers perceive actions and experiences, not what 'objectively happened'. In my opinion this is really relevant, because it is something which is not always taken into account by ELT course writers. I mean, there is only one possible correct answer in most gap fill practise activities or multiple choice quizzes, when actually it is possible to use different aspects of a tense. In order to demonstrate his view, he asked us to complete a text taken from a coursebook. Here it is the result:
He finished his speech stating that the perfect rule is that there aren't rules, it's a matter of choice. Then taking this reflection into account, I wonder if we really need to teach these kinds of things. Wouldn't it be more confusing for students? Would it help them to pass their exams?
For the last session I chose Patrick Howard's presentation whose title was Using Visuals. This session was full of practical ideas for using visuals to develop speaking skills and review vocabulary.
Drawing - Vocabulary
The first activity we did in small group was a brainstorm related to Olympic events and verbs related to sports. After that, Patrick gave us a set of cards with some words related to sports written on them. In turns we played pictionary with those cards and then a memory game with the cards and pictures we had previously drawn.
Video without sound - Describing (Present simple and continuous)
For the second activity he used the following video:
We worked in groups of three. He handed in a piece of paper with some words written on it to two members of the group who sat down in front of the screen. Then he played the video without sound and one member of each group had to describe what they could see. The people with the worksheets had to crossed those words they heard.
Photo - Speculating (Modal verbs of probability and certainty)
This time Patrick showed us a picture covered with post-it notes and we had to guess what the picture was, using modal verbs like must, could, may, might and can't. In turns, we rolled a dice and depending on the number (1 and 2 = must; 3 and 4 = could, may, might; 5 and 6 = can't) we had to use that modal verb in a sentence. I have just discovered this site which has great photos for speculating.
Describing pictures
We received half of a postcard each. The objective was to find the partner who had the piece from the same postcard. So we walk around the class describing our picture to the other teachers.
Picture cards game - Storytelling
The last game we played was a card game with a beautiful set of picture cards. It is very good to tell stories, experiences, talk about feelings and so on since it includes different kinds of cards with people, places and situations on it.
How to play (groups of 3-5 students):
- Deal four cards for each student.
- In turns, each student describes his card. The other ones listen to him and try to find a card that matches his story. They have to explain their choice.
I love attending to these kinds of teaching events since as teachers there is always something new to add, learn, improve, change or share with other colleagues.
Can you imagine a world without music? No tunes, no songs, no melodies, no singers or concerts. Music surrounds us and it is an important part of our lives, as well as of our students' lives. They are enjoyable, motivating, full of examples of real English and, therefore, very effective tools for reviewing vocabulary, grammar structures, pronunciation, culture and dealing with social issues in upper-intermediate and advanced classes.
What is very important to bear in mind before choosing a song are the objectives, the resources we will use and the activities we will use so that students can achieve their goals and develop the different language skills.
Try not to choose songs that are popular among teenagers because, although they may love and enjoy them, they will already know the lyrics and the activities you have carefully prepared may become an absolutely flop.
Digital resources for our classes
Tune into English is one of my favourite sites because it offers a section for teachers and another one for students. In the teachers section you will find lesson plans created by teachers to use different kinds of songs in your classes. Those lessons plans are in word format, what means that you can adapt the activities to suit your students' needs. Within the students area, students will find a lot of games, resources and links to learn more about music and learn English through songs.
TEFLTunes is a great place to find song ideas for teaching grammar and topics. However, not all the resources provided are free. There are free lesson plans but if you want get full access, you will need to subscribe and pay £10GBP.
Lyrics training is another great tool for students to improve their understanding of lyrics. The site includes YouTube videoclips which are organised in different levels of difficulty and cloze-type activities to complete the whole song.
What I do not like so much about it is that it includes a wide range of songs and some of them may be not suitable for pre-teens or teenagers.
