Back to School - Breaking the Ice

Image Credit: Marcel Germain
via Flickr

Another school year starts soon – very soon – and even though I’ve been teaching for about 20 years, I always get a bit anxious about the best way either to break the ice with a new class or simply to loosen (former) students’ rusty tongues.Therefore, an easy task, a familiar topic but still with a different approach.

After some browsing, a suggestion for the beginning of this school year is as follows.
Knowing beforehand that our first lesson is usually in our mother tongue and filling in some forms, a simple question designed to make introductions easier and spark ideas:

AnswerGarden: What word(s) best describe your last summer holidays?...: AnswerGarden: What word(s) best describe your last summer holidays?... AnswerGarden: What word(s) best describe your last summer holidays?...: AnswerGarden: What word(s) best describe your last summer holidays?...
YOU, go ahead, try!
Now, this can be used as homework once you embed this onto your blog / website / wiki (in this case, ask them to type their initials so that you might know who wrote what) or, done in class, if you prefer to have an instant overview of the results, make sure they really DO it and have a computer with internet connection. Obvious!
At http://answergarden.ch/ there's no need to sign in, we can quickly and very easily collect our sts' feedback and their contributions are necessarily short (20 characters); TIP: tick the "Multiple answers per id per day" ;)

2nd step: Why? Elicit reasons to explain their choice of vocabulary.

3rd step: To further brainstorm ideas and start preparing a written activity, consider using
http://www.bubbl.us/  a free web application that, as they put it, allows you to

• Create colorful mind maps online
• Share and work with friends
• Email and print your mind map
• Save your mind map as an image

For you to have an idea...

With the usual questions: Where / When / How Long / With Whom...

Or with the sts' names and we write down their data - one by one.

4th step: After oral eliciting and topic form registration, sts can be asked to write down their own essays. However, depending on the level / age group / … we can introduce a model, ask them to write down their essays for homework or in class and then take them home to correct. It’s up to each one of us to decide what will suit best, right?
Hope this might be useful - if not now, for some other time.

Image Credit: http://safetykitsplus.wordpress.com/

Why don’t you leave here your suggestions as well? I’d love to hear your thoughts, your comments, your suggestions.

Anyway, a great school year for all! May we keep the passion and energy to engage our students :))

Reading, reading, reading...

As you might have noticed, I've been much into reading these days...alongside my eldest kid, we've been ordering books and reading for hours and hours. That's what holidays are for, right? To do whatever pleases you; what you can't usually do or spend much time doing during the schoolyear.

The official BookCrossing logo

Though I usually don't get rid of my books (but am keen on lending them), I've become more and more interested in BookCrossing, "the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise." (in Wikipedia). In a different scale, it works somehow as a classroom library just like many have already experienced, mostly in our mother tongue.

Then, why not do the same in our EFL classes? And I don't mean just one class, the more classes involved, the better! I know you might ask where to get enough / varied stories for different grades. Well, I've already bought many myself but why not ask the learners themselves to bring in some money so that you may choose some graded readers? I also know we are in a crisis and in suburban areas to ask parents for some extra money can be painful... Another possibility is still the school library: why not approaching the school librarian and asking him/her if there is enough budget for your choice of books? It's not hard to try and... who knows?

Anyway, right now I'm reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert following a suggestion by a very dear and old friend of mine - and, yes, a blogger as well (click here). As usual, these "teacher's eyes" (don't you also believe teachers see and appreciate things differently???) are wide open and I'll post here a few lines on it as soon as I've finished. There is still another reason for my choice... it was not at random that I ordered the aforementioned American bestseller: 30th September is the release date for the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's memoirs starring Julia Roberts as Gilbert and Javier Bardem as Felipe - and these two alone are already reason enough to be willing to see it, don't you agree? ;)

Well, school isn't too far for many of us now and it's time to start outlining new activities - maybe based on this book and / or film... these teacher's eyes are and will be open (I hope for a long time). I'll leave you now with the trailer:

RUNNING DICTATION

Keeping our learners motivated – no matter how old they are – is a really challenging task. Facing a class of students, with different learning styles (and paces!), with different personalities, is not easy but, as a teacher, I feel I have to cater to all in the classroom, to everyone’s particular needs.

Bearing this in mind and as often as possible, I put different and somehow unexpected language activities into practice – either in the classroom or out. Why not?
Anyway, this time the challenge was a RUNNING DICTATION (running in English as sts mockingly put it). The school year was coming to an end and the weather had been great. Yes, why not? It would be much nicer than sitting still inside the classroom.
After choosing the activity, my concern was now the text, or to be more precise, the song. Some colleagues / friends emailed me some suggestions (Thank YOU), I googled a bit, I saw many youtube videos but I always stumbled over language problems – the texts were far too difficult for them and I feared the final result could be demotivation instead of having fun and learning / remembering some English. So, I finally made up my mind for an old time favourite “Friends will be Friends” by Queen, which is certainly questionable but, being adults, I believed they would also enjoy it but, above all, they would feel pleased for having understood something, for recognizing the text. And it worked! It worked not only with the learners but also with some colleagues I invited to take part in this running dictation.
As for the activity itself, here are the steps I followed:

• I split the lyrics into two parts and printed several copies in A3 sheets;
• Not to disturb other classes, I went out and placed the copies at eye level on the school building;

With some extra help, some chairs and desks were placed outside, at some distance but in front of each of the sheets on the wall (ah: each desk already had a blank sheet of paper and a pen);
Now, with the group:

• I put the learners and colleagues into pairs and for health and/or language difficulties, it was easy to decide who the writers and runners would be;
• The runners’ task would be to run to the A3 sheet and memorize a chunk of language / a sentence, go back to the partner and reproduce it to him/her; the writers’ task would obviously be to write down chunk by chunk till all the sentences had been reproduced;
• The winners would be the first pair to complete the task.

Well, no doubt we had great fun but there were no winners or losers, no prizes were awarded… we had previously arranged for a shared meal at school :)
Check for yourself – not only the running dictation but also the meal!!!

Yet that wasn’t the end of it! No, no, no!!!!
Next class, I took a worksheet with the full text / lyrics, we listened to the song and some even sang along (myself included) and we practised some vocab on the topic FRIENDSHIP (always important is to provide an opportunity to use and apply language and knowledge)

(FURTHER) SUGGESTIONS
Do try a running dictation – it’s a funny activity and it practises the four skills: reading, speaking, listening and writing – not to mention memorizing!
This famous painting by Pablo Picasso can be used to introduce or extend the topic of friendship as well as some cultural data; loose words can be used to make sts look up for the meaning (in case they don’t know them yet) so that they can have lists of vocabulary (English / Portuguese) and lead them to the topic. Ask them to add some more, elicit previous knowledge.
(NOTE: if you wish my materials, please send me an email and I’ll be glad to share)