The Magazine for English Professionals - English Teachers ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Teen SIG A11 Keeping boredom at bay Barbara Stucki-Schenk In a room of nearly 30 teachers keen to hear how to keep teenage students from being bored, Barbara took us through an actionpacked workshop of games and activities. We were able to have hands-on experience of several very interactive games, some new and others old favourites. One game Barbara has adapted for use in the ESL classroom is The Bomb. Students sit in a circle and are given a vocabulary or grammar task that requires a one word input. They then get a plastic ticking bomb to pass around and the aim is to give a contribution as quickly as possible and hand on the bomb before it ‘explodes’. The atmosphere becomes quite electrified and I can imagine this would certainly be an energy raiser on a dull day. Barbara also demonstrated other well-known games such as Battleship to drill the alphabet and numbers in a more enjoyable way than is often done. Barbara is very interested in songs and tries to start at least one lesson a week with a gap- fill exercise or other vocabulary discovery activity using a song text. Not only are the words in the song used, but also the background to the text. For example, who was Carly Simon talking about when she wrote ‘You’re so vain’? For teenagers on the roller coaster of adolescent emotions, songs can be quite thought-provoking and provide interesting vocabulary and grammar examples. Many of the games and activities are quite time intensive to prepare but if used with different levels and parallel classes, the work pays off. The room was buzzing during the activities and Barbara’s enthusiasm for teaching and learning was obvious. There was not enough time to explore the wealth of ideas and activities she had but we were given several handouts with descriptions of many other activities. Gabrielle Schiegg-Cleary 2007 Teen SIG C11.1 Much, little or none, sooner or later…. but how much and when? Anick Mariller Anick had a full house for her first workshop. I, for one, had come along to see if I could glean some ideas to pass on to my own teachers because we are constantly confronted by multi-level groups in our language club for 3 to 15-year-olds. Who isn’t ? How do we keep the one who finishes first from bugging the others whilst he has to wait, or allow that terribly slow student to complete at least a few sentences without making her once again feel low because she did not have the time to finish the exercise (sigh)? Anick is obviously confronted, like us all, with this problem every day, and showed us immediately, on a stand-up-and-show-theclass scale, where we considered our classes to be. Homogenous? No, obviously not. We were all standing bunched up somewhere around the middle, which showed that as a group, we were all concerned with the problems of a mixed-ability class in one way or another. Anick led a discussion about how we perceive our students. Do we consider our classes as A Class, or as a group of individuals who each have their own ways of learning? Are our tasks adapted to the individuals or are we just preparing our lessons for the average student mass within the class? What is a multi-level class and are teachers’ tasks appropriate? On a more detailed level, we looked at reading and writing, since this is an area where many multi-level problems frequently occur. Anick took us through a reading task scenario using small groups of students. The tasks for the groups were varied in level, allowing quicker or slower students to feel able to complete something. Looking at stories (stemming from a short video cartoon), creating a group story, then reading it, editing it, and reviewing it were some of the suggestions for teenage classes. Anick also showed us other ways to allow students to feel satisfied with their work on different levels, including more story creating using objects, class work-plans so each individual works at their own pace, preparation using clear instructions and selfcorrection, different level reading tasks, and so on. ETAS Journal 24/3 Summer 2007 31
SIGDAY Special Interest Group On a personal level, this workshop was satisfying because it showed me that we are all concerned with multi-level classes, no matter how old the students are. Also, it opened discussion about our own possible solutions that we could find if we took more time to think things through properly for the different individual students. Lesson planning, preparing appropriate material, knowing our students well and thinking about potential difficulties are key elements to a more successful lesson. Thank you, Anick. Ruth Benvegnen Teen SIG C11.2 Motivation and fun for your pupils: using Spot on magazine in the classroom Carrie Andrews The workshop with Carrie started off very well, with all of us getting a package full of useful material. Not only did we get two issues of Spot on but also a Spot on MORE! a Spot on EXTRA and two issues of Spot on in the classroom. Then Carrie explained the magazine to those of us who had never used it, which was quite challenging, as there are so many symbols used in the magazines: light bulbs mean the text is more difficult; the MORE sign tells you that there are extra exercises in the MORE magazine; POD on means there is a podcast online about the topic; a bomb means rude expressions are used and a loudspeaker means you can listen to the text online or on the phone. Once we got the hang of how it all worked, we had time to browse through all the issues, looking at the teaching ideas and exchanging our own ideas. Then Carrie showed us the Spot on homepage, which provided some of the ‘fun ideas for your pupils’ which the workshop title had promised. It is full of material you can download and use. There is a new podcast every week, which you can burn onto a CD or play directly from the internet in the classroom. It is related to an article in the current magazine, but you can easily use it alone. You can also download audio files (including the tapescript) relating to certain articles - some taken from films or interviews, others from surveys or other interesting soundbites 32 ETAS Journal 24/3 Summer 2007 you can easily use in your classroom. So, all in all it was a really interesting presentation with good materials and a great homepage I’ll certainly visit again soon. Natalie Milsom Young Learners SIG (YL SIG) A12 Classroom language Rosemary Smeets Eleven participants attended this lively, very informative and hands-on workshop as promised in the title. To relieve putting the onus on one person to do the write-up, some of the participants volunteered to do it collaboratively. Here are a few impressions from some of the enthusiastic participants: We enjoyed the interactive, hands-on activities with many very practical and interesting ideas which made this workshop so great. We were given excellent tips to teach children, especially the memory cards game - matching pictures of classroom objects such as a paper clip, a pencil sharpener, some glue, etc. with the appropriate words; and introductory activity – write the name of an object in the classroom on a post-in and stick it on the object and walk around the classroom looking at all the names. Then collect all the post-its and stick them onto the whiteboard in their respective category - which I will use and cannot wait to try it out in the classroom. The time flew! A very stimulating workshop. I appreciated the variety of activities Rosemary showed us. A very enriching workshop. Great workshop with lots of material and ideas to take home. Time passed so quickly. This was a great hands-on workshop. We were given ideas and examples and used them ourselves. One of the ideas I liked best was getting the students to imitate the language we use in the classroom. ‘Be quiet!’ ‘May I borrow…’ The workshop was totally hands-on from memory cards for learning classroom language to Play-Doh for giving and following instructions (children learning propositions, numbers, adjectives, comparatives, etc.) Thank you very much, Rosemary.
Page 1: Volume 25 - No. 1 Winter 2007 Journ
Page 4 and 5: Editorial After a few editions with
Page 6 and 7: President’s Report After four yea
Page 8 and 9: Explorations in ELT at all, just en
Page 10 and 11: Explorations in ELT An example of t
Page 12 and 13: Explorations in ELT Earning a Crust
Page 14 and 15: Explorations in ELT solution, then
Page 16 and 17: Business English SIG (BESIG) A1.2 B
Page 18 and 19: Drama & Literature SIG C2 Creative
Page 20 and 21: New edition P ✓ English Language
Page 22 and 23: Immersion/CLIL (ICSIG) B4/7 Enhanci
Page 24 and 25: Simply a wealth of new material, in
Page 26 and 27: years as an active member of ETAS I
Page 28 and 29: Teacher Development SIG (TD SIG) B9
Page 32 and 33: Young Learner SIG (YL SIG) C12 How
Page 34 and 35: UPSTRM A4 15-02-07 15:34 Page 1 ñ
Page 37 and 38: MEMBER MIX 10 Ideas for Using Comic
Page 39 and 40: MEMBER MIX but also in the form….
Page 41 and 42: MEMBER MIX 13b. Shakespeare’s mos
Page 43 and 44: to be registering for maternity lea
Page 45 and 46: Baden Workshop: The best thing you
Page 47 and 48: English for academic study: Vocabul
Page 49 and 50: context. At the back of the book th
Page 51 and 52: 52 ETAS Journal 25/1 Winter 2007 SE
Page 53 and 54: 54 ETAS Journal 25/1 Winter 2007 SE
Page 55: ��

The Magazine for English Professionals - English Teachers ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?