Monday, 9 November 2009

Technology in the ESL Classroom and 21st Century skills

Dear Reader

If you are interested in staying up to date, dragging yourself into the twenty first century and avoiding becoming fossilised to your black board while you peer out at your students through a haze of chalk dusk that has settled on your glasses then I seriously recommend that you read my article on using technology in the ESL classroom and 21st century skills.

Now let me just say that firstly the article DOES specify what 21st century skills are. Secondly the important thing to realise is that all these skills can be applied and used from your yak tent on the Tibetan plateau, or your hill tribe village without so much as a plug for your laptop. In fact even if you are in a shanty town in Brazil where they have not been able to pirate electricity from the telegraph poles, you CAN still use these ideas - everybody can with some energy and imagination - be creative - life is a lot more fun!!

http://www.teachingenglishgames.com/Articles/Technology_ESL_Classroom.htm

I hope it inpires you as it did me.

All the best
Shelley

PS Fossilised with an s is British spelling.

Friday, 6 November 2009

Request for role-plays and dialogues

Hello readers,

Today I received a request for role-plays and dialogues from a teacher who, like all teachers, does not have much time to prepare for classes.

My primary games book does not have this kind of activity.
It is for teaching and practising vocab and grammar and does not go far towards speaking fluency.

The teen/adult book however has plenty of that type of activity.
For example Talk About It. This requires no preparation and may be used with any topic. Plus you don't need to buy a set of books for every child, or make tons of photocopies.

Set up chairs in rows facing each other so with ten students you would have five on each side. You sit at the end of the row as timekeeper. The people on your right are talkers and have to talk about a topic for 1 minute without stopping. The people on the left are listeners and do not talk at all except to encourage the talkers and provide a word if they get stuck.

You can allow any kind of topic, serious or funny. You can hand out topics for students to talk about, have all students talking about a different topic, all about the same one, or let students choose their own topics. If you let students talk about topics of their choice they may have more to say on them, however forcing a student to talk about a topic you select can stretch their imagination and vocabulary. In general I would say that it is best to give students a choice of topics at the very least rather than force someone to talk about goldfish when they know nothing about them other than that they are orange.

With elementary kids it is vital to pick topics the children know well, such as talk about a member of your family, your pet, what you like eating, what you like doing in your spare time, describe one of your favorite TV programmes, your morning routine before school, your journey to school and what you see out of the window, and so on.

All the talkers talk at the same time so you have to accept a certain amount of noise and you cannot expect to control and correct everything that is said. This is a fluency exercise so errors are to be expected. When the minute is up, the right row moves one seat down and the last person comes to the front near you so they are talking to different people. The left side never moves. The people on the right talk on the same topic repeatedly so they have a chance to become more and more fluent at expressing themselves.

Then to give the listeners a chance to contribute and give value to their listening activity have each talker ask a listener a question about their topic. See how many listeners were really listening! In the next class swap listeners and talkers over. Keep the time carefully because this makes things move along and more fun.

With advanced students you can vary the game by giving a 2-minute talking period to allow students to go into their topic in more depth.


A SECOND DIALOGUE IDEA NEEDING NO PREP FROM THE TEACHER

Have the children write up a dialogue for homework on a given
topic. Then get them to cut their dialogue into strips. Mix ALL the A's
into one tub and ALL the B's into another tub.

The kids then split into A's and B's and each one takes 5 strips from each
tub. The A's and B's then go through the dialogues they have randomly
taken, then swap with a different partner. Some of the dialogues will
make sense and some will be funny.

Then they could change their silly dialogue to a sensible one as a pair
and perform it to the class, the silly one and the sensible one.

You don't have to prepare anything for that you see - the kids do the prep
work!

More ideas like this in my teen/adult games book
http://www.teachingenglishgames.com/adults.htm

Kind regards
Shelley

Wednesday, 28 October 2009

Proof that language games really do get students talking

Hello my dear enthusiastic teachers,

The Proof is in the Pudding!
Language games really do get your students talking, even the shy ones.

Rewards really do come to teachers who make the effort to teach in a way that appeals to their students, and not in a way that anaesthetizes them!!

Today I received an email which I like immensely because:

1. The teacher is using my free games rather than letting them sit in her inbox.

2. She immediately had good results

3. Suddenly all her students who were reluctant to speak were calling out sentences in English

4. And she added her own innovative and amusing twist to the game which I will share with you now.

This email is about the Blanket Game, which is the first free one in my series.
This teacher immediately used it and found it got her students talking enthusiastically right away.

Check out her short story here. There are mistakes in the English but I preferred to leave the email in it's original form so you can see that it is really genuine.

Dear Shelly,
>
> Thank you for your free games. I have tried your game and it's fun, both
> for me and the students. I'm teaching English to students aged 10 to
> 13. But here in Thailand our language is nothing
> similar to yours. So even the kids are big kids but they still don't want
> to speak.

> As soon as I tried your blanket game, 5 out of 6 kids are happy
> shouting "What are you doing? What are you cooking?" (I have some cheap
> plastic toys for them to pretend cooking behind the blanket.) Of course,
> I sat among them and joined in the game and left the two chairs do the job
> of holding the blanket.

> We have cooked roasted lemon, boiled french fries,
> baked garlic, donut soup and many more funny food. Except only one
> thirteen-year-old girl that still kept quiet most of the time - perhaps
> she's not that thrilled like younger kids.
>
> I have used tricks and rewards and everything I could think of since I
> started some years ago. I believe it's the same technique (make them fun
> and love English) but your games safe me a lot of time preparing."

Tuesday, 27 October 2009

How to deal with mixed age-groups among children

Hello my dear Blog readers,

This post concerns a lady teaching a mixed age group of children from three to seven, in small groups, the problems she is having and my suggestions to her.

If you are also teaching children in a mixed age group then you might like this post.

FIRST THE TEACHER'S BACKGROUND

> Hi Shelley,
>
> How are you? I don't know if you respond to queries but in case you do, I
> thought I'd write to you. I have bought lots of your e- books on teaching
> English through games. Previously I have used them intermittently with
> texts books as I have been working in fairly traditional academies and the
> children have enjoyed the games immensely.

A DESCRIPTION OF THE PUPILS

> This year I have the amazing opportunity to create my own syllabus in a centre
> which supports teaching through play, I have no desks, no chairs and no books,
> just 10 children between 3 and 7 years of age. Most of the children are about 5
> and there is the odd 7 year old and three year old. I have them once a week for
< one hour.

NOW FOR THE PROBLEM

The problem is I am finding it very difficult to control them, I
> can´t get all their attention at the same time and I can't get the games up and
> running effectively. I am finding that they get over excited and chaos
> reigns in the classroom. I am beginning to get angry, which doesn't work
> either. I find it easier getting them doing some arty/crafty exercise even
> though I don't feel that it is hugely beneficial to their English. HMMMPH!
> Would you have any helpful tips by any chance?
>
> I would greatly appreciate any advice you have, however I'd understand if
> you get inundated with questions like this one.

AND MY SUGGESTIONS

Thanks for your email. I do indeed respond to all queries.

I'm glad you have had good use out of the resources so far. They should
be absolutely IDEAL for your small group teaching situation.

The major challenge that you have is having a three year old in there with
the other children - I mean is that MAD or what!

I would see if you can have the three year olds separately, or not at all.
They just do not function at the same pace as the others. Still if you
have to keep them there then I would more or less not worry about teaching
them anything - let them absorb what they can, ask them simple vocab
questions when it's their turn (such as always asking them "blue" while
the others are on silver, gold and purple.

Don't IGNORE the three year olds but don't hold back the class to teach
them. Just tell them how well they are doing, smile, encouragement, and
ask them v. easy stuff that they know. Then they will at least feel part
of the team.

I would aim to go at the pace of the five year olds and try to give the
seven year olds (who presumably can learn faster) some jobs like leading
games. For example if you play All Change, at first you call out the
words/sentences. Then give the seven year olds a turn at that, so they
feel special, they are being stretched beyond the others, and they are not
bored by the class.

With small groups it really is possible to quite a bit of tailoring like
that.

An ideal thing for that is my plays and skits because you can give the
bigger roles to the older ones. The three year old can be paired up with
an older child and be given the same lines, and it really does not matter
if they say them or not - I mean don't worry - those kids will pick
something up whatever - but you cannot go at their pace or you will lose
the rest of the class.

There is a free play in the Food lesson plans called The Best Restaurant
and all the flashcards you need including the worm paté and the fly soup.
Try that out. If you like it there's another one on the plays page called
Ready Steady Go. One of the seven year olds could be the driver for
example, that part has the most lines.

I do think that when you only have them once a week for an hour it is a
bit of a cop-out to do arts and crafts! Take a look in the primary games
book detailed index for games that are described as calm. There are
plenty of nice calm games like the Find the Pairs Memory game. It's v.
possible to play games like All Change calmly too.

I used to say things like "Would you like me to speak to your father when
he comes to collect you?" I never made threats that I did not carry out.

Check out on my articles page - there are two or three articles on
classroom dicipline / management - quite a few ideas there though I think
I put them all in the introduction of the primary games book.

I hope some of you reading this post found it useful!

Kind regards
Shelley

Thursday, 22 October 2009

Teaching Twos

This post is on teaching two year olds and the fact is that it's never too early to start learning a language.

I compiled a special report on teaching two year olds from interviewing 250 teachers.
Today I received this email message below from a customer who is just starting out with under twos. And she gave me this lovely idea. Thanks very much to her for the contribution.

You can see from reading her message below that it really is simple to teach two year olds. You just have to play along with them. You have to play at THEIR level. The good news is that once you have found something they like, they just can't get enough of it!!

"I loved your tips on working with two-year-olds, and
already am seeing one of them (18-months now) often. He loves crawling on
the sofa behind me. When I start saying, "Where's Saba? I don't see him!",
he gets very quiet and stays just behind my back. I pretend to look under
the table, in a big basket, etc while saying, "maybe he's under the table"
etc. Finally, he makes a noise, and I say, "Ohhhh! I heard something behind
me. I look slowly (as though afraid) around and finally "see" and grab him.
He can play this over and over and over! He already understands "where". He
also recognizes a few other English words (ball, car). And I play "where is"
with him with those objects too."

All the best
Shelley

PS For those of you starting out with teaching twos, or teaching your own children, the teaching twos report is included with my preschool stories on the site.
http://www.teachingenglishgames.com/3-5.htm

Wednesday, 16 September 2009

More on reading passages

Hello there teaching enthusiasts!

I received an email this week from a teacher asking me to knock out some short reading passage, each one with a grammar focus.

I replied that this would be a lot of work and that I'd have to know more about the class. So the teacher replied:
"Well, I thought it were easy to you to create passages or small readings involving some grammar focus"

Yes it would be easy for me to write things but actually reading passages
are done with a lot of thought with regard to the vocab the children
already know, what new vocab to include and the percentage of new words
compared to known ones, - it's not just a question of knocking out a few
paragraphs!

Then there is the question of topic - making the topic relevant and
interesting to the target audience and sounding NATURAL, and not like you
are just stuffing in some grammar into sentences.

So there is more to it than meets the eye.

Therefore instead of reinventing the wheel I recommend getting a good textbook that fits the age and level of your pupils and then use my language games to teach the vocab and grammar, and use the reading passages provided in the textbook for extra practise.


Kind regards

Shelley
http://www.teachingenglishgames.com

Wednesday, 2 September 2009

Making reading more fun

Hello there,

Here is an email I received today about making reading and listening more fun:

> Dear Shelley
> I really appreciate the help you-ve offered me and I bet you I-m going to
> work on that, Oh! by the way one more thing can you gime some suggestions
> to make my reading and listenning classes more interesting, cause
> sometimes the students get bored easily specially because the readings are
> not so funny.

I had this fun idea which just popped up from somewhere in that brain of mine.
I think this would be great fun to do as it challenges the readers to read convincingly and naturally and it engages the listeners fully rather than having them listening passively.

The scenario:
You have a reading passage.
Ask a class member to read out a part of it and so on around the class until a few students have had a turn at reading while others listen. Yawn...pretty dull way of doing things.

Take the same scenario and liven it up!

1. Cut up a piece of paper so that you have one strip per student in your class.

2. Write out five sentences that have nothing to do with the reading passage, or are related but don't fit exactly. Then write out scribbles on all the other pieces. Why scribbles? Because other students will not know from a distance if those scribbles are sentences, whereas someone could more easily see if a paper is blank.

3. Shuffle the papers and hand them out one per student. Students insert these into their reading book and/or position them so that no one else can see them.

4. Randomly pick a student to read. The student reads the paragraph and somewhere in there he/she must insert the rogue sentence WITHOUT the class noticing.

The job of the other students is to listen carefully and spot the rogue sentence, if there is one. They won't know at any time if there really is such a sentence so they will have to listen all the more carefully.

5. After reading the paragraph see if there are any votes for a rogue sentence.
And also ASK A QUESTION about the passage.

Listening out for rogue sentences helps on several levels:

1. Firstly it is quite a skill to read a passage out and naturally slip in a sentence that does not fit or sounds silly. It will be fun for the students to try to do this without giving the game away through hesitation or laughing.

2. The other students have a really good reason to listen, because they are not just listening passively to some content, but are actively engaged in trying to spot something that sounds out of context or unlikely content.

Now don't use this idea everytime or it will get boring and get one of my books so you have more ideas like it!

Bye for now
Shelley
http://www.teachingenglishgames.com