Learning Teaching (Scrivener) Chapter 15 - Tools, techniques, activities

Learning Teaching (Scrivener) Chapter 15 - Tools, techniques, activities

1. Flashcards

   • Pictures, diagrams, or words
     • Teaching aid
     • Collect flashcards from the internet or magazines, and keep them organized
       • Laminate them if possible
     • Choose large pictures
       • Visible for the entire classroom
     • Uses
       • Presentation of language, lexical items, and grammar points
       • Teachers' and students' storytelling
       • Guessing, definition, and description games

2. Picture Stories

   • On a book, handout, drawn on the board, on flashcards or posters
   • Usually involvesthe practice of past simple and progressive
   • Approaches
     • Accuracy to Fluency
       • Start by checking the language involved in the story, understand it, and finally tell the story
       • Steps
         • 1 Check the subject
         • 2 Focus on lexis, grammar, or function
         • 3 Discuss language, focusing on pictures
         • 4 Tell the story
         • 5 Writing exercise
     • Fluency to Accuracy
       • Start with a fluency activity and after that focus on language use
       • Steps
         • 1 Introduction of the subject
         • 2 Discuss the pictures
         • 3 Tell the story
         • 4 Focus on lexis, grammar, and function
         • 5 Tell the story more accurately
         • 6 Writing exercise

3. Storytelling

   • Classroom technique
   • It is about telling a story for pleasure, for the listener's pleasure
   • It provides a change of mood
   • Involves real listening
   • Technique
     • 1 Prepare the story mentally
     • 2 Give clear instructions
     • 3 Tell the story
     • 4 Let's students discuss about it
     • 5 Finish it and go on to something else

4. Songs and Music

   • To change the peace of a lesson
   • Can be a reward for hard work
   • Can help to practice grammar
   • Songs with interesting lyrics and clarity of vocals are good classroom material
   • Ideas to use a song
     • Gapped texts to complete the song
     • Song jumble to order the lyrics
     • Matching pictures following the order of the song
     • Reading or listening comprehension
     • Dictation of one part or the whole song
     • Picture dication
     • Listen and discuss the song
     • Sing along
     • Compose a song based on the rhythm
     • Action movements (mime)
   • Use it
     • To start a lesson
     • As a background
     • For pleasure / To relax
     • To conclude a lesson

5. Fillers

   • Activities applied when there is a gap in the lesson
     • They can be a warmer at the beginning of a lesson
     • Mid-lesson to change the peace of a class
     • At the end of the lesson if there is time
     • Have a list of your favorite fillers to use them when necessary
     • Common fillers
       • Revision dictation to practice vocabulary from the lesson
       • Yes and No questions with story puzzles
       • The hotal receptionist game using contextualized sentences
       • Kim's game for students to memorize and remember
       • Ordering by date of birth or alphabetical order
       • Students can provide the fillers (it can be in groups)
       • Paintbox using colors
         • It can be adapted depending on lexis and grammar

6. Lexical Games

   • They are integrated practice activities
     • Common word games
       • Back to the board for learners to guess words based on clues given by their classmates
       • Category list to guess the tittle of a list
       • Fictionary to create false definitions of given words
       • Word seeds to create stories based on given words
       • Word dominoes to stablish a connection among pictures
       • Word thieves to relate words from a passage to a certain category
       • I went into town for revising lexis
       • Word jumbles or pools to order vocabulary words that are mixed up
       • Instant crossword created by students with vocabulary from the lessons
       • Don't finish a word to create a chain of letters that form a word
       • Biting your tail to say words that start with the last letter of the last word dictated by a classmate
       • Chain dictation to guess words related to a specific topic
       • Initial letter to form an acrostic with the letters of a word related to a lesson

7. Dictation

   • Read a text for learners to write it down
     • It's not very popular or fun
     • Consider the following ideas to innovate dictation
       • Keywords dictation to create stories with given words
       • Collocation dictation to form collocations and compare answers
       • Wall dictation with writers and readers who memorize what they read in the wall
       • The "Bad Cold" dictation for learners to complete a dictation with any word if the teacher sneezes
       • The wild dictation to guess the answer of some prompts
       • Dictogloss with long readings used for students to remember as much information about it as possible
       • Living tape recorder for students to controll dictation by pressing play or pause

8. Sound-Effects Recordings

   • They represent a useful technique to add sounds up to a story
     • Making your own sound sequence tape
       • Plan a sequence of sounds to record and do test recordings
     • Storybuilding
       • Learners listen to a sequence and tell their versions of the story
     • What's wrong with my story
       • Find the noises that do not fit in a story
     • Pictures from noises
       • Create a picture of a scene that students listen to in a recording
     • Verb hunting
       • Verbs used to explain the actions in a story
     • Wacky ideas
       • Wacky interpretation of sounds
     • Tense focus
       • Tell a story in present and ask learners to retell it in past

9. Poetry

   • It is a stimulus to see things in a new way
   • It's not appropriate to use it every class
   • Writing poems
     • Fill in the blanks to finish a poem
     • Form a poem following specific patterns
     • Make students realize some alterations of a poem
     • Found poems by selecting phrases of normal texts
     • Cut-ups to order lines of a poem
     • Add metaphors to a list of facts
     • Instructions to write instant poetry
       • Notice unusual things
       • In one sentence, describe an object you see
       • Notice the light and describe it
       • Look at other people
       • Write about their thiking
       • Write about what you can see
       • Describe the view through the window
       • Write what you can hear
       • Write about feelings
       • Refer to the future
       • Proofread your work
   • Reading poems
     • Choose poems with metaphors
     • Brainstorm words to know what it is going to be about
     • Prepare an easier version of the poem for learners to get the idea better
     • Do a picture dication

10. Drama

    • Bring the outside world into the classroom to let students practice the language
      • Common drama activities
        • Improvised drama
        • Play scripts
        • Guided improvisation
        • Drama games
        • Simulations
        • Role play
      • Drama games including improvisation
        • Interesting situations
          • Students act interesting situations in pairs. It can be used to real-play
        • Strange meetings
          • Prepare three cards
          • Give one to each student to create a story
          • Learners should interact and have conversations about the story
          • Students will move from one meeting to another when listening to a signal
          • Recall the interesting things
        • Making a picture
          • Frozen representation of an escene
        • Guided improvisation
          • Prepare a landscape in the classroom for learners to improvise

11. Projects

    • It provides an ongoing thread to classwork
      • Task-oriented
        • To practice the language
      • It has group-building outcomes
      • Learner-centered
      • Plan a project
        • Decide the project task
        • Design, prepare, write, perform, make something
        • Publish, present the results
      • First decisions to organize a project
        • Single class or group work?
        • One large task or project with stages?
        • How much time will it take in each lesson?
        • How long will it last?
      • Ideas for Projects
        • Write a touristic guide, a web page, keep a diary or a booklet
        • Brainstorms, live-performance comedy, invent a new country
        • Problem-solving, research interviews and analyses,

12. Getting to Know a New Class

    • Have clear aims
      • Learn some personal information and feelings of students
      • Help learners interact and work coperatively
    • "Getting to know you"
      • Activities
        • First, visualize the classroom environment
          • Find someone who, based on specific parameters, and turning prompts into questions
          • Use of badges or labels
            • People bingo, using students names
            • The small difference for students to change places and have other classmates to notice it
            • Anagrams with students names
            • Spy with "True" and "False" cards and students creating their own stories
            • Another option for students to get to know classmates they do not know well
        • Adapt activities if necessary

13. TV, DVD and Video

    • Exploit a video material
      • Basic guidelines
        • Keep it short, blank the screen, find an appropriate place to watch it, and do not ask students to extract information for studying
      • Using video recordings in class
        • Preview activities
          • Use language focused on grammar and lexis
          • Discuss topics and use a worksheet
        • Viewing activities
          • Task-text-feedback circle
            • Listening, looking, or interpreting
        • Follow-up activities
          • Discussion, interpretation, and personalisation
          • Study new language and perform role plays
          • Write a letter
      • Other ideas
        • Create communicative activities and challenge students
        • Switch off the sound and use the "pause" button for guessing
        • Have students recording their own videos
        • Watch one or two minutes clips, which are unfamiliar for students

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