CISELT Reflections

16/1/2014

I love literature, and I love this particular workshop. All the activities presented would be easily integrated in my teaching practice. I wish we had done this workshop right in the beginning of the course, it would have served in a very useful way in teaching the narrative cluster for grade 12. Anyway, the first great activity is ‘Walking through the story’. After listening to an oral story, learners are supposed to write down the story stages they can remember then compare them with the notes from the teacher. Then, with a partner, they are going to retell it, in their own words using notes, and whenever they reach a new stage they have to make a step forward. For sure, I will not miss the opportunity to try it with my students. It addresses many language skills like listening for gist and details, taking notes, developing notes into a speech, and addresses various learning styles.

Another interesting activity is ‘Pink Bow Tie‘. Presented a picture (of a bow tie), learners have to write answers to a set of questions that the teacher asks (*). The activity is done in groups; each member is going to write his own answer, fold the paper and handle it to one sitting on his left. At the end, each learner is going to have a funny story with interesting and sometimes unconnected events. Ultimately, the story is given to the students to be read and compared to what they have written. Of course, this activity could be adapted to suit students’ levels, interests and cultural beliefs.

‘The Wolf’s Tale’ is the last activity I will definitely use. Actually, it appeals to creative thinking and helps considering issues from different perspectives. Secondary students are required to identify the point of view in a story and justify its use, and such an activity would allow them, not only to be aware of the point of view used, but also experiment with telling the events from a totally different angle. Referring to Bloom’s taxonomy, this activity is placed at the highest level, since it allows the learners to experiment with characterization and plot, and create new scenarios. Of course, a good variation would be to ask the students to act out the dialogue or the scene they have written or produce a storyboard.

While our trainer was presenting the possible pre-, while- and post-reading activities for ‘The Wolf’s Tale’, one of our colleagues made an interesting comment. He said that whenever it comes to stories, he finds that he does not teach it in such creative ways. My immediate response was ‘it is your choice!’. Indeed, for many reasons, language teachers have fears to give up teaching stories using old-fashioned methods. They are usually obsessed with assessment and worry a lot about the way their students will perform in exams.

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(*) The questions are:

1. Why is the boy sitting outside the principal’s office?
2. Why is the pink bow tie amusing?
3. Who sees the boy sitting outside the principal’s office?
4. What does the principal say to the boy?
5. What excuse does the boy give to the principal?
6. What happens to the pink bow tie?

Drama I think is one of the most successful strategies any teacher can use to enhance interactivity in his/her class. Most students find drama activities interesting and fun. I agree that shy students would not show encouraging signs of interaction right from the beginning. However, as the activities flow and the teacher manages to set up an atmosphere of trust and confidence, attitudes would change to the better. Apart from using language, human communication has always depended on other parameters like using body language, tone, pitch of voice and of course, context. Hence comes the importance of drama as a natural as well as important tool to experiment with the language.

The workshop
The activities that went well and I would use in class:
1. The drama warmer ‘greetings’ is engaging. The students would have fun greeting someone in an unusual way (angrily, like a king, happily, secretly, etc.), and in the same time, they learn a lot about tone of voice.
2. The second activity I liked is the ‘dramatic dialogue’. It is one of the high-thinking order activities that challenges the students’ imagination. It is a three-fold activity: students start by reading dialogues in pairs and guess the way characters could feel. Then they are challenged to guess who the characters might be. Finally, they are asked to decide about changing words from the dialogue to match the correct situation and register.

3. The third activity that everyone found enjoyable and motivating is the ‘what is this?’. Our trainer held a pen in her hand and asked, ‘what is this?’. Everyone answered in a very natural way, ‘it is a pen’! ‘No’, she replied, ‘it is a dart’, of course she was miming the answer. Such an activity could be used at any stage of a lesson, and most importantly, it can serve as a tool to get the students’ attention whenever we feel that they strayed.

4. The last interesting activity revolved around a video clip, ‘Fawlty Towers: handling complaints ‘

We have been shown the muted video at first. In groups, we had to guess who the people were, where the scene took place and how everyone felt. After that, we formed new groups and we had to focus on one of the characters in order to guess what he/she was saying. Each group had to perform the scene. The final step was to watch the video again, with sound this time, and see if our dialogue was close or far away from the real scene.

2/1/2014

I liked most of this session, because it was full of activities that would engage students notwithstanding their learning style. The activities address visual as well as kinesthetic learners and cater for differentiated learning. Personally, I was particularly impressed by the activity in which the trainer asked us to build a place using the material she brought for each group. The material was not the same: some groups had Legos, others sticky notes and shapes. I think that, apart from the fun all the participants shared throughout the activity, there was room for a lot of creativity and high-order thinking skills. The activity was closed by going around the room, with a person explaining his or her group’s project to members from other groups (who worked on different projects). When we apply this activity in class, especially in mixed-up ability classes, more able students would most probably in charge of such a task. They would talk about the whole group’s achievement, providing a real feeling of interdependence and confidence.

5/12/2013

Project-based learning has always fascinated me. All started with a workshop conducted by the British Council during the period I worked in Bahrain. When I was first introduced to the idea, I did not feel very comfortable with it. This could be accounted for by a simple reason: when your task as a language teacher consists of ‘teaching a textbook’, from cover to cover, within a limited time framework, and when your main job is to prepare your students to get ready for an exams at the end of term or year, the idea to base your teaching on a project that may elapse over a long period of time seems unreasonable. But with my first experience with independent schools, I had a second thought about it. Actually, I took advantage of the ‘Film Club’ unit to try it out. Over two weeks, I divided my class into groups with different tasks. The lessons usually started with a trigger like a presentation, a short video, or a reading, then there was an explanation of each student or group’s task, making room for collaborative work. I transformed the class into actors, directors, reporters, graphic designers and technician with the goal to write and produce a movie, design a poster, and write a review. Needless to say that the majority of the students were involved and that it was very easy for me to get them listen to me. In the end, the result was impressive. Students were proud of their work, and kept talking about the project for the following two years.

This week’s session dealing with project-based learning was very interesting in many respects. Apart from the project ideas presented, I liked the discussions with my colleagues concerning the functional and language skills that can be reached through the implementation of projects, and the way to guarantee the effectiveness of class projects. This session revived in me the idea that I have to integrate one or two projects in my teaching this year.

Throughout the first five modules, I was exposed to a ‘bundle’ of activities that could be adapted and used in class.

1. Mutual Dictation Text:

Our trainer split us into pairs and gave us gapped texts that we had to fill. Pairs had to sit back to back and mutually dictate the missing words. Then there was room for peer-checking. Though the activity was a bit noisy, it was a very good way to start the session and break the ice.

I was interested to try this activity in class. indeed, I used it with a mixed-ability class.