Troublesome and Intolerant: Part One

 

He would fit in well with my class!

Every teacher has one of those classes. You know the one I mean, the class that you come out of with feelings that range from slight dejection to outright depression. The class that makes you feel like a bad teacher because it doesn't go as you'd hoped. The class that makes you react in ways that you wouldn't have dreamt of doing when you were training and may have even got you thrown off the course. Now don't worry, I'm not talking about anything violent here! I mean reactions such as raising your voice, getting into useless discussions with students, sticking to your guns when you know it's best to change tactics or move on.

Every year there seems to be one of these groups to spoil your otherwise perfect timetable. And the funny thing is, that the class in question isn't a group of bad kids, their previous teacher thought they were a lovely group, but there is something invisible that prevents you from gaining their respect and trust. Maybe you started the year on the wrong foot, maybe they preferred last year's teacher, maybe they have just changed over the summer. Maybe, as teachers, we know that the year is not going to be perfect and that there will be one group that will ruin things and we unconsciously stick a label on this group in the first week. Yes, this is going to be my dreaded group this year! I would hope this wasn't the case, but it is a possibility.

For me, this class changes as time goes on. Once upon a time it was very young learners that made my life difficult. Four year olds that I couldn't keep on a chair for more than five minutes. This year it's a group of thirteen year olds. Hormones all over the place, these kids are giggly, touchy-feely (with each other!) and would be much happier if they were allowed to sit chatting in Spanish all lesson. It may not help that I am no longer a "playing games" type teacher. It certainly does not help that they are in that in-between stage of mental and emotional development. They want to  "play games" but they don't want to get up from their seats or actually do anything. They definitely don't want to "do the book"!

So, I try (I really do) to find more fun things for them to do. They have been reasonably responsive with a couple of lessons based around activities from the Timesavers Speaking Activities book of resources. They particularly enjoyed the drawing activity but get quite bored with the "opinion" type discussions. They all profess to prefer "grown up" activities like the previous type, but don't really have the maturity to do them effectively. Sometimes they come out with things they have seen on TV and show some interest, so last week I took in a simple copy of the summarised Declaration of Human Rights and the following lesson we looked at what was happening in Libya. They didn't complain as such about the content, although I could tell it went a bit over their heads. A few of the students had never heard of Libya. Only one knew where in the world it was and could easily locate it on a globe. I wasn't particularly surprised as Spanish education focuses on mainly just that: Spain. Spanish history, Spanish geography and so on. I'm sure I had never heard of Libya myself when I was thirteen, but the again it wasn't on TV twenty-four-seven. Very few had heard of Gaddafi, but when we read a short article and discussed briefly what was happening, they were at least showing some interest. Maybe this was because I had promised them a game after we had finished!

Some of the students have showed an interest in history. I'm wondering whether to try a few lessons on historical events. I'm not particularly well-read on history myself, so I would have to do some research first, but if it keeps them happy...

I am open to any ideas on how to keep this group motivated. My main concern is to get them speaking, as I can focus on vocabulary or language features that either emerge or that I can smuggle into the activity itself.
If anybody knows of any resources suitable for teenagers with an elementary productive level (but pre-intermediate receptive skills) please add a comment below.

This post is a two-parter - this is the "Troublesome" part. You can find Part Two "Intolerant" here.

Open Book Tests Part 2 - How it went

Before you start to read I have to warn you that I don't yet have the results of the tests and therefore I don't know how the students have done or what problems they may have had. I left the tests at work yesterday and will be marking them this evening.

What I can say is that the students all appeared to be thinking hard whilst doing the test - I was actually writing some report cards but I had one eye on them all the time (I don't know where I've managed to learn the ability to write without looking at the paper properly!) and they were all concentrated on their work, sometimes looking up to think about something.

Funnily enough, a couple of the students didn't seem to open their books at all. I don't think this is because the test was easy for them but because it was actually harder and would take longer to find the appropriate section in the book than to think it through themselves. This was really one of my objectives for doing the test this way - they would have to think about the answers, using the material available to help them. In a state of such high concentration (as opposed to the usual fun and chatty atmosphere of the class), they would perhaps be more likely to take in and internalise the information and language they were reading about in the book and using in the test exercises.

Most of the learners used their books at some stage, but it seemed to be after thinking about a question that they opened their books, to check the answer they had already formed in their heads. In any case, as I had warned them before we started, they would not have time to look up everything.

One of the problems I had foreseen would be whether or not the tests would actually do their purpose and show me what the students know and what they don't. However, I think that if somebody really didn't know, for example, when to use "will" and "going to", that this will still be apparent in their answers. If they have been looking up individual examples in their book, there are likely to be mistakes in their test. In any case, the point is that even if they weren't sure about something before doing the test, it is quite possible that now, after looking in their books and doing the test, that they understand it.

I will be looking carefully at the test papers this evening. Rather than the number of correct answers, I will be focussing on the areas where the students generally did well, and those that seem to need more work. I will check for consistency within the same grammar point or lexical area for each student.

I think that even if the circumstances of the test turn out to not be ideal, something postive will have been taken from it. The learners felt that there were being some concessions made to them and they felt more confident having their book in front of them, like a kind of security blanket. The latter I believe to be important because it means the affective filter was higher than in a traditional test situation and hopefully this will have provided better working conditions for the students.

I will be asking them next lesson if they thought doing the exam in this way was a good idea, if there could be any improvements, how they felt during the test, if they used their books much etc.

I will report back on their opinions and my conclusions after marking the tests.

Thanks for reading :)

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After marking the tests I can say that being able to use their books has not actually helped the students do the test - to be honest, they haven't done as well as I had expected - it is possible that looking in their books may have confused them on some points, but the general impression I have is that they haven't taken advantage of the situation. They don't seem to have looked up the rules for the grammar that was being tested but have relied on their own knowledge, and they ecrtainly haven't used to their books to find examples of collocations that appeared in the test since the questions they got right are of examples they have come across many times.

As I mentioned in the original post, I think I will have to show them how to use their books to find relevant information. Just as they would need training in making notes, they need training in using reference materials.

This has been an experiment, and I am not going to take their test results into account for their end of term reports, because I don't think they are accurate enough. What is clear though, is that if I want to give a test in similar conditions in the future, I am going to have to show the students how to look for information. We will need to do some practice on looking for specific information (scanning) and transferring rules and examples into different types of exercise.

I do think that having their books available for consultation was comforting for the students, but it is clear from the results that they found the test difficult. This obviously isn't very motivating - doing badly in a test is one of the worst things that can happen to a language learner - but I think it will show the learners a need for a change in attitude (they can be particularly lazy). The test was difficult and I will make sure this is clear to the learners, and I plan on going over the exercises and asking the students to find the appropriate pages in the book, encouraging them to find similar examples and rules that they needed to do the exercise well.

The most important thing I need to do today though, is reassure the students that they are making progress, they are improving their English and that their test result isn't so important. What is really important is the work they do every day in class and this is what will be reflected in their reports.

Open Book Tests

By ccarlstead on Flickr with Creative Commons licence

In October I wrote a post about allowing students to take in notes to exams. The idea was students would hopefully spend some time before the test preparing their set of notes, at the same time revising the content without even realising it. I was planning on using this method with a group of thirteen year olds, who are at an age where they need to understand the importance of doing a test properly because for the next five years at secondary school they will be having tests more often than they actually have a proper lesson, such is the educational system in Spain! However, these kids are actually this - kids. They may be taller than me but inside they are just beginning to step away from childhood. For this reason, I don't think allowing them to prepare notes would be of any help. They know what grammatical structures will be in the test, but do they know how to make notes? Has anybody shown them how to make a good set of revision notes? No. At school nobody teaches them study techniques. They mostly just have to memorise facts and even large chunks of information word for word. Unless I show them myself how to create a set of notes and how to focus on the most important parts, they will have difficulty in doing so successfully.

So, I am going one step further. We are having an open-book test.

The test they have is fairly long and is based on the grammar and vocabulary we have been learning this term, with a writing stage for early finishers. As I said in the other post, I'm not a big fan of tests, but this class is quite lazy (I know, it's their age) and I'm hoping that having a test will help them focus more. They are so used to testing that if we don't have one they seem to think that the class is just to doss around in (for those of you who didn't live in the UK in the nineties, "to doss around" means "to spend time doing very little or being unproductive").

Anyway, they will be able to use their books to help them do the test. However, they won't have time to look up everything in their books. In any case, the test questions are not reproductions of tasks in the book, so they will have to find the approriate section. If they have to choose between the Present Continuous and Will to talk about the future, they can read the grammar section (in English) on that to remind them of their uses before doing that particular exercise. If they can't remember the spelling of a vocabulary item, they can find it in their book to double check.

One of the other reasons why I'm doing this is to reduce stress. I didn't want the learners to be worrying about the test, or hurriedly studying five minutes before the class and getting all nervous. Allowing them to use their books means that everyone is relaxed about doing the test and sould hopefully be more successful - essential with this age group.

I do plan to allow notes as mentioned above in the future, but with older students and when we have some time to discuss how to create these notes.

I shall report back tomorrow on how today went!

Pimp My Ride: an activity to practise comparatives and superlatives

I actually got the original Pimp My Ride lesson idea from a colleague named Will Hebbron during summer school many moons ago. In this lesson the students were given a basic black and white picture of a car which they then had to "pimp" or "tunear" as it is known in Spain. They had to change the entire look of the car by adding spoilers, wings, tinting windows, adding a cool design to the paintwork and so on. They also had to list the characteristics of their car including any special features it may have had. This was done as a project type lesson, the main aim being communication in L1 and collaboration in groups.

This afternoon my class of thirteen-year-olds are going to be revising comparative and superlative adjective forms. After the usual course book exercises, I wanted to do something a bit more fun with them. What could we do to practise comparatives and superlatives in a way that they would enjoy? Well after actually seeing an episode of the real "Pimp My Ride" tv show on MTV last night, I remembered the activity in question. However, we don't have time to waste colouring in large pictures of cars, so I decided to slightly alter the activity and have them design their own car, in pairs. In each pair, one will be responsible for the design of the car and the other will work on the characteristics. Here are screenshots of the worksheets I have just created:

Fairly self explanatory I think. They have a sample advert to look at first, and I will make sure they understand horse power and engine size (not that I really understand it myself!).

When everyone has finished, which may have to be in the following lesson, we will stick all the worksheets on the wall around the classroom. The students will look at all the pictures and information and decide:
Which car is the fastest?
Which car is the most expensive?
Which car is the biggest?
Which car is the most beautiful?
Which car is the most fashionable?
Which car is ther most sporty?
and so on.

Teaching T(w)eens Part 3 - Social Networking

In the first part of this mini series of posts I explained an idea I had for the first lesson of a group of thirteen year old students: Part 1

This involved asking the learners to think about their interests and likes, what type of activities they would like to do in class and what they need to work on. They came up with lots of typical ideas such as listening to songs, watching videos, sports and so on, but I was surprised to see that a few of them were interested in history and one even mentioned politics! Not that I plan on discuccing politics with a group of 13 year olds - I would have no idea on how to go about that! However, their thoughts have given me something to consider while planning their lessons. We are using a course book, but I would like to supplement that with tasks and activities that really interest the learners. Something else I am going to try with them is peer teaching (see this post on the topic). This afternoon we will be looking at the overview to the next module of study, which lists all the activities they will do for the four main skills. I am going to ask them to tick the ones they like and to choose their favourite. Then I will form small groups of students with the same answer and tell them that they are going to be the teachers for that particular lesson, giving them time in future lessons to prepare adequately.

But this post isn't about learner participation or autonomy, it is about social networking. Now, I have had a Facebook account for around five years, which I use personally rather than professionally. I use Twitter to keep up with ELT news. However, I have never used either of these with my students (yet). To be honest, I would not share my personal Facebook with my students as it would be sharing too much of my personal and past life, although I may consider opening a new account for this purpose in the future. Anyway, the majority of my students don't actually use Facebook, but a Spanish social networking site calle Tuenti.

I have just opened a Tuenti account ofr the purpose of communicating outside the classroom with my students. Last year I tried to set up an Email in English scheme with a teenage FCE class. Most of them opened a Gmail account as specified, in order to be able to use the online chat, however none of them EVER replied to the emails I sent, I only chatted with one student ONCE who is the same student that sent me her homework via email ONCE. The problem? Teenagers don't seem to use email! And why should they? The only people they want to keep in touch with are their friends, all of whom are on Tuenti, which is a much more interesting place than boring email. You can read people's status, see their photos, send them short messages and so on.

So, after giving up last year on the whole email business, I have decided to use Tuenti. If I can manage to get them all to add me as a friend (I wonder if THEIR personal lives aren't too secret to share with their thirty-something English teacher), then hopefully I will be able to engage them in English communication outside of class time. I have set up a Page called Exam English for the FCE and CAE classes where we will all be able to share links to videos, photos, songs and websites. We will be able to write on each other's Wall (or whatever it is called in Tuenti) and basically socialize in English. This is what I'm hoping for anyway!

I am also considering trying this out with my group of tweens. Supposedly, in order to use Tuenti you must be 14 years of age, but I'm sure some of the kids will have got around this minor detail. This afternoon I will bring up the topic and see how many are interested in using social networks. If they do use Tuenti, I will set up another page for them. If not, I wonder if they would be interested in a blog?

Do you have experience using social networks or blogs with young teenagers?

First Lessons: Teaching T(w)eens Part One

I only have one new group this year as I really wanted to continue teaching last year's classes. This new group has been learning English at the school for around four years and I'm guessing they are somewhere around the Pre-Intermediate level. They are about thirteen years old, which can be a difficult age group to deal with, especially if the first day doesn't get off to a good start.

I have titled this post First Lessons: Teaching T(w)eens because although these learners are actually teenagers in their own right, many of them still have the maturity of an eleven year old. I don't really know the kids in question, having never taught them previously, but I get the impression that they are more "tween" than "teen". They don't seem to be at all interested in the opposite sex yet, which is probably a good thing, even though this usually makes it difficult to pair up girls and boys.

So after this bit of background about the students (although after today I may have to rewrite this post) I was thinking of what to do in the first lesson.

I thought of doing the typical "rules" lesson, so that everyone is aware of what is expected and permitted of them, but maybe they are a bit old to enjoy thinking up rules, after all, teenagers are there to bend or break them. I don't want to play games with them, except maybe as a bit of vocabulary revision from last year, as I want to start off the term in the way I want to continue - and that will not be playing too many games! I don't want to get right back into where they left off in their course book either - it is the first day (and their first proper day back at school).

So after a bit of umming and ahhing, this is what I've decided to do:

I'm going to give each learner a sheet of paper and a pen and I'm going to tell them to write down anything that they would like to do throughout the course. I will give them the following titles to start them off on the right track:

• Things I like doing.
• Activities, people and places I'm interested in.
• Things I enjoy doing in class.
• Topics I would like to study in class.
• Problems I have with English.
• Doodle space.

The students will divide the piece of paper into six sections, each with one of the titles above. They will then have around ten minutes to write something in each section. After that, they will talk together in groups and share ideas. This will let them write down ideas that they hadn't originally thought of themselves but that they would like to include. I will take in the papers at the end and make a list on the board, giving the class an idea of some of the topics and activities we may be doing alongside the course book.

What about the doodle space? you may ask. Let me ask you a question. How many times have you set a free-ish task such as this one only to see half the class chewing on their pencils with a blank piece of paper on their desks? My point is made! It can be difficult to get started, and the doodle space is there to give the students some thinking time, allowing them to write or draw anything that comes into their head. This may be an idea that they can then put into one of the other sections, or it may just help them to focus on the task.

The doodle space is actually a double-edged sword, since it also has another function - doodles can show what really interests someone. The learners may have likes and interests that they don't want to write down for others to see, or things that they don't even realise they like! Tweens are very conscious of what is accepted by their peers - if they write down "Hannah Montana" and the rest of the class thinks she is too babyish, they will be mortified. However, if in the doodling section they include the lyrics to one of Hannah's songs, no-one will even notice. They may also write "I hate Hannah Montana" in which case I know never to bring up the topic in class! (By the way, I have nothing personal against HM, I even had her calendar up last year in the classroom!). It also gives me the chance to see who the class artists are, and who prefers writing.

The other sections are, I think, quite self-explanatory. Having students think about both what they like and what they like to do in class gives me a wider view of their personalities. Getting them to think about the parts of English they have difficulties with gives me an idea of what they need to work on. Asking them what they would like to do is actually allowing them to negotiate a small part of the syllabus. I will substitute some of the exercises from their course book with the activities they have chosen.

Finally, I will have a piece of writing from them on the first day (even if it is only notes) which can serve as a diagnostic tool, allowing me to see what their writing skills, their vocabulary and possibly grammar are like.

See the results here.