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.

Killing Two Birds with One Stone

I just had a brainwave as I was getting ready for work! I was wondering how I was going to get my group of young teenagers to sit with people other than their friends. Although the boys are starting to have an interest in girls, they still aren't very happy about sitting next to and working with them, but if I want them to work well and not waste time I am going to have to mix them up. I don't want to create a formal seating plan, and in any case, I would rather they changed places every lesson and had the chance to work with everybody.

The idea I have just come up with probably isn't a new one, in fact I've tried similar things with children in the past, but it combines moving students around and vocabulary revision (i.e. killing two birds with one stone!).
This is how it works:

Before the lesson, choose a topic that the students have been studying recently and make a list of words from that lexical set, making sure there is one for each student in the class. You will need two copies of each word. Then, assign each word to a chair. You could write or print out the word in large letters and stick it onto the back of the chair, or you could find a picture illustrating the word and stick that on or above the chair. Then, fold up the second set of words (these should be on small pieces of paper) and put them in a hat or box.
As each student comes into the classroom, they must take a piece of paper from the hat and find their chair. This will be their place for the whole lesson. If they are to work in pairs or groups, they will be with the person or people next to them.

You can do this every day. It will help the learners get used to changing place and working with different people and it is useful revision of vocabulary. If you don't want to revise that many words every lesson, why not use pictures of famous people like Myley Cyrus (Hannah Montana) or Cristiano Ronaldo?

Try it!

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 2 - What they came up with

In my last post I spoke about an activity to use with a new group of young teenagers, where they are given the opportunity to tell me what they are interested in. Here are some of the results, in no particular order:

Likes and Interests

Sports          Computer games          Shopping          Reading          Watching TV          Talking to friends

Drawing        Listening to music         Girls                Chatting on MSN                          Football

Basketball      Justin Bieber               Technology       Art                   History

Preferred Class Activities

Playing Combiletter (a word game)
Listening to songs
Talking to my friends (one can imagine that this would be in Spanish)
Watching a film/video
Talking about interesting things (whatever they are!)
Speaking to girls (Yes, a new obsession has appeared over the summer for one boy!)

Topics to study in class

Art
Famous People
World news
Technology
Science
History
Conversations

Problems

Grammar
Pronunciation
Writing

The Doodle Space didn't give too much away, but I did discover that we have a very talented artist in the class! I also got the impression that quite a few of the kids like drawing Manga style characters. Being allowed to draw while they worked seemed to give them the impression that the activity was more fun. I monitored closely to make sure they were all actually working and not just doodling, helping out with ideas where necessary.

Hopefully I will be able to draw on this information to provide more motivating activities to use to supplement our course book.

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.

Motivating teenage exam classes: an autonomous approach

A few months ago I wrote an article about learner autonomy, which, for those of you who subscribe to MET magazine, appears in the July issue. One of the practical ideas I spoke about for encouraging learner autonomy is a take on "peer teaching".
Peer teaching means that the students are the teachers for a period of time. This could be ten minutes at the beginning or end of a lesson up to a whole lesson. The idea is that the learners choose the lesson focus, possibly from a list that you give them, and find a way to present and practise this content.

With teens, who may be going through a difficult period of self consciousness, this type of approach has to be considered carefully. It really depends on the learners themselves: How shy or outgoing are they? What kind of relationship do they have with one another? Are there any particularly reserved members of the class?

As the typical answers to these questions would generally make it difficult for students to get up in front of the class and present a lesson or activity, the best way of going about peer teaching with this age group is to put students into groups. Ideally the groups should have a healthy mix of different types of learners such as boys and girls, stronger and weaker students, shy and more outgoing people, students with different interests and learning styles. Having variety in a group helps the dynamics and creativity of the results.

I am going to present the following idea to my group of FCE teenagers tomorrow in their first lesson of the new school year.

Each group of students is going to be responsible for one lesson per term.
Each group will choose a different subject as the basis for their lesson. It could be based on a grammar point, a vocabulary topic, or a specific exam skill (e.g. Use of English Part 2).
Each group will spend some time in class to prepare their lesson.
Each member of the group will have a role to fulfil and an area to work on.
Each group will receive a valuation for how they have worked both as a group and individually, as well as a mark from the other learners.


The idea is that including the students in the design process of their course will highly motivate them. They will feel great when there classmates have understood something they didn't before thanks to their presentation or explanation. They will become more involved in decision making and take responsibility for their own and their classmates' learning. They will also improve cognitive skills such as evaluating, decision making, explaining, planning and summarizing.

Would anybody like to try this out as a parallel experience with me and discuss how they get on?

Back to School: 5 things to do before the first day

It's that time of year again - the start of a new school year. You're feeling refreshed after the summer break and are raring to go, brimming with enthusiasm and you just can't wait to get back into the classroom. Well, maybe I am exaggerating slightly, but most teachers who enjoy their jobs are looking forward to starting a new year. However, this enthusiasm can wane over the first few weeks, especially if your new timetable isn't what you had hoped or if that class that last year's teacher raved on about doesn't live up to your expectations.

There are, nontheless, some things you can do to get off to a good start, to try to get the most out of your students so that both you and the class enjoy their lessons and which will help keep everyone motivated and keen.

1) Prepare the classroom.
Spending an hour or two getting the classroom looking decent before the first day is more important than it may seem. For new students, one of the first thing they will notice is the classroom. Make sure that it at least looks clean and tidy, even if the cleaner hasn't been in yet. Set out the tables and chairs in a way that looks inviting and relaxed. Make sure the windows are open and are letting in enough natural light (for daytime lessons). Hide any paintwork defects or stains on the walls with posters or students' work from the previous year. Decorate the walls in whatever way you prefer - with motivational posters, grammar posters, paintings, student displays. I find student displays to be a real motivator with new students as they often admire the work and show willingness to do something similar.

2) Have all books, CDs and materials ready.
This may sound like an obvious one but very often on the first day you forget something and have to go out  to get it, often meaning that the lesson will start slightly late. Not a good first impression! And if you work with young learners it is all the more important - you need to be there, setting an example of punctuality and organisation. If you are using photocopies, make sure you have extra copies. It is very common in private language schools to have students enrolling 5 minutes before the first lesson. Rather than saying that you have to pop out to get a copy because you weren't expecting two extra students, just make two or three extra copies beforehand- don't worry about wasting paper because you can always reuse them as scrap paper!

3) Get the temperature right.
Maybe something for the maintenance man, but making sure the classroom is at a suitable temperature before the students arrive is essential. If you live in a country where the temperature is still 35º C in September, putting the air-conditioning on ten minutes before the lesson is due to start is a good idea. The same goes for heating in colder climates. A suitable room temperature is absolutely essential for high concentration. Students should not feel hot nor cold, as any feeling of discomfort will distract them.

4) Have water available.
This may seem like a luxury, but in a hot country it is important to drink plenty of fluids. If there is no drinks machine in your school, ask your boss if the budget could stretch to a couple of bottles of water per day. If not, bring in water and plastic cups yourself, or ask parents to send their children with individual bottles. Dehydration can drastically lower concentration and sense of well-being. Imagine being really thirsty. Now imagine you are in a classroom. Would you really be able to concentrate on a presentation of the present perfect? Or would you be thinking "I'm really thirsty and if I don't have a drink in one minute I'm going to die!" Point taken?

5) Have everything planned.
Ok, so this is no surprise either. However, many of us don't actually plan much for the first day because we haven't met the students. Of course it is important to adapt a course to the needs of the students, but you should have an idea of what you are going to teach them throughout the year. And even if you haven't yet chosen a course book, have the first lesson properly planned. Explain to the students that you are going to
choose a book specifically for their needs. Don't let them go through the lesson thinking that they haven't got a book, they don't know what the course objectives are and that the teacher doesn't know what he or she is doing. They won't turn up for the second lesson. Even if you prefer the dogme approach, at least explain this to your students. In my experience with Spanish learners at least, students like to have some kind of structure and want to know what they will be doing. They also like to look over things again at home, so if you can give them an outline of the course objectives as early as possible, they will be happy. Like I mentioned before, the first impression counts, and a teacher turning up with no materials on the first day asking the students a few questions and setting up a load of "get to know you" activities does not cause a brilliant one.

I hope these points are useful - I'm actually really just giving myself a reminder of what to do next week but I thought I would share them. If you have any other ideas on what to do before the first day, don't hesitate to post them in the comments section.

Have a great start to the new school year, fellow teachers!

Your Virtual English Friend

Having just watched a short video of the Microsoft's presentation of their "virtual human", I started thinking how this technology could change language learning.

Milo is a virtual boy. You see him on your TV screen. He will do as you command, but he's not just a character in a computer game. Milo actually responds to your oral commands, answers your questions and interacts with objects that you give him. In the video the girl passes Milo a drawing she has just done on a piece of paper and he take sthe paper from her and responds. Now, doesn't that seem incredible? We can't pass objects through the TV screen! Of course, the paper itself doesn't leave the girl's hand, but an exact replica of the piece of paper is scanned and it's data sent to Milo. The player and Milo interact and this interaction is so much more realistic than in previous video games because facial expressions and body langauge are so successfully portrayed. When the girl asks Milo about his homework, he acquires a sheepish expression. I have no idea how this technology works, and I'm sure that when it is released as a game it will not be anywhere near as effective or realistic as in this demonstration (just like most video game adverts and demos) but even if it does half of what we expect, it can be exploited in many different areas, not just entertainment.

Imagine you have your own English friend with whom you can converse, play games and explore. For a learner of English this is a brilliant opportunity to practise the language. Learners who live in a country where English is not spoken by most people can have great difficulties in practising the language outside of class. With somebody like Milo in their XBox, they can have a fairly realistic experience of interacting with a real English boy. This will surely interest children and teenagers, but I think a similar product could be developed for adults too. Imagine a "game" where you have to negotiate with a board of businessmen who react and respond to everything you say. To be honest, the possiblities are endless.

Let's just hope that one day soon this technology is released into the market, and at a reasonable price. Then we will all be able to have our own mini English friend!

The article from BBC News here 

Wiki Wiki (not Waka Waka)

I have just created my very first class wiki! The wiki is one of the free educational wikis wikispaces are giving away at the moment.

I am currently designing a programme for one of my young learners' groups for next year, for which I have decided against having a course book. The programme is based tasks and activities related to different areas of the primary curriculum. Since the children will have no book to take home and show their parents, I decided to create a wiki which the parents will be able to access and see some of the work their children are doing in class, as well as helping them practise what they have learnt at home. The idea of involving parents in learning is not new one, however it is one that can be difficult to implement, especially when you only teach the children for two hours a week. Parents show much more interest in mainstream education and often they treat their after school English lessons as a bit of a hobby or babysitting service. For this reason I will send out a letter to all parents, explaining what a wiki is and how it will be used, and asking them to participate. Hopefully, in this way we will see a bit more interest in what the children are doing, on the part of their parents.

The wiki in question will have a page per topic; meaning that approximately every month a new page will be set up. On that page I plan to upload some of the children's work including drawings, photos and videos for all the parents to see. The wiki will be private and only those with a password will be able to access it. Parents with passwords will be able to log on and help their child answer questions and complete tasks that I leave on the page. Parents will also be able to comment on what we have been doing.

I really hope that this way parents will be encouraged to participate actively in their child's learning, whether it is just showing an interest, or actually doing extra practice with their child.

Has anybody else set up a wiki for young children? I would love to hear about how it went and any suggestions you may have.

Wordle of the first unit for next year's 6 year olds

I am currently designing a programme for First Year Primary learners at my school.
Here is a wordle of the first unit syllabus.

PLN quiz - a fun way to encourage self study

What you can learn from my PLN #4 (June 28) » online exam

Barbara has a great initiative to encourage people to read blog posts they may have missed in her PLN quiz.
http://www.teachingvillage.org/  I have just read five fantastic posts that I hadn't discovered or got round to reading the first time around. I would recommend anyone to take part in these quizzes, not for the chocolatey prize, but to read some great posts you may not have come across. Wanting to do well in the quiz just makes you read the posts even more carefully and think about what they are saying - this must be good! It could actually be a nice way of encouraging students to revise - instead of giving them a formal test, why not make a quiz out of it with a nice certificate for the students who get 100% - if like Barbara you give them unlimited chances to get a perfect score, you are giving them more opportunities to revise what they have been studying.

Thanks Barbara, for starting this initiative!

Fluffy Friends

Lenny the Lizard, Kitty the Cat and Robbie the Rabbit are my faithful furry friends. Lenny has been around the longest, Kitty was a favourite at the nursery school I teach at, and this past year we have adopted Robbie as our classroom pet.

Now unlike Leahn at Early EFL I am no animal lover. I would rather avoid most animals (except perhaps cats, but even then it depends on the cat!) so the pets I am referring to are of course, puppets. I am going to talk about how I have used these puppets over the years and also suggest some newer ideas I have for exploiting them in class.

This is Lenny. I actually thought he was a crocodile when I found him, but the children said he was a lizard and gave him his name. He was the first puppet I took to the nursery school when I started teaching 3-5 year olds there a couple of hours a week. Lenny is a fun puppet to use, as children find lizards and other reptiles quite interesting. He's very playful and loves pretending to bite small hands!

This is Kitty. She is a well-loved member of the English class. She came to the nursery school for four or five years before she got too big and decided to go to school with the older children. I named her after the "Hello Kitty" craze, because I thought it would be an easy name for the children to remember and it is easy to pronounce. The children love to give Kitty a hug and a kiss, although some cheeky monsters sometimes pull her tail! Kitty has a surprising past, which I tell the children in our Hallowe'en lesson. Kitty used to belong to a witch! I never met the witch so I ask the children if they think she was a good or wicked witch, usually with mixed responses!

Finally, we have Robbie. Robbie has been accompanying me to the nursery this year. He is actually from Robby Rabbit course by Macmillan  and I decided to keep his name. Robbie's ears are a great source of enjoyment for the children, as they get bent in my bag and every day he looks a bit different! Robbie is very soft and the children love touching him. I made up a song that we sing to Robbie every day. It goes like this: (tune similar to Twinkle Twinkle)

Hello Robbie, how are you?

Fine, thanks. How about you?

Let's speak English today

Let's speak English today

Hello Robbie, how are you?

Fine, thanks. How about you?

                        (Choral), FINE THANKS!

The puppets allow me to use English in a natural way, that doesn't intimidate the children. The puppets don't actually speak themselves, but I talk to the puppets and formulate the questions the children want to ask. Depending on the topic we are covering, I may ask the puppet about his/her favourite food or colour. When we are learning the names of clothes, the children tell me what the puppet should wear and we dress him/her in paper clothes. We have a "Good morning" and "Goodbye" routine where we greet/say goodbye to our puppet. On the odd occasion when I forget to bring him the children always ask about him, so I tell them that he slept in or went away on a short trip.

For young children puppets can be a way of connecting to English and it helps them understand that there are people who do not speak their own language and to communicate with these people they need to do so in English (or whatever language you are teaching). Young children don't really know what a country is and it is hard to explain, they often think that England must be a few kilometres away, which is the furthest they have ever been. Having a puppet that comes from another country (or planet!) and speaks another language can help with this.

However, I have not only used puppets with very young learners. Sometimes I get one out with older children, which they actually quite enjoy, as long as you take care to make sure that the activity is not seen as too babyish. For children with more English, you can do the following activities:

1. Introduce the puppet as an alien from another planet about whom they must find out as much information as possible by asking questions. (Works great with the puppet from OUP's Galaxy course)
2. Introduce the puppet as the main character from a story (you can make up your own story or adapt one that exists) that the children will later act out using the puppet.
3. Show the class the puppet and ask them to write about it, choosing a name, age, sex, nationality, hobbies, likes/dislikes etc.
4. Students make up dialogues in pairs which they then perform using the puppets.
5. Ask each student to create a profile for the puppet. They can take a photo of the puppet, dressing it up with props as they require, and add it to the profile. This could be done on computers if they are available.
6. Again, if the internet is available, use an audio recording program for the children to talk about the character they have invented for the puppet. You could use Fotobabble  or Voicethread to do this. All you have to do is upload a photo of the puppet and the students record themselves talking about it.
7. Games like pass the puppet (like pass the parcel) where you play music and the puppet is passed around until the music stops, when the student holding the puppet has to say a sentence about it e.g. "He's black and white", or "He eats carrots". This can be a fun way of revising vocabulary.
8. For classroom management issues, make one child resposible each day for the puppet. The child is also responsible for other duties such as handing out books and pencils. You can allow the child to take the puppet home (for younger children), and this can lead on to a discussion of how to look after a pet.

There is another kind of puppet that I also like using to create stories. These are finger puppets.  I have a set of around ten, where each puppet is a different character. We have a royal family, a wizard, a dragon, an owl, a jester and a baddie (not sure exactly what he is so I call him the baddie!). These are great for dramatising stories. You can make up a story or get the children to make up and write (if they are older) their own stories which they they recreate with the puppets. Finger puppets are also brilliant for short dialogues, even with beginners.

I'm sure there are hundreds of other possiblities for using puppets in the classroom, and these are just a few. If you have any good ideas, post them in the comments section. 

Curriculum Design: Part 3

Needs Analysis

One of the first things I need to do at the beginning of the planning stage of the course is to conduct a needs analysis. This should be a comprehensive analysis of what the students need, want and lack. It should include information about present knowledge and any gaps in this, general and specific language students will need in the future, skills, types of activity, topics, as well as taking into comsideration the environmental factors outlined in Part 2. The analysis should be partly done by and with the students, but should also take into account research and past experience of similar groups and courses.

The following are some of the aspects I will need to consider:

Needs:

• What will learners need to learn in order to be able to reach the goals of the course?
• What language will students need in order to communicate at a higher level than present?
• Which skill areas do students need to work on?
• What types of activity or task would best help students in these areas?
• Is fluency work more important than accuracy or vice versa?

Lacks:

• What is the students' proficiency in each skill?
• What language needs to be revised in order to fill in gaps in their knowledge?
• What do students think they need to work on?

Wants:

• What would the students like to work on?
• What kind of task do students prefer?
• How much time would they be prepared to spend on each aspect of the language?
• Will they spend time out of class improving their English?
• Do students prefer individual, pair, group or whole-class work?

How will I find this information? I will design a questionaire and interview form to use with the students in order to find out as much as possible from their point of view. I will also analyse the work covered this year. I may give students a diagnostic test in order to discover their main weaknesses. When I have all the results, I shall combine them to find the most important areas to include in the course. For example, if an item appears on the "lacks", "needs" and "wants" lists, it is something to spend more time on during the course.

Have I gatecrashed the party?

Maybe it's just me being silly, but I sometimes get the feeling that I have joined an CPE class when I am only a Pre-Int student in the world of blogging and social networking and that I do not belong here. After all, I am but a simple teacher in a private language school in the South of Spain, doing my job on a day to day basis to earn a living. I have been doing the exact same for the past eight years: preparing lessons based on the course book, spending fairly little time on planning, because I had lots of experiences of spending hours preparing lessons only to be greeted with bored faces asking me to do something else. I felt that it wasn't worth the effort.

However, over the last school year something has changed. Something has changed inside me and it all started when I started to read other blogs and use Twitter. Enthusiasm is infectious, just like a laugh or yawn can be and every day I read comments from professionals that are just oozing in enthusiasm towards their teaching. I have had such zeal relatively few times in my career, but recently I have a new-found passion for my job. Perhaps passion is the wrong word: I do not consider teaching the be all and end all of my life, but I can say that I am much happier about going to work than I used to be. I have plenty of new ideas, thanks to my PLN (a term that I feel uneasy about using, and that I will come to shortly) and I think my students are benefitting from this. I have decided to start giving some in-house teacher development sessions to share what I am learning.

Nevertheless, I can't help feeling that I don't fit in with these professionals that I sometimes communicate with on Twitter. I get the feeling that I am pretending to be a professional and that someone soon will catch me out for being a fraud. As for Personal Learning Networks, I believe this supposed to be a two-way affair. I learn so much from the people whose blogs I read and links I open. But do they learn anything from me? They are teacher trainers, course book writers, directors of studies, whereas I am just a teacher. I can't help thinking that I am taking much more than I am giving back.

I felt even more like a fraud when a well-known magazine agreed to publish an article I wrote. Why would anyone want to read what I have to say? I am not well read on methodology. What I write is really just common sense. I feel slightly embarrassed to see myself on people's educator lists on Twitter - I am not an educator, just a teacher! Now I have always been a quite an insecure person and find it difficult to believe in myself, probably the opposite to a lot of  Tweeters and bloggers out there, and so it really does make a difference to me when I get comments on my blog, or people retweet my tweets. I guess I just need a bit of encouragement occasionally!

Does anyone else get these feelings from time to time? Is it normal? How do you deal with it? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Curriculum Design: Part 2

One of the first things to think about when designing a course is the kinds of situational or environmental constraints that may exist. These constraints are factors that have the potential to impede the success of the course, and must be taken into account during the planning stage. They could be related to the students, the teacher, the resources available and the general situation.

In my case, the biggest constraints are time, resources, students' needs and students' level of proficiency. Let's look at these a little more closely.


Time
One of the most common problems that teachers find it hard to accept is that of time. Most teachers in the private sector only see their students for around three hours per week. In the context of adult learners, the majority of these will also have very little time to spend on language study or practice outside the classroom. Adults have lots of commitments such as work or studies and families as well as all the basic daily activities they have to make time for. This means that trying to get them to do anything in their free time is very difficult, and at best they will find half an hour once or twice a week. The challenge for us is to make sure they progress quickly in order to maintain high motivation, but it is very difficult to do, especially if some of the learners are sporadic attenders. How can we find the time to recycle language enough that the learners really internalise and acquire it without them feeling that they are repeating something they have already learnt. How can we make the students feel that they are making good progress? One possible solution is to do several tasks over several lessons that use the language in question, including warmer and filler games or activities. As for the lack of homework, maybe trying to incorporate the use of technology could be a solution. If we can get students using a social network in English, they can chat to each other, send messages, and share links to English language materials on the web. This will not seem like homework and it is a way of encouraging students to use the language out of the classroom.

Resources
In this particular case the problem is finding interesting and thought-provoking materials that challenge and motivate the learners. This group of adults enjoy talking about things they have been doing and about current affairs, especially local politics! However, we can't talk about politics all the time, and this means that the majority of these discussions are based around something they have read or heard in their own language, or a newspaper article I have brought in. The traditional topics that are found in course books are not suitable for this class, as many of them have been learning English for several years, and are tired of the typical course book material. Their syllabus should be based around topics that are up to date and stimulating. This means that choosing texts and listening tasks before the course starts may be detrimental, as they will be out of date by the time they are used. I will need to design a flexible syllabus whose topics can change according to what goes on in the world. However, I can choose the topics beforehand - in most years there will be a natural disaster, a general election in some part of the world, an important sports event, a change in government policy and so on. It will be the choice of lesson material that will have to wait until each specific lesson is planned.

Students' needs and levels
 Although the group is small (usually around 6 students), each student has different needs and wants. Some have excellent speaking skills but have big gaps in their grammar, others find reading and writing fairly easy but have problems listening and speaking, some want conversation and others want grammar practice. I need to accommodate all these needs into the syllabus in order to keep everyone happy and motivated. Looking at common wants, the course should be based around improving speaking and listening skills whilst widening students' vocabulary and revising grammar. However, most of the learners do not enjoy doing the typical controlled grammar exercise, and will therefore need a different way in which to practise language.

These are the most important environmental factors that I need to consider for this class. Other factors to consider are lack of lesson planning time for the teacher and whether it is worth spending so much time designing a course that is only suitable for this specific group. Will the course be suitable for other groups? If not, it may not be practical to develop a whole new course but to adapt an existing syllabus or published course book.

Curriculum Design: Part 1

I have just started reading a book about curriculum design and I thought that writing down what I understand from the book may be a good way of processing and reflecting on what I am learning. I have decided then, to do so here on my blog, so I apologise if my next few posts are really boring and complicated - I'm writing them for myself rather than for my (very small) audience. Just ignore my posts that begin with Curriculum Design!

I am going to be thinking about a specific group of students whom I have been teaching for the past two years, and will possibly continue with next year. These students have not had a book because they wanted conversational type lessons in order to maintain their level of English and increase their comprehension and fluency. I have had lot of help with lesson planning from onestopenglish.com this year! The group are middle-aged students who do not need English for their job, but really see their lessons as a hobby. This is the class I will be analysing for the purposes of the tasks in the book.

Before planning a course, it is important to think about the following subjects, and to ask yourself a few questions:

What are the levels of the learners and how I am I going to deal with variation in proficiency?
How am I going to encourage autonomy through the course?
How am I going to deal with students' lack of time outside of class to study English?

What do students want to achieve during the course? Long term and short term goals.
Which aspects of ELL do students want to work on most?

Which methodologies would best suit this group?
How can I introduce different methodologies into the lessons?

What are the main aims of the course?
How can I choose the goals from students' needs and wants?

Should the syllabus be lexical/functional/grammatical/skills based?
How will I decide the order of language items to be presented?
How often will I recycle language?

How can I effectively assess progress without the use of tests?

Evaluation (during and after the course) - Is the course successful?
Does it meet its aims?
Are students and teachers happy?

I need to consider these aspects in order to design a suitable curriculum for my learners. As I have not found a suitable course book for this group, I am going to design my own course, based on their needs. I am hoping this book will help me do so in a systematic way.

Teacher, can I write on the board?

This morning I bought a small whiteboard with washable marker from the local chinese bazaar. As I was standing in the queue I was thinking about what I would use it for. Here are some of my ideas, sometimes requiring more than one board, but you can buy them very cheaply and they will last for a long time.

1) Secret Word - I write a word on the board and tell students what category it is e.g. clothes and they take turns at guessing the word. The student that guesses correctly then writes a word.

2) Pictionary - Instead of whispering the word or sentence to the drawer, I write it on the board.

3) Pictionary - Students draw on the whiteboard and play pictionary in small groups (several boards needed).

4) Sentence completion - I write a sentences with a missing word on the main board. Students in teams write on their board the missing word. (Suitable for PET and FCE exam prep)

5) Writing letters - Very Young Learners practise letter formation on small boards.

6) Picture Dictation - In pairs or small groups students draw a picture and describe for their companions to draw.

7) Giving praise - When a student does something very well, I draw a smiley face or a big tick on the board and show it to the individual.

8) Sentence writing - In a chain, students each write a word to form a sentence. If done in two teams, give points for the number of words.

9) Silent Way - Instead of speaking, write everything on the board, encouraging students to respond orally. This includes saying hello, showing your feelings e.g. big smiley face, a question mark if you don't understand.

10) Writing vocabulary - For young learners who find it hard to locate a specific word on the main board, write the word they want to use on the board.

11) Pass the board - Like pass the parcel but with vocabulary. Give a topic e.g animals and play music. Students pass the board around and when the music stops, the person who has the board writes a word.

12) Prompts - Ask students questions and prompt their answers using the board.

13) Instructions - Write an instruction on the board, show it to one student who does that action, then the others say what the instruction was. (Practice for Starters speaking exam)

14) Menu - For a café or restaurant roleplay, write the menu on the board and display.

15) Shopping List - For a shopping roleplay write the shopping list of items students need to buy.

16) Physical Sentences - With several boards, write a word on each that can form a sentence. Then give one to each student who have to stand in a line in to make a correct sentence.

If I think of any more I will add them to the list. I'm sure Alex Case would come up with a hundred! The possibilities are really quite endless. Most of these activties can be done on paper, but just think that this way you will be saving a tree or two! Please feel free to add any suggestions in the comments section.

Getting the Buggers to Speak English!

I have often though about trying out different teaching approaches in my lessons, and to some extent I have done so, but some approaches such as Task Based Learning do not work as well as I would like. The main reason for this is the difficulty (impossibility?) of getting my learners to use English during the task. This problem usually occurs with Young Learners. I'm not really thinking about children here, as they do not have enough language to be able to discuss things in English, but teenage learners, for example, a PET or FCE group. At these levels, the students should have enough language to be able to talk about problems and do simple tasks without L2 interference. However, even if they start to do the task in English, they will always end up speaking in Spanish.

So, I'm thinking of doing an experiment to try to make them aware of how much Spanish they actually use in class, as I'm sure they don't realise how little English they use when left to their own devices. What I plan to do is:

a) Give them a task based activity to do in small groups and write down the number of utterances I hear in both English and Spanish on a piece of paper (using a simple five-bar gate method) and later transfering this to the blackboard. I think that if I did this directly on the board, they would ask me what I was doing rather than concentrate on the task. So I will have two columns on the page; one labelled English and the other labelled Spanish. Each time I hear a word or sentences in either of the two languages, I will mark it in the right column. This of course would not work with a large class. Seeing this on the board will give them a visual image of the amount of Spanish they use. We could even transfer the numbers into a bar or pie chart.

b) Record a lesson, either audio or video. For this I will need a good quality microphone that the students can't see in order to pick up the speech whilst drowning out the background noise. It is probably not feasible to record the whole lesson, but just a short part of it should be enough. I have actually done this before with a very small class and a tape recorder. I will then play the recording.

c) I also thought it might be nice to make it more fun. I could bring in two large jars or boxes and a big bag of sweets and a bag of chickpeas or dried beans. Everytime I hear an English sentence, a sweet will go into one jar, and every time I hear Spanish, a chickpea will go into the other. At the end, the jar with the most items will be given to the students.

I don't think the last idea is right for the experiment as I don't want to bribe them into speaking English, but to do a realistic experiment in order to show them the real results. My hopes are that the students will become more responsible and try to speak English as much as they can, without having to be reminded constantly.

What do you think of these ideas? Do you think they could work? Do you have any better ideas?

Competition Winner!!!

This month I have won the lesson share competition on Onestopenglish and I was so happy when I found out that I felt like a little girl again! It is a strange phenomenon, that whatever the competition, you never really expect to win, or at least that's how I view them. I tend to think of all competitions as a prize draw, where thousands of people enter and only one name is drawn out of a hat, therefore making it virtually impossible for me to win. This is why I have refrained from entering any competition for many years. I suppose however that you can compare the idea of competitions to the phrase: It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Is is better to enter a competition and to lose than to not enter? If you don't enter, you can't win (which is what my partner says every week when he buys several lottery tickets!)

Anyway, that first time I won a competition was when I was about 7 years old, and I remember clearly that it was for drawing a picture of dangers in the home and the prize was a book token. Now I have won the second competition in my life (how sad does that sound?) and my lesson plan about the World Cup which practises First Conditional sentences is here

Thank you, Onestop,  for choosing my entry as the winner!

Snozzcumbers and Never Ending Gobstoppers

I was having a bit of a tidy up last week at work, clearing off the stacks of unused photocopies to put in my scrap paper pile and sorting out my books, when I found my beloved copy of The Roald Dahl Treasury. Just the title of this book makes me love it - a treasury sounds like something very important, that you care for and would hate to lose. I know that Mr Dahl passed away years before this collection was published, but it sounds like a title he would have found acceptable, mainly because the word "treasury" appeals to children.

As a child, I never read many books by Roald Dahl, I suppose this was because these books aren't really aimed at young children anyway, and I was more into Enid Blyton. However, as an adult I can really appreciate the talent and efforts of this writer which enabled him to penetrate into the world of a child and write stories that children would want to read. The way Dahl portrays adults from the point of view of a young boy is exceptional. I would recommend that anyone who has children gets hold of some of his creations, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda or The Witches.

The most fascinating talent of Dahl for me, though, is his use of language. I have a copy of Revolting Rhymes, which is a collection of well-known fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White told in a rather different way to what you usually expect. The stories are written in rhyme and are therefore ideal for reading aloud. I have used these rhymes many times with my students (generally Intermediate and above) as a reading activity, listening activity, for pronunciation practice (sentence stress), as a cloze exercise, and to inspire creative writing. The rhymes are fun for students of all ages, including adults, who will often try to come up with their own unusual fairy tales. I had a student who recently suggested that they write their own revolting rhyme - actually in rhyme!

Dahl uses a lot of words he has made up himself, and this can be a useful way of getting learners to think about the meanings and usage of words, giving them practice in guessing meaning through context. It can be great fun for them to make up their own words too! With a story like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, you can give students the names of sweets that appear and ask them to describe what they are like - what they look like, what they taste like, what is so special about them, which one they like the sound of, and so on. With The Witches, you can ask students to draw a picture of one of the witches that is described in the book, and then for them to imagine a witch of their own.

Have you used Roald Dahl stories in class, and if so, how did you use them?