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ajuma
Joined: 18 Feb 2003
Location: Anywere but Seoul!!
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 Posted: Fri May 18, 2012 6:09 am Post subject: |
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One of the best games is the "flyswatter" game. It works all the way from kindie to adults.
Put whatever you're teaching on the board. For example, if you're teaching vocab to 1st graders, draw pictures of the vocab. Review what each picture is.
Divide the class into 2 teams. 1 person from each team comes up and is handed a fly swatter. You say the name of one of the pictures. The first person to hit the correct one gets one point. Each student gets 2 or 3 tries, depending on the size of the class.
I've used this with uni and adult students for differentiating 12/20, 13/30...for kindies learning ABC, for high school students learning parts of speech. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination!
Edited to add: It's best to have 2 different colored fly swatters! |
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some waygug-in
Joined: 25 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2012 10:23 am Post subject: |
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One approach is to try to make your classes more learner-centred - so even if you have to use a coursebook, you might think about how to adapt the activities to encourgage students to personalise the language and use it creatively.
In my opinion, allowing for creativity and personalised learning is one way of making classes more fun. It means you are getting away from the dreary routine of reading inauthentic dialogues, and formulaic structures that some textbooks still suffer from. Quote:
alistarcandin:
Not to be an arse, but can you give an example of what you're talking about?
I suppose I can think of ways of personalizing stuff out of a boring textbook,
but I'd like to know what you mean exactly. My idea may be totally out in left field, if you know what I mean. |
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alistaircandlin
Joined: 24 Sep 2004
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2012 2:29 pm Post subject: |
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| some waygug-in wrote: |
Not to be an arse, but can you give an example of what you're talking about?
I suppose I can think of ways of personalizing stuff out of a boring textbook,
but I'd like to know what you mean exactly. |
Yeah, sure. It's my mistake for using a bunch of jargon, actually.
What I was thinking of were tasks like:
� after practicing a dialogue, students imagine what happens next. They might script the next scene and then act it out, or they might practice it as an improvised activity in groups, then practice it, with the option of presenting it to the class.
� a more structured approach with dialogues is to give students a "skeleton dialogue." What I mean by that is, you strip away all the content words, leaving only the structures, and students and insert their own new vocabulary. I would encourage students to try to create funny dialogues and situations for this.
� You might use pictures as prompts - giving each group a number of picture cards and asking students to perform a task with each, or some of these pictures. For example: to describe what happened in the situation; to use one picture as the starting point for a story; to sequence the pictures and make a narrative; to imagine what the characters might be saying; or to make a dialogue for each picture.
� You might have students do some kind of project: write a class newspaper (I do "wall newspapers"); make a photostory; design posters about a topic. I would then use this material in successive lessons. I think this is personalised, in a way, because students can see that the material they have produced is important, and useful for the lessons. So it is making the lessons more centred around them, rather than a fixed series of lessons. i.e. the material they make changes the outcomes of future lessons.
� Any kind of expressing your opinion discussion, or activity would be personalised - because students are giving personal opinion.
� Another thing I'd do with small classes would be to note down any recurrent language issues - either in speaking or in reading or writing - and give the students individual targets of what they need to focus on. I'd then try to do class activities to target these errors. That way the students can see that the lessons are catering to their individual needs, and again it personalises the lessons - the students are learning what they actually need to know, rather than what happens to be in their textbook.
� I sometimes give students a choice of tasks: either do task a, task b, task c, or task d. These would offer some variety, but also some would be more suitable for more advanced students, and others for the lower-end of the class
If you send your email address by pm, I can zip some of my materials and send them to you; you might get a clearer idea of what I mean if you see some concrete examples
All the best with your class, anyway,
alistair |
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bobbybigfoot
Joined: 05 May 2007
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2012 4:03 pm Post subject: |
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The answer is simple: Lesson Planning.
Design lessons that are engaging from get to go.
Trying to "tack on some fun in the final 5 minutes" is the wrong approach. |
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alistaircandlin
Joined: 24 Sep 2004
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Fri May 18, 2012 6:51 pm Post subject: |
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| bobbybigfoot wrote: |
The answer is simple: Lesson Planning.
Design lessons that are engaging from get to go.
Trying to "tack on some fun in the final 5 minutes" is the wrong approach. |
| bobbybigfoot wrote: |
The answer is simple: Lesson Planning.
Design lessons that are engaging from get to go.
Trying to "tack on some fun in the final 5 minutes" is the wrong approach. |
Yeah, possibly that's what I was trying to say, too. It took me a few hundred words, but Bobby said it in two: Lesson Planning, is, indeed, where it's at.
I think that unless you are very experienced, the amount of lesson planning you do has a direct relationship to the quality of your lessons. As Bobby said, tacking on a "fun" activity at the end (presumably after working through a textbook) is not much cop. If you are interested in improving the quality of your lessons, then doing some research into communicative activities, and spending time planning, is the way to go. |
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some waygug-in
Joined: 25 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat May 19, 2012 8:42 am Post subject: |
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Thanks for your replies. I am no longer teaching, but I am still interested
in teaching. I had some problem classes back in my hagwon days and I
am always interested in learning what I could have done better.
I'm not sure I could have implemented your recommendations
in some of the situations I was in; the students would not pay attention
to me no matter what I did. (no matter how much lesson planning I may have done)
They would just sit and chat about their school life etc.
I was not allowed to do anything outside of the textbook and that included
making my own exercises. I'm not saying your ideas are not good, they certainly are. But there are situations where your hands are tied as a
teacher.
Best wishes. |
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blackinque
Joined: 07 Apr 2010
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 8:09 pm Post subject: |
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If you enter the class thinking that "we can only have fun for 5-10 mins" then the rest of your class might be uninteresting and the students will complain that most of your class is boring.
Try and be passionate about what you do. Try and pass that passion and energy on to your students. Make everything seem interesting. Even the most boring textbook can be fun  |
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