Teacher Discussion Forums

What did you do?

Had fun. But you know, when I took a survey of the lessons at the end of the course, students had a different opinion of which was the best lesson. And different students had different opinions depending on the their learning styles, emotionally, intellectually, socially and so on.

My absolutely favourite lesson was when the janitor took out the desks from the room to do some work at night. This was a grade 2 class. I asked him to leave them out in the hall and we spent the day painting on huge piece of paper on the floor and talking about colours and shapes, dancing to music, lying on mats on the floor with the lights out and curtains drawn while they listened to me read, "Kon Tiki", using their bodies to make letters and words to answer comprehension questions, playing running math games, counting everything in the room including the holes in the ceiling tiles ands so on.

Here is an old discussion on getting adults to talk:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewt ... n&start=30

I haven't beaten this drum for a while.

The best lessons, without doubt, were with (the minority of) students in a "method school" who grasped the concept of taking the target words and using them in all manner of weird and wonderful questions and answers and had very structured, useful fun over 50 minutes. All without a computer, worksheet, flashcard or bingo board in sight.

Sally Olsen wrote:Had fun. But you know, when I took a survey of the lessons at the end of the course, students had a different opinion of which was the best lesson. And different students had different opinions depending on the their learning styles, emotionally, intellectually, socially and so on.

My absolutely favourite lesson was when the janitor took out the desks from the room to do some work at night. This was a grade 2 class. I asked him to leave them out in the hall and we spent the day painting on huge piece of paper on the floor and talking about colours and shapes, dancing to music, lying on mats on the floor with the lights out and curtains drawn while they listened to me read, "Kon Tiki", using their bodies to make letters and words to answer comprehension questions, playing running math games, counting everything in the room including the holes in the ceiling tiles ands so on.

Here is an old discussion on getting adults to talk:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewt ... n&start=30

wacky

woodcutter wrote:I haven't beat this drum for a while.

The best lessons, without doubt, were with (the minority of) students in a "method school" who grasped the concept of taking the target words and using them in all manner of weird and wonderful questions and answers and had very structured, useful fun over 50 minutes. All without a computer, worksheet, flashcard or bingo board in sight.

what level were they?

There were a few classes like that - from intermediate onwards.

No planning too, shouldn't forget that!

It's called Dogme! Seriously, cult movement in teaching started (sorry, named) by Scott Thornbury

Google it
Karenne

Or you could search Thornbury or Dogme on the search function of this site, if you prefer, and see what we said last time.

(I hope you do, and that you feel free to add to/argue with whatever was said on that sort of thread.)

I did Google it though, and I learned that Dogme doesn't do desks. Who would have thought it? Vive la revolution!

The now sadly defunct englishdroid.com had a piece parodying Dogme, in which a supposed abhorrence of anything that might act as a barrier or appear to elevate one above one's students resulted in advice to the teacher to ditch the desk and even the chair and lie on the floor in order to teach "properly". It's certainly easy to read more than was intended into the movements precepts (as quoted by a believer in the BC link that Woody has provided on another recent and also somewhat Dogme-connected thread entitled 'Fossilized Errors': http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewt ... 0624#40624 ).

In April 2009, Delta Publishing released Teaching Unplugged by Scott Thornbury and Luke Meddings, which is an overview of Dogme. You can read more about it here:

http://www.deltapublishing.co.uk/html/b ... l#TEACHUNP

Thanks for the info, Surrealia! Apart from being interesting in itself, it's helped me remember the title of that Englishdroid article: 'Teaching Unhinged'!