- how we learn and how gaining insights from this can help us understand better what works with our students
- how far we can expect students to take the lead in their own learning
- practical ideas for motivating students and encouraging them to be more autonomous
Thursday 27 October 2011
Mobile and social media for language learning and teaching - INSETT
Last Friday (October 23) we had an INSETT on this. There weren't that many people there but that didn't matter because the discussion was good. We talked about:
Are you ready to Dogme?
Dogme certainly seems to be one of the current buzz words in English language teaching – we've even had a dogme session here at our centre (thanks Peter!) So what is it? As I understand, it's all about making as much out of students' input into your class as you can. But don't take my word for it. There are a lot of experts out there ready to give their definitions and specific takes about its implications for what we do in our classes.
Check out:
Scott Thornbury's blog An A-Z of ELT – and particularly the comments on his posts – for an unwinding debate about what dogme is all about. Scott wrote the classic on the subject - Teaching Unplugged (do we have a copy at our centre? We should!)
He co-wrote the book with Luke Meddings, who is currently the guest writer on the TeachingEnglish website. Lukes's already written there an article, 2 activities: Family snapshot and My wikipedia plus a blog post. And if these inspire you, why not take the opportunity to ask Luke a question while he's around on the site? All you need to do is to add one to his blog post.
Another dogme blogger to look out for is David Coulter. David's blog – which is endearingly called Language Moments – is based around him providing lesson skeletons – not lesson plans – because if you've got a plan you've probably not got the right dogme mind set to go with the flow of how students are responding to your class. (So forget most of what you learnt on your CELTA/DELTA course!) I personally like his skeletons a lot – they're full of practical ideas for activities to do in class and are obviously the product of a teacher who reflects a lot about what works (and doesn't) in his class.
There are many more dogme ELT bloggers than the 3 I've mentioned here. Perhaps you can add them yourselves in a comment or write another blog post? Or if you've found this useful, let me know and I'll add a follow up.
Check out:
Scott Thornbury's blog An A-Z of ELT – and particularly the comments on his posts – for an unwinding debate about what dogme is all about. Scott wrote the classic on the subject - Teaching Unplugged (do we have a copy at our centre? We should!)
He co-wrote the book with Luke Meddings, who is currently the guest writer on the TeachingEnglish website. Lukes's already written there an article, 2 activities: Family snapshot and My wikipedia plus a blog post. And if these inspire you, why not take the opportunity to ask Luke a question while he's around on the site? All you need to do is to add one to his blog post.
Another dogme blogger to look out for is David Coulter. David's blog – which is endearingly called Language Moments – is based around him providing lesson skeletons – not lesson plans – because if you've got a plan you've probably not got the right dogme mind set to go with the flow of how students are responding to your class. (So forget most of what you learnt on your CELTA/DELTA course!) I personally like his skeletons a lot – they're full of practical ideas for activities to do in class and are obviously the product of a teacher who reflects a lot about what works (and doesn't) in his class.
There are many more dogme ELT bloggers than the 3 I've mentioned here. Perhaps you can add them yourselves in a comment or write another blog post? Or if you've found this useful, let me know and I'll add a follow up.
Spellbinding resources for Young Learners
Draw a stick man is an online resource where - you've guessed it! – you draw a stick man. But then the remarkable thing is that your stick man comes "alive" and starts asking you questions and giving you instructions! I've used it with my Silver 2 class (Primary 9 & 10 year olds) and they were spellbound. We then followed this up up with me giving them a drawing-a-story dictation – which practised the vocabulary we'd learnt, following instructions, prepositions of place (next to, behind etc), some basic adjectives etc. I left the ending of the story up to them – what the monster did when the 2 stick men that they'd drawn escaped (hanging onto a balloon and a kite). So, we ended up by having a round the class interchange about what each monster was doing. Great stuff!
I reckon that Juniors would also buy into drawing a stick man. I've even used it with a Young Adult class for a quick mood change activity – and it seemed to go down well.
Another drawing resource that fits the seasonal theme – Halloween – is Grabba Beast I haven't used it yet but for a fun class activity to revise body parts, colours, adjectives and the obligatory draw a Halloween monster, I'm sure it'd work well.
Fun drawing!
I reckon that Juniors would also buy into drawing a stick man. I've even used it with a Young Adult class for a quick mood change activity – and it seemed to go down well.
Another drawing resource that fits the seasonal theme – Halloween – is Grabba Beast I haven't used it yet but for a fun class activity to revise body parts, colours, adjectives and the obligatory draw a Halloween monster, I'm sure it'd work well.
Fun drawing!
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