Getting Students To Produce IWB Flipcharts

Like a lot of teachers, I've been worried about hogging the IWB a bit too much. The recent insett on getting students to create flipcharts was really helpful and interesting. It gave me the idea of getting students to produce 5-minute tasks based on module 5 of English File Upp-int. One of my worries was that it would take up too much time so that's why I called them 5-minute tasks. I thought up the tasks and divided them into 'revision' tasks i.e. on areas we'd already covered and 'teaching' tasks i.e. on areas which were due to come up over the next few weeks. We then spent an hour in the CALL room and I monitored closely and made suggestions as to activity type - a lot of the final products were mix and match activities e.g. one pair wrote up rules for using 'used to' with examples for each rule. The other students then had to match the example to the rule. Over the next few weeks the students presented their 5-minute activities. They proved great as fillers and both the presenters and their audience seemed really engaged. And the objective of making the classes more learner-centred was certainly achieved. My biggest worry had been that the hour in the CALL room would be laborious, and would challenge their computer rather than their language skills. However, I stressed that the project would only be successful if they did the preparation part in English and they reponded well to this. This was something of an experiment for me, as I suspect that my classes generally rate low on the 'learner-autonomy' scale, but it worked out really well.