Looking Forward to the Next Class

I've often found myself wondering, whilst plannig my next class, what do the students already know. we are all well aware that before we start a class we should really take into account and think about any assumed knowledge the class have on the subject we're about to embark upon.

You'll read it in every book, you'll hear it at every training session but how often do you actually check what students know before you start teaching it?

What I like to do is check at the end of the previous class what they might know. I always review what we have done in that lesson (I check again in the next) and then using a spidergram or something of that ilk on the board I just get students to come up and write any words or phrases relating to that subject of the next class.It's a simple way to get the mind going and into gear. If unit's a grammar point simply asking a student to explain it rather than a boring diagram up on the board. All it ever sounds like to me is
 Subject +blah + bla-ing and I'm teaching it.

So for vocab. Preview known vocab with a spidergram and then in the following class open with a quick round of Categories on mini whiteboards or in Ss notebooks. Starting the class with a game is always great and students have almost always thought of a new word or two since the previous class as you've left that idea there in their heads.

I have been know on the odd occasion to tell eams it's their turn to look for new vocab on the topic and start the next class by explaining it to the other students.

These ideas are hardly revolutionary. I don't claim to have any ownership whatsoever over them. They just make classes flow a lot easier and take the subject matter from the hands of the teacher and puts it into the hands of the students.

These ideas take a a little bit of forethought. Just flick to the next page in the book before the class finishes and see what's coming up, if you're a class to class planner, like me. If you're even more organised and you plan a few classes at a time then you're already set. These ideas have helped me an awful lot and have saved time in lengthy explanations and most importantly got the students thinking about what they've learnt and what they're going to learn.

It's very rare that a class will have no idea at all about the subject matter so give them some credit and relinquish your power........ to an extent.


That's all you're getting for this week.

Enjoy your weekend.

What's that sound?

Good day one and all. A blog post with some new content, how strange I hear you cry from the rooftops.
Here's a little activity I love to do with all ages and levels. It's on of the more interactive, tactile, jumpy around activities we talked about at the conference on Saturday.
I like to choose my two sounds from the minimal pairs list. (Check the slides on the STRIP PowerPoint #jazzhands)Next I stick them on either side of the room and elicit what each sound is and draw students attention to their mouth shape when using the words.

The next step for my is to run through the words I am about to use in the activity. I usually do this with a simple slide and some coloured board markers. I get students to work in pairs and decide which colour is which sound. With the slide pìctures you can see two examples.

When the students are up to scratch with the words, their sounds and meanings I split the class into two or three groups.  There is a team leader who picks the words (which have been cut up and put in a cup) then they say the word to the next memeber of the team. Player two attaches a piece of blue tac to the word and passes it to player three. Again repeating the word. Player three then must say the word and stick it under the relevant phoneme stuck on the wall without looking at it.

When the time is up students sit down and check each others answers. The winning team is the one with the most correct answers. to push the students a little further I give them three minutes to then write a sentence or paragraph using as many of the words freom the previous activity. After three minutes each group has to read their sentnnces aloud.

I've found this last bit of drilling, in context, really helps improve the use of the sounds in question and since i've implemented this final part I've seen far fewer mistakes in the pron. Especially with the 3: sound. No longer do students talk about their beerday and their birthday is something we can all talk about together.

right that's all for today. It's great to be back blogging again. With some real content. I hope you find it of some use.

til the next tim