Can I have your attention please?! Attention getters

Attention Getters are must-haves for young learner classes. Think about it: You've sent students to work in small groups or with partners. It's time to call their attention back to you for further directions or a change in activity. How will you get their attention? This seems like such a small issue, but it's NOT! You need multiple tools in your toolbox in order to handle this smoothly because you will do it multiple times every day.

Below you find a selection of nice chants to grab attention for young learners:

Teacher: Hocus pocus – Students: everybody focus

Teacher: Macaroni and cheese – Students: everybody freeze

Teacher: All set- Students: you bet!

Teacher: Hands on top – Students: everybody stops

Teacher: ABC –Students: Easy as 123

Teacher: Scooby Dooby Doo – Students: Where are you?

Now, some other handy techniques:

The quiet spray!: you spray the ROOM to signal children to get quiet. Or you can just leave the bottle empty and spray a child!

Give me five: raise your open hand in the air without saying anything. Your students then put their hand in the air too. Start counting down on your fingers (not saying anything, just moving your fingers) and your students will follow along just moving their fingers. Teach them that by the time your are making a fist (representing zero) everyone should be quiet and looking at you.

Let's think drilling outside the box! Drilling games

Although many teachers and students think drills can be incredibly boring, it goes without saying they play an important role in the ESL classroom. Boring or useful… one thing is a fact: Drills are like that - They make students repeat target language until it sticks.

Drilling is a powerful teaching technique that leads to quick production of target language. However, if used incorrectly, students may be able to produce mechanically without real understanding of the meaning or context of what they are saying. They are best implemented in the early stages of a lesson, as target language is presented or to provide controlled practice.

Try to think drilling as a game where there is a whole scenario and objective and not just as repetition for the sake of repetition. I found below two example of drilling games to be used in the practice stage of your class. Believe me, students will be way more prepared for production stage. The key is “let’s think drilling outside the box”!!!

Lord of the Rings

Objectives: drilling the structure of questions and answers that you have recently covered in class.

Procedure

Start the game by selecting four students. These students are the hobbits and will be asking the questions.

Get the four hobbits to stand in a straight line in front of the board.

You are the King. You have to sit on your throne behind the hobbits.

Assign each of the four hobbits a question, e.g. What's your name? How old are you? Where do you live? What's your favourite food?

The remaining students are the orks. They form a queue near the first hobbit.

The first hobbit asks the first ork in the queue their assigned question in this case "What's your name?" The ork replies "My name is ..." and they rock, paper, scissors.

If the ork wins, he or she can go on to the second hobbit who will then ask him or her the assigned question, e.g. How old are you?

The ork replies and again, they rock, paper, scissors. If the ork wins, they proceed to the third hobbit and so on.

However, if at any time an ork loses at rock, paper, scissors to a hobbit, they must return to the starting line and repeat the whole process.

If an ork manages to get pasted all four hobbits, they rock, paper, scissors with the king and if the ork wins, the king has been dethroned and the ork is now the King. You must rejoin the game with other orks in an attempt to get past all the hobbits to reclaim your throne.

Conversation Race 

Procedure

Divide the class into teams of five or six.

Have each team stand up in a line.

The teacher holds up a flash card and makes a sentence based on the picture.

Each team must repeat the teacher's sentence three times and then sit down.

The team that sits down first wins.

You can vary the ending by having the students do different actions like turn around or jump before they sit down, etc.

Also, instead of every student speaking at the same time, you can get each student to repeat the sentences one at a time and then sit down.

http://www.teach-this.com/games/drilling-activity-games

Vocab hint! Willy-nilly!

I was watching a movie the other day and I heard this: I willy-nilly had to go to school.

In Portuguese we could translate as:  Eu tive que ir para a escola por bem ou por mal!

I’ve heard other expressions with a similar meaning ( come hell or high water, by hook or by crook) but this one (willy-nilly) sounded more informal.

For more reference go to:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/willy-nilly

Fostering "Constructive Alignment"

Biggs (2003) has been influential in his work in the area of what he calls ‘constructive alignment.’ The basic premise of constructive alignment is that the curriculum is designed so that the learning activities and assessment tasks are aligned in order to support students to attain the goals intended for the course. This concept considers students to be responsible for their own learning. If students construct their own learning, then it makes sense that the real learning can only be managed by them. In light of this view, education literature (e.g. King,1993) prefers educators to think of themselves more as guides on the side, not sages on the stage.

This role leaves educators in charge of coordinating the activities required to facilitate the learning experience and adopting the necessary supportive learning strategies. In this sense, educators are responsible for  setting clear goals, and more importantly, expectations. If students are provided with this  alignment between the objectives and the learning outcomes, they will be more intrinsically motivated, and as a result, their performance will be enhanced and their perception of educator effectiveness will improve as well.(McKone, 1999).

What about you? Have you considered this alignment between your goals and  students expectations in your lesson plan? If so, good job! If not, go for it. Students expectations and a positive learning perception are vital for our success as educators. It’s not enough setting clear goals if they don’t meet  students expectations.

One strategy teachers can use is accounting for the students’ perception of learning at the end of each class by using the picture below. Teachers can make stick figures with the names of the students on it and they will go to the board to put their stick figure on the stair step they think they achieved that class. The teachers then has the chance to praise, question and elicit more information about the feedback they are giving. Think about it!

Hobson's choice? What does it mean?

Meaning: a free choice in which only one option is offered. As a person may refuse to take that option, the option is therefore taking the option or not; "take it or leave it".

Em português, ás vezes, quando não temos a opção de escolher, dizemos que a escolha foi por livre e espontânea pressão!!! A Hobson’s choice!!!

The Joker and Ace game!

Procedures: Give out 3 Jokers and 3 Aces to each student (it can be a real card or a printed copy). They make a statement while laying one of their cards face down on the table (if the Joker/ Acer figure can be seen through the back of the paper, they’ll need to hide it under a book). If their partner thinks it is false, they can call their bluff by saying “Liar!” If it was indeed a lie, the person who laid the card down takes that card back, and any other cards still on the table from previous rounds. If it was in fact true, the person who made the accusation has to take the card or cards on the table and add them to their own pack. If no accusation is made (people should say nothing if they think the sentence is true), the card(s) stay there for the next round(s). The first person with no cards left in their hand is the winner.

Hints for teachers: This game can be used to work with any grammar topic or vocabulary as long as the teacher gives them the language chunks to be used. Also, it can be used as a warm-up or wrap-up but then, instead of 3 cards, give them 2, so that the game don’t last more than 10 minutes. If you decide to play with 3 cards the game will take around 15 minutes.

Paper Clip Challenge! Fun way to learn about important facts of the English Language!

Challenge your students to play this true or false cool activity while they have the chance to enhance their knowledge of the English Language.

How to play: Give each student a strip of paper with a sentence (like the examples 1-10 below) and they keep it to themselves. After, students take turns to roll a dice and the first one to get a six will start the activity. This student will read his sentence aloud for the whole group. Students hide a small object like a paper clip in their right hand if they think the statement is something true and in their left hand if they think it is something false. After checking who got it right or wrong, the student who began the activity will choose the next one to read his statement and the activity goes on and on. The activity is very student-centered and empower students because they will be the ones to say if what they have read is true or false and not the teacher. The teacher will just act as a facilitator to guarantee the timing, organization and success. This activity will take tops 15 minutes!

1.   English is spoken today in all continents. (T)

2.   It is spoken as a first language by 370 to 400 million people. (T)

3.   The number of second language speakers and foreign language speakers is the same.(F)

4.   Brazil speaks English as a second language.(F)

5.   India, Kenya and Singapore use English as a second language.(T)

6.   English is the working language of the European Central Bank, although the bank is in Germany.(T)

7.   In Asia and the Pacific, nine out of ten international organizations work only in English.(T)

8.   The river name Thames, meaning dark river, derives from Old English and no one is really sure of the reason for it.(T)

9.   In Old English, there were no capital letters. (T)

10.Some names for the days of the week come from the names of gods and goddesses.(T)

Reference: Oxford University Press, The History of the English Language.