English language school in the heart of the Japanese Alps, and English language learners sharing their experiences online. Teachers post regular items about teaching, learning tools, events in the school, their day to day experiences living & working in a foreign country. Students post on whatever takes their fancy - book reports, festivals in home towns, postcards from business trips etc. A little Brit of England in the guts of Japan!
As a pre-read/speed read I asked my class to find all the animals they could in the story. I think 'sloth' is a low-frequency noun (it's not in the text!) and a bonus point to the lad who asked me what a "lazy whatsit (in Japanese)" is in English! Looking hard for creepy crawlies too!
Previous titles in the orange series have introduced irregular past tense verbs, and most of those occuring in this story are not new. We listened to the narration on the CD, underlining said, got, threw etc as we followed the text. I coughed and/or paused the CD if we missed one - lots of peeking at friends' books.
Vocab/grammar in logical place
This gives the children something to 'do' - and a not easy task either. Competitive challenge too, as well as co-operative; writing them as a list in the inside back cover & counting - in this case we had collected 22. I wouldn't ordinarilly go anywhere near that many in the course of a class!
A messy board - brainstorming
The challenge then was to try to remember what the original form of the verbs looked like. They could remember a few but 22 is a daunting; nice teacher put them up on the board but oops in a bit of a mess. We took turns to call out pairs and scribble them down in our books (see right). I think you'll agree these ARE high frequency words, so making a decent note of them is no bad thing and in a place where we can remember them ie in the Jungle!
The digital version of my messy board is a lot more fun with a PC: check out Space Race below. Plenty of other fun ways to use Quizlet online; apps work oniOS as well but with limited functionality (still useful!).
Why not log in to Quizlet & see if you can set a high score?!
I was thinking about drilling last week, and not just because I've got a hole in one of my teeth...and I put the idea into my 'blog about this soon' folder. This folder is just next to 'go home & eat dinner' in my head, and I think I must have been hungry that evening.
I just came across Martin Sketchley's timely post on his really good blog http://www.eltexperiences.com ARGH!!! on drilling which reminded me I had something to say! Martin's post is here by the way, and I especially agree on using music to do the hard work. A couple of the other ideas are new to me, but as our landlord complains about noisy kids (yes, he's a real gas) the full-volume one will have to wait a while. Find Martin on twitter as @ELTExperiences
Devon Thaggard of Super Simple Songs fame is an exponent of using music all the time - warmers up, coolers down (if that is a proper phrase I don't know!), scene shifting & transitioning, background & subliminal input...all of which I like but I find myself up & down like a yo-yo doing that, and so do this once in a while. But I do like to use his songs a lot - check out some of our Audioboos here.
Songs obviously have rhythm, and I enjoy the challenge this brings to my learners as they are in (L1) habit of giving each consonant the same weight, and not elliding (joining words together). Enunciating nicely yes (I hope - they are copying me after all!) but not getting whole chunks out quickly enough or with too much "oomph" (my favourite technical phrase in EFL since my CELTA course!).
The other day I was introducing my YLs to the this/that concept...by way of a song in English Time 1 (OUP). The children already knew the vocab, so simple matter of sticking the flashcards out of arm's reach (around the room, spread out a bit). Having never hear the song before, I just asked them to listen and touch or point at the approriate card. Windmills! Second time was more co-ordinated, and they wanted to join in (fine - not me forcing them too, and they wanted to know what the other words were...OK, I gave them!). They wanted to try again and do better...it's working!
The lyrics for the songs are in the back of the classbooks, which I really like - and they are also indented to identify different 'parts' in back & forth or question/answer chants. This is a flower That's a bird This is a flower That's a tree......
This makes it really easy to assign parts to students individually or in pairs/little groups, reading their 'bit' and hearing the other bit (a slow read through, focusing on actually reading - remembering? - the words). And then press play for a full speed go with all the words in, emphasising the this/that distinction as a 'battle'. Replay quickly with roles switched, and the little troopers will be singing all the way back to home :)
Here is a very impromptu audio grab of our efforts - remember, this was the 1st time they'd come across the song!
