A postcard from ... Pantai Tengah Beach, Langkawi, Malaysia

Dear Jim, Yukari,

and all the wonderful students at Luna.

Having a wonderful time.

Wish you were here!

All the best,

Michael

Sensei, I don't have a story to tell...speaker's block & interrogative teaching

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Casually mentioned I was trying to teach "The Narrative Tenses" last Thursday evening, via Swarm,  and then had a bit of a 'mare doing so. Friend, inspiration and twitter vivant +Michael @mickstout promptly asked me about resources to do so. Oh hell, called out!

Back story = used to employ a DELTA-qualified teacher whose every second sentence was about teaching the narra'ive tenses (Geordie), how good he was at it (them?) and that we should all d'off caps & bend a knee to the genius before us. But seeing as we have never had that many students in the rarefied reaches of advanced storytelling...you do need a bit for YLE Movers but you can generally get by without having to display any grasp of the past perfect simple/past perfect continuous/etc...in fact if you even tried, I think the speaking examiner would shake your hand!

This particular class week was missing the storytellers, instead only the 'answers on the next page already filled in' students had turned up. Any story telling they do attempt is in L1. My 'pardon?' usually gets a 'No, no' + dismissive hand wave. Been there? Can never introduce something stealthily or creatively because my thunder eternally stolen "that's on p45"...

Nuts & bolts of had + past participle etc all diligently underlined. But grasping the actual concept? Timelines, arrows, arm waving...Jim sensei needed to hit reset and start again.

So not only scratching my head all week about how to rescue the befuddled students from last week's grammatical cul de sac, needed to actually impress a colleague as well - or at least try to reply.

My students share the same language, and are not natural story tellers nor inquisitors. Imagine the opposite of Irish or Italian, maybe? Any contribution usually delivered as a set piece, accepted universally & scarcely a comment or question there be afterwards.

As usual, simplest is best, and decided after rummaging my collection of supplementary materials that nothing was really going to present itself. I needed to detox the class from the dreaded G terminology & translation mindset, and in some parlance flip the classroom. Keep books in bags, concentrate on imaginative brain, banish pencils, avoid turn-taking & prevent dominant personalities railroading others. Time too for me to be quite a lot more intrusive than I usually am (inviting fluency and letting 'errors' go).

A board game with out story telling limits

Solution. A narrative.

Dived into the back of our games cupboard & found Never Ending Stories (sorry, that awful song will start in your brains too!) - for age 6+ it says on the box. Ideal. Very simple. Totally random. Players plop cards onto a board in turn, and develop a story as suggested by the images on them (characters, objects, locations) in the order they have been played. Past tenses great. But the 'forgotten' past?

Start at the end of the story and add cards to try to get to the beginning, back-filling detail as you go. This is where the teacher needs to be very involved asking for connections, suggesting links, checking/requiring details eg Were they married before? What happened? How did they meet? and letting the whole group contribute - player whose turn it is selects 'best help' and adds the bits up. Importantly, before the next turn, teacher as narrator recaps - helping everyone keep up with developments and providing a model. Embellishment with current events etc as they occur to you are great, as students then get to see the rationale for the tenses you are using, without focusing on the tenses you are using per se - at least if the story is interesting! I challenge anyone to recount the same (and ever expanding) story the same way twice without leaving bits out; students need to see this is the beauty of storytelling not the mental linear blockage some see it as. Grammatical flexibility gets you over the hurdle and you can 'keep going' without having to go all the way back to the beginning of the timeline and get things 'in order' Students love pointing out the teacher's mistakes....ask them if you left something out...and 'rescue' yourself with a post script.

How our story unfolded - narrative to come

So, for me, interrupt like mad at the creative brainstorming phase, establish chronology and link bits together grammatically - then let that part of the story be told however it comes out. Once a turn is 'done'; gently re-tell it to check you got it right (include 'corrections' here?), and help the other students with a second listening before connecting all the other previous parts.

So there has to be a digital way to do this, for classes with wifi & tech savvy learners.Voicethread would be one way to collate a final version, I think, and could be done outside of class/before the next class. Sock Puppet, minus the time limit, another idea. Fotobabble only gives you 90 seconds - but ideal per pic?

In class, with confident students I think a Pecha Kucha type approach might work. You could also trawl ELTpics or any theme in Flickr - or go random and use flickr as a screensaver (hands free, adjust time images shown to suit skills).

Another randomiser = give a student a slip of paper with a ridiculous scenario on it and have them bluster their way out of it - kind of Liar's Game. (eg "You were seen climbing out of a nightclub window at 8am this morning wearing a superman suit")  Of course allow questions from the floor. Big class, have 2 or 3 students sit at the front and have them tell a story. Only one is true, room votes at end of story & Q/A on which one. NB They can all be false, but the winner = most convincing liar?!

Jim's top ten blog response

This is a blog posting I wrote in response to an original article posted on ELT Experiences - Experiences of an English Language Teacher . I thought I`d share it with Luna`s readership, but invite everyone to go read Martin`s original article and other follow ups.

 

Jim George8 September 2012 01:23

Through twitter @ELTExperiences aka Martin asked me if I had a Top Ten - I don't, but here are nine (in no particular order) I find myself paying more attention to than others! Homage to Mick Stout who got me going in the first place.

1. Ana Cristina Pratas blog CristinaSkyBox is not a weird toyshop but her Ed Tech blog home. An awesome Scoop It curator and tireless inspiration on twitter Ana seems be busy 24/7!
2. Former children’s laureate & Youtube star of “Going on a Bear Hunt” Michael Rosen is usually in fine form railing against inane Government/education/school policies. Whether or not you agree with him is besides the point; excellently written and wonderfully argumentative
3. Although not an iPad user myself, I find Around the Corner-MGuhlin  a very good corner to lift & find techno tips
4. Short, unbiased & to the point blog about tech in the classroom, usually the first place to find new sites reviewed  iLearn Technology
5. Nik’s Quick Shout has been a bit quiet lately, but another prolific ‘discoverer’ Scoop It curator
6. Martin Byrne must have a brain the size of a planet; his Free Technology for Teachers is always a wealth a superb new bits & pieces that help get the job done.
7. An inspiring teacher & presenter I actually know personally is Barbara Sakamoto, known to many through her Teaching Village blog which hosts her global network of friends’ contributions shedding light on our classroom challenges!
8. Like Martin, I find Dave Dodgson’s Reflections of a Teacher & Learner an excellent source of calmness & rational reflection, and often find myself wishing “I’d said that”
9. Although commercial, I have found Oxford University Press recently to be serving up a regular serving of high quality postings
10. I am hoping that Personal Reflections of JALT Conferences Past will become an instant classic, as my blogging inspiration Mick Stout asked me to tackle another blog challenge i.e. asking teachers & learners who have attended previous incarnations of Asia’s largest teachers’ conference to share their thoughts…  contributors are so far a bit shy, but very welcome (email me oyajim@gmail.com to get an invitation) and I hope will feature plenty of updates during & after our jamboree Oct 12-15.

Of course Martin’s blog here is on my list, and I have enjoyed following your journey east. Keep going and we’ll see you in Japan sooner or later! Thank you for putting my school’s blog in your original ten Martin. It is very humbling to be in such stellar company – and a massive acknowledgment for our students’ work/bravery in posting online.

Looking forward to seeing this feature mushroom!

What I did at the weekend - Jim in Ueda

In my other job, organising presentations for Shinshu JALT, I get to invite some really cool people to make presentations on their work/research/books. As you can see from the slideshow, Sunday was really good fun. More info when I can find my notes (yes, we did go to the pub after!)

Teaching event, Jan 29th in Ueda; all welcome

ABAX is very happy to be sending four presenters to Nagano for this coming Sunday, January 29th. Among the presenters is Marcos Benevides, co-author of Fiction in Action: Whodunit which won the Duke of Edinburgh ELT Book Award in 2010 and the British Council’s ELTON award in the international category in 2011. Things kick off at 1.00 p.m.

This is the first time we’ve sponsored multiple presentations for a local event; many thanks to the Shinshu JALT Chapter for arranging this. We’re looking forward to our day in Ueda and hope you too can find time to attend. And if you can’t attend but think it looks interesting, please let your friends in Nagano know! We promise to keep the presentations resolutely non-commercial!

Sunday, January 29, 2012
TIME: 1.00 p.m. To 5.30 p.m.
PLACE: Pareo Library, Ueda City, Nagano-ken、〒386-0025 長野県上田市天神１丁目８−１

http://www.city.ueda.nagano.jp/hp/sys/20090911135734758.html

INTRODUCTION: 1.00 - 1.20
• An Introduction to Task-Based Learning – Marcos Benevides 1.20-2.10
• Narrow Reading 2.0 – Michael Stout 2.20-3.10

BREAK: 3.10-3.40

• Teaching Speaking Strategies: the Why and the How – Alastair Graham-Marr 3.40 – 4.30
• Teaching Listening to Low–Level Learners – Hugh Graham-Marr 4.40-5.30

We’ve set up a facebook page for the event here: http://www.facebook.com/events/136929726423999/

Please let your friends know about this too!

Bus man's holiday

I have tried to make it to the annual Tokyo bookfair (TEL) as regularly as possible for the last sixteen years or so. I was struck this year by the very low number of participants, and the absence of several publishers. This event used to be unmissable; I worry it may no longer be so. There are a number of other healthy mini- conferences eg Niigata, Nakasendo, Pan-SIG (in Matsumoto, May 2011) that might supplant this calendar staple.

I was unimpressed with the first presentation I went to about "Expansive Reading": I can read, so having someone read their own (dull) PowerPoint made me reconsider the wisdom of waking so early to catch the first Azusa to Shinjuku. Reading is a favourite topic of mine and something I wish our own students did more of...the Black Cat Readers look attractive but promoted like this I doubt they'll find much room on our shelves. Useful teacher resources at www.blackcat-cideb.com

Nothing to see here - Lexxica for Kids

I was equally annoyed that the next presentation I went to see was mis-titled "introducing the Kids Word Engine!" because Guy Cihi patently did not. It has not been made, nor was there anything even beta to see previewed. Clearly very keen on himself and his financial success, I was cross that this chap had no grasp of delivering phonics. Go have a look at some great iPhone apps? Basing his next money-maker on Smart Phonics is flawed as the book is unsound; the book while introducing good sensible phonics practice uses the same font 'a' as here for instructions to learners...who don't recognize it. Also, 'practice' will involve learners having to translate (& therefor be able to read) hiragana. That, for me, is not language acquisition. Now, if you were using images...I saw Charles Browne present at the first ECAP conference in Tokyo and know Lexxica is a very good product for certain aspects of targeted learning, especially exam preparation (but not for my beloved ESOL ones!). Last comment I have is that this kind of technology has to migrate to smart phones pdq.

Two Oberlin University teachers held a very good workshop on podcasting in the classroom. Sensible, practical & jargon-free demonstration of how easily this can be done. I am not a computer techie or anorak myself, but have managed to produce our own school podcast (on Podbead & found on iTunes). Reassuringly, David Brewster & Hans von Dietze had to cope with unfamiliar equipment! After explaining the how (I want to check out "audacity" for editing, especially if it comes with jingles etc) the audience was challenged to record group answers to a simple question - the content (you have students brainstorm & plan before this stage of course). Within 20 mins this was done, edited on the hoof, uploaded & published. Think you'll find it as 'teachers' at www.podspress.com A very worthwhile 45 minutes, inspiring me to make our students do more of this (exploit our graded readers more, I think).

Rob Waring is the man-mountain of Extensive Reading. I have heard him make sense many times before and am always impressed with his calm authority of his mantra - and totally agree that learners have to read to make progress (but they have to want to. Teacher can't read the books for you!) New titles in "Foundations", "Pageturners" & "Footprint" series - I love these non-fiction titles Cengage have come out with National Geographical. These are standalone + CD or backed up with related DVD material. Best of all, these titles are all supported on ER Moodle. The 4th Extensive Reading Seminar will be in Okayama Feb 13th; Rob Waring will be a featured speaker at Pan-SIG.

@mickstout presents Whodunit

Michael Stout (@mickstout) is the inspiration behind this blog; his presentation at TEL three years ago was a "Eureka" moment for me. I rely on his presentations for new ideas and angles into old media with Web 2.0 approaches. At last somebody showed me the much acclaimed "Whodunit" which is going straight into action with one of my adult classes asap. Will try to incorporate smart.fm & mindmeister as suggested; think there is a role for quizlet perhaps, and certainly Edmodo, timetoast.

ELTNEWS.com ran a very good Charity quiz, Russell Willis in sparkling form keeping team-members onside & audience involved. ¥50,000 went to charity & an iPad prize drew a good crowd.

I was more than happy at stumps; saw some good stuff and caught up with the usual suspects. OUP are peerless, but I want to know more about Colin & the librarians. Likewise, Koichi needs to explain the source of his KitKats. Last time I saw those distributed at TEL (Ikebukuru) an urban myth was born. And no tequila tonight - safely on the train home!