Workshop No. 6: Using Activities Effectively

My final (a sigh of relief for both me and you I imagine) report of the series of IIEEC Teacher Training Workshops I attended, entitled "Using Activities Effectively" and presented by Miki Sakai. I have learned a great deal from attending these workshops as well as mulling over my experiences and writing them down in the form of these reports. I intend to continue to progress and develop as an English teacher, applying all that I have learnt during these workshops as well as taking some well needed self reflection time every step of the way. Enjoy my final rant and as always any feedback is appreciated.

Leaning activity: complete the alphabet

As teachers, using our time in the classroom efficiently is crucial. In most cases we are limited to 45 to 60 minutes (or even less!) of contact time a week with our students, further emphasising the importance of putting effective teaching methods into place. In this workshop we were taught the importance of implementing “learning activities” and effective review activities, as well as using the students’ mistakes as a way of highlighting the weaknesses in your teaching methods.

First on the agenda was differentiating between the use of games and “learning activities” in the classroom. Learning activity can be another name for a game but in this instance they are implemented with a specific purpose; either reinforcing vocabulary, correcting pronunciation or providing context to what you are teaching etc. Games tend to be more orientated about having fun and not necessarily practising for fluency (even though you can adapt almost any game in order to suit your students’ needs or build on the main focus of your lessons).

Reviewing numbers by matching

Learning activities should be short and repeated many times. I know from experience that some games can seem to go on for an eternity, with minimal speaking time for the students. A short activity that is repeated many times is going to be much more effective than a long drawn out game. It’s important to consider when planning and introducing learning activities that you yourself are familiar with the activity. How are the students expected to know what to do if the teacher is stumbling over their words? On top of that, always, always, always demonstrate the activity rather than attempting to explain it in detail. You are wasting your time! Students will learn much more quickly from doing rather than listening. Also don’t forget to revert back to the 6-second MAT drills if the students are struggling, (this was drummed into our heads continuously throughout all the workshops) or are in need of straightening out the kinks in their pronunciation. And if all else fails, abandon ship immediately and resort to “plan B” or move onto the next activity.

Something's a little off...

The next thing to consider; student’s mistakes. We must acknowledge that mistakes are unavoidable. We should expect our students to make mistakes and in turn learn from them through trial and error. Although mistakes (especially repeated mistakes) may become frustrating at times, avoid blaming the students, instead reflect on your approach to teaching them. Student’s mistakes can be used as a tool to analyze aspects of your teaching that need developing, perhaps the way you introduce the language is not clear enough, maybe your learning activities are not up to scratch, or your students’ concentration levels are dropping due to the lack of engaging classroom tasks. Try changing your teaching style to see whether you evoke a different response from your students.

The final area to consider during this workshop was effective review activities. Review is hugely important, especially when it comes to younger students as they have a knack for forgetting things quickly. The easy part is getting information stored into short term memory, but difficulties arise when embedding new information into long term memory. This is why we must review EVERY LESSON. No exceptions. This does not only mean reviewing what was covered in the previous lesson, but reviewing everything covered from lesson one, book one. In order to do this effectively, we must be creative in our review activities by combining as much of the previous language as possible. Otherwise your hands will fall off from attempting to review previous vocabulary by cycling through flashcards. Another significant point to take away from this workshop was to alter the way you review something from how the students initially learnt it. This provides an alternative means of students to express themselves, whilst adding much needed diversity in your classroom 

Since attending this workshop, I have been making more of an effort to include more learning activities during my lessons, even something simple as rolling a die to elicit vocabulary from the textbook or throwing a ball to each other in order to practise the question and answer form of a sentence. I have always made it a point to vary activities, as conveyed in this workshop it is important to differ how you review a topic to how you introduced it. This prevents lessons from stagnating by repeating activities over and over again as well as allowing students to use English in a different context.

Workshop No.3: Know Yourself, Know Your Students

Over June and July I have participated in the IIEEC-Oxford University Press Teacher Training Certificate Program in Tokyo run by Ritsuko Nakata. For each workshop attended their is an additional task of writing a report. Even though I am not intending to apply for the certificates, as I have no plans of attending all 6 workshops, I thought I would give them a go anyway. Any feedback or comments are very welcome.
Here is the first instalment of the workshop reports: Know Yourself, Know Your Students presented by Miki Sakai.

The focal point of this workshop was the “Multiple Intelligences” (also referred to as MIs, which is something I learnt about whilst completing my TEFL course), understanding the details of the different intelligences and how to apply them effectively within the classroom when teaching young learners. Everybody is said to possess each and every type of the 8 intelligences, albeit in different proportions. Unfortunately, especially in my case, just possessing these MIs does not necessarily make you intelligent. However by understanding the 8 intelligences, we are able to identify our students’ skillset to create appropriate lesson plans that coincide with their learning strengths by catering to their strongest intelligences. For example, a person who possesses strong “Math Logic” (or “Number and Reasoning Smart”) will be better suited to activities involving counting or logical thought, whereas someone who is “Bodily-Kinesthetic” (or “Body Smart”) is more geared towards activities which comprise of gestures and bodily movement. By combining as many of the intelligences as possible during our lessons, we are able to improve our students’ aptitudes for learning English.

It is interesting to note that each of the intelligences can be trained or developed, much like any other skill, meaning we can turn any weakness into strength. Or at the very least develop it to a point where it is no longer considered to be a weakness. The MIs also interact with each other, often in complex ways; they are not so black and white.  Students may be accomplished in many of the intelligences and may respond better to tasks that integrate various skillsets rather than focusing on them individually. People can be intelligent in many different ways and we can come to realize this fact through the MIs.

Even before attending this workshop I have always made a point of having variety in my classroom by trying new fun and invigorating activities as often as possible. Sure it’s great to have a little structure and routine as well, but as we all know young learners can be quick to lose interest in repetitive activities, which can lead to a dull and mundane classroom environment. Having attended the workshop, I now understand the importance of respecting my students’ proficiency in the different intelligences, not just the intelligences I am most comfortable and familiar with, in order to incorporate activities that focus on my students’ capabilities as well as providing flexible lesson plans that utilizes the MIs that the students are most skilled with whilst also developing their weaker intelligences.

Now comes the important part, applying what I have learnt from the workshop into my classroom. From previous experiences I have found that a majority of students tend to be visual learners, meaning that many of my classes include activities that revolve around the “Spatial” intelligence. I like to use props and items of realia as visual aids where possible in place of flashcards and promote associating gestures with words or phrases, even if some may not seem all that conventional. Students respond much better when presented with a visual stimulus when introducing new vocabulary, whilst the gestures can serve as prompts for when the students are unable to recall a word or phrase. I have also found that at times students are able to remember the gesture associated with the word instead of the word itself, although this doesn’t mean they have learnt and memorized the words completely I still view this as progress nonetheless.

Songs and chats are also a fantastic way of involving many of the MIs at once, it also gets the students motivated and energised whilst allowing them to express themselves with their bodies. There are such a multitude of songs to choose from it’s sometimes hard to decide what to use! I tend to go with songs that allow the students to express their individual creativity while interacting interpersonally with their peers. One of my favourite songs to perform is “5 little monkeys” from Knock Knock English. It combines the “Verbal Linguistic”, “Math Logic”,  “Bodily-Kinesthetic”, “Musical”, “Interpersonal” and (to a lesser extent) “Naturalist” intelligences in just 1 activity. There is even a video version available on the “Super Simple Songs” YouTube channel that would then additionally include the “Spatial” intelligence. This song also gives me the opportunity to work on my monkey impression, which always gets a great reaction from my students. Some of my students probably think it’s TOO realistic.

All in all I found this workshop constructive and beneficial towards my personal development as an English teacher, especially for young learners. As well as learning about the MIs in more detail than I had previously, the workshop gave me the opportunity to be exposed to new ideas and teaching techniques which I will be adding to my ever growing repertoire.