Games in the young learning environment - vital!

Picture-based vocabulary review

 As I keep reminding our teachers, if you have a good idea, see how much you can adapt it to fit other classes/situations. We do this a lot with Wordwall and Quizlet at Luna with online learners in group/collaborative work, which we also set as homework assignments for independent use. 

As described in a post last month, we wanted to get "hands on" for face-to-face young learners, now that we have relaxed the barrier requirements. (Of course, masks on, and all moving parts disinfected after use.)

Ideal game for groups x3

With first-time, younger players we paired up & helped each other out, sharing tips and tactics loudly! The board was colour-coded to make play more obvious, and laminated; memo, mount the photocopy on something stiffer to make it less vulnerable to nudges! Teacher's scissors & glue have been in the cupboard too long; nice to get creative again.

"Homework" last week was to take each of our personalised games out at home, and challenge family members. Distinct homefield advantage here, as each of the students made the games from vocabulary sets (glossaries) in the graded readers they have already read!

We can re-cycle these games in the coming months, as each students has a different version of the same content...which makes for ideal revision when we have 10-15 minutes up our sleeve at the end of a lesson or want to avoid getting into something 'new' just yet.

As a twist, Hana & I "flipped" our new

Hana head-to-head!

Read & Imagine readers by picking out words we were not sure about/wanted to learn and pronounce correctly before we got into them...smart girl still beat the teacher!

Another exciting pay-off was exploiting the word list at the back of the text book (Everybody Up in this case) for self-access revision; diving into dictionary skills and finding the 'hard' word in-context, and after searching for the same word three or four times, fixing it in memory for longer than usual!

Dictionary diving

To anyone who thinks 'games' have no place in the language learning environment, we think you are fundamentally wrong! Guess we'll have the proof of this little pudding when these Cambridge YLE takers sit down for A2:Key, B1:Preliminary & B2:First before they leave school in the years to come :)

(Adapted from a Mark Hancock pronunciation game)

Flipping good work - young learners on Zoom

Two of my students moved away in the spring, but wanted to keep learning together as they've been with Luna/in the same class since they were knee-high. They have adapted to taking classes online really well, because they have confidence in each other, trust me (a bit!) and realise that 'mistakes' are just part & parcel of the learning process...but once upon a time a hair-trigger for tears & red faces. Now, giggles galore and superb collaborative English adventure.

Having adopted/upgraded to online presentation tools for textbooks, & digital copies of graded readers (kids still need physical books in their hands...reading is a tactile sport!) for our teachers to exploit, we've been re-skilling at Luna Towers on the job.

Last night, only one student could join me at the last minute...we've just started a new text book and I didn't want to leave her buddy behind or have to retrace our steps next week. We've just finished a set of readers and the new order is literally in the post. My game plan crashed & burned.

Sherlock Holmes:
The Dying Detective

Imagine MY delight when she bounced off her chair squeeling when I showed her the front covers of the new readers "I love Sherlock Holmes!" ... Let's run with that enthusiasm :)

Ceeding control of my keyboard & mouse, we worked together to build a Quizlet set from the glossary of 'harder' or less familiar words in the story. How? 

I have a fair idea her vocabulary 'store' so:

• challenged her to spell 'known' or previously studied words (memory or a quick book dive) & then checking herself, by choosing an image (auto search is accurate enough) to suit. I liked this approach as her selections were different to mine!
• familiar words I typed and she told me what she thought it meant (some L1 here), then image search to confirm understanding
• obviously unknown & unique words to this story eg contagion or microbe, I added the word & found a suitable image & then checked for understanding ('corona?')

And there you go. Student generated content. Fully engaged both of us, and will be a great help to her buddy next week. Next mission with this set will be to make a copy, and have them both agree on a Japanese translation for the vocabulary. This will be a dictionaries open exercise if necessary, and another way we can flip our online classroom; after that game time in Quizlet and whatever else I can think of eg  wordwall or oodlu

The Quizlet set "Sherlock Holmes - The Dying Detective" OUP Dominoes "Quick Starter" graded reader produced by 'lunateacher' in our "Graded Reader - Young Learners" class. Feel free to join (it's free!) students and teachers!

Evaluating apps in class - crowd sourcing problems!

Prepping for Successful Meetings

It's not often you get to a class and the students are already doing exactly what you wanted them to do...but that's exactly what happened for me this afternoon and I really want to give my class a pat on the back. So, Chinasa, Reiko, Yumi & Tomoko - well done!

I was going to give them a telling off, truth be told, because I could not see any evidence of them having done the homework I'd asked them to last time - to create & then share, do, vocabulary quizzes. But here's the thing, between us we figured out that the app we were using on our iPhones & Android was not up to scratch and was letting us down. While we thought our work in-app would show up online, it was not doing so. Likewise, material we wanted to share we were unable to (except in one case where the creator had gone to her PC and worked around the short-coming).

I was delighted, because we'd all byod (brought our own devices) - which these in-company students are otherwise told to leave in their lockers - and were finally using them instinctively (and not falling at the first hurdle failing to remember passwords etc!). Will they take their text books on a business trip? Nope. Dictionary? Nope. Phone? You bet - and there's so many different things we can make available for ourselves to make the job & the learning easier!

Negotiating pronunciation (an app for that too!)

So, now they kind of generated their own need to do an extra homework, which is to write to the app developer and point out their disappointment/frustrations with the tool, and to ask for improvements. Nothing like realia!

I look forward to hearing what kind of replies they get (I was going to write myself, but figured four end users sound louder than one intermediary!)

Some lovely new flashcards created on Quizlet...for YOU!

Check out a recently created set of flashcards for PET level learners (CEFR B1), which is all connected with the topic of travel. There are many ways to study with Quizlet as I have talked about before - search the blog! Thought you would like to see how attractive and clear the actual flashcards are, and how much they can help any/all learners build their vocabulary. Do you like Quizlet? Find a class you like by searching for "LunaTeacher" in the site, and then choose some classes or groups to join. I am sure you will find yourself learning more & more!

Interview - vocabulary/learning guru

I came across an interesting interview with Paul Nation, who I have seen present a couple of times now at various EFL events and hold in high regard. I was talking about him in class with my students the other day, as his comments on learning vocabulary were very relevant.

The interviewer an OE for Luna, who I had the privilege of training earlier this year but missed the chance to say hello properly last Sunday in Nagoya. Well done Darren, good interview!