Thus a pencil and paper make excellent concentration tools
Providing students with written passages to study and analyze is obviously a good thing for them. They notice vocabulary, grammar structures and syntax and use them as models for their own texts. In a recent post Copy that Jason Renshaw stresses the importance of making students copy down the inputs/models/samples in order to fully experience the text.
For language learners in particular, the process of copying out texts is a fantastic way to slow down the language and encourage some noticing of the finer details (before the teacher with the whole class helps them notice some of the bigger picture things happening with the text). It also encourages more uptake in the form of chunks, as learners gradually learn to memorise phrases and parts of clauses in order to speed up the copying process.
I totally agree with Jason: copying things down helps students improve concentration skills, it's good for spelling and it engages both eyes and hands.
Despite all these pros, copying down can also be labelled as a BORING activity. That's why I feel guilty if I simply tell my students " Copy that" without trying to spice up this exercise a bit.
Despite all these pros, copying down can also be labelled as a BORING activity. That's why I feel guilty if I simply tell my students " Copy that" without trying to spice up this exercise a bit.
The activities which follow are an attempt to find a compromise between the need for the copying process and the demand for more challenging, task-based and creative activities.
HALF-COPY
Students read a text which is displayed on the IWB. They work on pronunciation and , after that, they are given some minutes to read the text silently.
Here is an example. The text is about Edward Cullen's physical appearance ( adapted from Wikipedia to make it suitable for elementary level ).
Then, on the IWB, the same text is displayed with the last part of each word covered with coloured ink. The students have to copy and remember the whole words.
COPY RIGHT
This activity worked quite well with my students. We've been studying Martin Luther King and racial segregation. I wanted them to memorize some parts of his "I have a dream" speech, but I didn't like the idea of handing out photocopies of the printed text.
So , using the site Mirror Writing - pniTiяw яoяяim, I wrote it backwards.
The mirrored text looked like this.
4 comments:
Lovely post Daniela and have shared this and your fabulous glogster on Facebook. Everyone thinks it's fantastic.
Marisa
Thank you, Marisa. It's very kind of you. Glogster is a great tool for teaching. My students find Glogs useful and I have so much fun creating them.
Daniela
fantastic post Dani, I'm going to try the mirror writing activity on Monday. thank you for the really useful ideas. Dani
Hi Dani,
What a wonderful friend you are! :)
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