"You talk as if a god had made the Machine.. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind."The machine stops - 1909 - Forster
Teacher: - Open your diary and write down homework for our next lesson -
Teenagers grumbling.
Teacher: - Homework: look at your Ipod and make a playlist of your ten favourite songs in English -
Surprised teenagers grumbling.
Lesson2
All the class have their homework.
Teacher: - Ok, now work in groups of three and, after looking at your classmates' titles, make a new playlist of ten songs. Then, write a text , something like "My day yesterday" , using the simple past and embedding the titles in the text in such a way that it sounds natural and meaningful. -
Smiling teenagers on task for one hour.
Lesson 3
Martino, aged 13 ( 21st century teenager interested in music, arts and internet ) comes to lesson
with a memory stick .
- Teacher, have a look at this. I thought I could record my voice and let the music play in the gaps with the exact songs words. It took me all Sunday afternoon, but I did it! -
Thus a pencil and paper make excellent concentration tools
( Michael Leboeuf)
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.
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.
Then we created a Wordle using their answers. That was the starting point for further work on vocabulary.
We also recycled common words introducing emoticons.
Students were shown smileys and had to guess the animals they represented.
Some new words were introduced using emoticons.
Here is a link to a site where you can find a lot of them
We thought we could let people comment on our creatures and we made a Voicethread.
Feel free to add comments if you wish.
Steps 6 : Wrapping things up
Teaching aims: making students reflect on the meaning of words such as "diversity", "imagination" and "creativity" Web2 tools used: Animoto
A class discussion was led to fully understand the meaning of creativity and the incredible power of imagination. As a final consideration they came up with these simple words:
It's the vocabulary panel which hangs on the wall of our classroom.
Time has come to digitalize it :).
Here you can find the Web2 version.
Click on the pockets and you can listen to the words and see the pictures.
You can find some games as well.
It's a work in progress...
You fill up the pockets with word cards and I keep on adding new links.
When I read the post The Two Week Vocabulary Blogging Challenge I thought I could share some of the ways my students and I store words.
I have to confess I am a big fan of word cards, the small pieces of cards that have the foreign word on one side and its translation on the other, no matter if that is a picture, a definition or anything which can help the memorization process . If you are interested in vocabulary cards you may like to take a look at this article: EMO-TIONAL Verb Cards - Ideas for Teaching Vocabulary
Maybe I am vocabulary-obsessed. I spend a lot of time teaching vocabulary, mnemonic techniques, introducing words, practicing, recycling and using them in different and personalized contexts. I am convinced that storing vocabulary items in a systematic way can greatly help students remember the words. When learners acquire new vocabulary they need concrete, physical ways to collect and keep it, a "safe" and personal place they can refer to whenever they want. At beginner level we organize vocabulary through topics.
We choose the way at the beginning of the first year of Middle School and then we stick to it for all the three-year course. The students regularly and systematically test themselves ( usually at the beginning of each lesson ) to check the learning of new items. Quick, whole-class activities are also provided to help vocabulary retention as well as autonomous tasks to carry out, using both technonology and traditional ways.
What follows are some ways of storing words which have been tested in class.
Vocabulary Notebook
Students use a "Vocabulary Notebook", which is a sort of self-created Pictionary, for systematic organization of vocabulary notes. This process involves abilities which are also extralinguistic, it is multiple-intelligence friendly and it works well with multi-level classes .
Here is an example ( created by a Middle School student , in year 1 and 2 )
They're easy to build and students can keep track of all the words they should know: you need just some pins and templates. Again, they can write the translation or draw a picture in the empty spaces.
Slot Book
Each student has a folder divided into 12 separate slots where the vocabulary cards are kept. They start by inserting the words in slot number one, from where they go to number two and so on until the last slot. The final aim is making all the cards end up in the twelfth slot , meaning that those words should have been learnt. This method is for individual memory training and it is based on the memory principle of spaced repetition: in the last stage words can be revised less frequently.
Transparent Folders
These are folders with pockets to be inserted in ring binders which the students fill up with word cards . They come in handy when revising in pairs. The students face each other with the folder between them: one reads the mother tongue words while the partner has to provide the English forms and the other way round.
Vocabulary Panel
The storage systems described above are for individual reference and study.
As a class, we have a vocabulary panel on the wall. It is home-made :), it's got some pockets and students in turn prepare the cards to be put inside. A lot of activities are done systematically ( usually as a warm up at the beginning of the lesson ) in order to recycle and retrieve vocabulary.
And here is a Web2 version of the vocabulary panel. There are links to speaking dictionaries where the students can listen to the pronunciation of words and see the images. It' s a work in progress ans I'll keep on adding new links whenever I find some interesting sites.
