A usual way to structure a class is to have the following components:
Warm up to engage the students in the beginning of the class.
Introduction of the topic
Presentation of new material by the teacher
Student practice
Evaluation to gauge how well students learned.
Follow up for additional practice (homework)
My goal for the fall is that students in every class have an opportunity to practice on their own. Student practice should be taking the majority of the class time. In a 50 minute block, it should be the longest period, lasting at least 20 minutes.
In this blog, I would like to share ideas how to build in the student practice.
Feel free to comment and contribute for everyone's benefit.
Many of our books in the beginner and intermediate levels contain examples of conversation.
ReplyDeleteHow can we give students practice in such an exercise?
Think about the following steps:
After a warm up activity, announce the objective of the class. Introduce the conversation and ask comprehension questions. Play it from the CD.Check answers and explain details of idioms or structure.
Structured practice: ask students to read the conversation in pairs - ask one pair to demonstrate.
Structured practice leading to unstructured practice: ask students to rewrite the conversation with information related to Plymouth and NH. Give feedback to every pair/group by walking around and commenting. Ask a couple of pairs or groups to act out their conversation.
Could you please choose a section/page in your book and provide and example of student practice.
I like to kidnap friends to come in and be interviewed by the students, using the language forms that have been studied.
ReplyDeleteSometimes the students write questions out the previous day, and sometimes I write the structures on the board as a reminder to interviewers and interviewee. This could also be a good opportunity for the teacher to do one of the language evaluations required at the lower level.
Grading of the activity could be done according to the 1) number of questions asked, 2) how responses to the answer- followup questions- are handled, and 3) how the students adapted his/her questions to the situation (i.e., asking deeper questions...
In my afternoon class today, I had students choose a dialog from the book they are reading and perform it. They seemed to really enjoy that along wi giving a short explanation of the background before performing.
ReplyDeleteIn the SSP classes, I have long tried to get them to use e grammar that we a learning, outside of class. I have some students who do this, but for many, it is a tough sell. Today we practiced adjective clauses in class and I had them take a basic sentence ( The person who I would like to meet is _______ ) and had them tell each other in class. The other students had to respond apprriately and add something.
I also asked them to, on their way out, make a comment about their favorite to. Zita, using an adjective phrase. Unfortunately, it seems our "chicken" students are afraid to do this, or perhaps embarassed. Who knows?!
Another idea may be to ask students to write a short play using the dialog or grammar points and perform them for the group. That could be fun!
Timely reminder! Right now I'm starting to feel bogged down in the amount we have to cover in the few days left in this session that I'm not taking enough time for students to practice to really help it sink in!
ReplyDeleteOne of my go-to strategies for practices is Think-Pair-Share, it's not super creative but gets everyone participating and works for anything. For example, on their own, students write a couple sentences given a certain structure, then they share with a partner (or small group) and comment on each others' work, then each pair or group can select just one example to share with the whole class.