YES WE CAN!

Can you recycle vocabulary with your students?

Can you practice pronunciation using various techniques?
Can you lower your Teacher Talk Time if necessary?

Can you use at least ten different activities based on pictures and images?

Can you help students get rid of those terrible fossilized mistakes?

Can you bring poems and creative writing tasks to your students?

Can you break the ice at the beginning of the course?

Can you build on trust and rapport with your students?

Can you use different short activities to warm your students or practise vocabulary?

Can you teach phrasal verbs, idioms and collocations?

Can you use L1/L2 effectively?

Can you incorporate homophones into your lessons?

Can you name at least three types of dictation activities?

Can you switch off your autopilot every lesson and break the routine?

YES, you CAN do most of these THINGS with ease and grace!

                                  *And if not, please, look back at our past TTC topics to learn more :) 

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Let´s focus today on the “CanDo” statements which can be commonly found in your course books (both at the beginning of a unit or at its very end), in English portfolios and other study and resource materials. 

Can you answer these “CanDo” questions?

Do you do these activities with your students or do you tend to skip them? Why?

Are students ready for these activities? Do they enjoy them?

Are they good at completing the tasks?

If you were in the shoes of a language student, would you be keen on these activities? Why/Why not? Have you ever tried them in the role of a student?

Do they understand what is the purpose of these activities and what are their benefits?

When do you use these activities?
How do you use them?
Do you combine them with the unit? How?

Can you prepare them if they are not part of your course book?

Can do statements may help us become aware of the goals of the ready-made material we are using and plan our weekly lessons accordingly.  They can help us focus less on grammar and vocabulary (such as we will learn how to use present perfect) and move with ease to communicative competence (we will learn how to talk about your life experience).

They can help us develop more independent learners who can set SMART learning aims. We can help them change the learning needs and wants from the unhealthy demotivating “I want to speak English fluently” to more realistic and valuable aims such as “I want to be able to answer a phone call in English and leave a message on the phone”. 

They can help students to reflect on what they have learnt and how well they have learnt it. They can make decisions for themselves on how to learn (outside the classroom).

Here are some activities I do in my classes:

Students work in groups. They choose one of the CanDos and prepare a revision activity, an informal test or a quiz for their colleagues. Then they swap the task with another group and do the tasks.

I use material (activities, exercises, tasks) from a different course book to help students decide if they “can do” the task in English.

I ask them to reflect on the unit we have just covered and prepare a list of can do statements themselves.

I ask them to mingle in the class and Find someone who …. (can talk about their family). Then we do some of the activities in the class.

I label two or three corners of the classroom with posters: Yes, I can. – Yes, more or less. – I need to work on it more.

Students move around the classroom to one of the corners while I read out the can do statements. They have 30 seconds to share their experience, knowledge, ask their colleagues in their group.

 Source:

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Can you use Can you … statements with your students :)? Let us know.

 

Stuck in a Let´s Check it Rut?

The end of the school year is here and it is time to reflect on what went well and what are the routines we follow without even knowing it. Let´s get rid of another “autopilot” programme and bring more surprise and variety to our classrooms.

Based on the observations, one of the most stereotypical areas even with experienced teachers is the procedure we use to get and check answers from students after their individual and pair/group work.

T: What´s the answer to number 10, Tom?

S: He bought a sandwich.

T: Yes. He bought a sandwich. Mary, number 4? 

S. b)

T: Do you agree? …. Yes, b) is correct.

Does it ring a bell with you?

Sure it does. Students like it. Students are used to it and once they answer one of the questions, they can fall asleep. If the teacher calls out students in a predictable order, they can quickly prepare the correct answer to one question only. If the teacher selects the nominees randomly, they work hard. It is quick. Teachers like it. It gives us, the god power to decide who is to answer and to correct the “invalid” answer. 

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Well …  It is stereotypical. It is predictable. It does not involve any self-correction or peer correction. We do not get much feedback about the group and how much they are learning. We do not cater for fast finishers and/or weaker students … and .... it is sooo stereotypical and predictable.

Here are some tips which work in my classes.

• Call out students randomly to make students pay attention all the time.
• Students, not the teacher, nominate other students to provide answers. You can, for example, use a ball to throw around the class.

Surprise students:

• Vary the order of the questions. Go from the last question to the first, or skip around.
• Take names out of a hat at random to nominate the student who answers the question. Student A then draws another name out of a hat, etc.
• Students choose a number out of a hat which indicates the number of the answer he/she will give to the whole class (do it before they start working on the exercise or afterwards).
• Write down the numbers of answers on the board. Once they finished, students go to the board and write their name next to the question they are pretty confident about answering (send the weaker students first, especially after you have monitored their answer).
• Ask them to vary the way they give answers: e.g. whisper, shout, sing, write, say the answer (they can draw a card with an instruction or roll dice). 
• Ask students to write the answer to one question on the board.
• Put the answers on the board while they are working on the exercises but not in the correct order.
• Read out the sentences from a course book (e.g. the exercise where they decide which sentence is correct, which is incorrect, or true/false exercise) and they repeat the sentence after you only if they think it is right/true. They remain silent if they think it is incorrect/false.
• With these two types of exercises, you can also label two corners of the room (e.g. true – false), read out the sentences, they move to the appropriate corner of the room.

Pass the role of the teacher to the students:

• Ask one student to be in charge (give the answers to him/her e.g. using your Teacher´s book) or one student in each group gets the role of a teacher.
• Provide them with the answers on the back of the question paper (or fold the worksheet; once they have completed the exercise, they can unfold it and check the answers for themselves).
• Pass a key to the exercise around the class.
• Write the answers on the board using very small letters. They can get up, go to the board, and check the answers for themselves.
• Display the answers on the walls around the classroom. Once they finish the exercise, they walk around the classroom and check the answers from themselves. They can discuss the answers in pairs/small groups and ask their peers for explanations.
• Pass an envelope with answers to the exercise around the class.
• Tell them you are going to read the answers out loud but they you do not feel well today and you might make a few mistakes. They listen and must correct you immediately when they hear a mistake.
• Student A (or teacher) reads out the answers. The rest of the class react to the answers: they stand up if they agree, remain seated if they think it is not correct. Or: They clap hands, if they agree (and boo if they disagree). Alternatively: They repeat the answer if they agree with it.

What is your favourite way of checking answers and giving whole class feedback? Which of these activities have you decided to try to use in your class? Did it work? How did you alter it?

Share your ideas with us!