Want to treat your young learners to a little fun as it’s the last week before Christmas? Or want to share some games they can play at home over the holiday? Today I’m going to share some interactive games courtesy of the British Council.
There are also some songs and listening activities (talking about Christmas celebrations in the UK). I think my favourite is Run Santa Run!
‘Elly, problem!’. It was the middle of my first observation at a new teaching job, and one of my grade one students sidled up to me holding her freshly detached tooth. I’ve also had an adult student proclaim loudly mid-observation ‘I don’t understand anything!’ (in L1, during an advanced class). There was also the lesson when the cupboard door fell off, landing on one of my seated students. The list goes on.
As teachers, we have the dubious privilege of periodically having someone come and stand and watch over our shoulder, and then provide us with feedback on how well (or not) we are doing our job. If you’re in your first year of teaching, the whole process probably feels a bit like an additional CELTA teaching practice, although with the added terror factor that a ‘to standard’ lesson might be required in order to pass your probationary period. Even if you’ve been teaching for several years and know that you’re unlikely to be fired, it doesn’t necessarily make observations any more pleasant.
Benjamin Franklin said ‘By failing to prepare, you prepare to fail’, and at least in my experience, many new TEFL teachers who fail their observations do because of their planning.
It should hopefully go without saying, but an observed lesson is not one where you should decide to just ‘wing it’. Your school should give you at least 24 hours notice of an observation, giving you plenty of time to plan and prepare.
Some schools (my current place of work, as an example) require only the most basic lesson plan before an observation – simply a spoken outline of the lesson will do. For other schools (some branches of IH, for example) you will need to produce a full ‘CELTA-style’ lesson plan. Find out what your school’s policy is beforehand to save yourself either missing something you were meant to do, or doing a lot of unnecessary work! If you’re unfamiliar with the ‘CELTA format’ – for example if you were previously a mainstream school teacher but now find yourself teaching TEFL, check with colleagues who have done CELTA or Trinity to find out what is expected – it’s quite a different way of teaching. There’s also some great advice online, check out ELTplanning’s blog post on how to write a CELTA lesson plan.
‘Potential Problems’ is often included as a section of lesson plan forms. However, it isn’t just a box on a form. Rather than simply encouraging you to be pessimistic and think of all the things that could possibly go wrong, the purpose of this activity is to help you pre-empt those problems, and then have a shot at solving them before they occur. For example, if you know that two particular YL students are often silly and disruptive when working together, you might plan to organise your pair/group work in a different way, so that those students are separated. If you are teaching something that you think your students are likely to find really difficult, you might plan ways to stage the activities more carefully and provide more support.
Lesson aims/stage aims were something I found really hard to get my head around when I first started teaching. Why is ‘Students will practise reading for gist’ an acceptable stage aim, but ‘Students will read’ not?! What I have found helpful is rephrasing the idea of an ‘aim’ as ‘What will the students be able to do after this activity that they couldn’t do before?’ – and then answering that question. Again, lesson aims can seem like another pointless ‘box to fill’, but strong aims (‘Students will be able to understand and produce vocabulary to describe clothing’ as opposed to ‘Students will talk about clothes’) can be the difference between a well-structured lesson where the students have a real sense of achievement, and one where they don’t.
I’m well aware that this might seem like strange advice – after all, you want to impress the observer with your new and exciting ideas! However, (unless this is a developmental observation with the intention of you experimenting) an observation really isn’t the best time to try something completely new and unpredictable. Don’t repeat something you’ve already done word-for-word – that’s unlikely to be beneficial for your students – but consider the activities and tasks you’re asking students to do, and choose tasks types that will be familiar rather than unknown. By choosing familiar activities it allows you to concentrate on your instructions, your classroom management, your explanations and the atmosphere in the classroom; and it means that you can better anticipate problems in advance.
One huge advantage of writing a full lesson plan is that it allows you to see all of the activities you’re going to do in relation to each other. This can also highlight if you need to make some changes. Ideally, you’re aiming for a variety of different activities (so no gap-fill, followed by a gap-fill, followed by a gap-fill), and a variety of interaction patterns. This means that you need to alternate between individual work, pair work, and perhaps group work, so that the students are communicating in a variety of different ways and with different people.
Even as an experienced teacher, it’s easy to fall foul of this one. If your school requires a full CELTA-style lesson plan, the ideal is that you should be able to give that plan to someone else and they will then be able to teach your lesson. Assume that it is someone who has absolutely no initiative whatsoever – they need to be told every little thing, otherwise they won’t do it. If you are going to ask the students to check their answers in pairs after an activity, write it on your plan, even if it feels like you are simply covering pages with ‘students check in pairs’ repeatedly. Don’t leave things out because they’re ‘obvious’.
Before submitting your plan (sometimes you’ll be required to hand/email it to your senior teacher/ADOS 24 hours in advance, sometimes it’ll be fine just to hand it to them before the lesson (again, check!) make sure you proofread it. Run it through spell-check, make sure there aren’t any glaring errors. It should be second-nature, but it’s also very easy to forget!
Far easier said than done, but before your observation try to make the time and the space to switch off and relax. Staying up late the night before worrying won’t make your teaching any better – if anything it’s more likely to have a negative effect. Constantly revising your plan isn’t likely to improve it, so set yourself a deadline for it. Remember, at the end of the day, it’s only one lesson, and you will survive it.
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This post has been included by Twinkl in their blog on Teacher Interviews
Teenagers often have a reputation which precedes them. Moody, rude, unmotivated and uncooperative, they’re many teachers’ least favourite age group to work with. What many teachers don’t realise is that teaching teens can be just as fun and rewarding as teaching other age groups – you just have to approach it in the right way.
Thrown in at the deep end and have a class of teenagers to deal with? Here is what I wish I’d known when I first started teaching teens.
It sounds obvious, but especially if (like me) you’re not overly tall, it can be a bit of a shock to walk into a room of 15 year olds and realise that they all tower over you. One of the mistakes people often make when teaching teens is that they assume that because their students look like adults, sound like adults, and sometimes act like adults, they can teach them in the same way that they would adults. With some classes, you can – however as a general rule, I’d say ‘don’t’. Teenagers don’t have the same attention span as adults. Hormones lead to fluctuations in both mood and energy levels. Often teachers complain about their teenage classes being ‘bored and lethargic’, when actually their students are just tired. For more information about the differences between teenage and adult brains, I really enjoyed this article.
Teenagers can be interested in very ‘adult’ topics (and by this I mean things like politics and the economy, as well as the other interpretation), but they can also surprise you by suddenly being interested in something that would strike you as being very immature. I remember one occasion when my teens begged me to let them write letters to Father Christmas – simply because they’d seen the letters my younger students had written and for whatever reason it had tickled their fancy.
Finally, it’s worth bearing in mind that teenagers do need stricter boundaries than adult students. In most adult classes, there isn’t much classroom management to ‘do’, students don’t tend to be badly behaved and students are generally respectful of others’ points of view. Adult students also don’t have quite the same propensity to say things simply to ‘get a reaction’. Your teenagers need to be aware that if they wish to be treated like adults, they need to behave like them.
Given what I’ve just said, it can be natural for teachers (especially those used to teaching younger children) to go too far in the other direction and treat their teens as though they are simply bigger children. Again, this tends to not work well. Teenagers are becoming ever more aware of themselves and the world around them, and as they get older they are increasingly able to engage in adult topics. I’ve yet to encounter a teenager who doesn’t hate being patronised – and if you ask them to do too many activities which are seen as ‘babyish’ this is the risk you are running.
As I’ve touched upon in my last two points, teens can often be changeable, and surprising! It can be hard to work out what they will (or won’t) be interested in, and even if you weren’t a teenager too long ago yourself, it can still be difficult as an adult to try to keep up with the latest popular singers, films, books, and trends. Rather than guess what your students might be interested in or which celebrities they might be familiar with, it’s far safer to plan your activities so that your students can provide as much of the input as possible – even if it means asking them about things they like, and planning a subsequent lesson based on that.
A useful addition to the above point. Teenagers are often pretty self-absorbed creatures, and are far more likely to engage with an activity if it gives them the opportunity to think, write, or speak about themselves. It also means you’re guaranteed a topic that everyone is interested in – win-win! The teenage years are also when children move from only thinking about their own little world to having opinions on more diverse subjects and issues, so if something does come up (or a textbook activity on the environment or laws is unavoidable), be sure to ask if they have an opinion on it.
I cannot stress this enough, as I’ve always found this to be the most important factor when teaching teens. If you respect them, they respect you – and vice versa. Teens need to be allowed to express themselves, to engage with themselves, each other and the world around them, and they need to be able to do so in an atmosphere which is open, friendly and supportive. Conversely, they should know that there is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in the classroom, and any words or behaviour which are intended to hurt, belittle or intimidate other class members, or to disrupt others’ learning, will not be tolerated. Make your expectations know, be clear, be firm, and above all, be consistent.
With respecting teens, comes giving them some responsibility. Show them that you trust them, you respect and value their ideas and opinions, and their behaviour is almost sure to reward you. Not sure how to give your teens responsibility? Allow them to determine the consequences when rules in the class contract are broken. Allocate a certain student or group of students to be responsible for preparing/leading a game each week or each lesson. Spice up a revision lesson by asking each pair to prepare and present a short summary of a topic that will be covered in the test.
Part of treating teens with respect and giving them some responsibility means trusting their ideas and opinions. Sometimes it can be worth giving teens a bit of a free rein and allowing them to talk about a potentially controversial issue – they may well surprise you with their maturity!
Often we associate constantly asking ‘why?’ with toddlers or small children. However it’s something I like to use with teens, as it forces them to think a little more and express themselves more clearly and in more detail. Often teens tend to try to cut off a conversation by giving a quick/silly answer. ‘What did you do on the weekend?’ ‘I slept.’ ‘What did you do yesterday?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘What can you tell me about the person in the photo?’ ‘He’s stupid’. Rather than try to pressure students into giving an entirely different answer, another approach can be to take their original answer and then run with it. ‘You slept? All weekend? Do you like sleeping? Why do you like sleeping?’. Be warned, this will make you incredibly annoying. It will also make your teenagers talk more, and in time they will give longer, more thought-through answers.
One of the joys (and the challenges) of teaching teens is that you never quite know what to expect. A normally chatty, lively class can be impacted hugely by a pre-lesson argument. School exams can have an effect on how motivated (or even how awake!) your students are. You may carefully plan a lesson, only to find that for whatever reason, on that day, your students aren’t interested in it. Yes, it’s annoying. But often going with the flow is the only way.
Maybe whatever coursebook you’re meant to be using is fantastic, ideal for teenagers and really suited to both the level and the interests of the students you’re teaching. Chances are this is not the case. You may want to think about adapting the coursebook, leaving out or changing some activities altogether. Particularly if your coursebook is a few years old, don’t hesitate to replace the material (or particularly the songs!) for something a bit more up-to-date. The coursebook is there to help you – but provided you’re teaching whatever grammar, vocabulary and skills that the students need for any exams they are taking, don’t feel as if you have to follow it slavishly.
I hope some of this helps with your teen classes (particularly if you’re new to teaching this age group!). You can also read my Teaching Kids 101 post, which focuses on teaching 6-12 year olds.
One of the loveliest things (for me, at least) about summer school is having a bit more freedom in your classes than you often have the rest of the year. The combination of mixed nationality (and potentially mixed level groups), seeing the same groups of students every day, and potentially quite long lessons (my last summer school had three 90 min classes a day, pretty long for 7-13 year olds!) all lends itself to one thing: project work.
I have to admit that these are hands down my favourite type of project. I’ve done them at summer camps in Russia, summer schools in the UK, and even managed to slot them into the last few weeks of term when my students have desperately needed a little ‘something different’ as a pick-me-up. Ideally for a film project you need at least a couple of 90 min lessons – they work best if you can spread them out over a whole week. It sounds like a lot of time to spend on one project, but I’ve found that the rewards of seeing a film through to the end are enormous, a lot of language learning will be taking place, and once the ball is rolling, the students will provide most of the input, meaning minimal planning time!
Again, a tried-and-tested project that I’ve done multiple times, with both kids and teenagers. This is a really good one for getting students to work on their presentation skills, and gives them a great opportunity to be creative! For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, Dragon’s Den is a TV show in which contestants showcase their new invention or business idea. They present their idea to a panel of ‘dragons’ – successful businessmen and women, who are all looking to invest in new projects – and successful candidates receive money towards their business, in exchange for shares in the company or part of the profits. It all sounds very ‘adult’, but some years ago the BBC produced a great kids’ version for BBC Children in Need – and it’s been lovely to show my young students that just because they are young, it doesn’t mean that they can’t have a taste for business!
Coursebooks aimed at children/teenagers often include a section on sport. However, as we all know, playing sport tends to be far more fun than simply talking about it! This project combines the best of both worlds – and makes for some interesting discussion about some of the wackier aspects of British culture as well!
What’s your favourite thing about summer school?
Do you have any great project ideas? I’d love to hear them!
Most English teachers have the bulk of their new classes at the start of the academic year – in September or October, or around January in many Asian countries. What sets teaching at summer school apart from this is finding that you have new students every week or two! Here are a few ‘getting to know you’ activities to make things a little easier, and to prevent you from racking your brains to remember what you did last September!
Some team-building activities can also be good ice-breakers with a new class – see my post about them here.
Time: 15 mins Level: Beginner +
Materials: Paper plates – 1 per student, slips of paper, felt tip pens/coloured pencils
If you don’t have paper plates, an alternative would be simply to use paper or card, and ask students to draw a circle after handing out the paper and pens. This activity also helps to revise parts of the face, colours, and simple adjectives such as big/small, long/short.
Procedure:
To extend the task: Students discuss whether they think the plate is a good picture of them – why or why not? Students vote for the best drawing (the one which looks most like the person) or the most imaginative drawing. Students write a short description of their/another ss’ plate; then match the descriptions with the people.
We’ve all done them – but honestly, that’s because Find Someone Who activities work. You can easily find one appropriate for your students’ age group and level online, such as this example, or you can simply make your own in a few minutes.
Time: 5-10 mins Level: Beginner +
Materials: Find Someone Who worksheets – 1 per student, make sure all the students have a pen/pencil!
Procedure:
1. Hand out the worksheets. Allow a minute or two for students to read all the sentences and make sure they understand. For lower levels this would be a good time to check students know how to correctly form the appropriate types of questions.
2. Model the activity using one or two students. Make it clear that they need to speak to individual students, not simply call out and ask the whole class (they will try!) and emphasise that they need to speak English throughout the activity.
3. Allow around 5 mins for students to mingle and speak to as many people as possible.
To extend the task: Students find the person in the class who is the most similar to/most different from them. Students write a short description of one person in the class based on the information they have found out. They the read this description out and the rest of the class guesses who it is. Students answer teachers’ questions about their classmates – either as a whole group or as a team activity.
Time: 10 mins Level: High elementary +
Materials: paper for each student, music
Procedure:
To extend the activity: Students can write questions instead of facts, mingle and ask and answer when the music stops.
Another common one, but adults and young learners seem to love it alike.
Time: 10-15 mins Materials: Paper and pens only
Time: 15-20 mins Level: Pre-intermediate +
This is my favourite ‘getting to know you’ type activity with teens and older children. It really gives them an opportunity to satisfy their curiosity about their new teacher, and is also a great practice of question forms, giving opinions, and justifying ideas.
Procedure:
1. Ask the students what information they want to know when they meet a new person – eg. name, age, hobbies, where they live, etc. Write their suggestions on the board (in one/two word note form).
2. Elicit what questions you would need to ask about these topics in order to find out the answer: eg. age = how old are you?
3. Put the students in pairs/small groups. Tell them that you are going to give them 5 mins (or more if you have lots of ideas on the board!) to guess your answers to the questions. They must also say why they have chosen each answer (eg. We think your favourite colour is yellow, because you’re wearing a yellow t-shirt). Tell them that after 5 mins they can ask you the questions and find out if their guesses are correct or not.
4. Monitor while the students are discussing/writing their answers. Then ask each group at a time for their guesses and reasons, before confirming the right answer. Students can then work in pairs and complete the same guessing/asking/answering activity with their partner.
To extend the activity: Students discuss what they thought was the most surprising/interesting fact they found out about their teacher/about someone else in the class. Students write a mini-profile of themselves or a classmate using the information discussed.
Have you tried any of these getting-to-know you activities in your classroom?
What are your favourite getting-to-know you activities?
If you enjoyed this post please check out my series on Surviving Summer School – you can find them all here.
This is part 6/6 of a series on Surviving Summer School. To read the other parts check here.
Today’s the day: it’s under two weeks until the usual start of summer school season, and my final post in this series. In this post I’m talking about after it’s all over – you’ve completed your two or four or six or even eight weeks at summer school, and now you need to relearn how to survive in the real world.
If you thought starting at summer school was a culture shock, finishing summer school is even more so. For the last x number of weeks, you’ve lived in a bubble. A somewhat hectic, crazy bubble, where you’ve not had much free time, you’ve had a very rigid schedule, and you’ve been working (and living) with pretty much the same group of people 24/7. Leaving that is almost guaranteed to be strange.
Personally, I know that for the first few days after my summer school contract finishes, these thoughts will be at the forefront of my mind:
All I can say with regards to any of this is a) it’s normal, b) give it time.
The double-edged sword of returning to the ‘real world’ post summer school is that not only are you rejoining your previous life, but you’re also suddenly spending all your time with PWWNASSs – People Who Were Not At Summer School. Understandably, the only known cure for this is both to keep in touch with your summer school colleagues, and to start (or restart) a teaching job in the autumn with a load of other recovering summer school teachers.
In the meantime, I must offer my condolences to all your friends, family, and loved ones. If you’ve ever seen the first few American Pie films you’ll know where I’m coming from with the title of this section: recovering summer school staff are destined to retell all of the hilarious summer school stories at any available opportunity. PWWNASSs will not get it. That’s ok.
I’m well aware that this is a pretty light-hearted post, but I do still have some wisdom to impart. Hopefully, over your time at summer school, you’ve learnt something – now is your chance to put it into practice.
…in more ways than one, I hope! If you loved your summer school experience (and I really, really hope you did) then it’s never too soon to start thinking about next summer. The summer school recruitment season doesn’t seem to start properly until spring, but most schools tend to prefer returning staff to get in touch early. When I worked in the Head Office for a language school, we had one staff member email to let us know he’d like to come back the following year – on the day his contract finished! While perhaps that’s a little too keen, remember that summer schools do tend to work on a first-come, first-serve basis. If you really want to return to the same school you worked at this year, or you want to work with a particular colleague (and have made plans to return there together) it’s probably wise to get in touch early. Otherwise, there’s always the option of applying to work for a school in a different location, or even a different summer school company.
If by any chance your summer school experience wasn’t a good one, I’m truly sorry. I have to admit that just as not everyone is a talented artist or a skilled sportsman, summer school simply isn’t always for everyone. It can be a demanding job, an intense environment, and particularly if you’re dealing with problems of any kind back in the real world, it can all be a bit much. If this is you and you’re still struggling through, well done for making it as far as you have, and please talk to someone.
Do you have any other questions or things you’d like to know about summer school?
Please do get in touch – I’d be happy to help!
*Disclaimer: Pretty much every summer school has a policy about staff not keeping in touch with students via social media etc, and if they don’t, they should do. Keeping in touch with child or teen summer school students is never a good idea, and can result in you being disciplined or even fired. If one of your students asks if they can add you on Facebook etc, politely decline, let them know it’s nothing personal, and if they persist tell them that it’s the company rules and you are simply not allowed. I’ve never had a student argue with that.
This is part 5/6 of a series on Surviving Summer School. To read the other parts check here.
For many new CELTA/Trinity graduates, summer school is their first teaching job. If you are one of them, then this post is for you!
Summer schools all work a little differently, and one of those differences is in terms of *what* exactly is taught. Whilst I can’t offer one-size-fits-all advice here, I can offer some hints and tips to make teaching a little easier.
Some summer schools do base their syllabus on existing coursebooks. Others produce a ‘lesson plan pack’ that is individual to that particular school. Still others have school-unique workbooks for the students to complete during their stay, and the lessons aim to cover those topics. This is something that’s helpful to find out about during your interview. If you didn’t ask and they didn’t tell you, don’t panic – do some scouting around on the summer school’s website, email the company, or even just wait until you get there; it won’t be the end of the world. Once you’ve found this out, there are three main questions you’ll want to address:
I remember in my first few months of teaching finding the idea of ‘lesson aims’ utterly daunting, and something I’d rather avoid thinking about. After all, it’s much easier to simply aim to cover page 66 and 67 of the coursebook. What I found completely changed my approach, however, was the idea of starting at the end and working backwards in order to figure out what your aims actually are. Whether you’re considering a set of vocabulary words, a grammar point, or even just a couple of pages in the coursebook, think about what you’d ideally like your students to be able to do at the end of the lesson. Do you want them to be able to talk about their favourite film? Do you want them to write a story using past simple and past continuous? Do you want them to ask another student in the class questions about their family? Once you’ve identified that ‘end aim’, what you do in the lesson should enable your students to get there. For example, if you want them to ask questions about family, they need to remember words for different family members, they need to know how to form questions, and they perhaps need some work on intonation/pronunciation in questions. These are the things you need to include in your lesson. Working backwards suddenly makes it very easy to work out what you do (and don’t!) need to include, and so helps you to work out what the different stages in your lesson will be.
At most summer schools, there will be more than one teacher for each level – for example, there will be several classes of pre-intermediate students, several of upper-intermediate students, etc. This means that there is likely to be someone else teaching the same material as you. Make use of each other! One of the nicest summer schools I’ve worked at was where one of my colleagues and I set up a ‘photocopying agreement’. The syllabus involved lots of worksheets/bits of paper on most days, which meant lots of time spent at the photocopier. We agreed that on one day, one of us would do all the copying for both our classes (we would be teaching the same lessons, so it simply entailed making double the amount of copies), on the other day the other would do all the copying. More free time, everyone wins! It’s also nice to have someone to plan with/bounce ideas off – often other people have fantastic ideas that you might not have thought of.
I feel as if I spend a lot of time reiterating this point, but it is an important one. Your senior teacher is there to help you, so don’t be afraid to ask for help if you’re uncertain or even if you simply want reassurance that you’re on the right lines. No one starts out teaching knowing everything (in fact it’s the people who think they do who often run into problems!), and all of your colleagues were new to teaching once. At some point in the future you’ll be the one giving advice to the scared-looking newbie, and realise just how far you’ve come!
Good luck, and happy teaching!
Dictation is something I’ve often shied away from using in the classroom – I’ve previously taught in both Russia and the Czech Republic, countries where the state educational system often relies heavily on ‘old school’ methods like dictation and translation when teaching languages. My students at private language schools tend to be looking for a more up-to-date, communication heavy approach, and as a result I’ve lumped dictation in with ‘classroom activities to avoid’ through fear of reminding them of their schooldays. Or so I thought.
One of the things I love about using social media (blogging and twitter) for CPD is that it means I am shown new ideas almost daily. This means that often I am forced to admit that I might, in fact, be wrong.
As the above paragraph might imply, I joined Wednesday’s #ELTchat fairly certain that whilst some may believe that dictation had a place in their classroom, it certainly didn’t have a place in my classroom. Within the first five minutes, @SueAnnan suggested running dictations. Ah, yes. I’ve done those. My students enjoyed them. What followed was then an hour of my ideas of ‘dictation’ being expanded a little.
@helend_s uses various forms of dictation in her classroom, and is particularly in favour of peer dictation for helping students to focus on their pronunciation. As she teaches multilingual classes her students need to quickly become accustomed to each others’ accents and activities such as peer dictation help students to develop the ability to communicate clearly and effectively with each other. She also finds dictations helpful for training students to recognise and produce correct stress patterns, at both word and sentence level. @AdeleRaemer commented that this type of activity would be a good way of improving spelling and oral presentation skills.
@DavinnaArtibey returned to the idea of running dictations being fun for students. She also suggested dictaglosses* as a means of introducing new vocabulary.
After some initial discussion about the different types of dictation, we highlighted two potential problems. Firstly, that traditional dictation isn’t very fun! Some ‘more fun’ ideas are:
Running dictations: A great challenge for students. The race element makes them try to speak faster and then they find it even harder. They can work at any level, provided the language is graded accordingly (@helend_s) and can potentially work with any age group.
Chinese Whispers dictation: The students pass on a message and the last one has to write it on the board. (@SueAnnan).
Shouting or whispering dictation: Again, suggested by @helend_s, I can see this working well with my young learners, as well as students who are self-conscious about their speaking and so are uncomfortable with the idea of other students hearing them.
Human Tape Recorder: The teacher reads a text, however the students can call out ‘pause’, ‘stop’, ‘play’ and ‘rewind’ and control the reading accordingly.
The second problem was that some teachers felt that their students responded badly to dictation activities as a result of previous bad experiences, particularly in education systems where there is a lot of emphasis on graded dictations.
Aside from using styles of dictation which are more fun, everyone agreed that there were ways to make dictation less stressful for students:
Online Resources
We also discussed the ways teachers can use technology to make dictations more appealing to their students.
@GlenysHanson shared some of her online dictations which can be found here and says that her students particularly enjoy dictations based on videos. She also shared a link to a ‘missing vowel’ online dictation exercise, which would be particularly helpful for Arabic speakers.
@SueAnnan suggested using speech to text applications, such as Dragon dictation, in order to focus on pronunciation problems.
@fionaljp and SueAnnan discussed the use of lyricstraining.com, although we all quickly advised that this should be used with caution (especially if used in class when teaching young learners) – popular song lyrics can be pretty inappropriate!
@GlenysHanson also shared the tool Rhubarb, which can be used to make similar exercises to those found on lyricstraining.
Many of these online resources can be used to encourage student autonomy – if the teacher raises awareness of them in class, the students can then use them to practice their skills in their own time.
We finished our chat with a discussion about grading. Most agreed that dictations did not necessarily need to be graded (especially those with negative memories from school French lessons!). However it was agreed that if a grade was required, the best way to do it would be to allow the students themselves to decide on the mark scheme. For example, marks could be deducted for missed words or incorrect spelling (@MarjorieRosenbe).
Following the end of our chat I hadn’t had quite enough dictation – so did a little research for myself. I found some nice ideas that could be used in class for dictation (I particularly like the ‘jumbled story idea’ in point three) and for dictagloss.
Thanks to everyone for a great #ELTchat, and I look forward to having my horizons expanded again soon!
*For those unfamiliar with the term (I have heard it before but still needed to look it up!) a dictagloss is where students listen to a short text whilst writing down only the key words, then reconstruct the text from their notes. As opposed to dictation, where the aim is to reproduce the text word for word, a dictagloss requires the student(s) to produce a text with the same meaning.
#ELTchat is a weekly, hour-long, online discussion on Twitter for English Language teachers and teacher trainers. More information can be found on their blog or on the #ELTchat hashtag on Twitter. It’s a great way to broaden your horizons, exchange ideas, and get some solid CPD, all without having to change out of your pyjamas! I thoroughly recommend it 🙂
This is part 4/6 of a series on Surviving Summer School. To read the other parts check here.
Summer school is a full time job – and then some. Make no mistake, no matter how well-prepared you think you are, how much teaching experience you have, or how much energy you think you have to spare, by the end of the first week you will be exhausted. Don’t despair, don’t panic, and above all else please don’t think about quitting. You can survive 6-8 weeks of this, and there are some ways to make it far easier.
Most summer schools have a disclaimer in their contracts where it states that on some occasions you will be required to work for more than 40 hours a week. This is there for a reason. It’s also not as terrifying as it initially sounds. Here’s why. It isn’t all ‘work’ as you know it. Some of those hours will be when you are having the time of your life dancing at a disco (trust me, it’s amazing – it’s like going clubbing but without the pressure to pull, and the lack of alcohol means no hangover the next day). Some of those hours will be on the glorious sunny afternoon when you are lounging by the swimming pool, or playing volleyball in blazing sunshine with a group of Spanish teenagers. Some of those hours will likely be supervising students at meal times, or during their free time, or during the ‘lights out’ period. It’s all ‘work’, but not all work is equal, and it isn’t all equally tiring – in fact a lot of it’s pretty fun!
Saying that, it is wise to make sure you’re as well-rested as possible before you head to summer school. If at all possible, don’t start work there immediately after finishing a contract elsewhere. If that’s unavoidable, know that you are going to get tired. Cut yourself some slack.
Tiredness, working hard, a change in diet, lots of students coming from all different countries… it only means one thing: getting sick. It sounds like typical ‘Mum advice’, but regardless of what you do the rest of the year, summer school is the time to make sure you are getting enough sleep, eating as much fruit and vegetables as possible, drinking enough water, and ideally taking multivitamins. Taking precautions won’t necessarily prevent you from getting sick, but it will mean that if you do, it will likely be less severe and you’ll recover more quickly. It can be difficult to get good fruit and veg (UK boarding school food is notoriously dire) so this is where either stocking up on your own supply or bringing multivitamins with you comes in. It can also be tempting to stay up late socialising with your new colleagues/hopefully friends – don’t do this every night. I speak from experience!
This advice also comes from personal experience. The first couple of years I did summer school, I was at something of a loss as to what to do with myself when I did get time off. I’m an extrovert by nature, and spending my day off by myself in a city I didn’t know didn’t appeal in the slightest – so I did what seemed natural: hung out with my colleagues. Who, obviously, were working. Meaning that I ended up working too. When you’re nineteen or twenty (as I was) you can deal with being constantly ‘on’. It’s not ideal, but it’s doable. However as an elderly lady of twenty-seven, I now find that I need my time off. I’d advice anyone valuing their sanity to do the same.
If you have a hobby you can easily indulge in while at summer school, make sure you pack whatever you need for it. Take some good books or a laptop with films or TV shows you love on it. If at all possible, leave the site on your days off. It might seem easier just to stay put, but you will feel far more refreshed and relaxed if you physically leave for a few hours and go somewhere else. This is also where befriending your colleagues comes in! It can be harder as an activity leader (they generally have their days off during the week and, at least at smaller schools, take separate days off) but as a teacher you will tend to have a weekend day off – along with other teachers. See if you can go somewhere or do something with them – and if they’d rather just stay in their room and relax show them this post!
At the end of the day, no matter how exhausted you feel, remember that summer school is invariably only for a limited number of weeks. This is not your life from now on (although it might feel like it) and things that would not be sustainable in the longterm are perfectly ok if you’re only doing it for a short period of time. Expect to sleep well for the first few days after you finish your contract!
If at any point you’re feeling tired to the point that you can’t cope, talk to someone. Your senior teacher/ADOS/course leader is there to help you – and as it won’t be their first summer school, they’ve definitely been in your position. Maybe you can swap a shift with someone so you can go to bed a little earlier, or supervise a slightly gentler activity. Maybe another teacher or your senior teacher can help you a little with planning or photocopying so that you get a bit more free time. Don’t make yourself suffer in silence.
This is part 3/6 of a series on Surviving Summer School. To read the other parts check here.
At every summer school I’ve worked at so far there has been, to a greater or lesser extent, a Great Divide between ‘them’ and ‘us’ – the teachers and the activity leaders. Everyone on the staff at a summer school is working together to make it an enjoyable experience for the kids, so we’re all on the same team, right? In theory, yes. But it can be hard to believe. As one of the seemingly rare hybrid species who have done both roles, here are some mediating letters to both sides.
Dear Teachers,
You may think that our role as Activity Leaders is less important (or you may have even been told as such by well-meaning but ill-informed management). The fact of the matter is that this is simply not true. Much as the sense of taste is damaged with no sense of smell, we are a team. Without you, the students would simply play games, do sports and do arts and crafts for the whole summer – all in their own languages. Without developing their English skills, they would not have the ability or the confidence to strike up a conversation with a student with a different first language… and as a result everyone’s experiences would be far less rich. During activities, however, is when the language they have learnt in class becomes a real, ‘living’ thing. Using English as a tool to communicate will develop their confidence, their self-esteem, and their English as well, and this is something the students will hopefully experience outside the classroom as well.
We know you are tired after teaching for the morning and are mentally busy planning for the following day. But please, please try to be enthusiastic about activities. Unless we tell you otherwise, you aren’t in ‘teacher mode’ here, we are – so a lot of the time you can simply join in and have some fun! You don’t need to be a skilled sportsman/woman. Some of the students inevitably won’t be either, and the best thing you can do for the reluctant student who wants to sit on the sidelines is to take part and show enthusiasm yourself.
Likewise, please try your hardest to be flexible – as in the classroom, things can and do go wrong. If the plans suddenly change or something doesn’t work as intended, please try to be understanding. The best thing you can do is to offer to help or to ask what needs to be done – then do it.
Often we are pretty young – most of us are university students. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that we are immature, irresponsible or simply in this job for the money. Who knows, one day we might do a CELTA and become one of you!
Love,
Your Activity Leaders
Dear Activity Leaders,
Teaching for the day and then being expected to do activities is hard. Teaching takes a lot of energy, and by the time we come to you in the afternoon we may well be occupied by the events that happened in our lessons – the student who was struggling, the student we think should probably move up a level, the one who doesn’t seem to mix well with the others and the one who is downright angry about being here.
Activities are your time to shine. Please take the lead here and make sure you plan what we’re going to do, where we’re going to be, and make sure that the space and equipment are available. As teachers, we know all about planning, and no one enjoys an unstructured ‘let’s just go down to the sports field and kick a ball around’ as much as a properly organised event.
As previously mentioned, by the time we get to you we are tired. We don’t intend to be deliberately obtuse, but it can really help us if you give us specific tasks to do – collect the footballs from here, supervise this group of students, help this group of students sort themselves into teams. After a morning of making tens of decisions, we don’t really have the energy to play guesswork to figure out what you want us to do. (This is why we might be standing in a little group in the corner of the field talking, not because we are deliberately trying to annoy you).
Love,
Your Teachers
The Best Ticher 