phoenix from the flames presented by martin mccloud how to make unsuccessful activities into great...
TRANSCRIPT
Phoenix from the Flames
Presented by Martin McCloud
How to Make Unsuccessful Activities into Great Activities.
Phoenix Fireworks Display, Nagaoka
Introduction
About the workshopSuggest ways to an iterative approach
to improving classroom activities
About meMartin McCloud 4th Year ALT based at Tsunan ChutoLessons of 20 or 40 students
Activity Demonstration
To help you see the lesson from the students point of view
Give us something to improve
Fight-off the post-lunch nap!
Dengon Game – how to play
Teams arranged in lines down the classroom
Person at the front gets a message from the ALT
The message is passed to the person behind them
When the message reaches the last person, the
last person must run to the front and write the
answer on the board.
Dengon Game – how to play
Where do you live?
Start
Finish! runwrite
Dengon Game （日本語）
どこにすんでいますか
Start
Finish! runwrite
Dengon Game
GO!!!
A Quick Think about the Dengon Game
A) How many rounds did we play?
B) How many times did you speak during one round?
C) What where the answers needed to win the rounds?
Questions I Ask Myself
How can this activity become more interesting?
Can it be more fun?
Can it be more educational?
Can it be fun AND educational?
Why should we question our activities?
Why should we question our activities?
Because we re-use our activities
Why should we re-use activities? Saves time
we don’t have to spend time thinking of new ideas
we an re-use materials we have already made
Less riskwe know that the activity ‘works’we know the benefits of the activitybut, we also know the problems of the
activity
The Main Benefit of Re-use...
...Iterative Improvement
By re-using activities, we will have anopportunity to improve the activities
Use ActivityUse Activity
Find Find ProblemsProblems
Make Make ChangesChanges
Iterative Improvement - 'Use Activity'
We played a dengon game. Let's use this as an example.
Iterative Improvement - 'Find Problems'
What problems did the Dengon game have?how much speaking practice did you get?how entertaining was the game?how competitive was the game?anything else?
Iterative Improvement - 'Making Changes'
What changes could we make to the dengon game?
Can the game:be more entertaining?be more competitive?give more practice and feedback?have more interaction for the students?
Dengon Game v2.0
Have two messages:one going backwards and the other going forwards
Have messages that make a small dialogue
Have answers at the back for the last student to find
Dengon Game v2.0
Whose is this camera?
It’s Mark’s camera
An
swers
Start
Finish!
Activity Demonstration 2
To see if the changes we’ve made have improved the original activity
Practice a little more Japanese
Dengon Game v2.0 ( 日本語 )
これはだれのカメラですか
マークのカメラです
An
swers
Start
Finish!
Dengon Game v2.0
GO!!!
A Quick Think about the Dengon Game v2.0
A) How many rounds did we play?
B) How many times did you speak during one round?
C) What where the answers needed to win the rounds?
Moment of truth
Which was better?
The Original Dengon Game
or
Dengon Game v2.0?
What are the problems? (1)
1) Losing the student’s attention (i.e. not fun)
The activity is boring Students have no interest in the activity Activity is just dull
activity fatigue Activity goes on for too long Activity has been used too much
too much to learn Students shocked by the amount they must learn
and give up
What are the problems? (2)
2) Students not acquiring enough English (i.e. not learning)
Not enough English used in class Students waiting for the translation
Not enough practise Students need to process language to
learn it practice constructing and expressing
their own sentences
What are the problems? (3)
No immediate feedback after giving an answer, students need
to know if it is correct or not as quickly as possible.
Too much to learn students shocked by the scale of the
task and just give up
Solving these Problems (1)1) Keeping the students attention (more fun!!)
problem: activities are boring Make the activity entertaining Students are very competitive. Distract the
students by making activities competitive
problem: activity fatigue Don’t let an activity run for too long Don’t do the same activity too often
problem: too much to learn Limit the amount of new vocabulary
Solving these Problems (2)
2) Increasing the amount of English students acquire (more learning!!)
problem: Not enough English used try to use only English in the classroom (on
materials, during explanations, checking answers etc.)
problem: not enough practise try to use activities that encourage speaking
as much as possible. have students speak with the ALT and JTE
Solving these Problems (3)
problem: no immediate feedback try to use activities that provide instant
feedback (quizzes, short interview style dialogues)
problem: too much to learn Limit the amount of new vocabulary
In Summary…
To improve a lesson, we want to add:
Entertainment Competition Limits on the vocabulary More practice and feedback More interaction
Improving Other Activities
In groups, we will discuss improvements we can make to other activities.
Conclusions
We should think about our activities after we have use them. We might re-use the activity in a future lesson. We should learn from our mistakes and improve the activity.
Conclusions
Good TT activities should have:EntertainmentCompetitionLimits on the vocabularyPractice and feedbackInteraction
Any Questions?
More information
Slides for this workshop can be downloaded from:
http://www.martinmccloud.com/teaching
Any other comments or questions can be sent to: