Teaching Techniques

Presenter: Lucy Castan Ralph

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Breaking the Ice

Write down the following words on a scrap of paper, keep what you write secret from those around you: The name of a fruit The name of a vegetable A number between 1 and 200 Do you like football? How many pencils and pens do you have?

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

What is the first thing you do every morning?

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These things are actually:

1. Your first name 2. Your family name 3. Your age

4. Are you married?

5. How many children you have 6. Your job

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Now you:
Must stand up and go around the class and ask the personal questions and share information about your new selves.

Shake hands and make eye contact when meeting new people.

GO
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Techniques for Better Classroom Discipline

1. Focusing 7. Low-profile intervention

2. Direct Instruction
3. Monitoring 4. Modeling

8. Assertive discipline
9. Assertive I-Messages 10. Humanistic I-Messages

5. Non-verbal cuing
6. Environmental control

11. Positive Discipline

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 Golden Rules About Classroom Management

1. Ensure that you have clearly stated rules and procedures with established consequences that are expected and reviewed regularly. All students must know the rules, routines and expectations. 2. Never continue on with instruction when the rules are being broken - pause, delay and ensure that you have your student's attention.

3. Catch your students using appropriate behavior and praise them!

4. Use behavior contracts when necessary and follow up with appropriate incentives.

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 5. Be sure that your instructional periods are NOT too long, students need to be mobile throughout the day. 6. Provide individual , personal cueing and prompts to certain students as needed. Sometimes just touching a student's shoulder will bring them back to task. 7. POST the important rules - keep it short, no more than 6 and refer to them often. These should be posted after the class has brainstormed them. 8. Make sure you are teaching to all the various learning styles your students have. A student who is not being reached is more likely to be a problem.

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Teaching Language Skills

Listening Speaking Reading Writing

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Listening
A Silly Dictation
Aim: Good with higher level students to allow processing of language. Encourage thinking skills as well as listening and writing.

Laughter is great at helping to create a positive and energetic classroom mood.

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Procedure
Tell the students you have a cough today but you are still going to do a dictation. If they dont hear words, they will just have to guess what you said. Read out a joke like the one below and dictate as usual but dont read all the words cough instead of saying certain words e.g. Eleven people were cough on a rope, under a helicopter, ten men and one cough.

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 Students have to guess what the missing words are and write them in, either individually or in pairs. After checking whether they guessed correctly, they could discuss the joke and why/if they found it funny. They could also try telling jokes they know in their mother tongue in English.

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 Eleven people are hanging on a rope, under a helicopter, ten men and one woman. The rope is not strong enough to carry them all, so they decide that one has to leave, because otherwise they are all going to fall. They are not able to name that person, until the woman makes a very touching speech. She says she will voluntarily let go of the rope, because as a woman she is used to giving up everything for her husband and kids, or for men in general, and is used to always making sacrifices with little in return. As soon as she finishes her speech, all the men started clapping their hands......

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Listen and discuss

Imagine by John Lennon Imagine there's no heaven It's easy if you try No hell below us Above us only sky Imagine all the people Living for today... Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people Living life in peace...
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Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger In a brotherhood of man Imagine all the people Sharing all the world... You may say Im a dreamer But Im not the only one I hope some day you'll join us And the world will be as one

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Speaking
In groups of six discuss the following questions: What does the author mean when he says You may say Im a dreamer?

Whos the author singing to?

What does he want to express in his song? What feelings are awaken when listening to this song? Do you know who John Lennon was?
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Jigsaw puzzle challenge

Take 3-4 large pictures/photos and stick them on card. Pictures can come from Sunday supplements, travel brochures, calendars, magazine adverts etc. Pictures specific to students interests will motivate them e.g. film stills, cartoons, news stories, famous paintings, famous people.

cut out the picture in two pieces.

Give each student in the class a jigsaw piece. They must not show their piece to anyone. Students then mingle and question each other about what is on their puzzle piece to try and find the other person with the piece of the same jigsaw. The object of the game is to find the other and put together the jigsaw.
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Writing
With the pictures you have in the envelopes you should write any of the following: Commercial Poem

Letter
Note Story Riddle Show your master piece to the class.

Teaching Grammar Without Teaching Grammar

Grammar has a bad reputation because: it has often been taught as a separate skill strangely disassociated from the rest of language learning students have had to learn the labels for language e.g. past continuous, which can be like learning a third language students have had to do lots of grammar exercises that have had little or no meaning for them its not been fun

its not been meaningful

its not been memorable
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When teaching Grammar the following aspects of the language items need to be focussed on see checklist below

meaning context pronunciation form practice

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Teaching grammar: can/able to

Can means is able to, as well as is permitted to.
e.g. I can speak Japanese. / You can smoke in the caf.

Make sure you focus on one meaning and dont muddle them up.
Context - Choose a clear context to introduce the meaning

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 Pictures are very good for presenting grammar. For can/able to you can have a picture like this (draw one on the board, or find an appropriate picture in a magazine)
This is Mighty Mike. He can pick up an elephant.

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This is Weedy Will. He cant pick up a chair.

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Elicit other sentences from the students. Give them prompts if they do not have enough language to think of their own sentences like

pick up a table

fight a crocodile
break a door

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 Using real examples from the class will ensure that they are meaningful for students. If you add some very silly ones, you will get the attention of students and they may be motivated to add their own examples.
* concentrate on allowing students to hear the target language. Later they can see the written form, but now they should be digesting the meaning through the context and teachers questions

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Drilling Grammar:
This is a very valuable activity and students need to hear and repeat target language to get their ears attuned to it and their tongues used to producing it. Model the target language e.g. He can pick up an elephant. Ensure you use the schwa in can. Allow students to hear the model sentence a number of times. Get students to repeat the sentence all together you may need to say 1-2-3 get them to say it at the same time

 Get individual students to repeat the sentence so you can check that they have got it right Repeat with other example sentences: He cant pick up an elephant. She can speak Japanese. Allow plenty of opportunities for students to hear and say the target language. See below for practice ideas. Form students need to be able to recognise and produce the written form

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Give students this grammar grid:

He

can

pick up

an elephant

She

cant

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And ask them to add words to columns 1,3,4

1 2 3 4

He

can

pick up

an elephant

She

cant

fight

a crocodile

speak

Spanish

We

swim

They

cook

spaghetti

play

basketball

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Questionnaires Produce a worksheet like this (using vocabulary students are familiar with):
name swim speak French play tennis cook

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Talking about famous people

Ask students to bring in pictures of their favourite pop, film or sports stars.

In groups students tell their classmates about their stars:

e.g. Jennifer Lopez can sing, dance and act. She cant cook.

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 Students write sentences under their pictures and display them on the class notice board.

Make it a game. Have students write their can / cant sentences on cards without the names of the stars. Put them all up on the class wall and get students to read all of them and try to match them to the correct stars. Students can be encouraged to find out some interesting facts about what the stars can or cant do for homework. Students wont mind doing this if it is about stars they like!

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Tips for Teaching Vocabulary

http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/dorian_gray/1/
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The sullen murmur of the bees. a. Angry b. Willing

c. Happy

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You shrug your shoulders? a. Raise b. Shrink

c. None

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How perfectly hideous they are! a. Extremely nice b. Extremely ugly c. Exciting

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Don't flatter yourself, Basil ! a. Praise b. Offend

c. Ridicule

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They can sit at their ease and gape at the play.

a. Look in surprise
b. Enjoy c. Horrify

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What odd chaps you painters are! a. Mosquitoes b. Men

c. Animals

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Look at the following words and in groups guess what they mean.

Gingerly
Harlem

Plait
Gingham

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 Read and find the words in the Sweet Potato Pie excerpt and match the meanings with their definitions:

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a. Gingerly

b. Harlem
c. Plait d. Gingham

a cotton cloth which has a pattern of colored squares on a white background ..City in NY inhabited by African Americans ..Carefully ..Pig tail or braid

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Very Important Web Sites

http://www.teachnology.com/teachers/lesson_plans/language_ar ts/grammar/ http://dictionary.cambridge.org/ http://www.pearsonlongman.com/map/index.h tml

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/
http://www.english-to-go.com/ http://toeflpractice.ets.org/ http://www.flojoe.co.uk/cpe/students/tests/index.htm http://www.m-w.com/

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