Did I accidentally plan a writing lesson?!

We’re all familiar with the drill. You consult your Scheme of Work for some idea of where you should be. You open a blank lesson plan and then get a cup of tea while you actually decide what you’re going to do. And then… eureka! The ideas come crashing down out of nowhere and you've got your lesson sorted.

Or at least it goes something like that.

For this lesson, my eureka moment came when I started to think about the exciting world of vocabulary. I've been covering Speaking and Listening with my E3 Functional Skills group, and I needed to think of a way to get them to use more interesting words. I decided to use the warmer activity Tonia showed us - the star with 'I can', 'I like', 'I used to' and so on. They really enjoyed this and were openly discussing facts about themselves and engaging as a group. There was a lot of laughter when I asked them to state something about their partner (they were keen to spill all of their partner's deepest secrets to see who they could embarrass the most) but overall the lesson got off to a great start.

Next, I decided to recap the skills of a good speaker and listener. For this I used a DVolver some funky cartoon characters and asked them to identify the skills they saw as well as discuss any that weren't included:

Katie's DVolver 

This worked well - good stuff. But the next part is where it gets really crazy. I read them a story and asked them to think about the way vocabulary was used. Was it interesting? Could they identify any words that they would change? Why? They responded well to this (although the story I chose wasn't great - I'll rethink that for the future) and seemed excited when I asked them to write their own stories...

However, I didn't just tell them to write. I gave then a blank cartoon strip (see below) and asked them to use it as a basis to write their story in groups. We talked about synonyms and common words that were banned from the task (nice, great, good, boring, big). Can you guess what happened? They loved it! The stories they came up with were simply fab, and there were constant shouts of 'Miss, is there a better word I can use for (insert word here)?'

So, where's the problem, I hear you ask? Well, my original aim was for them to have a chance to use vocabulary creatively, and then apply the process of using more imaginative words to the context of a group discussion. This is where they struggled. When I started to bring them back round to the idea of speaking and listening, all of their enthusiasm for fun, exciting words had disappeared. Perhaps I should have foreseen this. Looking back, what I had planned for was a writing lesson, and I'm not disappointed with how it turned out. It was great to see them so engaged with a writing task and actively seeking better ways to write things.However, I'm still on the hunt for a way to use better vocabulary in group discussions!

Demand-high teaching

I thought I would have another go at writing a blog post on a Saturday night when I really should have better things to do but my brain has gone numb watching 'X factor'.

I read a while ago about an approach to teaching and learning called "Demand High Teaching". I'm not sure whether to describe it as an 'approach' but I am going to label it as that for the time being until I come up with a better word. In fact, the advocates of such an 'approach' describe it as a "meme"as described here:  "we are not asking to throw out infant and bathwater.  We are proposing a small course correction to our current direction of travel – or whatever direction of travel you are taking in your teaching approach." (Underhill and Scrivener - http://demandhighelt.wordpress.com/).

So, what exactly is meant by 'demand high teaching?' The basic premise is demanding more from learners: not accepting incorrect responses; encouraging learners to push themselves; walking away from learners when they speak quietly so they are forced to speak up rather than the teacher going towards them; only giving praise when it is warranted; leaving more time for responses rather than feeling the need to fill silences, etc. If learners are forced to challenge themselves, deeper learning is more likely to take place. So far, so good. This seems pretty sensible to me.

However, I was wondering how ESOL learners might react to this. I'm sure we have all been in a situation when we have asked a learner a question, there has been what seems like an interminable silence and have felt the need to stop the torture: "Anybody else help?" etc. I once taught a Japanese learner who would put her head down and refuse to look at me when she didn't know/didn't like a question. It didn't matter how many times I rephrased the question or gave her more thinking time, in the end I just had to change tack and topic. 

Nevertheless, I like the idea of encouraging learners to take risks and to be creative and experiment with language. I find that some ESOL learners can be too dependent on the teacher and expect him/her to do the work for them, to clarify and reformulate language for them rather than 'forcing' them (OK - encouraging) them to do the work. This may be down to a lack of confidence and I think it is wise to tread carefully and cautiously. Learners have different expectations of a teacher and it may take time for them to adapt to a more 'hardcore' approach. Small steps leading to, hopefully, better results.

If you are keen to read more about demand-high teaching, you might want to have a look at these observation tasks which encourage you to critique some of the key issues involved with the approach/meme or what ever you want to call it! Let me know what you think.

http://demandhighelt.wordpress.com/observation-tasks/

Using corpus-like tools

This is not really a post but more of a reposting of Leo Selivan's post on 'essential lexical' tools. He has kindly agreed to let me repost anything from his blog.

I thought this post was particularly interesting as it ties in with the session we will be doing on lexis. If you are interested in helping learners with lexical chunks, you might want to try out some of the tools mentioned here. The collocations tool is excellent.



Please clink on the link for Leo's post.

Recording oral feeedback for written assignments

In recent weeks, I have been reading a bit about how best to give learners feedback.

John Hattie  says the following:

"Effective feedback must answer three major questions asked by a teacher and/or by a student: Where am I going? (What are the goals?), How am I going? (What progress is being made toward the goal?), and Where to next? (What activities need to be undertaken to make better progress?) These questions correspond to notions of feed up, feed back, and feed forward. How effectively answers to these questions serve to reduce the gap is partly dependent on the level at which the feedback operates."

So far, so good, but what can the problems be with giving feedback to learners? You might do all the right things: use a correction code to encourage the learners to monitor their own work and notice the gap befween their own performance and the correct form only to find that the learners continue to make the same mistakes. Additionally, if you have 25 students in a class, it can be difficult to consistently provide detailed feedback to every learner in the class. However, we still need to make sure that the learners know where they are going, how they are going and what they need to do in order to ensure that they are making strides in the right direction.

Currently, and unfortunately, I am not in a position to teach ESOL learners on a regular basis. For this research project, I decided to try out recording spoken feedback for a group of trainees on one of their written assignments. I was inspired to do this after reading Nathan Hall's inspiring and detailed post on the subject and after purchasing Graham Stanley's excellent book in which he also advocates this practice.

I wanted to see if trainees found the practice useful and whether it could be used to feedback on ESOL or literacy learners' work. In order to carry out the micro mini research project, I downloaded a free software tool; I used 'Jing' but any other kind of screencasting (recording the screen as a video along with the audio) tool would be fine. I had recently bought a microphone to help me with recording podcasts and had already marked the trainees' assignments: a reflective piece on their teaching.

With Jing, you are limited to 5 minutes of feedback so you have to be concise in what you say. I found this quite difficult and was dismayed at how often I said 'important' but I'm sure with a bit more practice, I'd get used to it. You can see and hear one example here. Once I had recorded my feedback, I saved the link and posted it to the participants. Quick and easy!

Feedback and implications

What I liked about the process was being able to elaborate on what I had written. For example, if I had commented, 'Watch your use of sentence structure here', I was able to explain exactly what I meant and the individual was able to see it on screen whilst listening to me provide examples to support my points. Unfortunately, I was not able to annotate as I was speaking, but I tried to indicate to what I was referring by moving the mouse to the relevant point. The trainees commented that they had found the feedback useful because it was more personal. Nathan Hall mentions that the approach is 'softer' than having written feedback only.

One of the limitations here was that perhaps the trainees didn't really need such detailed feedback. They had all produced good pieces of work and it could be argued that the feedback did not really add anything: it did not move learning forward. However, I would definitely like to use it again. In my line of work, it would probably be most useful when trainees submit drafts. It can be time-consuming ploughing and correcting errors; with oral feedback, you could provide an overview of the assignment along with a few comments to consider. There is an argument that feedback should not be too detailed: learners need to be able to work out the mistakes for themselves but spoken feedback can point them in the right direction.

What do you think? Do you think you could use this practice with your ESOL and/or literacy learners? If so,  how might you use it? What problems might there be?

Any constructive comments welcome!

Welcome

Dear all

Welcome to our first attempt at a "collaborative blog'. In the past, I (Clare) have used blogs to post useful weblinks or to summarise a session. However, a chat with a teacher the other day made me question their usefulness and ask myself the question, "who is the blog for?". In fact, who is getting the most out of the blog? Is anybody learning from this?

You should already have a course and assessment handbook and be able to access the VLE. Useful articles, handouts and weblinks will be posted here but this is a space for you to share ideas and engage with material.

So, what is the aim of this blog?  If you look at the new professional standards for the further education and skills sector which came out in April 2014, you will notice the following things:

• Build positive and collaborative relationships with colleagues and learners (Professional Values and Attributes)
• Apply theoretical understanding of effective practice in teaching, learning and assessment     drawing on research and other evidence (Professional Knowledge and Understanding)
• Promote the benefits of technology and support learners in its use (Professional Skills)

 

We want you to broaden your horizons, carry out mini action projects and share them with each other. You might want to review an article you have just read, try out a new way of teaching vocabulary or an online tool, question the notion of 'learning styles' in the classroom etc. You will all be co-authors of the blog and, hopefully, once we get started, it will run itself.

I shall start it off by reviewing the use of recording oral feedback for written assignments. Everyone is welcome to add comments; you can agree or disagree albeit appropriately, question content etc.

I know you are all busy juggling assignments, work and family life but we hope this will be a productive exercise for everyone.

Happy blogging!