Sunday, 26 July 2015

Demo lesson on art

Hi everybody,

the two things I am certainly going to try out in my future teaching are the following:

- Live listening
I really like the idea of bringing live listening in to my classroom. I often tell my students more about my opinion about a topic, but I have never done it in such an organised way. I never thought of writing it down with certain pieces of target language in it, read it to the class and then let the students use the text for further activities. I am planning to use live listening, as I believe it is very important to make the lesson more personal in order that students get the feeling that the topic really matters and is not just something in a course book nobody can relate to. So if we have a text about our own opinion students will be more motivated and interessted.

- Other ways to use unjumbled sentences
The course book we use in our school (New Inspiration by Mac Millan) has a lot of exercises with unjumbled sentences. I often have the problem we talked about in class: my students are too lazy to write down the sentences (and there is also often not enough space), even if I tell them to do so. That is the reason why I really enjoyed talking about new ideas on how to work with unjumbled sentences and get students to write down the whole sentence. In addition, there is a competitive aspect which helps to keep the students motivated.

I was very inspired by the lesson on art in general, so when I went to the National Gallery on Friday, I bought a fun art game for my students. It is called Brain Box and you can also buy it with other kinds of topics (maybe some of you already know them).
There are 61 cards in the box with famous paintings on them:
Each person has 10 seconds to look at the picture and remember as much as possible. After the sand timer has run out you have to turn around your card and throw the die to find out which question you have to answer.
If your answer is correct you can keep the card. The aim of the game is to be the player with the most cards at the end of the game.
I've already tried out the game with the grandchildren of my host family (8 and 10 years old) and it was good fun.




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5 comments:

  1. Fiona26 July 2015 at 23:45

    I'm glad you found those activities useful - the unjumbling activity is one I use a lot. I'd love to hear how you get on with the Live Listening - I find students really engage with it much more than listening texts on CD (although there is still a place for CDs with native and non-native speakers for use in class). I love the Brainbox game you've showed us, I don't know it but it sounds great fun.

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  2. Unknown27 July 2015 at 10:14

    Nadine, you're always a treasure trove of creative and unusual activities -- you lateral thinker!

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  3. Luca27 July 2015 at 12:31

    Live listening is a great way of turning 'teacher talk' into a meaningful exercise. Also, I find that if you're nervous about doing it live, you could always record yourself first, that way you have more control.

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  4. Alessandra29 July 2015 at 13:06

    Nadine, I'm thinking of having a creativity course with you!!! How about that? rsrsrsrsrs You've got awesome ideas!!! Congrats!!!

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  5. Nadine29 July 2015 at 21:23

    Thanks for the compliments! I think it's great to talk about ideas (in the course), because we can develop them further if we talk to other people about them.

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