A radical EFL lesson plan

The introduction to the unit is a game designed to shock students and raise their awareness of a global issue of importance.

Examples:

1.       Game: “Products of slavery marketplace”.  Students pretend to buy and sell products made using slave labor such as chocolate and running shoes

2.       Game: “Poverty trap quiz”.  Students play a quiz-type game where they attempt to decide whether sentences are true or false (ex: “The more soap operas women watch, the fewer children they will have” is true according to Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee in Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the way to Fight Global Poverty)

 

Quests are scaffolding tasks and games to help students learn language and thinking skills. 

Examples:

1.       Students learn about how to use the passive voice (ex: Children are forced to pick bananas) and then create a “grammar gamble” game for each other where the aim is to spot correct/incorrect sentences

2.       Students write a persuasive essay, then scramble the paragraphs for other students to reorganize.

 

The missions then allow the students to develop both the language points and the global ideas further.  The final product of the mission is then disseminated to a specified audience.

Examples:

1.       Try living on less than $2 per day.  Document the experience.  Post the results to “Live Below the Line” on Facebook and Twitter.

2.       Create a book of shocking facts on the topic of human rights.  Donate the books to a local high school.

What is "play"?

Jane McGonigal suggests that games have obstacles.  Her famous example is golf: if the point is to put a ball in a hole, the easiest way is to just go and put it there, but the point of golf is to stand far away from the hole and hit the ball with a stick.  Scrabble too: if it's about arranging letters into words, we already have an activity for that, and we call it typing.  But in Scrabble, you have obstacles: you can only play with 7 letters at a time, the word has to connect with a letter of another already on the board, and the letters translate to points which have to be maximised.

This morning, I was in a hurry and wanted to get my 2 year-old's teeth brushed.  She obediently walked most of the way to the bathroom with me, and then suddenly inexplicably decided to lie down on the floor.  She laughed and waited to see what I would do.  She knew that eventually I would laugh too and pick her up and flip her and tickle her and swoop her into the bathroom. 

Now, why would that be fun?  Not only was she deliberately putting obstacles in my way, but getting picked up and tickled is and obstacle to walkingforward.  There's no biological reason for what she did: it didn't help her get food or any other necessity.  It's just  FUN.

There are millions of dollars for anyone who can really define what FUN is.
 

Playtested game: products of slavery

These were the revised instructions for the slavery game:

You work on the black market, so you sell whatever you can for whatever prices it will bring you.  

With that money you can buy things.  Your aim is to buy things for yourself and your family so that you will have status and your friends will envy you.

You may or may not know the origin of the products you sell.  Most likely it will have been produced at great harm to the producers.

You will each start off with $25 and a selection of products from the board.

Note down the names of the people who buy from you with the product they bought and the price, ex:

Janine – shoes - $50

Add the money you earn to your original $25 and buy as much as you can.  Note down what you buy and the price, ex:

            Cell phone - $75

            Steaks for 4 - $50

The winner is whoever spends the most money by 11:40

The products are: CHOCOLATE, FRUITS, VEGETABLES, SUGAR, SHOES, COSMETICS, MEAT, JEANS, GOLD JEWELRY, CELL PHONES

During the lesson, I had to clarify that the aim was to buy the higher status objects such as shoes and cellphones and that the lower-end products such as fruits and vegetables were only a means to making money. 

The game ended when one girl had spent all of her money approximately 15 minutes into the game.  I also decided to end it because by that point, one girl was selling her boyfriend (also in the class).   She got $20 for him.

I then asked them to count how much money they had spent.  The winner had spent $178, so i called her up to the front of the class to read the mission statement of the university up to the part where it talked about ediucation people "con conciencia ética".  I then reread the part  of the instructions where it says 

You may or may not know the origin of the products you sell. Most likely it will have been produced at great harm to the producers.

This led into an interesting discussion and journal writing session on both the ethics of blindly following orders as well as the issue of consumerism.  Some of the comments:

• I used to believe that after the Second World War, nothing worse could happen, but now I discovered that people are even more curel than they were in that time.
• I didn't think of what you were asking us.  It was just a game! 
• Do you trust the company or the activists?  Both can lie. 
• We need to be more aware of what we do and what we buy.
   

 

 

Teaching logical thinking

Is it possible to know how to think logically and still be racist?

Of course not.
Racism is not logical because it starts with two premises:
1. that human beings are not fundamentally equal 
2. that each person acts as a representative of his or her race
Neither of these are true.

This means that if we can teach students to think logically and to spot logical flaws, then we will have taken one giant step toward erradicating one of the great ills of humankind.

Work and play: synonyms?

As I watched my 23 month-old spend 20 minutes trying to put on a t-shirt and pants, I realised that for very young kids, work and play are absolute synonyms.  She was working immensely hard at a very important task, yet she approached it in the playful spirit of a fun challenge.

In my last post I mentioned that some people find it possible to get into "flow" doing relatively mundane things like house-cleaning.   If you think about it, Candy Crush helps millions of people get into flow, yet it's essentially mindless.  People say that they feel like they're accomplishing something, "getting something done" when they clear a level.

Maybe that could be part of the way to encourage students to tackle fairly mindless, but necessary repetitive work such as grammar exercises.  I've noticed that with the right music and the right environment, some of my students can get so absorbed in their workbooks that they look up in surprise when I announce the end of class.

The importance of "flow"

Csíkszentmihályi came up with the concept of "flow", which wikipedia defines as "characterized by complete absorption in what one does".  Most of us get into flow on a regular basis, some by running, or playing sports, others by reading, cleaning the house, gaming, or whatever else gets us into "the zone"  where we're totally absorbed by what we're doing. 

We can even get into flow when we're doing things we don't particularly find interesting.  I can get into flow writing syllabi or grading, although it's harder.  Usually I get myself in flow by playing music I like and giving myself plenty of time.  Studies show that the most successful students are those who are most often in flow when they do their school work or homework...and this doesn't seemt o have anything to do with how much they like the subject itself.

Flow is so important, that in studies Csíkszentmihályi conducted where he asked people to avoid getting into flow, the subjects ended up with symptoms similar to serious depression...after only three days!

One of my complaints about the school system is that kids are so ruled by the bell that it's hard for them to get into flow.  It takes time to get focussed and really begin to get into a task, and this drives teachers nuts ("Come on, you have to write three paragraphs and you haven't even started!").  But then the irony is that they do get started and are just beginning to get into it...and the bell rings.   "Sorry, you didn't start when I told you to, and now it's time to put it away."

Challenge: A good EFL writing lesson

Obviously, when EFL students write, there must be some kind of exchange process where they read and respond to each other's work.

The first problem then is that students finish writing at different times.  This means that a fast-finisher extension task is absolutely necessary so that the others have a chance to completely finish.

The second problem is that students can't read each other's work unless the English has been corrected.  The teacher needs to find a way to do this so that even the last ones get their work checked and re-written.

This is a process that could take several lessons, but then the risk is that the students' interest will wane.

How might you deal with this?

Decision time: tech or no tech?

Using technology for presenting lessons:
CONS:

• You never know how reliable the connection will be
• There may be technical glitches
• It might take time to set up

PROS:

• A visual presentation using technology such as videos or powerpoints might be more compelling
• The audio might provide a better quality of language

THE CHALLENGE:
Use technology if you think it will enhance your lesson, but aim to learn to be interesting by yourself in case the tech fails.

Decision time: should students draw in EFL class?

Drawing in EFL class:
CONS:

• Students may not draw very well
• Students may take too much time to draw
• Students may focus too much on artistic quality

PROS:

• Students may be better able to demonstrate comprehension through drawing than through language
• Drawing develops right-hemisphere thinking
• Drawing allows for more language in EFL class precisely when the drawings are ambiguous

THE CHALLENGE:
There are several ways of using drawing: one is as a stimulus for a speaking task, so, for example if they have 30 seconds to draw what they did over the weekend, the others have to try to interpret the drawing.  Another is to demonstrate comprehension of a reading or a listening, where they may draw, for example, the main parts of a story.  A third is as a way to present work in an asthetically pleasing manner.  The trick is to inform students of the purpose of the drawing and to assign the right amount of time.  For example, if the aim is artistic quality, they will be allowed more time and materials than if it is a simple comprehension task.

Decision time: Should students write alone or in pairs?

Writing in pairs:
CONS:

• There may be one worker and one slacker. 
• There may be one strong one and one weak one who doesn't get a chance
• The teacher can't see what each individual can do

PROS:

• Students learn to help and co-operate
• The strong learn to make room for the weak
• The students devlopm work ethics so that both work equally

THE CHALLENGE:
Nobody is born knowing how to work well with others.  We need to teach them using class discussions, and by trusting and supporting them when they need it.  In the end, they will learn by doing.  We can not deny them the opportunity to try on the assumption that they will do badly because then they will never have the chance to prove themselves.

The exit principle

There is no freedom without choice.

If you have no way to say no or to leave, then you have no choice.

Slaves have no freedom; people who cannot divorce have no freedom; children at school have no freedom.

Many educators are experimenting with games and game-like learning to increase feelings of motivation in the class, but according to Katherine McMillan Culp in her article "Games Are for Play, Not Assessment" (http://www.gamesandlearning.org/2014/05/16/possible-worlds-creator-our-games-are-for-play-not-assessment/),

"if the players are acting as students – if they are expected (again, explicitly or implicitly) to demonstrate learning while they play – then their freedom to subvert, ignore or break the game is lost. And, critically, we believe that our players – children – know this."

Is freedom something we as educators should be thinking about?  Traditional school culture says NO, but the new wave of alternative schools, homeschoolers and "unschoolers" (homeschoolers with no fixed curriculum) say YES. 

What does your heart say?

Mission: "live below the line"

One class here at Universidad de los Hemisferios is trying a different kind of mission for their English class: they are trying to live below the line as per the rules of https://www.livebelowtheline.com/

They can only live on $2/day which only only included their food and drink (transportation is not included)  but they cannot take food from anyone, so for example if they take food from the family kitchen, they have to count the cost. 

For alot of these students, even though they live in Ecuador, it's the first time they've thought about what it really means to be poor.

One issue that I'm wondering about for the women in the class is if they will count such necessities as sanitary napkins inside their $2.

Definition: "game"

In his article "What's the difference between games and gamification?" (http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/08/whats-the-difference-between-games-and-gamification/),  Frank Catalano describes three very different conceptualizations of games.

The first is the idea of what people are calling "gamification" which is adding game-like elements to non-game-like tasks.  For example, in EFL, teachers often play games involving guessing a word or using a correct structure.  These are not inherently games because the main aim could be achieved just as easily with a worksheet; but the teachers think that adding points, competition or a time-limit makes it more fun.  Maybe they're right, more often they aren't.

The second is a simulation or a role-play in which you are exploring worlds and characters.  There's no real end point to this type of activity, it's more of a creativity-focused task.  The real-world analogy would be unstructured playing in a park or other location.

The final one is what Catalano calls "simply" games where there is a definite end-point where you win or lose.  It's more rules based than a simulation.  The aim here, however, is the game itself, not what you might learn from it. For instance, in my earlier examples of EFL games, the focus of the game is grammar or vocabulary, but in an online multiplayer role-play game, you use English to communicate with your teammates to complete missions.  You don't realize how much your English is actually improving, and paradoxically, you learn more.

Are games the ultimate interactive art form?

Games are already, by definition interactive.  What many people have deep reservations is the content: maybe the messages the games are sending aren't what's best for our society.

Art is about esthetics, and an appreciation for beauty and harmony, but art can also serve to shock and raise awareness of social justice issues.  Think of Pussy Riot and John Lennon; think of the painting "The Scream" by Edward Munch; think of novels like "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe...on a visceral level, we can identify with and learn from these what it's like to be someone else.  But in games you can actually BE someone else because you can have an avatar who can move around in a virtual world. 

If you want to make protest art, if you want people to really understand about human rights, poverty,  illness, injustice, war, maybe the best way to get the idea across is through a game. 

A brilliant class

What's the definition of a brilliant lesson?

One where 100% of the students are engaged and doing something 100% of the time.  One where you know exactly what each student has understood at each stage of the lesson.

I have the good fortune to currently be observing two teachers who demonstrate this concept beautifully.

One class I observed involved a jigsaw reading where each group read and made sure they understood one section of the reading, then regrouped so that every student had to explain their section to the others.  The teacher monitored the entire time and every student ended up with a thorough understanding of the text.
Another was a math class where the kids were practicing mental math.  In the first class, the teacher would give the students problems such as "what's 7+6+5-3?"  and 5 or 6 kids would call out the answer, which meant the others didn't have a chance.  However, the next time I saw the lesson, the kids were all sitting on the carpet with little pieces of paper and pencils.  They were only allowed to write the final answer and then hold it up to see if it was right.  EVERY child participated. 

This is what school should be!

Role playing

What are some different ways you can use role-playing in your class?

Strangely, although I have a degree in Drama, it's one teaching method I've explored very little.   The reason is that most role-plays for EFL students are scripted.  For example, there's not much you can do in a scene between a customer and a waiter (although I did post earlier on how to turn that into a game).

Today I'm teaching a 2 hour lesson on my favorite play ever: "A Raisin in the Sun" by Lorraine Hansberry.   Obviously it's impossible to do it justice in a two-hour lesson, but one way around that is simply to provide the scenes and have the students role play them. 

First, we'll watch the first scene of movie to get a sense of the characters.  Then the students will divide up into groups to act out different scenes based only on a short summary such as "Walter tries to convince Mama to give him the money".  The rest is up to the students.

It will be interesting for the different groups to compare what they did, and for those who are curious, they can go and get the play or the movie and compare what they did with that.

Note-taking

How do you take notes?

• whatever the teacher repeats more than once?
• whatever the teacher tells you to write down?
• whatever you think sounds important?
• just theory or just examples?

Note-taking is an art.  Good students seem to know how almost instinctively, but students who can't master it will never be able to do well in lecture-based classes (or, as they call them here, "clases magistrales"). 

How can we teach students to take good notes?
One way is to help them do it in our own clases: by repeating key points, speaking s l o w e r or LOUDER when we say something important.  But not all teachers do that, so we need to give them "tricks of the trade", such as learning to write key words (usually nouns) rather than entire sentences, or using different colors, arrows, signs or drawings to note down ideas. 

Information: a look backward and forward

In the past...

Information was scarce. If you wanted to know something, you asked your teacher or someone in your community. If you wanted more than that, depending on where you lived you could go to the library and maybe you’d find just enough information to leave you thinking “is that all there is?” Usually you’d give up at that point.

In the future…

There is already an information overload. You can find out anything about anything…and some of it might even be true!

In the past…

There were very few news sources. You had the morning and evening news programs on whatever basic TV channels you could get. The newspapers all got their stories from the same two or three sources, usually the Associated Press or Reuters. Some magazines or news shows had more in-depth reporting and novels were even written about intrepid, courageous journalists risking all to get the scoop. You read or listened to answer the 5 Ws: who, what, where, when, why and how.

In the future…

Anyone with a cell phone can photograph, tweet, blog and post whatever they consider news, from a child who got bit by a dog in Pifo to suicide bombs in Jerusalem. They also add their own point of view to their photo, tweet, blog or post. Your job is no longer only to find out the 5 Ws because that’ll be everywhere, but to analyze the source and critique the content and find the same news written from other perspectives if you want the complete picture. In political speeches, the main job of reporters is fact checking: if a politician quotes a number or a source, s/he instantly has an army of amateur and professional reporters fact-checking his/her every utterance…and woe betide them if they are off by so much as a single misattributed word or figure!

In the past…

In common conversation, spoken language was unlike written language because of the difference in time delay between the sending and receiving of the message. A letter took days or weeks to arrive.

In the future…

With email, instant messaging and the nearly 24 hour surveillance we put on our social networks, we can receive an answer in minutes or less, which makes written conversations happen almost in real time.

In the past…

Reading books was considered a vastly superior way of spending one’s time compared to staring at the “idiot box”, but both were fairly passive, and even solitary activities. You read, you thought, you went to bed. No wonder many kids hated it.

In the future…

Via social networks, wikis, and other online communities, you can interact in a much more meaningful way with your reading material, which itself has become far more multimedia. The Harry Potter craze in the first decade of this century not only succeeded in making kids andadults read novels the size of doorstops, it also spun off into an incredibly successful movie franchise, a series of online games (some multiplayer) as well as wikis, fan fiction and fan sites visited and participated in by millions of people worldwide (here we have, among others, www.facebook.com/HPotterEcuador). The author J. K. Rowling has her own website http://www.jkrowling.com/. Internationally there are many charities and volunteer organizations done around Harry Potter themes (check out the Harry Potter Alliance http://thehpalliance.org/tag/charity/)

In the past…

The teacher’s job was to pour information into her students’ heads…and the students’ job was to pour it all back out onto the exam paper. Any form of co-operative learning was called cheating (“In the real world” my teachers used to say “Johnny won’t be sitting next to you giving you the answers and then what will you do?”)

In the future…

The students have all the information they could possibly want literally at their fingertips…if they know how to find it. The teacher has now becomes the navigation guide. In one study, American students found it difficult to locate Iraq on a map, but when sat in front of a computer and told “find Iraq”, not only were they able to do so, but they were able to find street views and aerial views, they were able to focus in on specific locations, use satellite imaging and more. The older generation unused to such possibilities calls this cheating, “taking the easy way out” and worse…but this is the future.

Stalker stories: using pictures

Why would we teach our students to write fiction? For one thing it can often be more interesting than fact. For another, fiction has a great deal to teach in the way of emotional intelligence because it allows you to see the world from a different perspective. Thirdly, being creative is one of the few things technology cannot do for us, and is therefore one of the most important qualities companies look for in a professional no matter what field they’re in.
There are many different ways you can introduce your students to fiction writing.
"Stalker" fiction is where you observe a stranger (either in a photo or in real life) and try to guess what their life is like. The structure of a stalker story is to first describe the person and the setting and then imagine the story.
In the following two lessons, the students look at photos, the first one a famous one, the others just ordinary people in different countries. The first lesson below is just about imagining the character and comparing it with reality. The second has the students develop multiple characters until they are ready to put them into a story where they interact with each other.

Lesson 1
A) Go online and find the photo of the Afghan girl made famous by Steve McCurry in the September 1984 issue of National Geographic.
B) What do you think her life was like when that photo was taken? Where was she from? What was she thinking?
C) Imagine and describe what she usually does at

·         6am

·         10am

·         12pm

·         5pm

·         8pm

Compare with your partners: did they have similar ideas?
D) Now look at the photo of the same woman 15 years later at
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text . How has she changed? What do you think has happened in her life since the first photo was taken?
E) Imagine what has happened in this girl’s life. Write out the events on a timeline such as the one used on Facebook.
E) Now read the article:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text and compare it with your own story.

Lesson 2
A) Go to www.lberger.ca and look at the photo pages. Select a photo of a person or people and describe it to your partner and see of your partner can find the one you’re talking about. Then switch roles.
B) With your partner, choose one of the photos of a person or people. Write a story about the subjects of the photo:
1. Start by describing the setting: Where are they? What time of day is it?
2. Describe the person or people in the photo: How old are they? What are they wearing? What are they doing? How do they feel?
3. Imagine the story that led up to the moment the photo was taken. What happened? Why?
C) Post your story up with a selection of 5 photos including the one that inspired your story. Have your classmates read your story and try to identify which photo inspired it.
D) Put all the stories and photos together in a book for your school library or create a website with all of the photos and stories.
 
 
 

Real-time research conclusion

Today, my students presented their real-time-research. 
The task was:

• Make the presentation no more than 3-5 minutes long.
• Present in any way you want EXCEPT powerpoint.  (They used posters, videos, powtoon and comics...really creative!)
• Include all of the information you got from the interviews or surveys
• Include some of the information you got from your readings and videos

The other group listened to as many presentatiosn as time permitted and for each they had to answer the following questions:
1. What were the 3 most interesting/important points of the presentation?
2.  What did you think of the presentation style?
3.  Can you suggest further avenues of research?

They gave their answers to the presenters who then had to compile them and answer the following questions:
1. How well did your audience understand your presentation?
2. How was your presentation?  Would you have changed anything?
3. What avenues of further research did they suggest?

All in all a solid hour of excellent speaking practice.  I saw spectacular creativity and (last-minute) collaboration!  Congratulations!

I hate exams

After many years, I'm back in the student seat and I hate it.  I'm trying to study for exams worth 81% of the course and they involve (UGH!)  memorising names and dates.   I can't believe in this day and age at such a pretigious university (studying education no less!) they're still doing this to us!  I find it hard to believe they can't find a better way to assess what we know.