Finding the balance between games, learning and communicativity

Finding the balance between games, learning and

communicativity.

Presented by Martin McCloud martin@martinmccloud.com

Introduction

About the workshopThe main aim of this workshop is to show

you how to improve the activities used in the classroom

About meMartin McCloud 3rd Year ALT based at Tsunan ChutoLessons of 20 or 40 students

Activity Demo 1

To help you see the lesson from the students point of view

Give us something to improve

Wake you, the attendees, up!

Dengon Game

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

GO!!!

Dengon Game Analysis

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 (1)

Why did the students not like an activity?

Why did the one of the activities ruin the atmosphere?

Why didn’t this activity work, but the others did?

Questions I Ask Myself (2)

How can this dull activity be more interesting?

Can I make it more fun?

Can I make it more educational?

Can I make it fun AND educational?

Why should we question our activities?

Why should we question our activities?

Because we re-use our activities

Why do we re-use activities?

Saves timeWe don’t have to spend time thinking of new

ideasCan re-use materials we have already made

Less riskwe know the activity ‘works’we know the benefits of the activityBut, we also know the problems of the

activity

Main benefit of re-use

Main benefit of re-use

But, by re-using activities, we will have an opportunity to improve the activities.

Use ActivityUse Activity

Find ProblemsFind ProblemsMake ChangesMake Changes

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 boringMake the activity entertainingStudents are very competitive. Distract the

students by making activities competitive

problem: activity fatigueDon’t let an activity run for too longDon’t do the same activity too often

problem: too much to learnLimit the amount of new vocabulary

Solving these Problems (2)

2) Increasing the amount of English students acquire (more learning!!)

problem: Not enough English usedtry 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 feedbacktry to use activities that provide instant

feedback (quizzes, short interview style dialogues)

problem: too much to learnLimit 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

Competition

Types of competition

Student versus Student e.g. Pair Quiz, Pen Race

Student versus team e.g. Karuta

Students versus class (mixed) e.g. “Find someone who”

Pairs versus class e.g. questionnaire T/F

Team versus class e.g. King and Servant, Dengon Game, Quiz games

Avoid having a single student against the whole class.

Limit the vocabulary

A psychology theory, “The Magical Number Seven”, describes the limits of short-term memory

Humans have a working memory of around seven elements. Elements can be anything, such as numbers or words

So, when we introduce new vocabulary to students, and we want them to use it, we should limit the number of words to about seven at a time

More Speaking

TT lessons are an opportunity for students to use spoken English.

Try to introduce speaking as much as possibleDialogues between studentsPassing messagesAnswering questions

More Feedback

People learn from their mistakes and successes.

But feedback has to happen quickly to reinforce learning

Proof? It’s why flashcards are effective

More Interaction

Try to encourage students to talk with lots of people:

Mixing pairs after an activity Combining pairs into groups “Find someone who” games Make chances to speak with ALT and JTE .

This is the communicativity part!

The Ideal Activity

So, the ideal activity would

be entertaining be competitive limited to a practical amount of new material provide lots of practice, with instant

feedback, using old and new material encourage interaction with other students,

the ALT and the JTE

The Aim of Improvement

A typical activity will cover some of these qualities. We should aim to improve the activity to cover ALL five qualities.

And if an activity covers all five qualities, we should aim to improve the way it covers the five qualities.

Improving “Dengon Game” Activity – Analysis

NoneLittle

bitSo-so

Fair bit

Lots

Entertainment

Competition

Focused

material

Practice and

Feedback

Interaction

How does the Dengon Game fit our expectations for the Ideal Activity?

Improving “Dengon Game” Activity – Analysis

NoneLittle

bitSo-so

Fair bit

Lots

Entertainment x

Competition xFocused

material x

Practice and

Feedback x

Interaction x

We should improve ‘Practice and Feedback’ and ‘Interaction’

Improving “Dengon Game”– Changes Have two messages;

one going backwards and the other forwards. Have the messages make a small dialogue Have answers at the back for last student to find

Whose camera is this?

It’s Mark’s camera

An

swers

Start

Finish!

Activity Demo 2

To see if the changes we’ve made have improved the original activity

Wake you up after sitting through 20 minutes of slides!

Pad out the workshop to last 50 minutes!

Dengon Game v2.0

Have two messages; one going backwards and the other forwards.

Have the messages make a small dialogue Have answers at the back for last student to find

Whose camera is this?

It’s Mark’s camera

An

swers

Start

Finish!

Dengon Game v2.0

GO!!!

Dengon Game v2.0 Analysis

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?

Improving “Dengon Game”– Analysis of Improvements

NoneLittle

bitSo-so

Fair bit

Lots

Entertainment x

Competition xFocused

material x

Practice and

Feedback x

Interaction xX : Original Dengon

X : Dengon v2.0

Improving “Dengon Game”– Analysis of Improvements

NoneLittle

bitSo-so

Fair bit

Lots

Entertainment x x

Competition x xFocused

material xx

Practice and

Feedback x x

Interaction x x

Overall, an improvement!!

X : Original Dengon

X : Dengon v2.0

Conclusions (1)

We should think about our activities after we use them

We might re-use the activity in a future lesson. We should learn from our mistakes and improve the activity.

Conclusions (2)

Good TT activities should have these five qualities: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:

martin@martinmccloud.com