Adapting to a traditional system

Ed wouldn't say he "enjoyed" his pre-service training, but after the intensive TEFL technical training sessions, he did feel that he was better prepared to teach. He recognized the value of meaningful activities and agreed with the philosophy that promoted student participation in the learning process. By the tenth week of training, Ed was anxious to get to his site and begin implementing this innovative communicative approach.

But here he was, four weeks into the school year, facing rows and rows of faces that did not seem to welcome new tricks. Ed was losing his enthusiasm. He had surveyed their interests (football and tressing hair were big winners), assessed their language proficiency (fairly low), and collected a few homework assignments (most copied from the two best students' papers). The students seemed disjointed, unable to work as a team. There was no class identity, no united spirit. They were happy just to take notes, copy work, or let the better students talk.

Ed puzzled over the lack of cohesion in his class and then recalled some advice that an experienced Volunteer had offered at PST about

Initiating change:

On the day you try something new, take a deep breath. Exhale slowly. Remember you're the band leader, and if you introduce your students to rhythm and pitch and harmony by building on their knowledge and experience, your budding musicians will learn to compose and enjoy the music of English.

Ed had dismissed this advice as whimsy, but now he thought more carefully about his role. "l am in charge, but I do need to build on their expectations. I cannot impose mine right away."

Ed was working in a traditional educational system where students are accustomed to lectures and rote recitals of information. As he thought about PST, he remembered the emphasis on working within the system. The more successful Volunteers do not try to beat the system, rather they accept it as a baseline and subtly adjust their students' expectations of what an English class should be. Ed realized this was approach he needed to take.

In this chapter we will share with you some practical suggestions and creative strategies that have helped Volunteers and other teachers adapt to a traditional educational system.

When you enter your class, one of your first priorities is to try to establish a rapport with your students. Begin by learning your students' names and move on to their personal interests. If you used some of the introductory techniques described in Chapter Two, you have already made good progress.

STUDENT EXPECTATIONS

In all likelihood, your students are used to a teacher-directed, lecture-driven lesson, based on the national (grammatical) curriculum and geared toward the national exam. Student participation is minimized. The posing of low-level (cognitively undemanding) information questions is the norm and higher-order thinking questions are rarely asked. Students work individually although they sit on crowded bench-desks and have to share textbooks, if any are available.

This scenario is not what you would like your class to look like. But for the time being, it is what you must work with. starting OUT In order to establish your credibility as a teacher, add new techniques and procedures gradually to your classroom repertoire. Since students are familiar with a whole-class, lecture-style lesson, use it to introduce the communicative approach.

As you read in the previous chapters, we are suggesting you use the 4MAT plan as you develop lessons. However, first you need to train your students to participate in wholeclass, pair, group and individual activities. This training needs to be done step-by-step, taking time to let students become familiar with the process.

The whole-class activities will be particularly important at the beginning and the end of a lesson. By starting a lesson together you can set the stage for the topic by:

- establishing the objectives and pace (especially if you plan a lesson that needs several class periods);

- building background information;

- activating students' prior experiences;

- Iinking the lesson to previous topics; and

- presenting new information.

EDING THE LESSON

At the end of the lesson, addressing the students as a whole class will help maintain continuity and also bring closure to the topic. Remember that the key to using whole class activities successfully is getting the students' attention, holding it, and encouraging the students' participation.

THE LECTURE

Let's start with a traditional lecture, which should not, of course, model a college professor's discourse. In this chapter we will use "lecture" to refer to teacher explanations, on a grammatical point or writing process, for example. However, your lectures should not be lengthy or without some student interaction

Lectures can promote student language development, especially in listening and speaking skills-provided the teacher intersperses the talk with questions to the audience and allows sufficient wait time for responses. They also provide the opportunity to introduce students to content-based activities, linking a subject like biology with English language development. Depending on what task is required of the students, lectures can also be used to develop higher order thinking skills and study skills. Further, while lecturing you are providing students with rich input, native pronunciation, models of English grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure, and so forth.

ORGANIZATION

- First, as in all lessons, know your objective and relate it to your students in advance. Write a few summary points or even an outline on the board and read the points aloud. Put up some key terms and phrases you will be using. You can even point co them as you talk. This preparation will give the students clues to your talk and will help focus their attention.

VISUAL AIDS

- Second, ask yourself what you can do to aid the students' understanding of your words. Visuals are one solution. Pictures, photos, drawings, and even stick figures can help your lecture come alive. Use your students to help demonstrate a point. Do pantomime or role play. Sprinkle a lecture with familiar examples, perhaps from the community or from the curriculum of another subject. Better yet, where possible, select a topic from your list of student interests. By using multiple media in the classroom, you can reduce the reliance on language and place the information in a context that is more comprehensible to the students.

NOTETAKING

- Third, teach the students notetaking, a skill which facilitates their comprehension. You might, for example, plan a presentation on "How to Take Notes." As you describe helpful strategies to the students, pause to write notes yourself on a separate sheet of paper. Occasionally stop and check to see what the students write. Have students compare notes with each ocher. For the second half of the lesson on subsequent days, present a few more lectures on topics of student interest and have students cake notes and compare their notes with yours and each others'. If you list the main ideas of THE lecture on the board beforehand, you will provide the students with a framework to which they can add details.

DICTATION

One traditional language learning activity that your students will expect is dictation. This activity primarily occurs in a lecture-like setting. Dictations are useful to practice listening comprehension and writing. A slight modification that you may want to use in large, multilevel classes is a listening cloze dictation. In this instance, you would prepare several versions of the passage. The first version, for beginning students, would have a few blanks. The next version would have those blanks plus a few more; the third, the same blanks as the second plus additional ones, and so forth. You then read the passage aloud to the whole class as you would read a dictation, slowly, with repetitions. But your students would have different amounts of words or phrases to fill in according to their ability levels.

DISCUSSIONS

Whole class discussion is another way to get everyone involved When you have 50 or 60 students, it is extremely difficult to get all of them to participate in a discussion. But, it is possible if students have been prepared for the discussion, if the topic is meaningful and relevant (geared to their concerns when appropriate), and if the discussion is structured to encourage their input (see, for instance, explanation of think-pair-share in Chapter Eight). As we suggested for lectures, you are encouraged to use multiple media to enhance a class discussion.

In earlier chapters, we noted that your students are most likely accustomed to teacher control of lesson activities. You may find that you have to lead several discussions as question/answer sessions until your students feel comfortable initiating questions and making comments without your prompting. You may want to consider selecting one or two students (your dynamic students, perhaps) as discussion leaders to model the participation you would like from all your students.

GUEST SPEAKERS

Consider inviting a guest speaker to your class as one way to make the transition from the lecture format to a discussion format. In advance, scout out potential speakers from your community. Lee the students choose a speaker from your prepared list and help write or dictate an invitation that requests the topic for the talk. They might want to create a list of issues for the speaker to address and include it with their invitation. (You need to monitor this list and make sure it is appropriate for the speaker both in Berms of its content and the speaker's English proficiency.) This process gives students a stake in the upcoming talk as well as background knowledge and concepts to listen for during the presentation

Before the speaker arrives, have the class draw up a series of questions to ask the guest after he or she has spoken. Besides factual questions ( What is a____?, When did _____?), encourage more interactive varieties ( We have been studying ____? What do you think about that? When we read ____, we learned ____. Can you share your ideas? I didn't understand _______. Could you explain again please?). These questions will provide the basis for a class discussion with the speaker. You should prepare your guest so he or she can ask the students some questions too.

This preparation time is also ideal for slotting in some of the grammatical points you need to cover from the national curriculum. Your students can work on question formation, verb tenses, punctuation, and more. You will be covering chose items in context, and they should therefore be more meaningful and memorable to your class.

When your guest speaker arrives, inform the students that you expect them to take some notes to use later in a class discussion. At that later time ask students to review their notes and summarize aloud what they learned. Or, set up a "hot seat" and ask a student to sit and discuss the topic, using his or her notes. To involve the whole class, encourage classmates to extend the information they hear from the hot seat, question and/or correct utterances, compare the information to their notes, and ask for repetition or clarification. Be careful, though, not to force students to join in, especially if they are particularly shy. You may want to have a lottery to establish an order for the "hot seat.." Clearly, not all students will get to speak, but if this activity is repeated every few weeks, more and more students will have a chance. Moreover, as the students become familiar with the task, they may feel more comfortable speaking up.

SOLVING A PROBLEM

Another useful way to generate a whole-class discussion is to set up a problem-solving activity. As we mentioned in earlier chapters, community problems, such as health or environmental issues, can be incorporated as themes in lesson plans. To facilitate a discussion about a critical issue-Guinea worm eradication or AIDS or digestive disorders, for example-you can play the outsider, perhaps a scientist or doctor, who needs to gee information. Questions you pose should elicit factual knowledge (e.g., What is the problem? Where toes it occur? Who is affected?) and critical chinking (e.g., Why to you think it happens? If it is not stopped, what might occur?).

WHOLE-CLASS ACTIVITIES IN A COMMUNICATIVE LESSON

Lee's look at the seeps in a communicative lesson plan and see where we can apply wholeclass activities. As we described the lesson plan format in Chapter Pour, we indicated that teacher-directed, whole class activities tend to cluster in the Motivation and Information phases of a lesson. However, there are times when the whole class will want to come together during the Practice and Application steps too. Frequently this occurs with sharings of discoveries and reviews of findings.

MOTIVATION

As part of the Motivation phase, you may want to offer the students some background information or check on their prior knowledge through several activities.

SEMANTIC WEBBING

This sophisticated version of brainstorming allows students to organize their thoughts and categorize information. One technique is to have students (with or without your assistance) first make a list of ideas, such as foods found in the market, and then organize them in a web, perhaps using branches to represent different food groups. Another option is to web from the start. As students offer ideas, you or an advanced student can create a web, linking related ideas as they are mentioned.

Semantic webing

REALIA

As mentioned earlier, the use of realia and ocher visual materials is important, and particularly effective as a motivator. These items provide a quick, often non-language-dependence means of introducing students to the lesson topic. Such materials can also meet different student learning styles (for example, tactile and visual) and offer critical thinking practice by asking questions like, What to you think this represents? and Why are we looking at this type of map?

PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES

Sometimes it is helpful to gee students "in the mood" for a topic. You can motivate your students by asking them to listen to a song, a poem or even a shore story, and having a brief discussion about it afterwards, or by having them draw a picture while they listen and then share it with the class or a partner.

INFORMATION

The Information phase of a lesson is also teacher-directed. In this phase, you may want to use lectures and whole-class discussions as discussed earlier.

LINKS WITH CONTENT AREAS

This phase is also a good place to incorporate some of the subject matter your students are encountering in other content areas. Using visual aids, showing diagrams and maps, and doing demonstrations and experiments are good techniques for making new information more comprehensible.

GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS

You can present information on themes and content topics with:

- outlines-to show the main idea and supporting detail, to sumarize information;

- timelines-to organize and sequence events chronologically, c' compare events in different settings (e.g., cities, countries);

- flow charts-to show progression and influences on an outcome, to show cause and effect;

- graphs, charts-to organize and compare data;

- maps-to examine movement and location; and

- Venn Diagrams-to compare and contrast information.

Graphic organizers

Political map and relief map

POLITICAL MAPS RELIEF MAPS

Consider training your students to create graphic organizers. In so doing, you may assist their notetaking and study skill development and also familiarize them with a technique that can be used in small group work.

PRACTICE AND APPLICATION

The Practice and Application phases of the lesson lend themselves to several whole-class activities.

STRIP STORIES OR SENTENCE STRIPS

First, you write a summary of a lesson or reading passage, or write out the steps for solving a math problem or for doing a science experiment on individual strips of paper-each strip having one sentence or more. You should be sure the writing is large enough to be seen by all students. Next distribute these strips, out of sequence, to several students. These students organize the strips into the proper sequence.

To do the sequencing each student may take a strip and physically stand in the proper place in front of the class or place strips on the board, with classmates concurring or disagreeing with the positions and the students involved justifying their stances.

DISCOVERY AND INQUIRY LEARNING

After studying a certain topic such as flowers, you might design lessons for discovery learning where students seek out specific new information on their own, like comparing petals and leaves from different plants. You would help organize the data and sometimes set out the procedures for your students to follow. Then, as a class, they draw conclusions and discover the results. Other examples of discovery learning include math problem-solving activities and open-ended science experiments.

Similarly, your students might want to investigate a topic of their own choosing while you act as a facilitator. The students would identify a problem, hypothesize causes, design procedures or experiments, and conduct research to try to solve the problem. These inquiry activities work well in conjunction with science, social studies and health objectives.

CLASS NEWSPAPER

Newspaper production is often successful in large, multilevel classes because there are tasks for all students to complete. The key to success, of course, is organization. Based on students' interests and ability levels, students can volunteer for roles, such as reporter, editor, layout, banner designer, artist, advertiser, printer, and so forth. Students with stronger language skills may focus on the reporting, writing and editing stages. Students with weaker language skills may work on the production-layout design, cutting and pasting articles into columns, drawing pictures, and designing advertisements.

CRAB BAG REVIEW

Another whole class activity that may be used to wrap up a lesson is the grab bag. Put written clues or objects into a small bag. Have students reach inside, select one, and talk about it in relation to the unit of study. For example, after a health unit on clean drinking water, you might put a piece of charcoal, small pebbles, and an empty bottle in the bag. As a student takes one out, she or he discusses the object's purpose or importance. Other students are encouraged to join in and add to the explanation.