On this page you can find ideas for the first day of school. These ideas came from members of FLTeach.
From Deb Blaz (mdblaz@JUNO.COM )
What I do for Level 2 students (aren't they ALWAYS the most scared?) is
to put them in charge of the review. Brain research says that there is
almost 90% retention of things you teach someone else. So I use the
Jigsaw method:
First (and thanks to FLTEACH ideas) we do a "scavenger hunt" through the
text, looking in particular at the review chapters.
Then we self-rate our confidence on the various things reviewed from the
previous year, and we list on the board what we'd most like another look
at.
The next day, I put the students into groups.
Each group gets one of the topics needed for review, and they review and
practice it until they demonstrate proficiency to my satisfaction (the
"expert" group). They then agree on how to teach this topic, what
practice they will have the others do, and they turn in lesson plans,
practice sheets or crosswords or whatever, and also a few test questions
for my approval. This takes small portions of several class periods.
When every group is ready, I shuffle them into new groups, each with one
student from each expert group. (though if I know a particular student is
very low level or has attendance problems or whatever, I might partner
that student with another, stronger student.) These people take turns
teaching "their" topic to the small Jigsaw group, correct their work and
give feedback, etc.
When all the groups have taught, I give a quiz made up of the questions
submitted by students, plus some of my own, over all the material.
While this is going on, we've also begun new material (for example, I
often use TPRS and my colleague who teaches Level one doesn't, so I have
to train them on that type of learning strategy); we never spend an
entire period on Jigsaw.
It's not perfect, but I do know that the kids come out of this knowing
the topic they had to teach QUITE well, which boosts their confidence,
and a lot of them enjoy the chance to be 'in charge' for a bit, as well
as a chance to get to know each other in a small group format. I know
there have been quite a few postings about group work. I keep this highly
structured (broken down into steps I oversee and must review and approve)
and it works well for me.
From Del Bard (DBard83663@AOL.COM )
One of the first activities I do in the language with incoming level 2's
(most of them coming from the middle school program, so kids I do not know
and who may not know each other) is have students do a little "web" activity
- not Internet, just a webbed information sheet. I give them a blank sheet of
colorful paper, then have them draw a series of 10-15 shapes of their choice
radiating out from a center shape. All of them have to be large enough to
hold a full sentence. (Just seeing the type of artistry and choices they make
is fun in that it gives hints to their personalities).
In the center shape they write the sentence "My name is ...." (in the target
language of course). Then I ask them to write a piece of information about
themselves in each of the other surrounding shapes, again in a complete
target language sentence. If they seem stumped about his, we, as a class,
generate a list of TL questions to which they might be responding and write
them on the board. Thus, kids come up with questions like:
Where do you live? How old are you? Do you have brothers and sisters? What
sports do you like? What color is your house? Do you have pets? and so forth.
Just generating the questions provides a good review. (And of course, I
unobtrusively guide this little activity to follow the lines of prior
chapters studied. If they have learned house vocab in the past, we ask
questions about the home. A chapter on leisure time activities could prompt
questions about sports and hobbies, etc.). I can thus get a handle on which
vocab sets have been well-learned. We write the list of questions on the
board, and students are pleased and amazed to see they can come up with 50 or
so questions with little prodding despite the summer break.
Anyhow, kids then get busy and fill in their grids. They write things like
"My house is brown and red." "I have a cat and two dogs." "I am an only
child." "I play the piano." "My favorite color is blue." "I like German."
At the end of the class period I collect the papers for use the next day, but
also to give me a chance to read over them. Not only do I get to know
something about each of my students and what they consider important in their
lives, but I also get to see spelling, syntax, and grammar errors we may need
to work on later. You can get an amazing amount of information from this
activity! And yet, it is somehow way less threatening to them than to say
"Write a 16 line paragraph about yourself." For whatever reason, scattering
those sentences around the page in the web shapes they drew is way less scary
to them!
The next day I return the papers to the students and get out a stop watch. We
then do 2-3 minute mini-conversations in which kids exchange information
papers, and their partners build additional oral questions based on what they
read. So if the student has written, "I have a dog," for example, the partner
might ask "What is your dog's name?" "What color is your dog?" "How old is
your dog?" and so on. They reverse roles. Then I call time, and they move on
to a new partner. The only rule is - it must all be in the target language.
We keep this up until they've had time to talk to several partners, most of
the class in fact.
Then we go back to our seats, and I do a directed conversational activity,
where I say, for example, "With whom did you speak, Natalie?" She gives me
the name of one of the several people with whom she spoke. I then ask her to
tell the class something about this individual. So she says (in the target
language of course), "Seth has a dog. His dog is named Daisy. She is 10 years
old. She sleeps in Seth's room. He likes to play games with his dog." Again,
we are getting to know each other, and students have now had an opportunity
to use :
First person when they wrote about themselves
Second person when they questioned one another
Third person to describe the other person to the class
They have practiced writing skills, listening skills, reading skills,
questioning and other speaking skills. And they have been up out of their
seats, mingling with new classmates.
As an added treat, I hang onto these papers until we are reviewing for the
final exam. At that point, I return them to their owners, who are generally
horrified at the errors they see there. I congratulate them on how much they
must have learned this year and then ask them to correct the papers as a
review exercise.
Although I generally use this exercise in level 2, it works fine in just
about any level and is especially nice for the teacher to get to know new
students and for them to get to know one another. It somehow doesn't feel
like a review to them, and yet it is very informative.
From Oliver Dunn (odunn@INTRNET.NET )
Here's an activity that worked well for me for early review and also just a
few weeks into the year in Spanish one.
Ask a question and model an answer. for example: What is your name? My
name is Larry Dunn. Ask the same question of several people, repeating
their answer outloud in the 3rd person and also give your own answer.
Expand on this by adding new information. I would say about myself then,
My name is Larry Dunn and I live in Murphysboro. Get several students to
supply this information and continue adding one new questions. What is your
name? Where do you live? What do you like to do? How old are you?, etc.
Students here the questions many times and most students can give all the
information back with only a little prompting at times. In recent years for
Spanish 2, 3, and 4 I have used this as a preparation for an oral grade for
the second day of classes. Using either the overhead projector or an LCD
projector I project a list of 6 or 8 items on the wall behind the students,
including things like: name, age, like to do, live in, etc. I explain that
tomorrow students will come to the podium, using good speech techniques like
eye contact, strong voice, etc., they will talk about themselves using what
is one the screen to prompt them for what to say. Only the student speaking
can see the screen, the class members are all facing forward like a good
audience. Students are told they are graded on content, grammar,
pronunciation, smoothness of delivery, eye contact and that they have X
amount of time to do this in, usually one minute or less. I always model
what I want making a speech about myself (other times it might be about my
dad, my best friend, my favorite classs, etc.) One day two, before students
give their oral reports I will again model for them. Sometimes I simply
call names, sometimes I allow them to volunteer and if no one volunteers
within 5 seconds I go to my list. Since students have practiced this a lot
before hand most students do an excellent job and before long I have to put
restrictions on length as some students want to go beyond the call of duty.
To make sure the audience remains attentive, after each speech, call on
somebody to answer a 3rd person question about the speech, How old is he,
what is his brother's name, etc.
This can also be expanded into a written assignment by telling students to
write out their speech to hand in, or have them take notes on one or more
speakers and have them write a short report in 3rd person about one of them.
Sometimes we work one what the question needs to be to ask for certain
information. After we have developed the questions for certain information.
I put them in groups of 4 where they have to interview the other members.
After the interview you can ask students about others in their group, always
requiring complete sentence answers. An assignment for at home or in the
computer lab can be to write paragraphs about "I" and some "he or she",
maybe extra credit for a 3rd paragraph about an additional group member.
I believe that students should talk and write a lot and that as often as
possible these activities should be conducted in such a way as to make them
responsible for what they hear.
From Deb Blaz (mdblaz@JUNO.COM )
A game we play to begin the year is Scattergories,
just like the game you can purchase, but using foreign
language vocab, of course.
Since I teach French, I use a 5 by 5 or 6 by 6 grid
that says a French word across the top.
I usually use Paris or France...
Down the far left column, I list review categories such as
(for the Paris one, level 2):
-er verbs
nationalities
people (nouns)
places
objects I own
Under P, they may only write words that begin with P, and so on.
I put students in groups and give them a set amount of time,
usually 8 minutes, 5 without looking at a text, and 3 with.
(Most words pulled from the text don't win points for the teams,
but since the goal is to refresh the words in their memories, I do
allow them to look in their text.)
Of course, if they are mostly still working productively, I give
more time than announced...
When the time is up, we go over their grids.
Scattergories scoring awards points ONLY for words no one else
came up with ("unique" words) so teams take turns suggesting words
from their grid (which must, of course, be correctly pronounced).
If another team has that one, they say so (but I verify this as I've had
groups cheat and claim words!!). If no one has it, they circle their
word.
The team that wins is the one with the largest number of circled words.
It is good for refreshing vocab, quick paced and they generally enjoy it.
Hope my explanation was clear!
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