teaching techniques

“Teaching Techniques”

Presenter: Lucy Castañón Ralph

Teacher Training Center

Breaking the Ice

• Write down the following words on a scrap of paper, keep what you write secret from those around you:

1. The name of a fruit

2. The name of a vegetable

3. A number between 1 and 200

4. Do you like football?

5. How many pencils and pens do you have?

6. What is the first thing you do every morning?


These things are actually:

1. Your first name

2. Your family name

3. Your age

4. Are you married?

5. How many children you have

6. Your job


Now you:

• Must stand up and go around the class and ask the personal questions and share information about your new selves.

• Shake hands and make eye contact when meeting new people.

•GO


Techniques for Better Classroom Discipline

1. Focusing

2. Direct Instruction

3. Monitoring

4. Modeling

5. Non-verbal cuing

6. Environmental control

7. Low-profile intervention

8. Assertive discipline

9. Assertive I-Messages

10. Humanistic I-Messages

11. Positive Discipline


• Golden Rules About Classroom Management

• 1. Ensure that you have clearly stated rules and procedures with established consequences that are expected and reviewed regularly. All students must know the rules, routines and expectations.

• 2. Never continue on with instruction when the rules are being broken - pause, delay and ensure that you have your student's attention.

• 3. Catch your students using appropriate behavior and praise them!

• 4. Use behavior contracts when necessary and follow up with appropriate incentives.


http://specialed.about.com/cs/behaviordisorders/a/behaviorcontrac.htm

http://specialed.about.com/cs/behaviordisorders/a/rewards.htm

• 5. Be sure that your instructional periods are NOT too long, students need to be mobile throughout the day.

• 6. Provide individual , personal cueing and prompts to certain students as needed. Sometimes just touching a student's shoulder will bring them back to task.

• 7. POST the important rules - keep it short, no more than 6 and refer to them often. These should be posted after the class has brainstormed them.

• 8. Make sure you are teaching to all the various learning styles your students have. A student who is not being reached is more likely to be a problem.


Teaching Language Skills

• Listening

• Speaking

• Reading

• Writing


Listening

A Silly Dictation

Aim:

• Good with higher level students to allow processing of language.

• Encourage thinking skills as well as listening and writing.

• Laughter is great at helping to create a positive and energetic classroom mood.


Procedure

• Tell the students you have a cough today but you are still going to do a dictation. If they don’t hear words, they will just have to guess what you said.

• Read out a joke like the one below and dictate as usual but don’t read all the words – cough instead of saying certain words e.g. Eleven people were cough on a rope, under a helicopter, ten men and one cough.


• Students have to guess what the missing words are and write them in, either individually or in pairs.

• After checking whether they guessed correctly, they could discuss the joke and why/if they found it funny.

• They could also try telling jokes they know in their mother tongue in English.


• Eleven people are hanging on a rope, under a helicopter, ten men and one woman. The rope is not strong enough to carry them all, so they decide that one has to leave, because otherwise they are all going to fall. They are not able to name that person, until the woman makes a very touching speech. She says she will voluntarily let go of the rope, because as a woman she is used to giving up everything for her husband and kids, or for men in general, and is used to always making sacrifices with little in return. As soon as she finishes her speech, all the men started clapping their hands......


Listen and discuss• Imagine by John Lennon

• Imagine there's no heavenIt's easy if you tryNo hell below usAbove us only skyImagine all the peopleLiving for today...

• Imagine there's no countriesIt isn't hard to doNothing to kill or die forAnd no religion tooImagine all the peopleLiving life in peace...



Imagine no possessionsI wonder if you canNo need for greed or hungerIn a brotherhood of manImagine all the peopleSharing all the world...

You may say I’m a dreamerBut I’m not the only oneI hope some day you'll join usAnd the world will be as one

Speaking

In groups of six discuss the following questions:

• What does the author mean when he says “You may say I’m a dreamer?

• Who’s the author singing to?

• What does he want to express in his song?

• What feelings are awaken when listening to this song?

• Do you know who John Lennon was?


Jigsaw puzzle challenge

• Take 3-4 large pictures/photos and stick them on card. Pictures can come from Sunday supplements, travel brochures, calendars, magazine adverts etc. Pictures specific to students’ interests will motivate them e.g. film stills, cartoons, news stories, famous paintings, famous people.

• cut out the picture in two pieces.

• Give each student in the class a jigsaw piece. They must not show their piece to anyone.

• Students then mingle and question each other about what is on their puzzle piece to try and find the other person with the piece of the same jigsaw.

• The object of the game is to find the other and put together the jigsaw.


Writing• With the pictures you have in the

envelopes you should write any of the following:

• Commercial

• Poem

• Letter

• Note

• Story

• Riddle

Show your master piece to the class.

Teaching Grammar Without Teaching Grammar

Grammar has a bad reputation because:

• it has often been taught as a separate skill strangely disassociated from the rest of language learning

• students have had to learn the labels for language e.g. ‘past continuous’, which can be like learning a third language

• students have had to do lots of grammar exercises that have had little or no meaning for them

• it’s not been fun

• it’s not been meaningful

• it’s not been memorable


When teaching Grammar the following aspects of the language items need to be focussed on – see checklist

below

meaning

context

pronunciation

form

practice


Teaching grammar: can/able to

• Can means is able to, as well as is permitted to.

• e.g. I can speak Japanese. / You can smoke in the café.

• Make sure you focus on one meaning and don’t muddle them up.

• Context - Choose a clear context to introduce the meaning

•


• Pictures are very good for presenting grammar. For can/able to you can have a picture like this (draw one on the board, or find an appropriate picture in a magazine)

“This is Mighty Mike. He can pick up an elephant.”


This is Weedy Will. He can’t pick up a chair.


Elicit other sentences from the students. Give them prompts if they do not have enough language to think of their own sentences like

• - pick up a table

• - fight a crocodile

• - break a door


• Using real examples from the class will ensure that they are meaningful for students. If you add some very silly ones, you will get the attention of students and they may be motivated to add their own examples.

* concentrate on allowing students to hear the target language. Later they can see the written form, but now they should be digesting the meaning through the context and teachers’ questions


Drilling Grammar:

• This is a very valuable activity and students need to hear and repeat target language to get their ears attuned to it and their tongues used to producing it.

• Model the target language e.g. He can pick up an elephant. Ensure you use the schwa in can. Allow students to hear the model sentence a number of times.

• Get students to repeat the sentence all together – you may need to say 1-2-3 get them to say it at the same time

• Get individual students to repeat the sentence so you can check that they have got it right

• Repeat with other example sentences: He can’t pick up an elephant. She can speak Japanese.

• Allow plenty of opportunities for students to hear and say the target language. See below for practice ideas.

• Form – students need to be able to recognise and produce the written form


Give students this grammar grid:

1 2 3 4

He can pick up an elephant

She can’t


And ask them to add words to columns 1,3,4 1 2 3 4

He can pick up an elephant

She can’t fight a crocodile

I speak Spanish

We swim

They cook spaghetti

play basketball


QuestionnairesProduce a worksheet like this (using vocabulary students are familiar with):


name swim speak French play tennis cook

1

2

3

Talking about famous people • Ask students to bring in pictures of their favourite pop, film or sports stars.

• In groups students tell their classmates about their stars:

• e.g. Jennifer Lopez can sing, dance and act. She can’t cook.


• Students write sentences under their pictures and display them on the class notice board.

• Make it a game. Have students write their can / can’t sentences on cards without the names of the stars. Put them all up on the class wall and get students to read all of them and try to match them to the correct stars. Students can be encouraged to find out some interesting facts about what the stars can or can’t do for homework. Students won’t mind doing this if it is about stars they like!


Tips for Teaching Vocabulary

http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/dorian_gray/1/



The sullen murmur of the bees.

a. Angry

b. Willing

c. Happy



You shrug your shoulders?

a. Raise

b. Shrink

c. None


How perfectly hideous they are!

a. Extremely nice

b. Extremely ugly

c. Exciting


Don't flatter yourself, Basil !

a. Praise

b. Offend

c. Ridicule


They can sit at their ease and gape at the play.

a. Look in surprise

b. Enjoy

c. Horrify


What odd chaps you painters are!

a. Mosquitoes

b. Men

c. Animals


Look at the following words and in groups guess what they mean.

•Gingerly

•Harlem

•Plait

•Gingham


• Read and find the words in the “Sweet Potato Pie” excerpt and match the meanings with their definitions:


a. Gingerly

b. Harlem

c. Plait

d. Gingham

………a cotton cloth which has a pattern of colored squares on a white background

……..City in NY inhabited by African Americans

……..Carefully

……..Pig tail or braid


Very Important Web Sites• http://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/lesson_

plans/language_arts/grammar/

• http://dictionary.cambridge.org/

• http://www.pearsonlongman.com/map/index.html

• http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/

• http://www.english-to-go.com/

• http://toeflpractice.ets.org/

• http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/cpe/students/tests/index.htm

• http://www.m-w.com/


http://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/lesson_plans/language_arts/grammar/

http://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/lesson_plans/language_arts/grammar/

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/

http://www.pearsonlongman.com/map/index.html

http://www.pearsonlongman.com/map/index.html

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/

http://www.english-to-go.com/

http://toeflpractice.ets.org/

http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/cpe/students/tests/index.htm

http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/cpe/students/tests/index.htm

http://www.m-w.com/

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