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Young Learners

Teaching English to Elementary School Children

Tests in Class

Games and Activities

March 16, 2010

I have recently started giving mini tests most weeks in my lower level children’s classes. Being against testing for children in general, this went against my natural inclination at first, but I could see lots of advantages to it so I decided to try it. The purpose of the tests is to give the children a sense of achievement rather than to assess what they know or don’t know, so the tests are designed to be easy for the students. My aim is for all the students to get all the answers right, or at least most of them. In this respect then, they are perhaps not tests in the usual sense of the word, but they have a test format and we call them tests in class.

The students number from 1-10 in their notebooks, then I either dictate words or show pictures and the students write the words. When I dictate words, some of the words are real and some are nonsense, as they are learning to read and write phonetically. After we have finished all ten, I ask the students what number one is, what number two is, etc, and I write the correct answers on the board. The students mark their own tests and we are finished. I don’t ask how many they got right but they often tell me or each other. Sometimes I make intentional mistakes when I write the answers on the board, and hope the students will notice and tell me I have made a mistake.

The main benefit of these tests is that the students get a sense of achievement from them. They almost always can get at least 8 out 10. They do not dread these tests in any way. They look forward to them, enjoy doing them and get a feeling of satisfaction from them. Now that they are all confident with them, I can throw in some more difficult words and they readily tackle them, and don’t mind if they make mistakes. It is easy to see how confident they are when they are able to point out the mistakes I have made.

Another advantage is that the students seem to take more notice of any mistakes they make and also seem to think more carefully about words they are not sure about. Another dictation exercise I often do is dictating words for them to write into a bingo grid in preparation for playing bingo. They often rush this activity and don’t think carefully when they do this type of writing. This kind of quick, fluent writing is also useful I think, but it is also good to have the opposite kind of writing where they do think carefully.

Asking students to tell me the answers provides an opportunity for reading practise as they have to read what they have written. Noticing how easily students write the words during the tests and also their shouts during the marking help me see where there are areas that need extra review.

All of these advantages can of course be obtained in other activities and I am still not sure whether I am doing the right thing by giving these tests, but so far I certainly don’t think they are doing any harm, and they do seem to be having a positive effect. Students have to face a lot of tests in this country and I certainly don’t want to add to that test-taking burden but because of the easiness of the tests we do, I don’t think that is the case. I hope that, maybe, developing a positive attitude towards tests by doing these little English tests could help them face other tests with more confidence.

Ten ways to use an eggtimer in class

Games and Activities

February 08, 2010

An egg-timer is a great tool for the classroom. It can spice up old activities, turn competitive games into co-operative ones, and help with classroom management. These are some ways a three-minute egg-timer can be used in class.

1. For small classes (four or fewer). Each student has three minutes in which to answer as many questions as possible from the teacher. Another student keeps track of the score, and another watches the egg-timer. It is a good way to practise new targets and review older targets, as well as to practise general personal questions such as What school do you go to? Where do you live? etc. It also really improves students’ listening skills. It can be turned into a co-operative activity by having all students answering questions during the first round, then repeating the activity and trying to beat the previous score.

2. For large classes. The whole class has three minutes in which to ask one question each to the teacher (or to one volunteer student). Questions such as Do you like...?, Do you have ...? Can you ...? What ... do you like? work well, as well as any other questions the students know and want to ask.

3. For any size class. Divide students into small groups (about four). Give each group a set of cards that consists of some kind of pairs, for example, pictures and initial letters, pictures and words, questions and answers. Students have three minutes in which to match up the pairs.

4. For any size class. Divide students into small groups (about four). Give each group a set of cards that consists of some kind of pairs (as above). Students play concentration (shinkeisuijaku) and try to finish within three (or six) minutes. This makes for a faster game avoiding the time-wasting that sometimes occurs as students deliberate over which card to choose. It also makes it a more co-operative game than the standard one as the goal is to finish in the time limit rather than to win the most cards.

5. For any size class. Write “yes” ten times and “no” ten times on the board. Students have to ask yes/no questions to the teacher (or volunteer student). When the teacher answers “yes” erase one “yes” and when the teacher answers “no” erase one “no”. The goal is for all the “yeses” and “no’s” to be erased within three minutes.

6. For any size class. Give verbal maths problems to the students e.g. ten plus twelve, forty minus twenty-five etc. Students raise their hands and answer. They see how many they can answer in three minutes. Play again later in the class and try to beat the previous score.

7. For any size class. Divide students into small groups. Each group has paper and pencil. Give them a category, e.g. clothes and they write as many types of clothing as they can in three minutes. Points can be awarded for the number and bonus points for correct spelling.

8. For small classes. Practise reading or writing for fluency by showing words or pictures, (or dictating words) and having students read or write the words. See how many they can do in three minutes or ask them in advance how many they think they can do, and try to reach that goal. If there is more than one student, then, for reading, students can take turns, and for writing, all the students can write and, once all have written the first word, show the second picture, and so on.

9. For any size class. For time-consuming preparation or clearing away, use the egg-timer to encourage everyone to hurry up and get the job done. This can save a lot of time in class. A one-minute egg-timer is also good for smaller jobs.

10. For sleepy students. I have a student who has some kind of “writing narcolepsy”. I see his eyes rolling back in his head, and his attempts to conceal his yawns as soon as he has a pencil in his hand. However, the egg-timer works wonders at removing his sleepiness. I ask him how many questions and answers, or words, he can write in three minutes, and then we start. He hates to not reach his goal, and enjoys the excitement of trying to beat the clock, and this keeps him awake. We then have another three minutes for corrections. Then start again. The egg-timer has made a huge difference to my class with this boy.

Homework Checking (2)

English in Elementary Schools

The Four Skills

January 12, 2010

My last entry looked at how to use time efficiently while homework was being checked and corrected. To follow on from that, this entry will consider how to go about checking homework. Most of this can be applied to any written work, not only homework.

Why do we check homework?
Firstly, we should consider the reasons we check homework. They probably include some or all of the following:
to see how the students managed with the task set for homework in order to evaluate the students’ progress
to give students another opportunity for learning as they make their corrections
students and parents expect homework to be checked
checked homework provides a correct model for students to look back on when necessary.

How many of the mistakes in students’ homework should be corrected?
If we look again at the above reasons for checking homework, it would follow that we should probably attend to all the students’ mistakes. This, however, may have some negative consequences especially, but not only, for weaker students. Weaker students may lose confidence if they realise they have made a lot of mistakes. Stronger students too can often be sensitive about mistakes. Pointing out all mistakes may lead students to be fearful about mistakes and may discourage them from taking risks in class, turning them into very passive learners. If they feel that perfection is necessary, they will be much more averse to taking risks. It is far better to have a child spell “desk” as “besc” than have them scared to write anything at all.

How should we handle mistakes in homework?
If mistakes are handled in a positive way then most students will be happy to deal with quite a few, as long as other students have a similar number or are occupied doing something else. If we correct the mistakes ourselves, the students are unlikely to learn from their mistakes and also don’t get any sense of achievement. It is better to have them self-correct. Giving small hints at first and gradually giving bigger hints as necessary gives maximum opportunity for students to think about, and learn from, their mistakes. For example, for spelling mistakes, first, point out which part has a mistake, then which word, then which letter, then say the letter or sound and anchor word (e.g. if they have spelled “desk” as “desc” we can say “k-key”), and finally we can give them three or four options to choose from written on the board (one is the correct answer - others are incorrect). Working through mistakes in this way will mean that finally the student gets the correct answer without being told by the teacher. This will lead to a greater sense of achievement as well as a greater likelihood of the word being remembered.

How should we handle mistakes with punctuation or letter formation?
This probably depends to an even greater degree on the individual student. It is important that writing is legible of course, and probably better overall to correct sooner rather than later to prevent bad habits taking hold. On the other hand, younger children may simply not yet have the fine motor skills needed for good handwriting. If students are making mistakes with the substance then we can probably be more lenient about punctuation and handwriting. With stronger students who are making few mistakes with the substance then we can encourage them to rectify any punctuation or handwriting mistakes they are making, such as height of letters, way of forming letters, and so on.

How should we check homework for large classes?
The method mentioned above will probably not work in a large class. For large classes we have to check the homework in advance or do it as a class activity in class. If we check in advance we can either correct mistakes ourselves or point out the mistakes, without actually correcting. If we have plenty of time for homework correction then students could be encouraged to correct their mistakes, and it can be re-checked with the following week’s homework. If we have time constraints that don’t allow this, it is probably better to correct those mistakes that we think the student may not be able to correct by themselves, and point out mistakes that we consider to be self-correctable. The drawback of this advance checking is that students don’t get the benefit of thinking through the corrections. It can also be quite time-consuming.

We can check the homework in class as a whole class activity. This would save teachers’ preparation time. It still wouldn’t give much chance for self-correction as it would probably involve the teacher or a student giving the correct answer. Common mistakes could be done in a more useful way, with the mistakes written on the board and the students trying to correct them individually. One major drawback of class corrections is that it will accentuate differences in ability between students, with the result of lessening the confidence of some students. Weak students will probably not want to correct their own work in front of their classmates because they feel embarrassed by the number of mistakes, and are likely to put their homework away out of sight as soon as possible. An ideal mix of these two methods is perhaps to check homework in advance, and to incorporate any common mistakes into the activities for that day, either in a “Find the mistake” type activity or as part of a regular activity.

Final Comments
It is important to remember why we set homework and to make sure how we correct it fits in with the reasons we set it in the first place. If the reason to is to provide the students with an opportunity to practise English outside the sessions they have with us, and to increase the amount of time spent on English by our students each week, then it is important to keep homework as fun and as stimulating as possible for the students. This includes the correction of the homework which should also be as fun and stimulating as possible.

Homework Checking (1)

Games and Activities

December 18, 2009

Checking homework in children’s classes can be time-consuming, especially if the students are self-correcting their mistakes, and if some students have made several mistakes. Many teachers prefer to check homework at the beginning of the lesson rather than a later point in the lesson, when the students may be busy with something, so that any mistakes made in the homework are not repeated in the lesson. The students can’t really play a game at this time as they would be interrupted by having to do the self-correction of their homework. Students who have made more mistakes may feel embarrassed or lose confidence if they are having to make a lot of corrections while their classmates are waiting. The students who have few corrections to do will be bored and likely to get distracted and chat excessively in Japanese, possibly setting the mood for the remainder of the class. Self-correction is much preferable to teacher correction though, as most students rarely look at teacher corrections and so learn little from them.

One way of dealing with this potential problem is to prepare worksheets for the students to do while the teacher is checking homework and some students are self-correcting their homework. Such worksheets should be relatively easy so that the students don’t need the teacher’s help, leaving the teacher to get on with checking homework and helping students with self-correction of their homework if necessary. They also need to be attractive (as all worksheets should be) so that the students want to do them, and don’t need any persuasion from the teacher. They can be of three main types - look and write, read and draw, or read, look and match. The students can settle down to these and then, when necessary, pause and do any corrections from their homework, going back to the worksheet when their homework is complete.

As well as dealing with the above-mentioned problems this type of worksheet at the beginning of class can have several other benefits. Having a relatively easy worksheet lets the students increase their fluency in reading and/or writing. For weaker students it is hopefully something they can do reasonably well, increasing their confidence for the rest of the lesson. It is an opportunity to review recent language or language from several weeks or months previously, and also a good way of getting plenty of practice with problem letters, words or patterns. It is a good way of marking the start of the class and getting the students settled into English mode. As the students know the teacher is busy checking homework they are more likely to get help from each other if they don’t know something or need to check something, therefore helping to decrease their dependency on the teacher. As the worksheet is supplementary and not related to the main target of the lesson it doesn’t need to be completed, so as soon as all students have finished correcting their homework, they can stop doing the worksheet and the first activity can start.

I have had particular success with these kinds of worksheets in my class of six students that started in April and are currently learning to read and write. The typical worksheets I give them currently consist of either pictures and the students write the words, or words and they draw the pictures, or words and pictures that the students connect with lines. I use a combination of recent language and language, from several weeks ago, that is now quite easy for them. As I am low-tech, my worksheets are drawn by hand and take about five minutes to make. It is a well-spent five minutes.

A Quick Analysis of Lesson Balance

Curriculum

Teacher Development

December 01, 2009

After attending a presentation by Paul Nation at the Kansai ELT expo on Sunday about balance in the curriculum, I started thinking about my children’s lessons and whether they contain adequate amounts of the four strands that Paul Nation spoke about. These four strands were meaning-based input, meaning-based output, language-based learning and fluency development. He argued that a successful curriculum will contain equal parts of these four strands.

Meaning-based input: listening or reading where the focus is on the meaning of what is being communicated, e.g. listening to a story.

Meaning-based output: speaking or writing where the focus is on the meaning of what is being communicated, e.g. explaining how to make okonomiyaki.

Language-based learning: activities which explicitly focus on grammar, vocabulary etc, e.g. memorising words from word cards.

Fluency Development: activities where the students are engaged in reading, writing, listening or speaking at a level that is easy for them in order to help promote fluency, e.g. reading a book at a level that is lower than the student’s current level.

I hope I have summarised them accurately. Of course some activities don’t involve just one of these, and many activities will involve two, three or, possibly, all of them. Nation was also not talking about individual classes but about the overall curriculum.

I decided to analyse the two lessons I had prepared for my children’s classes the day after the expo. It was an interesting experiment and I would highly recommend it to teachers. Although Nation was talking about older students, I’m sure this kind of balance would also benefit children’s lessons. Below is an outline of one of the lessons and the analysis I made of the activities.

Target: plurals and colours - What are they? They are (dogs). What colour are they? They are (brown, black and white).
Number of students: 2

Activity 1: Dog dice game. Students take turns answering questions about pictures of plurals, then roll a dice. The number rolled indicates what part of their dog they can add. The aim is to complete their dog faster than their partner.

Activity type: This is a combination of language-based learning and fluency development. They have been practising plurals a lot so if the question I asked was, What are they?, they could answer very easily and quickly and mostly accurately. This meant the activity had a fluency development aspect to it. If the question was, What color are they?, they had to think more both about the individual colours and remembering to use “and” only before the final colour. They haven’t had as much practice with this so are not fluent yet in answering this type of question. This aspect was language-based learning. Listening to my questions, both of which they are quite familiar with was also probably fluency development.

Activity 2: Speed writing. Students have a pile of card showing a picture on one side and the word on the back. Against an egg timer they try to write all the words into their notebook. They work independently, first attempting to write the word, then checking they got it correct. If it’s correct they put it in a different pile. If they make a mistake they put it to the bottom of their pile. The words were relatively easy for the students’ level as they were words of mostly 3 letters, were phonetically regular (the students are learning to read and write using phonics) and didn’t include any special combinations (sh, ch, ee and so on).

Activity type: Mainly fluency development. Many of the words were known very well by the students and could be written very easily. Some of the words were not even checked by the students before placing them in the correct pile,as they were so confident. As a few words were more difficult for them (some longer words such as melon and panda) this activity was also partly language-focused learning as they were focusing on spelling the words correctly.

Activity 3: Racetrack game. Flashcards are laid out in a circle. Students roll a dice to move around the track. For the card they land on, they must make two sentences, They are (trees). They are (green and brown). They score points for how many (trees) are in the picture.

Activity type: This is similar to Activity 1. Making the first sentence was fluency development and making the second sentence was language-based learning. It also involved fluency development for saying numbers as each turn they had to answer the question, How many (trees) are there? before they could add their points onto the board.

Activity 4: Guessing Game. One students held the plurals flashcards and after choosing a card, gave the other student hints about the colour. The other student guessed the card.

Activity Type: This involved meaning-based input and output. Both students had to speak and listen. The language they were using is not easy for them and they were focusing on the meaning in order to play the game.

Activity 5: Christmas Picture. Students had to draw a picture based on what was written on the paper (They are presents and Christmas cards.) and then had to write an answer to a question (What colour are they?).

Activity Type: Meaning-based input and output. In order to draw the picture they had to read the sentence that described what they should draw. They had to write an answer to a question based on what colours they had used in their picture. The language was at an appropriate level for the students so they weren’t able to read or write fluently, but had to think carefully. The focus was on accuracy related to meaning not related to the language, in that they were following instructions to draw a picture and then writing about their picture.

I was happy to find that I seemed to have a balance of the four strands in that lesson. Whether that would apply to my lessons overall I don’t know, and will need to investigate further. It was definitely a worthwhile exercise as it has made me think about the types of activity I do in a fresh way. In the past I have focused more on whether I have a good balance of reading, writing, listening and speaking. Now I will be checking for a different kind of balance as well.