Teaching Tip #11
Small Talk Speaking Activity
The students go around the room and practice small talk (variety of topics). Once they finish their conversation they use the tables (see attached file) as sort of a self-assessment to record whether they completed each of the ‘small talk’ elements. The students can add the worksheet to their portfolio as samples of speaking activity.
Note: This is for a higher level (CLB 6). You will adjust the elements to cover according to level.
Small Talk Speaking Activity
The students go around the room and practice small talk (variety of topics). Once they finish their conversation they use the tables (see attached file) as sort of a self-assessment to record whether they completed each of the ‘small talk’ elements. The students can add the worksheet to their portfolio as samples of speaking activity.
Note: This is for a higher level (CLB 6). You will adjust the elements to cover according to level.
Small Talk |
Teaching Tip #12
Board Games
Board games are an interactive approach to reviewing vocabulary/concepts taught. Depending on how the board game is set up, it allows students to practice speaking, particularly pronunciation, and listening (as they have to listen to another student’s answer). For lower levels, it can consist of pictures to review vocabulary taught or simple questions to review sentence structures. For higher levels, board games can be set up to review steps of a task, making sentences (as complex as you want) and the like. See below for sample board games on various topics.
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Teaching Tip #13
Establishing Routines
Routines are specific ways of doing various activities in class that mostly don’t vary over the course of the term. It covers activities like taking attendance to conducting skill-building and using activities and is an efficient classroom management tool. Following are some examples of routines used by teachers:
- Small talk at the beginning of class: The teacher asks a student ‘how are you doing today?’ or if it’s the end of the week ‘Are you looking forward to the weekend?’ and the student answers the teacher. The student then turns to the next student and asks the same question and so on.
- Weather dictation: The teacher reads out a varying script for weather every day and students complete a table (see document below)
- Reading short funny stories: Once a week, the teacher reads a short funny story together with students. Students work on a few questions to check comprehension. Note: Please ensure that the story is not something completely off-topic that takes away from the content of the week. Find stories that have content related to the theme being covered and then have a discussion on the content depending on the tasks being assessed.
- Outline of the day: Write down a short outline (numbered or bullet points) of what will be covered that day in class and check off when you’re done.
- What did you learn today? : At the end of class, have students write down what they learned in class that day. This routine helps in collecting evidence for ‘Learning Reflection’ needed in the ‘About Me’ section of the PBLA binder.
- Spelling test: Introduce important vocabulary words required for the task at the beginning of the week. At the end of the week do a short spelling test. Note: Please note these words should be random words on the theme being taught but rather words that are being used in the task.
- Short
- Specific
- Should include everyone
- Flexible
While establishing a routine is an effective classroom management tool, choose routines careful and be mindful of their relevance to PBLA.
weatherdictation.docx |
Teaching Tip #14
Spelling Tests
Using spelling tests can be helpful for students to learn and retain words required for a specific task i.e. you teach and test only the words that will be used in the task to be performed. For example, if the task is to write an email to your manager and complain about a workplace issue then you would want to go over some vocabulary required to complete that task. You can make a list of the new words or most commonly misspelled words for the students to focus on. Following is a rough outline and some activities that you can do during the week of teaching and leading up to the test at the end:
- Introduce words on the board and elicit meaning
- *Get students to look up syllables, stress and part of speech from the dictionary in groups i.e. one group looks up syllables, one group looks up stress and one group looks up part of speech
- Give each student a word then have students group themselves according to syllable then according to stress and so on
- Have students make a sentence with a few of the words
- Do the spelling test
Please note the activities are usually done over a number of days and not in one day. Also remember not to spend a huge chunk of your time doing the spelling activities. Keep in mind, the goal is to teach the students how to perform the task and not to learn and just reproduce the words.
Teaching Tip #15
Timed Speaking Activities
You can add a challenge for your students in speaking by adding a time element to their activity. It helps students work on their fluency and helps them to recognize the important parts of a speaking task. It’s also a good extension activity for stronger students.
Give your students a topic and have them write out an answer (the length of the answer should be appropriate to their speaking ability and not writing i.e. check the Speaking section of the CLB Document to determine how many words, phrases or sentences they should be able to speak and have them write to that requirement).
Monitor and correct errors. Once they are done, pair students and have them talk to each other for a certain time limit. You can start with a generous amount of time and make it shorter with further rounds of conversation.
Sample topic ideas:
- What did you do on your weekend?
- What are your weekend plans?
- How were your holidays?
- Introduce yourself/your partner
Teaching Tip #16
Post-Its – For Teaching, for Learning, for Everything …
Post it notes ‘for everything’ in our teaching. Uses:
- Learners summarize a presentation onto a post-it (like a one sentence summary) and the post-its then placed on the wall the next day for all to see as a review
- Brainstorming onto Post-its – easy to move and organize
- Needs Assessment – students use Post-its (or stickers) to make their choice on the poster of the topic or task options for the term
- Portfolio Review – students are given four Post-its to put on the artefacts in their portfolios: one on their best work, one on the most difficult task, one of the most helpful task, one on the most enjoyable one. It gives the teacher feedback on the students’ feelings about their work.
- Questions and Answers – on the one side a student writes a question (following the grammar/topic directions). The teacher collects them, then redistributes them and another student writes an answer on the back.
- Post-its with quotes, questions, dilemmas placed on the walls for learners to circulate to and discuss
- Great for giving messages to individual learners
- Organize – different colors and sizes make it easy
- For sorting and classifying activities – easy to rearrange and change decisions
- ….
Teaching Tip #17
Tell and Write a Story
This activity uses all four skills and can be used for all levels.
It’s Monday morning. Get the students in groups of four and have them talk about their weekend. Be sure each person has a chance to speak. Then each group decides which person had the best weekend. The other members of the group retell that person’s week-end’s tale to the whole class using correct past tense and pronouns. “She went to Banff. She went skiing. …” Next, the group writes the story about that person’s weekend. The stories can be posted on the bulletin board for the class to read.
Teaching Tip #18
Listening Dictation Extension Activities
These extension ideas are based on a dictation activity found in a textbook by Janet Kan, Listening, Reading & Writing
The basic dictation activity begins with 6 pieces of information: Name, Street Address, City, Postal Code, Phone Number, and License Plate number for practicing letter and number dictations. This worksheet of ideas helps extend the dictation into other activities including computers and maps.
Listening Dictation Extension Activities
These extension ideas are based on a dictation activity found in a textbook by Janet Kan, Listening, Reading & Writing
The basic dictation activity begins with 6 pieces of information: Name, Street Address, City, Postal Code, Phone Number, and License Plate number for practicing letter and number dictations. This worksheet of ideas helps extend the dictation into other activities including computers and maps.
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Teaching Tip #19
Making Lists
Our world is full of lists. Web-sites are always giving advice in list form: 5 best vacation spots, 10 ways to lose weight, 15 things to do before you die, etc. Begin introducing a topic using a list. Ask the students what are the top three or five things on the topic. For example: Travel: Top 5 Canadian tourist spots, Health: Top 5 ways to stay healthy, Shopping: Top 5 ways to save money, etc. Get the students into groups to make up their list. Post the lists for all to see. Each group then must defend the reasons for their choices and the reasons for the order. Students may encounter some difficulty here so perhaps work on some vocabulary building and comparative language. As an extension, get the students to write their reasons as well.
Teaching Tip #20
Signs of Spring
The winter has been too long. It’s time to look for the signs of spring. Let’s have a Signs of Spring scavenger hunt!
Go outside with your camera and collect pictures of the following:
- Sight of spring
- Sound of spring
- Colour of spring
- Smell of spring
- Taste of spring
- Feeling of spring
- Activity of spring
This is an activity we did with CLB 4-6 classes.
It was an opportunity for students to interact freely and problem solve together. Students were divided into groups of two or three trying to ensure that the only common language in the group was English. Students go out to walk around the grounds for about 30 – 45 minutes. They then regroup, share pictures informally, add captions and put the pictures together into a presentable format.
The instructions were open-ended, allowing students to think creatively, in trying to capture tastes and smells in photographs. Many chose to make videos to show sounds of spring.