Finding the balance between games, learning and communicativity.

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Finding the balance between games, learning and
communicativity.

• Presented by Martin McCloud
• martin_at_martinmccloud.com

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Introduction

• About the workshop
• The main aim of this workshop is to show you how
  to improve the activities used in the classroom
• About me
• Martin McCloud
• 3rd Year ALT
• based at Tsunan Chuto
• Lessons of 20 or 40 students

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Activity Demo 1

• To help you see the lesson from the students
  point of view
• Give us something to improve
• Wake you, the attendees, up!

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Dengon Game

• Teams arranged in lines down the classroom
• Person at the front gets a message from the ALT
• The message is passed to the person behind them
• When the message reaches the last person, the
  last person must run to the front and write the
  answer on the board.

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Dengon Game

• GO!!!

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Dengon Game Analysis

• A) How many rounds did we play?
• B) How many times did you speak during one round?
• C) What where the answers needed to win the
  rounds?

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Questions I Ask Myself (1)

• Why did the students not like an activity?
• Why did the one of the activities ruin the
  atmosphere?
• Why didnt this activity work, but the others
  did?

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Questions I Ask Myself (2)

• How can this dull activity be more interesting?
• Can I make it more fun?
• Can I make it more educational?
• Can I make it fun AND educational?

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Why should we question our activities?
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Why should we question our activities?

• Because we re-use our activities

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Why do we re-use activities?

• Saves time
• We dont have to spend time thinking of new ideas
• Can re-use materials we have already made
• Less risk
• we know the activity works
• we know the benefits of the activity
• But, we also know the problems of the activity

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Main benefit of re-use
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Main benefit of re-use

• But, by re-using activities, we will have an
  opportunity to improve the activities.

Use Activity
Find Problems
Make Changes
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What are the problems? (1)

• 1) Losing the students attention
• (i.e. not fun)
• The activity is boring
• Students have no interest in the activity
• Activity is just dull
• activity fatigue
• Activity goes on for too long
• Activity has been used too much
• too much to learn
• Students shocked by the amount they must learn
  and give up

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What are the problems? (2)

• 2) Students not acquiring enough English
• (i.e. not learning)
• Not enough English used in class
• Students waiting for the translation
• Not enough practise
• Students need to process language to learn it
• practice constructing and expressing their own
  sentences

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What are the problems? (3)

• No immediate feedback
• after giving an answer, students need to know if
  it is correct or not as quickly as possible.
• Too much to learn
• students shocked by the scale of the task and
  just give up

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Solving these Problems (1)

• 1) Keeping the students attention (more fun!!)
• problem activities are boring
• Make the activity entertaining
• Students are very competitive. Distract the
  students by making activities competitive
• problem activity fatigue
• Dont let an activity run for too long
• Dont do the same activity too often
• problem too much to learn
• Limit the amount of new vocabulary

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Solving these Problems (2)

• 2) Increasing the amount of English students
  acquire (more learning!!)
• problem Not enough English used
• try to use only English in the classroom (on
  materials, during explanations, checking answers
  etc.)
• problem not enough practise
• try to use activities that encourage speaking as
  much as possible.
• have students speak with the ALT and JTE

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Solving these Problems (3)

• problem no immediate feedback
• try to use activities that provide instant
  feedback (quizzes, short interview style
  dialogues)
• problem too much to learn
• Limit the amount of new vocabulary

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In Summary

• To improve a lesson, we want to add
• Entertainment
• Competition
• Limits on the vocabulary
• More practice and feedback
• More interaction

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Competition

• Types of competition
• Student versus Student e.g. Pair Quiz, Pen Race
• Student versus team e.g. Karuta
• Students versus class (mixed) e.g. Find someone
  who
• Pairs versus class e.g. questionnaire T/F
• Team versus class e.g. King and Servant, Dengon
  Game, Quiz games
• Avoid having a single student against the whole
  class.

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Limit the vocabulary

• A psychology theory, The Magical Number Seven,
  describes the limits of short-term memory
• Humans have a working memory of around seven
  elements. Elements can be anything, such as
  numbers or words
• So, when we introduce new vocabulary to students,
  and we want them to use it, we should limit the
  number of words to about seven at a time

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More Speaking

• TT lessons are an opportunity for students to use
  spoken English.
• Try to introduce speaking as much as possible
• Dialogues between students
• Passing messages
• Answering questions

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More Feedback

• People learn from their mistakes and successes.
• But feedback has to happen quickly to reinforce
  learning
• Proof? Its why flashcards are effective

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More Interaction

• Try to encourage students to talk with lots of
  people
• Mixing pairs after an activity
• Combining pairs into groups
• Find someone who games
• Make chances to speak with ALT and JTE
• .
• This is the communicativity part!

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The Ideal Activity

• So, the ideal activity would
• be entertaining
• be competitive
• limited to a practical amount of new material
• provide lots of practice, with instant feedback,
  using old and new material
• encourage interaction with other students, the
  ALT and the JTE

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The Aim of Improvement

• A typical activity will cover some of these
  qualities. We should aim to improve the activity
  to cover ALL five qualities.
• And if an activity covers all five qualities, we
  should aim to improve the way it covers the five
  qualities.

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Improving Dengon Game Activity Analysis
None Little bit So-so Fair bit Lots
Entertainment
Competition
Focused material
Practice and Feedback
Interaction

• How does the Dengon Game fit our expectations
  for the Ideal Activity?

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Improving Dengon Game Activity Analysis
None Little bit So-so Fair bit Lots
Entertainment x
Competition x
Focused material x
Practice and Feedback x
Interaction x

• We should improve Practice and Feedback and
  Interaction

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Improving Dengon Game Changes

• Have two messages
• one going backwards and the other forwards.
• Have the messages make a small dialogue
• Have answers at the back for last student to find

Whose camera is this?
Answers
Start
Finish!
Its Marks camera
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Activity Demo 2

• To see if the changes weve made have improved
  the original activity
• Wake you up after sitting through 20 minutes of
  slides!
• Pad out the workshop to last 50 minutes!

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Dengon Game v2.0

• Have two messages
• one going backwards and the other forwards.
• Have the messages make a small dialogue
• Have answers at the back for last student to find

Whose camera is this?
Answers
Start
Finish!
Its Marks camera
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Dengon Game v2.0

• GO!!!

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Dengon Game v2.0 Analysis

• A) How many rounds did we play?
• B) How many times did you speak during one round?
• C) What where the answers needed to win the
  rounds?

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Improving Dengon Game Analysis of Improvements
None Little bit So-so Fair bit Lots
Entertainment x
Competition x
Focused material x
Practice and Feedback x
Interaction x

X Original Dengon X Dengon v2.0
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Improving Dengon Game Analysis of Improvements
None Little bit So-so Fair bit Lots
Entertainment x x
Competition x x
Focused material xx
Practice and Feedback x x
Interaction x x

• Overall, an improvement!!

X Original Dengon X Dengon v2.0
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Conclusions (1)

• We should think about our activities after we use
  them
• We might re-use the activity in a future lesson.
  We should learn from our mistakes and improve the
  activity.

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Conclusions (2)

• Good TT activities should have these five
  qualities
• Entertainment
• Competition
• Limits on the vocabulary
• Practice and feedback
• Interaction

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Any Questions?
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More information

• Slides for this workshop can be downloaded from
• http//www.martinmccloud.com/teaching
• Any other comments or questions can be sent to
• martin_at_martinmccloud.com