Imagination, Innovation, Inspiration

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Imagination, Innovation, Inspiration

• Improving language through the use of
  interactive, creative teaching

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Main questions for the audience

• How do kinesthetic, auditory and visual
  activities improve our learners literacy?
• Why do they enhance motivation?

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Kinesthetic, interactive activities

• Whom do they benefit and why?
• .We retain 90 of what we do and say
• as opposed to 10 of what we hear
• Such activities suit the majority of our
  learners, boys in particular.
• The activities enable peer coaching to take
  place.

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More reasons

• They are excellent for EAL learners
• and language development as a whole
• Many of our pupils cultures are oral in nature.
• They are more inclusive and enable pupils who may
  be shy to participate actively in the lesson.
• The learners are more motivated and engaged
  (generally, pupils do not enjoy too much teacher
  talk).

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What about chaos ensuing?

• Motivated pupils tend to be more engaged.
• Ground rules must be firmly established.
• Some times will be unsuitable (last lesson, after
  PE?)

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Kinesthetic activities

• Kagan
• Each pupil has a question and an answer. They
  work in pairs and ask each other the question. If
  the partner does not know the answer, the other
  pupil will coach him/her through it. They then
  exchange their questions and move on to another
  partner (3 times). Brilliant!

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More Kinesthetic

• Thought tracking a pupil expresses a dilemma,
  impersonating a character in a novel for example.
• Pupils, one at a time must come and express
  possible solutions.

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• Half the pupils in the class have a
• word, the rest of the pupils a definition
  each, they must pair up.
• Good for comparisons
• Each pupil has a statement about a text, the
  other half of the pupils has a statement about
  another text they must place themselves in the
  right corner of the room
• They must then find a partner to establish
  possible comparisons (great for paper 1, poetry),
  using the right connectives.

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Statues and machines

• Pupils have to represent a certain concept and
  build a machine in groups of 4.Freeze frames can
  also be composed.
• Musical chairs/statues pupils walk in the manner
  described by the teacher.
• When the teacher says stop, they must
• do so the last one to do so is out and is
  given another task great for movement verbs,
  adverbs.

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Inner circles

• Pupils face each other in an inner circle / outer
  circle way.
• Each pupil has a word in mind.
• Pupils in the inner circle move in a clockwise
  direction once they have exchanged their word
  with the pupil facing them.

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Jigsaw brainstorm

• In groups of four, pupils contribute to a
  braintree (mind map) each.
• They then rotate to the next mind map and add to
  the previous groups contributions.

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Listening activities

• Narrative structured listening
• Each pupil is given a sign with a word (past
  tense verb, whatever you wish to reinforce).
• Pupils listen to a narrative and wave their word
  as it comes up.
• Elicit the story back from them.

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Listen and draw

• Listen and draw pupils listen to a
• descriptive passage and draw.
• Choose your song pupils choose songs to
  illustrate a descriptive passage / lines in a
  poem.
• Direct a poem using particular songs.

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More listening

• Pupils sequence a series of cards as they listen
  to a process.
• Students fill in the missing words of a song
  (good for contextualisation of novels, poetry).
• Pupils tick a list of key ideas / media
  techniques as they are watching a programme /
  movie/ advert.

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Visual

• Pictionary pupils pick a quotation from a text
  and illustrate it with Pictionary illustrations
  the rest of the class has to guess the quotation
• Activate prediction/ relate to pupils schema
  (experience of the world)
• Pictures are used in order for pupils to predict
  themes / make links between ideas.
• Different colours of highlighters are the best
  way to retrieve information for a purpose/ mark
  key words out in questions.

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Using visuals to contextualise

• Film clips / adverts are a great tool to
  contextualise the learning for pupils who may not
  be familiar with certain concepts Apartheid, the
  Vietnam war etc.
• Adverts are a great way to analyse language and
  presentational devices

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Memory map

• Pupils are grouped in fours and given a number 1
  to 4.
• When a number (1 to 4) is called out, all pupils
  who have that number in the group must come up
  and see a list or series of pictures for a
  minute. They must write or draw what they have
  seen for the rest of the group. Repeat the
  process for all numbers.

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Collages

• A collage of images and concepts, provided that
  they are linked, assists with acquisition.
• Collages can be pasted onto a braintree and
  backed by quotations.

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Braintrees/ mind maps

• Superb tools for oral presentations, planning,
  revising and structuring ideas.
• Provide an excellent overview of a topic.
• Add visual icons.
• Different colours of post it notes placed on them
  also works.

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Question for the audience

• What have all these activities got in common?
• Thank you for listening, hope it has been
  inspirational!