Monday 1 August 2011

Language World 2011: Active Learning with Greg Horton

This session was so active that I found it very hard to make any notes!

Here are a few tips I picked up…

Teaching Connectives: Read the text and students do an action when the connective is said.

Valentine’s lesson: Present as “How to chat up somebody in Spanish”-you say something and the other person repeats it using “you” and swapping verb forms.

Human Word Chain: Children say the missing word, race to fill in the gap correctly, identify separate words e.g. Which word is … Jenny?, “adjectives please sit down”

Writing can be improved by developing a picture of word sequences in students’ heads. This can be done through speaking and can be more “boy-friendly” too.

Get students to build a storyline around the room: can be done in speaking or writing.

Find pictures to support narratives for students to consolidate their knowledge of structures.

Design a child as a “word guardian” in charge of remembering the class of a specific structure

Associate specific gestures with subject pronouns to help students learn verb paradigms. E.g. curtsey for formal “you”

Get students to make their own videos to demonstrate how different verbs work.

The clock times ballet: students to model the time using their left arm for the hours and their right arm for the minutes. The “Blue Danube” is used as a musical background to get students to focus on the time at some specific point.

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