Lesson Skeleton: Iphones and Opinions
November 26, 2011 3 Comments
Teenagers and telephones – I had one, they all have one. Why not use one?
1. Write a an adjective and its antonym on the board, e.g. ‘proud’ and ‘embarrassed’
2. Ask your learners to find a picture that describes the adjective for them using their phones. Mingle and ask them to explain why they chose the photo. At this point I discovered my group had simply searched proud on Google – so I drew and Italian flag on the board, which focused the search on an idea – teenagers are resourceful things, they have the ability to find the quickest route possible to the finish! You can extend the topic and introduce more context if needed.
3. Each student takes a piece of paper and makes a topic sentence about their pictures, e.g. “The rubbish heaps in Napoli are truly an embarrassment to this nation”, “The fast cars we produce are the best in the world and make us famous”, also with a space below for comments.
4. Pass the sheets around and ask students to comment on the points, expressing their opinion in agreement or disagreement
- in this stage you can input phrases to agree/disagree/offer a counter-point/extend someone’s point/exemplify – feed in vocabulary for students. You could put this on cards and after dish them out and ask students to match them to the context (the statement/picture).
5. Gather the sheets up and check them for corrections (I usually do this in the break). You could do some error correction or just to make sure the extension activities don’t use incorrect language.
Extensions:
- Post the sheets around the room and ask students to pick the opinions they agree with and which they disagree with to formulate a debate.
- Do some vocabulary work on a topic: brainstorm.
- Ask students to host a chat show. They take a sheet and have to represent the point in a live debate.
- Write a magazine article or an interview with a famous person about the arguments e.g. an interview with George Clooney about how much Italy has to be proud of.
- Ask students to find a text about one of the points for next lesson and make a summary of it.
To consider:
- I used pieces of paper and circulated them to make the best use of my classroom: 17 teenagers, tiny black board, one piece of chalk… not so easy. Consider how to capture the language. Consider recording, using the whiteboard, the IWB, large sheets of paper stuck around the room and marker pens.
- Careful it doesn’t turn into ‘I agree, I agree, I agree’ monitor and push students to give reasons or to say something outrageous. Provide lots of examples yourself.
- I have a monolingual class, so I allow them to ask me for words in their language. Brainstorming vocabulary for each point may be fruitful as well.
Possible adjective pairs:
Relaxed – stressed
Busy – calm
Modern – old-fashioned
Brave – cowardly
Intelligent – idiotic
M-Learning.This blog just gets better and better.Blog of the year anybody?
I ventured into mobile tech a bit and realised that the average iphone/android student has loads on their phones and WIFI access and a camera. With this in mind I always do a Tech check at the start of class to check who has what and then go from there. It actually came about because I could see everyone using them so thought “well they have them and are using them so why not exploit it” and exploit it I did.
My DELTA mod 3 started as Blended Learning BE but then I got into Dogme and it started leaking in. I tried these:
1)Pairs recorded conversations then played them back for anlaysis
2)Students did presentations in pairs/groups then swapped them for analysis
3)Students recorded speaking work and upoaded it to the VLE for FB
4)Googling/Dictionarying language (Snapanda?) and ideas/concepts
5)Very quick webquest warmers “what does….mean?” or “what is…?”
6)Using calculators for mathematical activities
7)Using notepads/memos to record new language
8)Photographing board work or an activity
There’s also the whole ‘real life’ area you touched on with the photos:
1)Groups make appointments using their real agendas
2)Class mingle and getting to know you swapping numbers and inputting contacts
And the joys of SMS:
1)Mixed pairs send textos or have texto chats after class to practise X, Y, Z
2)Students write sentences of new lexis, text it and read it out
I had one kid who was addicted to mobiles so after hearing that all the other teachers had confrontations with him (he had become quite arrogant by this time) I accepted it and exploited it. He turned out to be a decent guy too.
Anyone with other ideas?
Great lesson, Dale. I will be asking my students about their mobile phones in the next lesson. Hoping to do something with photos they have taken and using language for speculation.
Love the suggestions that Phil has added.
Adam
Be careful with “antonyms”. They are often dependent on the noun they’re collocating with. E.g. Busy – quiet street? Calm – rough sea?