Dogme Reality

Great to see the great Phil Wade posting again on the blog. For anyone who doesn’t know the man, he’s an ELT Jack of all traits now teaching freelance in Rèunion in the Indian Ocean.  This time, he’s going to talk about how even bending over backwards to make this personal and student centred, it can be like banging your head against the wall!

I remember having a short Twitter chat with Rob Haines who used to handle the Dogme discussion group about Dogme allegedly being the ‘golden bullet’ to cure all teaching woes. Well, it’s good and brings live to classes of students used to heads down work but it doesn’t always work.

This term I’ve had problems with discipline. Students have been chatting heavily in the L1, messing around and not participating by answering no questions or doing any pair work in
English. It’s been doing my head in as I enjoy ‘Dogme moments’, student choice for activities, working with their output and a general positive attitude.

Finally, I realised that some just don’t want to pass, it’s that simple. It sounds crazy to me but logical if they get to resit a class rather than do another either more difficult one. If they don’t get penalised for failing and graduate anyhow, well, I get it. It’s not the mentality that I wish for or expect but now I understand.

Thus, we’re talking zero student contributions except for turning up and sitting down.

I think we teachers beat ourselves up over getting students on track, keeping them so and pushing them. On the CELTA we learned to push them and to keep lessons snappy and were used to eager students with motivation. Take that away and it’s not the same ball game.

There has to be a point where we admit defeat and just let things go before they consume us. In my case, this may mean letting some L1 chat pass or cutting out pairwork. My official course objectives will still get met as they are for people to complete the course i.e. attend and do the exercises. They may pass the test but many may not and thus fail for the 2nd or 3rd time.

I say goodbye to Dogme hopes for this class and put aside my interesting ideas and student-based activities. Sad but the reality is that Dogme doesn’t work with everyone and in every situation. Sometimes it can be a real uphill struggle changing students attitudes and getting them to see the benefits, this can lead to complaints too and if your colleagues are sticklers for teacher-based lessons then you may even face a serious chat.

My Dogme approach will live to fight another day but as it’s now an integrated part of how I always teach, it means I must teach unnaturally. For me, doing all the interesting and responsive stuff is what I like and what teaching should be about.

Apps n’ Dogme

 

Phil Wade 

To cut a long story short I’ve recently taught some 121 classes with ipads n’ apps. No books, copies, even handouts, just an ipad. Now, 

I’m not convinced about the ‘wonders of the ipad revolution’ as many seem to be. 1 ipad costs a lot of money for a teacher to buy and from my own experimentation not a lot works on them except specifically designed expensive apps. Another problem is that the student uses it and you can’t see what they’re doing.

In one place I work we have a couple of ipads and I have to use them but never seem to know how. Thus, with a TOEFL 121 and a Philosophy 121 I set about seeing what I could find that was ipad possible at 0 cost. Not easy if you don’t have a Mac or ipad trust me. 

A great FREE vocab app with several sections and useful questions. It’s available for Apple or Android.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xuvi.pretoefl&hl=fr

 

“Photo taken from http://flickr.com/eltpics by @alice_m, used under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial licence, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/”

I often use it as a warmer to check what my student knows and then to advise what to work on at home. It’s useful to kick off the lesson, also as a topic change or revision after another activity or even as a bit of fun to end the lesson. Simply select the topic based on the texts or listenings you’ve been using and away you go, instant vocab support.

TOEFL speaking

http://itunes.apple.com/kz/app/toefl-speaking/id476983599?mt=8

Another freebie but only for ios I think.

This has various questions and sample answers and lets you record your answers. It’s perfect for the first parts of the speaking. It can be used as a warmer, a whole speaking part 1 or 2 section or to end a class.

Where’s the dogme?

I like to think of each app as a tool that can be utilised in countless ways, just like a reading in a book. they are used as, well, readings, to introduce grammar, to contextualise vocab, to set a theme, to provide content for a discussion bla bla bla. So, why not the same for an app?

Now, imagine you have a 1 hour TOEFL ibt class. For anyone unfamiliar with the exam it is online and has all the usual skills. The 2 apps are inherently limited to vocab and speaking so I’m not going to lie and say make them into a TOEFL ibt reading or listening. No, for those bits just find and use online samples or Edulang’s TOEFL sim. The apps are flexible so can fit around what you are doing or be exploited on their own.

Getting back to the 1 hour. Now, I start off with the speaking app. I select a question, my student answers it while I record it then listen back and work on the mistakes and areas of improvement. Next, we look at another question and analyse the sample answer before doing another recording. To bring in the integrated aspect of the speaking section, I could either go TOEFL and show her a sample reading and play a listening from this part or just select similar material from the net. Again, I can use the app to record the student, play it back, discuss and then improve it.

Next, I could add a bit of vocab by choosing a similar category on the app, trying 10 questions then practising all the words, not just the correct ones in speaking style. After all, why not some listening? Like before, I can play a TOEFL listening online or choose a similar one from Google. The key with that is notetaking. I always check to see if my student is doing it well and then if there aren’t questions for the listening I can make up my own that are TOEFL style. A better approach is asking the student to think about what could be asked. Here we can go through question types.

So, 2 apps are quite handy but it’s also worth remembering you have internet access. I do tend to go on about early prep and laying the foundation at the start but in this course I did just that and collected loads of useful sites and put them on a Scoop. This means I can use them when I need.

Tip: At the start of the course I began building a Scoop which is my virtual resource board. I add to it when I can and keep a mental note of what’s there and how it could be used. In following lessons I pick out what I need (check that they work on your ipad please) but also am safe in the knowledge that I have the others ready for a if/when situation. Lately I’ve even started making my own Quizlets for revising language in the next lesson. They have a free app and even related ones, many of which are free:

“Photo taken from http://flickr.com/eltpics by @europeaantje, used under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial licence, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/”

http://quizlet.com/mobile/

http://www.scoop.it/t/toefllinks

Phil, the idea of a scoop is a brilliant idea to support learning outside the classroom. I was discussing learning a new language only last night with a friend who admitted to not studying at all outside of lessons; it adds an extra platform for students to use that’s not tradition head-in-books studying. One part that stood out particularly to me was recording and playing back students’ spoken language. I think there’s a lot to be said for this to capture their language to work on, what’s more it’s a handy learning strategy for outside the classroom. Thanks for sharing some useful ideas on using apps, all of which seem to work with student needs and student language – Dale

I am used to going to bed late

That is certainly how it felt after a 6-day holiday over Easter. Whether I was out or at home, with no commitments the next day, I fell into the trap of stay up well into the wee hours of the morning. Not a problem, until Thursday arrived and I was up and wide awake at 6.30am to teach at 9am at school.

Having read Chia’s inspirational accounts of the first few days of her Dogme challenge, I thought I’d try out one of her ideas in my classroom. The lesson was a group of 9 pre-intermediate learners, observed by CELTA trainees to make up part of their compulsory observations.

I sat down and introduced myself to the class, who, in turn, introduced themselves to me. I then asked them to make line up in order of what time they went to bed the night before. I listened carefully to the language they used to do this, they asked questions like:

What time did you go to bed last night?

Did you go to bed late last night?

Did you go to bed early?

Did you sleep lots last night?

They completed the task with very little trouble and we started talking about our sleeping habits, what time we go to work, what time we get up and have breakfast – this lasted about 5 minutes. After this, one student said

for me it’s not difficult to get up in the morning, I am…. (come si dice ‘abitudine’ in inglese?)…. urm… use it?

I CCQ’d the structure the learner was looking for. I asked “is it something you always do?” “is it difficult or easy?” and then wrote on the board:

I am ________ _____ get____ up early

We filled in the gaps to form:

I am used to getting up early

By now interest was at a high and everyone had clearly understood the meaning of the sentence. I highlighted the form (mainly the getting after ‘to’ and used as an adjective following the verb ‘to be’) and drilled the pronunciation. I also used the opportunity of creating some examples to correct some of the errors with prepostional phrases I’d heard in the previous activity such as “in the weekend, one time in a week, go in the park).

I then asked for some more sample sentences from the class and we made four on the board. After that, I asked students to go to their seats and make some more examples with their partners. During this time, I heard one group say “Americans are not used to the way we do things in Italy” and decided to pick on this topical aspect to extend the task.

I put learners into groups and asked them to discuss why it would be difficult for a foreigner to come to Italy (in the hope of eliciting ‘get used to’ as well).

Learners chatted and discussed their ideas, I inputted bits of vocabulary where needed and noted down some errors and also directly corrected a few. In my prioritisation of error I considered the following:

is it a chunk they are missing or is it language they already know which they are making mistakes with?

e.g.

They used to drinking large coffees (elicited the ‘are’) and asked what’s the difference between American coffee and Italian to put the learner back into fluency.

They have difficult when they read the menu in Italian (they find it difficult to read the menu) – I left this one for feedback.

By the end of the activity I had a list of pronunciation (mainly stress in words) and lexical points I wanted to look at. I decided to make correction more covert and wrote an email with the class on the board to recycle the language we used in the activity, extending students language by highlighting the use of the pronoun with be used to, e.g. I’m not used to it; an error I hear a lot from Italian leaners being ‘I’m used to’ and fill in some more lexical gaps, e.g. I find it difficult to…

25 minutes to the end of the lesson. We’d finished the email and I asked learners to write a quick email to a friend telling them about an experience they’ve had abroad to use the language we had looked at in class that day. I checked the emails and helped with some problems while students were writing.

The end of the class took the form of a review of the language we looked in class. I asked learners to draw a table with four parts: one for new grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and topics, which I’d seen in Teaching Unplugged. They filled in the parts of the table and class finished in plenary discussion of what we had learned that day.

On reflection perhaps introducing ‘get used to’ in the form of ‘I’m getting used to/I can’t get used to’ may have pushed learners further. The lesson was 1 hour 30 minutes however and I didn’t want to flood learners with too much information. It was my first time with the class and it seemed prudent to provide practice of one structure and the incidental lexis which accompanied it than provide an input tsunami.

It’d be interesting to see what trainees thought about the lesson. They all commented that students seemed very motivated, spoke a lot and clearly learned and processed a lot of language. I wonder if I should have told them what I was doing and why? Why bother?

Emi’s IATEFL Wonderland

Dale: Unfortunately I had to miss this year’s fun at IATEFL Glasgow. I spent the 5 days glued to my computer screen, feeding on any twitter update that came my way. My good friend and fantastic contributor to this blog, Emi, attended the conference. It seems that one thread stood out to Emi throughout the conference. Is it Dogme? As more people come into contact with the idea, they redefine and rethink their own teaching beliefs, as we’ve seen in the past six months with the emergence of much hot debate on the topic. Emi asks some important questions in her reflections on the conference, and leads me to wonder, now that there’s a name for a set of beliefs and practices that were clearly in existence before being given a title, is the idea itself in expansion? Is this why so many new practices have started falling under Dogme, or just good teaching. Over to Emi,

Oh my God my first IATEFL  (Glasgow 2012) is over. What a week. I have no idea where to start. It’s reasonable to think that everyone was talking about Dogme all the time, which of course they weren’t – it’s just who I chose to hang out with and the talks I chose to go to. Have I joined a religion?

It seemed that many people had responses to Dogme embedded into their talks

Dogme theme

It seemed that many people had responses to Dogme embedded into their talks. Even people like Michael Swan and Catherine Walker commented on emerging or “pop up” grammar in their talk. Of course Dogme is hardly anything new – been around nearly 12 years now – but it is interesting that it still provokes such a buzz. The talk by Martin Sketchley from British Council Romania on Friday practically ended in a fight and the older lady at the back who was longing for a proper definition of what Dogme is and how it was any different from what she has been doing all the time since she started teaching 20/30 years ago had a very fair point. An argument ensued about whether you should teach “used to” to pre-intermediate learners, i.e. it isn’t in the course books at that level so therefore considered not a good idea to teach it. I say teach whatever the students need or want – don’t patronize them. They know what they want to say so our job is to help them say it in whatever way we can. Not wait until chapter 5 in the course book.

It does help to have this label Dogme – it helps us think if nothing else.

Or maybe the label should just be “good teaching”?.

Good teaching

Was the thread running through everything really just a “we want better teaching” thread? Jim Scrivener and Adrian Underhill are setting up what they call an alternative movement, Active Intervensionist teaching because, it seems to me, they are sick of seeing bad teaching. They are asking is Dogme really the only alternative? Isn’t there another way? Of course it all depends what your definition of Dogme is in the first place. Jim Scrivener and Adrian Underhill say that what is important is “teaching in the moment” or going from “it” teaching to “I” teaching as Adrian said in the impromptu talk about “High Demand ELT” on Thursday evening in the bar. Is “High Demand ELT” a reaction to seeing so much bad teaching in the same way that Dogme was a reaction to all the boring course book based lessons a teacher may have taught 12 years ago?

 A reaction to seeing so much bad teaching

Day One for me was Wednesday

How arrogant and casual of us to think about throwing them out when some dream of more access to them not less?

First I met Marcos, the winner of the Frank Bell Scholarship from Ivory Coast who has 100 students per class, with 10 classes per week and yes he does have to mark their writing and grade every single one of them. This put things in perspective pretty quickly. He has to teach Dogme style whether he likes it or not. His school can’t afford to buy new books all the time and they have one tape recorder for the whole school. Perhaps course books are well perceived by such students. Perhaps course books represent wealth and success for them? How arrogant and casual of us to think about throwing them out when some dream of more access to them not less?

Diana Laudrillard gave the Plenary session on Wednesday

 She presented the idea of the teacher being an “innovative learning designer”. She questioned how sensible it was to have people such as Rupert Murdoch beaming things through technology directly into schools and urged teachers to take control and engage learners with good use of technology – she pointed out that Britain has no e – learning policy – and then listed a number of ways  to use technology in a better way. One of the key things she mentioned was Collaboration and she talked about “a shift from class teaching to more personalized teaching” and “less class presentation and more small group work” and a lot about learner autonomy and technology providing opportunities for students to use digital interactive tools and get feedback themselves.

She talked a lot about sharing teaching pedagogy and teachers building on each other’s work which is brilliant if teachers egos don’t get in the way.

The basic premise being that there are a range of pedagogical ways of structuring lessons which are repeated over and over and the same pattern of a lesson can be used with any kind of content

She described her website called “The Pedagogical Patterns Collector” which seemed to me like a very posh version of Dale’s lesson skeletons. The basic premise being that there are a range of pedagogical ways of structuring lessons which are repeated over and over and the same pattern of a lesson can be used with any kind of content. She demonstrated this brilliantly by showing us a lesson plan for a lesson on dentistry and then inserted  language lesson content into the same lesson skeleton/pattern. The website looks amazing and I will certainly try use it. It frees the teacher up to focus on the students more and to concentrate on “in the moment, hands on teaching”. A set structure but varying content – Dogme anybody or just good teaching?

Then I saw Bill Harris  give a talk on Live Listening

 Totally Dogme. Personal – if the teacher is personally engaged then the students are more likely to be. Couldn’t agree more. Organic teaching they call it. The teacher can control the input much more and tailor it, make it relevant for the students he/she is teaching at the moment. Minimal preparation so the teacher can concentrate on other issues more. Communicating with human beings, authentic, real, low tech. Dogme anybody or just good teaching?

What are your students actually trying to say?

Then it was Paul Seligson on the 3 Fs – foster, fluency, faster

There is too much “Teachering.” Among a plethora of other useful things he talked about “spending time correcting what comes from the heart not from the course books”. Not always asking your students to make a sentence “worry less about sentences and more about messages”. What are your students actually trying to say?

He said correct less and give better models. He said we don’t give students time because we are so busy teaching the silly bus (syllabus). “avoid race track English .. don’t rush. Quality not quantity. More conversation driven classes – work more on emergent language. Learner autonomy, Students tape themselves, ask them to judge themselves. Less of the teacher being judge and controller. Positive feedback on language used not just error correction.” Dogme anybody or just good teaching?

Panel Discussion – British Council ELT

 80% of education projects fail. They must be more bottom – up. The stakeholders (i.e. teachers and students) must be consulted and collaborated with  all the way right from the start if any educational project is going to be successful. The stake-holders must have a sense of ownership. “Focus on the people not the policy” A bottom up approach is recommended for success. Dogme anyone or just good management?

Party

Then sin of sins I went to the Macmillan publishers party. We are obviously not so against course books that we can’t accept an invitation to the publishers party!. On a boat, a ceilidh. Really good fun. Got to meet all. Scott Thornbury, Luke Meddings, Chia – particularly enjoyed singing along to the Proclaimers with Anthony Gaughan. After a few beers I think I did suggest to Scott Thornbury that he should get together with Jim Scrivener and Adrian Underhill and they could sort it all out together. Dogme anyone or methodology revolution?

Day Two – Thursday

 Amazing plenary from Steve Thorne called “Awareness, appropriacy and living language use” where he shared with us his amazing research into language generated through the motivation of computer games. How we cannot ignore this medium as so many people play them and produce tons and tons of ENGLISH via them. Check out these amazing statistics – “Approximately 20 million players have spent 17 billion hours on Xbox Live. That’s more than 2 hours for every person on the planet.”. He gave amazing examples of texts generated by non-English speakers while playing the game. So he is promoting the idea of students learning through their own game playing, chosen by them, controlled by them. They create their own fiction and their own characters and their own texts. Dogme anyone or just learner autonomy?-

Adam Beale and Emily Bell – Dogme and blogging in three social spaces: classroom, staffroom and chat room

There were yellow cards stuck on the walls with things like “winging it, no planning, easy and other things commonly associated with Dogme”. We were asked to put them on two walls – one Dogme wall and one non Dogme wall – we argued, we disagreed, we kept moving the cards back and forth. So many misconceptions. Adam asked “What research needs to be done to validate Dogme?” He said “Take a leap of faith – experiment. Every class should be a surprise! “. He presented his findings, videos of students describing their Dogme experiences.

Take a leap of faith – experiment. Every class should be a surprise!

Scott Thornbury was there and he said at the end “every good teacher should be doing this sort of reflection”. Dogme anyone or just good CPD?

Then Niall Lloyd from The Anglo Mexican Foundation gave a talk called Dogme – learning without the pressure of technology

He began by saying “I don’t like Dogme because Dogme has rules and I don’t like rules” ! When I told Scott Thornbury this later in the coffee shop he said “Oh yes, everyone is always so worried about the rules. Can’t they see things change?”

Niall Lloyd talked about the idea of Dogme plus which is Dogme + using computers, materials and anything else you want. Sounds a lot like Chia’ Suan Chong’s “improvised principled eclecticism”. Chaz Puglieze said “it (i.e. the course book system) doesn’t work like that. Lesson plans are just teaching by numbers”

Dogme anyone or just good teaching?

 Then I had an interesting discussion with Richard Hillman, one of the teachers I work with in London who said “Dogme can be just as restrictive as using course books because students are restrained by their own lack of language and that of other students”. Food for thought. 

I don’t like Dogme because Dogme has rules and I don’t like rules

Michael Swan and Catherine Walker

 Not all grammar “pops up” – continuing on from what Richard said, Swan and Walker said sometimes you need to impose the language on the students. They said not all students need the same grammar at the same time. Very true. TBL is not enough sometimes. Students need “explicit teaching”. The moment when a grammar point does “pop up” , this is the moment for a pause (Luke Meddings) , or a “grammar focus”, which is very often a teacher led grammar presentation. Catherine Walker said that there is evidence that grammar presentation works and referred to guided discovery, examples, texts, short texts with relevant examples. Students make up their own grammar gap fills, personalize at all costs . Dogme anyone or just good grammar teaching ?

Then it was time for Renata Franco and Melanies talk “Who is a legitimate English speaker?”

They talked about power structures and students own communities. They talked about rethinking the traditional power structure of ELT. I thought about course books so rooted in western British culture – whose culture? – while I was listening to them. They focused specifically on delayed feedback to encourage confidence, “creating empathy is key” they said, giving students control over their own material, recording themselves. Student centred lessons. Dogme anyone or just culturally aware teaching?

I thought about course books so rooted in western British culture – whose culture?

Even the eminent Neuroscientist James Zull , the plenary speaker on Friday, said,in his talk “A brain-based model for human learning” that the most important thing for learning is “ownership”, “stimulation” and “practice”. He also talked about learning by forgetting, abandoning things that don’t work”. Dogme anyone or just understanding learning?

 Someone said to me later that day and I’m sorry I can’t remember who, that although he didn’t agree with everything connected to Dogme, he, “liked the buzz around it. The slightly dangerous edge which is evident even now in 2012”…. twelve years later. I know what he means.

 He liked the buzz around Dogme. The slightly dangerous edge which is evident even now in 2012

So is the word Dogme just being bandied about to describe good teaching, good management, free thinking, quality teacher training, sensitive response to students, intelligent syllabus design and so on? Is it a one-size fits all word? which anyone can use to describe whatever stage they are at in their teaching life ? Is it as Jim Scrivener says just “an attempt to answer everything?”. Or is it (or has it become) a kind of trigger word much like “hippy” or “champagne socialist” or “facebook” or “cunt” or “coffee coloured” or “fat” or “born again” … words which are sure to provoke a reaction and get a discussion going whether positive or negative?. It’s twelve years on and we still haven’t stopped talking about it …… people are still arguing about it. A bit like religion really.

Hmm, Dogme? Very young learners?

What am I thinking about at the moment? A quick glance at the previous posts list on my blog would suggest younger learners. An accurate guess.  In fact, the last six months has been a roller-coaster ride learning experience of teachingchildren ages 7-10 – an age for the most part alien to me until coming back to Italy.

Here it’s big business, young learners. While numbers in business and general English are falling, there has been some quite substantial growth in the number of younger learners whose parents or schools are taking the initiative and signing their children up for class. In short, it’s an area of teaching that an EFL teacher in Rome would be a fool not to start specialising in.

If you’ve glanced at my blog since its inauguration February last year, you may be aware that I’m part of the Dogme crowd, a dogmetician. You may have also asked yourself as I have, “but does this guy do Dogme with his younger learners too?”. Not yet, I respond.

“Does this guy do Dogme with his younger learners too?”

 Of course, that’s not to say that it would be impossible. Nevertheless, it appears rather necessary to err on the side of caution.

With very little experience of low levels at young ages, it would seem of paramount importance to to understand your environment before embarking on a Dogme journey. Absolute folly, some would say, “younger learners need structure”, “activities and worksheets add the all-important balance that settles”, “songs and rhymes make lessons more fun and interactive”, “learning styles and student preferences need to be catered for”. Well articulated arguments and very convincing, each one.

These are well articulated arguments, and convincing ones

 You might ask, what have you been doing then?

• Lesson structures: including feedback routines, classroom layout, stir-and-settle activities.
• Different activities to appeal to a variety of learning styles
• Techniques of using flashcards to teach vocabulary
• Using well-designed materials well: one sheet per one-hour lesson, preferably
• Using songs, chants and jazz-chants
• Drama and miming activities
• Helping students with different problems: behavioural, pronunciation, word formation (without using their more formal names).
• Classroom management: giving positive and negative feedback on behaviour
• Functional language for the classroom.

In this post, I suggested that a newly qualified teacher could and even should try a Dogme lesson. By no means am I planning on retracting anything. I do however think it is important to add that this post dealt with adult classes. Anyone experienced with both will agree with me that they are two completely different kettles of fish. Preparation is important.

I suggested that a newly qualified teacher could and even should try a Dogme lesson. By no means am I planning on retracting anything.

Last Monday, a Dogme lesson happened in my 8 year-old class of Quinta Elementare. I’d like to share it with everyone. I think it’s important to note that before the lesson, I had a plan and materials that I fully intended on using.

1. Last week students had cut out and stuck in pictures of furniture to make their bedrooms. Seated in a circle, I used a student’s book to review the vocabulary from the week before. First with pictures, then spelling the words on our backs, then lip reading.

2. When in the last stage, a student said, “I’m in my room, I sleeping”, another asked me from the same group “how do you say gioacare al wii in English?”. At that point, I decided on running with this language for a bit.

3. I split the class into four groups. Two groups were to wait outside the room (A + B) (there’s a hall-monitor to look after them outside) The other two thought of an action they do in their rooms (C + D). Groups C and D could ask me in Italian for the action if they needed it. Once decided, representatives from group C and D mimed their actions separately to students from A and B. One by one, each student came in, watched the action and copied it. Another student then came in to whom the previous student mimed the action. At the end we guessed the actions.

4. Sat students in groups of 4 and we mimed actions in our rooms together. I moved around helping with various difficulties and noting down some of the actions. I also made an effort to model the present continuous, which I would say 75% of students started using.

5. We then moved to the board and recalled the actions we had mimed. I wrote “I’m in my room” on the board and wrote the actions given to me by students:

“I’m in my room”

“I’m getting dressed”

“I’m playing on the computer”

“I’m looking at my A.S Roma poster”

“I’m reading my favourite book”

“I’m watching television”

“I’m playing on my Wii”

“I’m sleeping in my bed”

6. I then asked students to go and draw themselves doing three actions in their rooms they’d designed the lesson before and write what they are doing. I then gave them the question “what are you doing?” and they shared their actions with each other, asking the question and responding. I circulated helping students that had more difficulty with prounciation, using some cuisenaire rods to show the different words.

7. I had written a chant in the meantime and had some cuisenaire rods with me. At the end of the lesson we sat in a circle and sung the following song, with different coloured rods for (I’m) (watching) (television) for example.

The chant was:

In my room, In my room!

What are you doing?

In my room, In my room!

I’m getting dressed!

In my room, In my room!

What are you doing?

I’m sleeping in my bed!

In my room, in my room!

What are you doing?

In my room, in my room

What are you doing?

I’m playing on my Wii!

8. We finished the lesson by filling out our behaviour chart. All smiley faces for lots of English used. Students left the classroom still singing out chant!

Phil Wade’s comment:

WOW! This is good. It’s sort of a mix of kids after school English clubs, drama, music and English classes all mixed in.

From my brief studies at this level I do remember lots of worksheets because we had to cover lots of teaching points. If you take this lesson as covering and practising the present continuous it’s pretty TEFLish. In fact, it’s very much like the ‘foreign language lesson’ I had on the CELTA in that it creates physical and vocal production ahead of written. I think you chose the physical activity well, kids love doing and they need to be active. Physical stuff also goes well with musical activities as you did here. The movement from outside, to groups and mats is also very useful and keeps kids on their toes.

I would only add that maybe you could have had students taking turns in standing up, doing their actions and others copying. It would also be a good opportunity for working on question and negative forms, or maybe you did this at the end of stage 3. Turn this into a ‘guess the action game in 5 questions’ and you’re onto a winner. You could get small groups in circles to choose 1 and then all do it together with 1 student guessing.  Another is to turn it more drama and get students to create a moving scene in a part of the classroom. Then if you introduce the classic ‘freeze’ you can start on past continuous or use ‘change’ and then you get “I was dancing salsa but now I’m doing yoga”. But I think your action drawing was great. A flipbook is good for PC as they can draw things that move with just paper and a pencil for flipping.

Another song you could do is to line students up and ask each to do an action and then see how many people can remember or build it up like the 12 days of Xmas and students must remember the gestures too.

I love circle time, it’s a classic and stems from the beginning of civilisation and storytelling. It’s great to start the day and end it like that, especially with a book or a song. Kids then leave singing and will probably sing all the way home. There are lots of kid groups that teach with music and give kids CDs and song books to revise at home. Have you thought of this? Having a weekly song? They can make instruments and you can either make your own songs based on what you cover or use/adapt classics.

Emi’s Dogme Diary

Emi:

Wow, a lot’s happened since I last wrote. My cloak and dagger have been firmly ditched and I have officially signed my life away to my Dog. He is now definitely in the driving seat. I thought I had been tentatively dogging for a while but now I am not so sure. I feel like I am retraining myself all over again but without a trainer. I am starting to question everything I have been doing over the last 8 years and it’s exciting but hard.

At work we have to teach according to a linear grammar dictated by the book. It is not compulsory at my school to use the book but I am obliged to “do the grammar in the order it comes in the book in order to correspond with other teachers/groups etc”. Language clearly does not work like that and I still feel like I am dictating the form/line the conversations in my class take. I am either “forcing” the students to use certain grammar structures so I can fit with the order of the book or I manipulate the conversation to come round to that grammar structure. Is this so bad? Sometimes it helps, it gives me a starting point after all, but most of the time I feel the learners are not in the driving seat enough for my Dog to be happy. As I write, the pros and cons of this are of course being debated all over twitter and on all the fantastic Dogme blogs that seem to be mushrooming all over the place as well as by many esteemed grammarians of the ELT world.

 

So sometimes my dog runs happily ahead or beside me. Sometimes he is stubborn and difficult. It is, as I am always saying, so much about breaking through the fear and trusting yourself.

How I use language that emerges from my classes:

Testing

One thing I have started to do recently is have a regular Monday morning test. Hardly a radical idea but hard to do when there is rolling enrolment in our school and we have new students every Monday morning.

I often do the spoken vocab test described in Chia Suan Chongs’ IATEFL 2010 presentation where I explain the word verbally and give them the context within which we all heard it last week and the students write it down. New students can ask what we were talking about and everyone can find new contexts for the language that helps recycle it again.

Every Friday I make a written test of new language and grammar that emerged from the previous weeks lessons for use on the next Monday morning. I write gap fills written in the context of the conversations we had last week, scrambled lexis, finish the sentences so they have to remember what their fellow students actually said (I suppose a written version of“What did I just say” from Teaching Unplugged) and pronunciation exercises.

The Monday morning test gives the students an accurate record of the most important language that emerged the week before and it seems to motivate them and it also gives a gentle, calm start to the week. We have 3 hour lessons with the same students every day so there is a limit how interested they can constantly be in each other. Sometimes they don’t want to speak to each other.

Dictation

I have also started regular personal class dictations. This again is hardly rocket science but it works well with low-level learners. I am a great believer in dictation as it focuses students and also gives them a written record of our class conversations not to mention all the other usual advantages of dictation such as listening, spelling, punctuation and so on.

Mini lesson skeleton

Teacher writes summary of conversation held in previous class mentioning all students by name. Includes examples of

emergent new lexis, noun phrases, verb phrases, collocations, gerund/ infinitive agreements, aspect and anything else discussed. Also refer to funny things that happened while we were talking (one of my students fell off his chair in the middle of class last week for example).

·      This is good to do on an IWB or a OHP as low level learners will need to see the correct version.

·      Put gaps in all the relevant places.

·      In the next class (or any time you want to recycle) dictate the text, with beeps for where the gaps are.

·      Ask students to spell their names at the relevant moment. This tends to make them smile and sometimes they have to repeat which is useful especially for very shy and timid learners. A particularly good one to do with a new group so everyone can get used to each others’ names and of course good practice for the alphabet.

·      Depending on level and difficulty of text give them time to check together, show them the original with the gaps and then have them guess/remember what is in the gaps.

·      Then they have to tell their partner what the dictation was about without the text. This may or may not generate further discussion depending on the original topic, mood of students etc.

Here is an example of one I used with a low level class, as you can see there is a lot of repetition, sometimes the same language used in different ways. I have marked in red the language that had emerged from the previous class and was covered over on the IWB as a gap fill.

“ Yesterday in class we talked about future plans and jobs. Esra would like to open a café in Turkey. Emine is planning to renovate her grandmothers’ house and make it into a boutique hotel. Daviti hopes to be a detective, he likes reading Sherlock Holmes. Emanuela and Rustya both enjoy their present jobs but would like to improve their English to use at work. Charlotte is hoping to apply to university in London… etc etc”

I think you get the point. As I said it’s not rocket science but it works well and ensures a good record of the emergent language for everyone. Teacher included.

Dog lovers

I am lucky enough to work for an organization that allows me a lot of freedom and trusts its teachers. I realize not everyone has that chance. Some places you can’t even bring pets in the building. When I started writing

on this blog last August I thought our school was against Dogs – I couldn’t have been more wrong. There are many Dog lovers all around it seems. So much so that head office organized a conference (Open Space Technology) last December that had no pre-prepared timetable. It was arranged to respond to emerging ideas from the attendees (us, the teachers) and bent and adapted itself around these ideas. Some of the questions that came up were: the effect of rolling enrolment on learning and the tentativeidea that scrapping course books may go some way to help this. It had a very clear structure, was very well organized and the emergent language/ideas will provide a lot of material for post-planning but there was no lesson plan in advance. A perfect Dogme lesson methinks. Watch this space Dog lovers!

Phil Wade’s Course Skeleton

Course skeletons I love using Dale’s skeleton idea for classes because it lets you create or adapt a basic lesson format which can be used, reused, adapted for different levels, topics, learners etc. This ‘bare bones’ approach also lets you ad on anything in your ‘teacher toolkit’ as it is referred to a lot nowadays.

While, this approach seems great for one-off or general classes, the question of (as with much Dogme-related work) how well will it work in formal/academic situations is another matter. Well, being an ‘all or nothing’ kind of guy I have jumped feet first into this predicament with Scott Thornbury and Luke Meddings under one arm, well a copy of their Teaching Unplugged, an assortment of board pens and paper in the other. Trial and error, hit and miss, pass and fail. I’ve probably experienced all of them but now that I’m planning another lengthy uni-level course I am confident that a ‘course skeleton’ works, so here are my ideas on what this involves. It feeds off Luke Meddings’ idea of a ‘back pocket syllabus and aims to reduce course planning to 1/2 pages and with it very minimal lesson planning is needed as you keep an ongoing ‘living syllabus’ from reflections after each lesson which feeds into the next.

The course Plan

1)Clarify what the course is, it’s aims

2)What must be taught/learned

3)How long is it?

4)What would the students like to do?

5)What do you think would be useful?

6)How will it be evaluated?

1 page 3 bubble syllabus in progress

1)Draw a bubble and write possible topics

2)In another language/grammar you think needs covering

3)In the last write a few activities you think would work well Make sure to leave space in the bubbles for later additions+amendments

 

 

Lesson skeletons

Write down what sections you would like in each lesson.Such as discussion, writing, language, debate, role-play etc. Try to have about 5 things, So, for me and my new English conversation class I have:

1)Input

2)Pair discussion

3)Group discussion

4)Class discussion

5)Language work

6)Writing

Now, before each class I just arrange/rearrange these as a tentative framework but depending on how the lesson goes I can move them. then I add on my toolkit ideas/activities.

After each lesson add/change your syllabus notes depending on: What works/students like What needs covering more, less What topics/areas would work well in the next class Here’s a sample class:

1)Students watch a video clip (in class or at home)

2)Pairs discuss what it was about and reactions

3)I elicit opinions and then help establish a discussion

4)Groups continue discussion

5)I focus on some areas of weakness on the WB and provide some practice activities

6)I refocus the discussion/topic

7)New groups discuss

8)Pairs write up

As you can see, I used the main elements but extended some of them. In the next class I could choose a topic and actually show a video or give a reading at the end which would help students compare their ideas. In another I could just do a whole class discussion activity or even start with some writing. After this class I would look at my bubbles and add and even change them and then tick of what I’ve done and choose what would be good for the next class. In this way, the syllabus is constantly changing and improving after each class and at the end you have a very concise summary of what has been done, ideal for testing.

Advs

 

Having a basic skeleton helps me keep each lesson similar but different Changing stages helps keep lessons fun and surprising The flexibility lets you choose the next best activity depending how the lesson evolves There is lots of room for personalisation You always feel that you have a plan

 

Dsdvs

You do need to be flexible and let things happen You need to think on your feet A good relationship with your class is important

Education and Dogme

To educate/education is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as the “give(ing of) intellectual, moral, and social instruction to (someone), typically at a school or university.

The route of the word is the latin verb’(e)ducere’, which has a very different meaning from ‘give’: to bring something out that’s inside; ‘tirar fuori ciò che sta dentro’.

This brings me onto my Wednesday and Saturday one-to-one student. He has a master’s in Education and Learning Psychology, studying English to take IELTS next year with a view to moving to Australia. Last week he came to class having completed a big chunk of the exercises in the back of his coursebook. We checked the answers and discussed the difficulties he had. At one point, he started saying to me:

“Sorry, but I looked at the scheme at the front of this book and the exercises at the back. In my opinion, this book is structured in a way that doesn’t introduce things in a schematic way, through different topics we can associate things with to help us learn and memorise, but instead in a linear way to teach you grammar; you start at grammar 1 and finish at grammar 7. I don’t think it’s the right way to learn”

This came as a bit of surprise, I mean, it’s not every day that an intermediate student comes to class and express such a well-though out criticism of the materials he uses. I continued the discussion, asking him questions and joining in the conversation. After about 5 minutes I moved the chat onto how he learns and how one learns more efficiently.

I elicited the stages necessary and boarded them.

I clarified the new lexis for meaning (there was one word he needed for which he needed clarification).

I asked him to write a process using the adverbs we’d looked at the previous lesson to describe a process in the IELTS exam.

I wrote one at the same time on the other board, adding some more difficult phrases like ‘on + verb-ing, once + past participle and participle clauses’.

I then asked him to find where I’d said the same thing as the adverbs in a different way.

We then discussed formality and the use of ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘we’ and decided that we should use a passive instead, so restructured our explanations to include this element.

The lesson then finished, I took his diary which he writes in to me every week and found this:

I’d like to think this explains the second definition of education.

Edublog awards – Best new blog nomination

I’m very honoured to say that this blog has been shortlisted in two categories for this year’s Edublog awards: Best Individual Blog and Best New Blog. First I want to say thank you to all the kind people who voted for it, I’m very grateful for the recognition. Now, if I were to chose between the two categories, I think Best New Blog would be more fitting.

I started blogging last February. The thinking behind the blog was to provide some insight into a Dogme classroom, defining some key bits of terminology while also providing myself with a place to articulate my thoughts. Since then, I realise that it’s not just become a place for me but for other people as well and the all-time views have now racked up to 13,336, which would have been unthinkable 10 months ago. In fact, I have some trouble believing it now. So, if you’ve ever dropped by and liked what you read or been on the receiving end of a good idea (be it from the blog or the comments) then I’d appreciate your votes.

Best New Blog

Finding Your Limits

TD, in my opinion, is the solution to the ‘stuck in a rut’ phenomenon. For those of us who’ve stayed in a job a while or taught the same class again and again and…yawn…again it’s easy to feel stuck and the rut can easily get bigger. Attending a course, a webinar, posting a comment in a discussion group or even just reading a blog are all solutions to getting out of the rut.

But isn’t it just easier to not get in it in the first place? After all, prevention is better than a cure, right? So, continuous TD sounds great and probably brings to mind weekly training or regular seminar attendance but these are external. Reflective practice is internal in that it is you looking at yourself and trying to improve. The only problem here is that after a while you may not address your key weakness; you may be in your comfort zone of having taught pre-int for 3 years.

My argument is that if you really want to start improving get out of your comfort zone. Try a new class, a level, a subject or even just change your approach. We’re always banging on about ZPD and i+1 so why don’t we live it? You can only improve a weakness if you are aware of it and by broadening your scope you’re more likely to find them.

Let’s call them ‘developmental hurdles’. Here’s an example from my first in-house oral English assessments:

Background:

10 minute oral assessments involving basic personal info questions then a text reading/discussion.

Day 1

What I did: Basic Q&A, short reading (4 pars)+gist/detailed/opinion questions

Reflection: Students focused too much on the text and couldn’t demo their true level

 

Day 2

What I did: Basic Q&A, short reading (2 pars)+opinions+related discussion

Reflection: Every conversation was different and developed according to the students’ ability. They all reached their limits and became very passionate about conveying their opinions

 

I had never done this type of testing before and was not happy after the first day because I had not provided an opportunity for the students to demo their true level. But on the second day, I let the conversations flow and pushed the students. The result was that they responded more and more and with greater and greater accuracy, range and ability then by the end they had reached their limit and I could easily measure their real level.

This is one basic example of me pushing myself into a new teaching situation where I discovered a weakness is my approach and was then able to improve it via reflection.

Whether you see it as getting better and better or getting less and less bad is up to you but either way it’s good to try something new from time to time because you never know where it may lead. In my example, I was able to quickly adapt and have a second shot at the task but with bigger TD issues. It may take longer to come up with a solution and it may even take several to find the one that works. In this respect, it may be worth reading about Exploratory Practice by Allright to get a better background.

Phil