Changudoaz!

As part of a more concerted effort to improve my teaching (which has become a little lazy recently) I thought I'd record things that are going well in the classroom. I planned to do one every day this week. So far, so good in that respect.

D1 (Diploma Foundation Class 1 - English for Special Purposes)
This class has 22 students, which is quite a lot for this kind of teaching (16 is generally regarded as the perfect class size). Unlike yesterday's class, the D1 students will quickly let you know if they find your teaching a bit dull. They are very bright and some of them speak fluent English which is great for classroom banter, but not so great for the actual teaching of the syllabus as they bore very quickly of it.

'Taking a Message' (where they listen to an answering machine and jot down the key information) worked okay as I upped the challenge level and asked them to write what they heard word-for-word. They got into it to some extent, but on reflection it would have worked much better if I had prepared a worksheet to give the task a little more structure. My instructions were a bit hit-and-miss too, which didn't help.

For vocabulary reviewing I turned to PowerPoint. I love using PowerPoint in lessons as it's so easy to devise something fun and engaging without the need for hundreds of bits of paper. Every classroom has a projector and a computer so at the very least, it would be a waste not to do something each lesson using them.

I gave each team (3 or more students) a piece of paper which the numbers 1-20 and asked them to think of a team name. I then proceeded to show 20 different pictures (from previous lessons) on PowerPoint, each one animated to appear and disappear every 5 seconds. The reason this activity works so well is that they have to scribble down as much as they can and then help each other afterwards to complete the sheet. By working together, they get to correct their spelling and help each other with difficult vocabulary. After the second viewing, I then take the papers off them, redistribute to the other teams and then go through the answers as they mark their competitors papers.

It was great fun and they really get in to the whole competition element. This group, comprising of Mahfooda, Hanan, Muneera and Hiba called themselves 'Changudoaz' which they said was Swahili for 'beautiful girls'. They were the winners with a pretty impressive 16/20 and received a grudging round of applause from the rest of the class. When I explained what I was doing with my 'blog' this week, they were delighted to get in front of the camera and be part of it (they are very blippable and you may recognise the middle two from previous entries).

After I thanked them for the shot, I asked them again how to spell their team name when they started laughing sheepishly.

"Changudoaz doesn't mean beautiful girls does it?" I asked.
"No teacher, it means prostitutes!" they replied.

I kid you not.




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I've got a 'Year Ago' blip! (It doesn't happen very often).