creating engaging classrooms

 Ok, here's a blog post strictly for Foreign Language teachers: possibly my favourite use of board games in the classroom - using Cluedo* to teach the passive! * Clue for US readers. It may be mildly morbid, but having students play this game (ideally in 3s or 4s) is a great way to have them practise the target language: "I think Dr Black was killed with the gun in the kitchen by Professor Plum." "I suspect Dr Black was murdered with the knife in the dining room by Ms Scarlet." Up the ante by making them mix in modals of hypothesis: "I believe Dr Black may have been killed with the rope in the living room by Reverend Green." Plus, if you want to be really gruesome, you can always introduce the weapon-specific verbs: stab, shoot, strangle, bludgeon, etc.  I like to start off the lesson in role as a police officer, miming locking the door, announcing that there has been a murder and that nobody is leaving until the culprit has been found. A game of ta...

OK, so I'm an English teacher, thus it's pretty easy to get drama into the class. However, I'm not just talking about acting out the texts we study.  Oh no.  Do you have to teach your students to use the passive voice?  OK, so after you have taught the form of the grammar point, set up a crime scene in class, and have them role-play being CSI, awarding points for every correct usage of the passive (e.g. "Buzz Lightyear may have been stabbed with the highlighter sir"). Yet, these kind of role-plays aren't limited to the Language departments. I was doing some training in a bilingual school outside Madrid and persuaded the Geography teacher to give this ago. Walking down the corridor the next day, he dashed out of his room, dragged me in and I was treated to a dramatic rendering of weather patterns: some students were playing the cold front, others area of high pressure, still more storm clouds. It was amazing! Forget the students: I swear I learned more about w...

So you're probably familiar with the word game (not the hideous 1990's alcopop) where one player describes a word and others have to guess it. This is a fantastic game for the classroom, in any subject : it brings loads of energy to the class; practices students' communication and recall skills; embeds key terminology; and, most importantly, gets the students engaged in each other's learning. There's loads of ways to do this, but here's how I play it with large (20+) classes: - divide up the students into teams of 3 or 4; - one player from each team comes to the front; - I show them all the same word (this is important); - in silence, they return to their groups; - I count down "3,2,1,Go!" and they have to explain the word to their groups; - the first person to shout out the correct answer, wins a point for their group. It's worth you, as the teacher, standing in the middle of the room for this, as close as possible to all groups, to avoid accusa...

 Questioning is a core part of teaching. Yet, as you badger away at an individual student, drilling down to see what they know and how deep their learning goes, how do you involve the rest of the class? One finger = agree Students in agreement with the answer/statement/opinion raise one finger. Two fingers = challenge Students who disagree with or want to challenge an answer can signal with two fingers. This is great - how often have you asked another student (or a series of students) only to hear the same opinion as the first student you asked? This way you can immediately jump to the dissenting voice. Three fingers = extend (or build, as I've also seen it called) Students who agree, but for different reasons than stated, or who want to extend the answer, can signal with three fingers. Train your classes to do this as students answer. Suddenly, you can see where the whole class is, and suddenly they are all participating and thus have an even greater reason to invest in listening ...

 Obviously, you know how to play Bingo. So, how to use it to engage your students? Well, I like it for when I either a) have to show a longer video or b) have to read a long text with the class. Playing Bingo thus motivates them to pay attention and scaffolds them to identify key information. It's really no different than giving them a list of questions to answer, except that: 1. You are making a game of it and 2. By creating different Bingo cards you can actually increase the number of questions you can ask. There's loads of variations here: you could have students create their own cards or make them for them; you could have them listen for facts, quotations or types; the possibilities and combinations are endless. Just don't forget to reward the winners...

 Have you ever been on a training session or team building activity where the organisers have kicked things off with an ice-breaking activity called Find someone who...  ? You know, the one where you have to talk to the other participants to find out who has a tattoo, who has back-packed around Australia, who can play guitar. (Tutors, this is great beginning of the year activity, especially if you have vertical tutor groups.) Anyway, this is basically a version of that. I call it a mingle ; it could be called an information exchange. Maybe you know it by another name. Let's say you are planning a lesson and have to give the students a huge amount of information. You could give them a hand out, which they will promptly not read or simple lose; you could dictate it and have them take notes (don't get me wrong - there's a place for this) or you could try a mingle.  Give each student a list of questions and a piece of information. That piece of information answers ONE of the ...