Tag Archives: teaching

March 26, 2014

Bytheway (2014) Top 40 creations

Top40

Create language learning activities from Top40 songs to connect to child and teen language learners. Bring their outside-school world into classrooms. Don’t use your favourite ‘old’ songs. Use learners’ hot songs to to increase motivation and build respectful relationships.

Create these activities fast because you’ll throw them out within three months.

Quickly select a song. Is it 1) hot? 2) safe & 3) learnful?

Hot?
Use Google to find the Top40 songs in your country. In the Netherlands, about 35 of the Top40 are in English. Look at how many weeks songs have been in the charts. Teens consider a song old after about three months.

Safe?
Children enjoy many totally inappropriate songs. However in schools, swearing, sex and drugs are out. Use Google to find the lyrics and scan for anything inappropriate. Learners choose our songs and our agreement is that if principle walks in while the song is playing, I will keep my job. We never had any problems.

Learnful?
The song has to be learnful. If something is full of beauty, it’s beautiful; if something is full of learning, it’s learnful. Some say the word I need is educational; however learning and education are different! Know your learners and context and judge what suits your learners’ needs.

Balance the activities using Nation’s Four Strands.

1)      Use input for meaning-focused listening and reading. The learners are familiar with almost all the language. Support understanding by reading the lyrics while listening to the song.

2)      Use output for meaning-focused speaking and writing. Use the lyrics to scaffold speaking or writing activities. Replace words (verbs, nouns, adjectives, prepositions) to create original lyrics with similar structures or use phrases as sentence starters.

3)      Zoom in for language-focused learning. This is new language for the learners. Look at the details of the lyrics (e.g. pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary). Selects aspects for special attention.

4)      Zoom out for fluency development. The learners use language they already know faster and more automatically. Use issues and themes in the song for speaking, writing, listening and reading, activities.

 

Bytheway, J. (April, 2014). Create original language learning activities from Top 40 songs. Presented at 48th Annual International Association of Teaching English as a Foreign Language Conference. Harrogate: IATEFL.
Retrieve Prezi from https://prezi.com/avbqkk6plzwb/

Bytheway, J. (July, 2014). Create Language learning activities from Top 40 songs. Presented at TeachMeetNZ Virtual at the National Conference for Community Language and ESOL. Wellington: TESOLANZ & CLANZ.
Retrieve Slideshare from http://www.slideshare.net/Julie_Bytheway/julie-btw-createlearningtop4020140712.
Retrieve video from http://teachmeetnz.wikispaces.com/Bytheway_Julie

March 13, 2014

Claxton (2008) inside/outside schools

Claxton Claxton, G. (2009). What’s the point of school? Rediscovering the heart of education. Oxford: Oneword Publications.

I read Claxton for relief from my heavy-going reading list, but Claxton’s comparison of learning inside and outside schools was worth reading.

Claxton says schools offer learning just-in-case for its own sake in narrow pre-graded pieces, with prejudged students achievement levels, and smooth learning that avoids mistakes. Whereas, learning outside schools is just-in-time for real achievement in broad complex ungraded contexts, with gradual increasing skills, and steep zigzagging learning filled with risks. Learners outside schools are curious, collaborative, and seek unknown answers.

Historically, schools are monasteries and factories.  As monasteries, schools preside over knowledge, select knowledge, sever knowledge into subjects, dispense knowledge, and examine knowledge. As factories, schools forge standardized subject production lines for batches of students to manufacture workers who will do the bidding of authorities. Successful students copy, memorize and reproduce (soon outdated) knowledge, but are not prepared for our messy complex real-world. However, Claxton proposes Epistemic Apprenticeships with guides who role model learning and encourage learners to be curious, resilient, balance creativity with logic, handle feedback, approach problems calmly, and be emotionally engaged.  Learners need responsibilities, respect, reality, choices, challenges, and collaboration, which is what I strive for, but many students still demand spoon-feeding and prefer to regurgitate pre-packaged knowledge.

I live outside my original learning culture, and even after ten years, occasional culture-clashes surprise me. Here many teachers appear to believe in the fixed intelligence and predetermined achievement levels that Claxton is so against. Beliefs are powerful self-fulfilling prophecies. For me, the basic core of teaching is believing people can learn and then helping people learn. Piaget defines intelligence as knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do. Intelligence is not what learners can do easily: intelligence is how learners respond to unknown and difficult situations. Grit, resilience and perseverance are better predictors of performance than IQ tests. Believing in labels as valid and fixed only encourages people to give up in difficult situations (the Pygmalion effect).

I’ll re-read Building Learning Power soon.