“Teacher, Nooo, No Books Please!”
These teaching tips are meant for groups of Young Learners & Teenagers
Even though most textbooks nowadays are colourful, with updated material, interesting activities and some of them even bring stickers, still, your students as well as mine, have that dreadful feeling of " Oh, nooo, no books, let's play a game instead!"
It makes sense, they might have enough to do with books at school, they might be tired when they get to the academy and ... most importantly, it's in their nature to play games!
Therefore, let's play!
I always start my class with a word game or an interactive activity that is, in fact, a competition between two teams and I reward them with money as explained in MONEY CHALLENGE?
Afterwards, as they are already in the play mode I take my book (Activity or Pupil's Book) and ask them to search for the picture of...for example, a watering can!
"€5 if you can find the watering can!"
They all get impatient to open their books and search for that picture to get the money. Sometimes they don't even know the word, even better! They learn new vocabulary either from you or from one of their classmates that will explain the object to them: it's something that we use for watering our flowers, it can be made of metal or plastic, etc.
Well, depending on the level of your students, you can tell them to search for something more in particular: a pair of white and blue socks, a pattern on a T-shirt, a particular detail in a painting, a symbol, a stain etc. Use pictures from the covers of the book as well!
I try to find those minor, almost invisible details for them to search for and, if they spend more time searching, I tell them "€10 if you find it quickly, you need to pay attention to details in life!" And it's true, isn't it?
Some other times I let them choose the picture and if it's difficult to find, I raise the reward from €5 to €10 to €15 to €20.
After a few turns I ask them to search for a picture that is on the last page we've done and afterwards I try to engage them in the first exercise pretending to be super excited about either how interesting that exercise is or how easy will be for them to do that exercise as we've worked exactly that concept the other day.
If it's a really difficult exercise then I tell them that they can work in groups, in one book and I'll give €20 for the first team that finishes the exercise and it's correct. Team-work, right?
Afterwards, one of the members of the winning team reads the exercise to the rest of the class and they jot down the answers in their own books.
If they work individually then I set a reward for the first one that finishes the exercise and it's correct.
Another variation of this activity is to ask them to search for words, expressions or short phrases only from the pages they have already worked from, this way they review vocabulary & use of English! ??
Honestly, it works wonders this approach!
I would love to hear about how you engage your students in working on the textbooks, because SHARING IS CARING, isn't it?
More teaching tips here