Tag Archives: Groups

Padlet digital noticeboards: ideal for English teachers

As Business English teachers, travelling from company to company, we usually have to make do with the equipment available to us. In some cases, that might not even include a whiteboard or flip chart. If, however, you are lucky enough to have an interactive whiteboard, or even just a projector to hook your laptop up to, you’re ready to make that move from course books and handouts to a more creative ‘connected classroom’.

The range of websites and apps out there is staggering. You can produce everything from podcasts and word clouds to infographics and videos, but what then? You need some way of bringing it all together, a place to save and share your students’ finished work. For this, Padlet.com is ideal.

Padlet lets you create a digital wall, similar to a noticeboard or pin board. You can post content for your students, adding documents, videos and links related to a topic being covered in class or you can create a wall for collaboration and allow students post their work, comments, questions there.

I love it because it’s easy to use and because students do not need to sign up to access walls. You can have multiple padlet walls, one for each group or project. You can customise your wall, make it public or private, pick an address or url for each one and share the link easily. You can choose to be notified when students post something, which is handy if you want to give feedback on homework. I could go on and on.

Watch this video on how to get started:

Some of the many ways teachers can use Padlet:

  • Share content with your students. Have a wall dedicated to each different group. Add anything you see that might be of interest to them, related to their business or the topic being covered in class. This can be used for homework or as a source of further reading for when they have some extra time on their hands and fancy some English practice.
  • Create walls for specific topics. I have walls for things like presentation skills or CV preparation. Students and teacher add relevant content. These walls could potentially be reused again and again.
  • Students create their own walls and use them as a digital portfolio. They save their finished work there. It’s a great way of charting their development and at the end of the course, they can present a selection of their work.
  • Use a wall for team work and brainstorming. The free flow layout allows you to move posted ideas around to categorise them as good, ok or impractical.
  • Have a wall for each course book or course book unit  – students add new vocabulary, links to extra grammar practice, additional texts relating to the unit’s content.
  • Display – photos of art projects, finished essays (stream mode works well for this also).
  • Discussion (stream mode). Post a statement and students give opinions and comment on the opinions of their classmates.
  • Students can each create a wall and use it as a learning diary, a language notebook, or a resource scrapbook. Save links to websites, notes on grammar, vocab lists, inspiring quotes. As walls have no limit to their size, this makes them a great bookmarking tool.
  • Use a wall for introductions at the start of a course. Students can share information about themselves, photos, even post an audio greeting. You could also collectively create a list of everyone’s contact details, so if someone misses class, they have the chance to get in touch with fellow-classmates to find out what they missed.

Go check it out! I’m sure you’ll love it as much as I do.

www.padlet.com

Are you encouraging students to be late?

Evening classes with adult learners can be a real joy. Unburdened by the pressure of exams or a set curriculum, students and teachers are free to explore topics of current relevance or of interest to the individuals in the group. Class sizes range from 4 to 8 students, motivation is high and students share their own experiences adding relevance and life to the lessons.

There are, of course, some challenges. One common problem here is punctuality. As students are coming to class straight from the office, a meeting that overran, a last minute conference call or an accident on the motorway all cause delays. Teachers often start these classes off by asking students how their weekend was, if they are busy at work or what plans they have for the coming weekend. The logic is that it gives students a chance to warm up and settle in, while allowing time for late-comers to arrive before the real business of grammar or vocabulary begins. You go around the class and ask each of the 4 or 5 students present for their contribution. It might only take a few minutes, but it might also throw up some interesting vocabulary or grammar review opportunities.

I’ve seen the ‘How was your weekend’ Warm-up in numerous lesson observations and experienced it as a student in evening classes for Spanish. I do it myself from time to time. But if punctuality is an issue, you might have to reassess the impact this low-key, relaxed intro is having on your class. What message does this type of warm-up activity give?

Starting the lesson with general chit-chat can signal to students that it is OK to arrive late. If the actual ‘teaching’ does not start for 10 or 15 minutes, they may feel that being a little late will not hinder their progress. After all, they are not missing much.

Screen Shot 2014-06-11 at 12.14.37

To counteract this, we should ensure that the content of the class is just too important to miss.

I read somewhere about a study in America which showed that introducing some type of mental warm-up at the beginning of every class increased the number of students arriving on time. An example would be a question or dilemma for them to work out alone or in pairs. This ‘Welcome – Get Working’ intro has more of an impact.

Here is a selection of easy tasks to get students working as soon as they sit down. They can be done as 5 minute writing activities or pair work discussions. Adapt them to suit your lesson objectives. If you choose the pair work option, assign students partners as they come in. ‘Hi Stefan, nice to see you. You’re going to work with Tina today.

This prevents them from all sitting in exactly the same seats every week,  working with the same partner and rolling their eyes in despair if you ask them to try out a different seat/vantage point sometime. (Do all adults do this or is it just a local phenomenon?)

1. What’s the question?

Students come up with inventive ideas for questions that can be answered with the word given. Write 3 ‘answers’ on the board, or give them one ‘answer’ and ask them to come up with 3 questions. The answer is ‘often’. What’s the question?

The answer is ‘before you go’. What’s the question?

The answer is ‘with a monkey’. What is the question?    

Suggested solutions: Have you ever tried kangaroo meat? When should you apply for a visa to visit China? How did the man get the coconuts down from the tall tree?

2. Dilemmas

Jot down some ideas and then discuss with your partner.

Would you rather be good-looking or rich?

Which is better: the power to read minds or the power to be invisible?

 

3. Brain teaser

There are a lot of sites dedicated to these online. Look for brain teasers, riddles etc.

What 5-letter word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it?

The more you take, the more you leave behind. What are they?

It’s a stormy night and a plane takes off from JFK airport in New York. The storm quickly worsens and the plane crashes – half of it lands in the United States and the other half lands in Canada. In which country do you bury the survivors?

(Answers are at the bottom of the post.)

4. Review of last lesson

List three things you remember from the last lesson/ 3 key words from the last lesson. Share with your partner and explain why you think they are important.

5. Ideas for introducing the topic.

Pairs. Put 20 words on the board, somehow related to topic or taken from text you are going to read together. Students make as many pairs as they can in 2 minutes. Must be able to justify each pair. Justifications can be simple (both start with an s) or more complex. They then try to guess what the topic is.

Topic Test. A word or phrase related to the lesson on the board. Students have one minute to write down words related to the topic or facts they already know about it.

Missing letter note. Ask students to rewrite a note/sentence without using a particular letter. Example:

Rewrite ‘Your dinner is in the dog’ without using the letter ‘d’.

Rewrite ‘Don’t dare touch my pint‘ without using the letter ‘t’.

Suggestions: Your evening meal has been eaten by our canine pet. Rover, our animal pal, was scoffing your lovely supper.

Laying a finger on my lager would be a serious error. Hands off my beer.

 

These type of intros grab people’s attention, get them immediately interested and active, and show students that by being late they are missing out.

What kind of intro or warm-up do you do?

Post a comment to add to the list.

Punctuality never goes out of fashion.
Punctuality never goes out of fashion.

 

While I’m at it, here are some activities to end the lesson with. Continue reading Are you encouraging students to be late?

'You what?' Name game with follow-up interview/introduction task.

Icebreaker/ Name game : Dialogue : Introductions

I often use this ice-breaker activity on the first day with a new class. I’ve used it with university students, business classes and even at a teacher training workshop. It makes a change from the usual introduction round of ‘name, job, hobby’ and while there is a bit of fun to it, its educational enough for students who baulk at the idea of ‘games’ in a lesson for adults.

1. The name game.

Write your introduction on the board and highlight the alliteration.

‘I’m Lonely Laura and I like limes’ or ‘I’m Lazy Laura and I lived in London’.

Give students a minute or two to come up with their sentence. Each student will re-introduce the person who went before them, and then add their own introduction. If they are stuck for ideas, allow them to ask their neighbour. Begin and go around the circle.

Example:

Student 1 – ‘She’s Lonely Laura and she likes limes. I’m Fit Frank and I fry fish.’

Student 2 – ‘He’s Fit Frank and he fries fish. I’m Courageous Caroline and I cuddle cats.’

There will be a few laughs, particularly if people have been especially creative or the participants know each other.  When everyone has spoken, you can point to a few different students and ask the group ‘who’s this?’ Continue reading 'You what?' Name game with follow-up interview/introduction task.