by aeu04117

You’ve probably heard the phrase “Too much of a good thing is a bad thing.” I just read a post that got me thinking a lot about my preferred teaching style which is strongly grounded in what the article would refer to as “Art.”  My lessons tend to be creative and imaginative but, as the post points out, an over reliance on art can create lessons that are interesting to experience, but that could lack learning.

That rings true for me. It’s easy for me to put together a leasson filled with easy to experience content (art). My favorite ingredients: TED videos, or Harvard Blog posts around issues that are meaningful for my students. The classes go great – students engage easily and quickly with the material, lively discussion ensues and then class ends.

Great content. Great conversation and interaction. But did learning REALLY take place? Not necessarily. The sort of class work mentioned above is great when you’re helping students meet fluency development objectives. (Example: B1 Spoken skills: Can understand the main points of clear standard input…” Common European Framework of Reference for Languages )- Standard input: a video or blog post of interest to the student.  But just staying in this kind of class mode will not make much of a difference on the student’s grammar or vocabulary development, for example.

Yes, new words will be encountered when you’re dealing with authentic content, but without careful planning and task time, you will fly over a natural opportunity to include “science” in your lesson.

Effective learning designs then, happen most when that elusive combination of art, science and craft come together. (Instructional Design: Science, Art and Craft by Tomgram)

I need to focus a lot of attention on making sure that my classes have this combination.  Today it worked wonderfully for me. I have a B1 level student, and we’re working through a TED video about employee motivation. One of my student’s greatest weaknesses is being able to understand specific details in natural English speech. He’s pretty good at getting the big idea, but if you ask him for details he quickly falls apart. So here’s what we did:

1. Listen/watch 3 minutes of the video.  Before we began, I let him know that we were going to listen only twice. The first time, his task is to listen for gist. (And any points of personal interest.) The second time, specific information.

2. End of first 3 minutes we talked about what he liked, and the general idea of what was heard.

3. Listen/watch again – focus: specific details, and exact words said. I did a combo of a) letting him know what to listen for, and b) after watching a segment, pause and ask him to repeat back to me – word for word – what was just said.

4. Discussion.

How the elusive combination of Science, Art, and Craft happened:

Art: The video.

Craft: At each pause point, the student had to try out a skill we have been working on: summarizing. I asked him to imagine that I was a coworker who had no idea what was being watched. His job: explain it in his own words. At the start, his attempts at this were painful (both for him and myself.) But as we repeated the process, his confidence and ability soared. Instead of taking 4 to 5 minutes to summarize a 30 second segment, which was the case the first time through, he was packaging it up in 2, and then adding a riff or two of his own to boot.

Science: While not the main focus of today’s class, we did step into the realm of vocabulary development. New words: Intrinsic. Meaningful.  We wrote them up on the board, together with the sentences they lived in during the video, and explored their meaning and how they could be used. By the end of the class, my student was throwing around intrinsic as if it was a word he had mastered ages ago.

It was a very full class, and both teacher and student left confident that learning had happened. (Student said so. Teacher knew so.)

Note to self: Effective lessons are balanced lessons. What do you think?

by MR+G

Stuff our Brain loves to pay attention to: have you ever thought about what your brain wants? Try an experiment today: as you go about your business, try to become aware of what you like to pay attention to. As you walk down the street, or through the mall, or as you surf the internet – what things make you stop and pay attention?

Early in the morning, one of the best ways to get my FULL attention is to let me hear coffee brewing – or better yet: smell it. Bam! Instant focus.

One of the best commercials I’ve ever experienced was a Coke commercial in a movie theatre. Imagine this with me: crowded theatre. The room dims to black. Everything – screen and all. The crowd quiets as they eagerly expect the movie to start -and then the commercial begins.  All is still black – but you begin to hear something. A kitchen cupboard opens, and a glass is set on the counter. You hear a “clink, clink, clink” as ice is dropped into the glass. (My brain instantly starts reminding me that I didn’t buy something to drink.) A second or two later, you hear the swooshing sound of a soft drink being opened….and then the worst: the glug glugging and fizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz of the glass being filled – and then a simple Coke logo appears. That’s it.

Remember: the room is all in black. You see nothing – but thanks to the sounds, you’re completely engrossed in the experience. The only thing that kept me from jumping up to go grab a Coke after the commercial was over was the fact that I hadn’t taken extra cash along.

I normally am not a Coke drinker. But that commercial sure lured me into wanting one.  When was the last time you tried to lure your students into your lesson?

I borrow again from the will power article from yesterday:

… after a long day at the office, we’re more likely to indulge in a pint of ice cream, or eat one too many slices of leftover pizza. (In fact, one study by researchers at the University of Michigan found that just walking down a crowded city street was enough to reduce measures of self-control, as all the stimuli stressed out the cortex.) A tired brain, preoccupied with its problems, is going to struggle to resist what it wants, even when what it wants isn’t what we need. (Blame it on the brain. By Jonah Lehrer)

My point: The brain wants stuff. What would happen if teachers took that into account when they were planning their lessons? Design to appeal to what student brains want – but carefully and skillfully insert what they need.  That way you’ll have complete attention of the brain, while covering necessary course content.  What do you think?

Tip 1 – Stop People from Giving Up:

It takes a long time to learn English. In fact, for most people, it takes years of hard work and extended practice.  Years. Hard work. Extended practice. Not very sexy, right?  And that’s one of the big reasons why so many give up. It’s just too long a process.

Will power, in part, is the ability to stick to a decision you’ve made and persevere until you’ve reached your objective. It’s the ability to say no to impulses or distractors that would move you away from your objective.  For learners of English, a major impulse would be to give up before they reach the end of their course. But have you ever thought that maybe the way your courses are designed and delivered may actually work against you? That your classes may ignore and actually shut down people’s ability to exercise their will power to stick with you?

Idea: Harness the power of your student’s will power to keep them on board. Here’s how:

• Account for Overextension – It’s valuable to remember that your students are focused on a variety of things outside your classroom. Overextension – or trying to take on too many things at once, reduces ability to apply will power. Look at this article: Blame It on the Brain Though the article is talking about New Year’s Resolutions, the idea of paragraph four is interesting: your brain can only focus on a limited number of things at a time

While you cannot remove clutter from your student’s lives, you can and should focus on making your class as attention grabbing as possible.

Stuff our brain likes to pay attention to:

by gwaar

Brains love the Unusual. In fact, if your student’s brain thinks the grammar rules you’re trying to teach are boring, it will actively work to focus on something else more important or interesting. (Blackberry. A pending report that’s due 2 minutes after class is out. An important email that needs to be written. A facebook or twitter update that could be made about how awful English class is today…)

Keep your students on their toes. Bonus points for keeping student brains on their toes as well. How?  Try pictures. Try powerpoint with pictures and minimal words.  Don’t have a laptop or computer in class? Get a magazine like National Geographic, or even your local newspaper.  Your students and their brains are expecting boring. They’re expecting what they’ve always had.  Can you imagine what would happen if you put a large picture like the one on the left up in front of your class and used it to dive into a quick lesson about conditionals?  (If the lady isn’t careful, she’ll go for a swim.)

Do yourself a favor: get into the habit of presenting your lessons as unusually as you can. Your student’s brain will LOVE  you for it. And their new found ability to focus on their English class will mean their will power is loving it too.

What are You doing to harness your student’s will power today?