Yesterday we finally finished the activity, and I’m quite surprised about a few of the results that came from the experience.

1. Main Ideas were Understood: when we first began the activity last Tuesday, only three of my five students were in class. Yesterday, everyone was there. So before we began the final few minutes of the audio, I invited the students who had heard the first half to give a briefing to the ones who were not there. Happily, they were able to quickly pass along the main ideas of what he had heard with just a little bit of peer help and coaching.

2. Questions to gather more information: when an idea wasn’t clear enough, I was really happy to see the “new” students asking questions to get more information from the ones doing the explaining. “Hmmm, I’m not too sure what you mean by…” “Sorry, I don’t understand.” That was great too.

3. Everyone had something to contribute: at the end of the audio, we launched into a free for all discussion around the 4 main points we had been listening for. One interesting thing I noticed: everyone had something valuable to say or add to the discussion. Not all was 100% fluent or spoken with perfect grammar, but there was excitement in the room. People said what they REALLY thought vs what they knew would be a correct answer. Even my weaker ability students had some great things to say which demonstrated their understanding of the material. (And I think they felt pretty good about sharing it!)

4. They Asked for More: The best part of my class was near the end. A few of my students asked for a copy of the audio so they could listen to the whole 56 minutes of it on their own. They quickly ran for their usb sticks, and waited after class for me to pass it along to them. Interest and confidence (I CAN listen to this!!) were high enough that they asked for more. That part was SO cool for me.  THEY asked for more. THEY wanted to challenge themselves. THEY FELT THEY COULD DO IT.

So as I concluded in the previous post, I will be doing complex audio again in my class. I think that if you can get the “how to deliver it properly to lower level students” handled correctly, and if you find material that is of interest to your students, you’ll also see some pretty amazing results. And I think your students will thank you for it, too. What do you think would happen if you used complex audio in your lower level classes?

(Photo by jekert gwapo)

To be honest this turnover was not planned. I had prepped to run the session, and the whiteboard but as we dove into the exercise the thought hit me: what would happen if the students ran the activity?

I went with it.

At first the students were a little taken by surprise, but they sure did well once they got over the initial shock of having to take over the session.

Results:

• The facilitator had to start, organize, and run the entire session in English which forced him to call upon skills we have worked only a little with. (Opened my eyes to a whole new arena of underdeveloped classroom focus: English needed to run a meeting, to referee participants, breaking complex ideas into bite sized chunks for note taking on the whiteboard, spelling, and confidence in front of groups.)
• Participants were also forced out into a new role: idea givers. (Brainstorm activity.) We’ve never tried something like that before, and it was interesting to see my students grope around for creative solutions to propose.
• Debating. I know you’re not supposed to debate ideas given in a brainstorm activity, but the fact that my students were able to engage each other and defend/criticize their own ideas brought a smile to my face.

I’ll be doing this again, that is for sure. And best of all, after the class was over, all of my students agreed that it had been a hard session, but one that they felt was of great importance. To quote one student:

“Leading a meeting is hard enough in your own language, but when you have to do it in English it’s a whole other thing.This was hard, but really good.”

So have you ever thought about giving your whiteboard and markers over to your students? Would you share what happened?

Keep it short. I’ve heard some clients say that their conference calls go on and on and on. Hours. That’s far too long to pay attention, and far far too long if English is not your first language. Conference call classes should be short. The one I just finished lasted 30 minutes. It was filled with energy, and my student had no trouble following our activities. Respect your audience’s attention span, and keep your classes short.

Keep it focused. Planning is key here. Make sure you have your activities well planned out in advance. (And be prepared to email content to participants as a backup plan – tech glitches always happen.) Know exactly what you want to do, and explain it to your participants BEFORE your session begins. (Show were you intend to go.) Avoid deviations.

Keep activities short, and varied. Again, to gain and maintain attention of your participants, I think it’s a good idea to keep your activity roster full and varied. Today I was working with an actuarial manager. We worked through a 4 paragraph section of a large article about teleunderwriting. Our main focus was on taking graphical information, and reporting it back as if he was doing a presentation. I modeled the style of language we were looking to work with: “According to the graph, the number of truthful answers gathered on the survey was x%.” (This part alone took us a while to get down correctly.)

After student was comfortable with the target language, I turned him loose on the real graph info from the article. I made sure my instructions were simple and specific: look at the graph, and tell me about the % of respondents who answered truthfully. (Article dealing with effectiveness of teleunderwriting vs. traditional Face to Face interviews.)  It took us a few attempts, but after a minute or two, my student was flowing smoothly through the different percentages on the graph. (It’s so interesting to see how in the practice part of the class, the student picked up the target language pretty easily. When faced with “the real thing” there seemed to be a bit of hesitation. Reality intimidates, so building as much realia into the class is added value for student!

10 minutes later, we were ready for a switch. My student writes English emails on a regular basis, so that was our next direction. The online presentation system I work with has a built in chat section on the page. Again, I started with a simple explanation of what we would be doing: I explained out loud that we’re going to work on writing. I will send you a short info request via the chat section. (I wrote something like: Juan, please let me know about the percentage of truthful vs untruthful responses from the teleunderwriting survey.)

I set up the situation orally:  imagine you’re writing an email to your head office to report this information. And he was off. After a minute or two, I had my response. There were a few mistakes, but he got his message across pretty clearly.

Dealing with errors. The text I got back had two minor mistakes. I opened a fresh whiteboard page on my meeting site, and gave my student access and the ability to edit the document. I then pasted his first response into the page, and let him know there were two minor mistakes, emphasizing them as I repeated his answer back to him. As he spotted his mistakes, I invited him to do a real time rewrite of his work.

Class ended as soon as he finished.

30 minutes flew by quickly, but they were on target, focused, and 100% helpful for the student.

Always be Checking in: final, and perhaps vital thought: When leading a teleconference class, always let your students know what you’re about to do. “Ok, now I’m going to scroll down to page 3, paragraph 2.” or “We’re going to switch over to x page now.”  - And always check in before you begin: (you finish scrolling, page switching etc,) then say something like: So does everyone see X on your screen? Await confirmation from everyone before you proceed. Sometimes connection lag can slow things down for your participants. What you see on your screen, may not yet be the same for them. Always be checking in.

What do you do to make your teleconference classes effective?

So does an unfollowed plan, or an altered plan, mean that that plan failed? 

Plans that change are not failed. I know that one thing is true: if you don’t plan, you’ll have little to no idea of where you should be going. Without a plan, you’ll wander, and that’s never a great idea. And this is true in classrooms, in business, and in life in general. Planning helps you act on your environment vs having your environment act on you.

But plans need to be living creatures, not something set in stone.

Richard Rumelt: ….Someone in the introduction of their book wrote that if you don’t have a clear vision of the future ten years hence, you’re not managing. I couldn’t disagree more. I think if you have a clear vision of the future ten years hence, you’re a psychotic.

Lowell Bryan: It’s a hallucination, it’s not a vision.

Richard Rumelt: It’s a hallucination, that’s right. Good strategy is more like surfing a wave than having this clear vision of the future. You’ve got to find a wave of change. The way we make money in business, typically—if we’re not sitting on a stable brand—is we find a wave of change that we can exploit. And we ride it with skill. It’s not about having a lockstep plan. It’s about figuring out which forces we can harness or ride to our benefit. (Taken from Setting strategy in the new era: A conversation with Lowell Bryan and Richard Rumelt )

I love this idea: planning (strategy) is like"surfing a wave."  How well do we do this in our classrooms? What if you thought of your students as a wave, that they have the possibility to influence the direction of your class? What would happen?

Planning is still relevant. You still need to have an idea of where you need to go – though that destination my change depending on what your students are showing you as you progress together.

Example: I have a student who has been working at the B1 (intermediate) level. We have been working towards the following writing CEFR objective:

The plan:

• Being able to understand short newspaper articles. 

 I had prepped a few newspaper articles and comprehension questions/activities for our classroom work.

What Really Happened: I arrived to class and found that my student had his laptop open on the meeting room table. As I sat down, we exchanged greetings and some small talk, and then he drove straight to his need: dealing with a flood of English emails that needed immediate attention.

My plan was changed instantly, and remained changed for several weeks as I  followed my student’s direction. The origional plan of working with a few news articles went out the window – but my objectives did not. My student was intensely focused on reading and understanding some emails, so I adjusted my plan to this new reality. I developed comprehension questions on the fly – dealing exactly with the material he had on hand. Written comprehension exercises (writing the answers to those mails) morphed into discussions, where my student had to actually explain his answers to me, and all the intricate ins and outs of what the email was actually about.

So, what would have happened if I decided to force my plan on my student: ignoring his reality? What would have happened – and I  borrow from the surfing analogy here – if I had decided to chuck my surf board out the window, choosing instead to walk against my student’s wave?