Editorial
“Using Circles in the ELT Classroom” comes from "English Language Teaching Matters" by Michael Berman, Mojca Belak, and Wayne Rimmer (O Books, 2011).
Using Circles in the ELT Classroom
Michael Berman, UK
Michael Berman works as a teacher, teacher trainer, and writer. Publications include The Power of Metaphor for Crown House, The Nature of Shamanism and the Shamanic Story for Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and All God’s Creatures: Stories Old and New for Pendraig Publishing. ELT publications include a resource book for teachers on storytelling, In a Faraway Land, and On Business and for Pleasure - a self-study workbook for Business English students. E-mail: michaelberman@blueyonder.co.uk, www.Thestoryteller.org.uk
Menu
Weekly Rounds
Spiral Learning
Musical Chairs
Mind-Mapping
Chinese Whispers
Name Learning
Lazy Eights
The Describe-in-the-Round Game
The Rain Game
Circle Dancing
The Circle of Compliments
Full Circle
Spokes of the Wheel
The String Tossing Game
Circling your Brain Size
The Affirming Circle
Finally
Bibliography
The idea is for everyone to sit in a circle and to take it in turns to say how they are feeling and what they would like to have more or e are really getting what they want. And if the answer is “no”, then the session provides an opportunity to bring about change. After such a feedback session, a programme can be planned for the following week taking everyone’s views into account.
The person who is talking holds a talisman or a Talking Stick, which is passed round the circle. Whoever holds the Talking Stick cannot be interrupted. This way everybody gets to talk when it is their turn. People can talk about anything they want, but nothing that is said may be repeated elsewhere. This helps people talk honestly. The Native American Talking Stick reminds us that to speak is a privilege. Words are sacred. They are magical. They can be builders or destroyers and they can bring peace or pain. For many people the tongue is the most intransigent organ of the body, seemingly with a will of its own. To select one’s words with care and thoughtfulness is to speak in a sacred manner. The Talking Stick helps us awaken from the stupor of too many words and of good words that have been used in evil ways. It is one of the most important tools of the circler.
Instead of linear instruction, where the learning is introduced once, then never again, spiral instructions can help to activate knowledge into meaning. A single topic might be brought up four or five times. This is also known as layered learning. Past learning is part of the learner’s perpetual maps. Therefore, the learner needs to integrate into the new learning what they know or it may not be accepted.
The following version of the game is an effective way of putting the Total physical Response approach into practice with young learners. If there are sixteen people, then use fifteen chairs, which they walk around in circles. When they hear a word that does not fit into the lexical set being presented, they should sit down on the nearest available chair. Whoever is left standing is out, and the number of chairs is then reduced again by one. The process continues until only one chair is left and the winner is found.
These webbed, thematic, graphic organisers offer colourful peripheral thoughts organised around a key idea, often in the form of a circle, and provide an excellent vehicle for understanding associations of ideas. They were popularised by Tony Buzan, Michael Gelb and Nancy Marglies.
Researchers who have studied the use of graphic organisers have found that they do, indeed, help learners understand and recall information better, but they have to be personalised. The mind maps the learners produce can be used for peer teaching purposes to review the material covered.
Write a sentence on a card in large readable letters, a tongue-twister perhaps, then place it face downwards on your table. Whisper the utterance once only to the person next to you, who then repeats the process with his/her neighbour. Work round the circle until you come to the last person who says the utterance aloud to the group. This can then be compared with the original version on the card.
This works rather like the children’s game “I went to market” and can be used as a First Day activity. “My name’s Michael and I’ve got no hair. I’d like you to repeat the information I’ve just given you, and then add your own name and a sentence about yourself.” If necessary, you can provide a skeleton on the board as a model:
Your name’s _____ and you _____
My name’s _____ and I _____
Singing can also be used with a new class to introduce members to one another. One member begins by singing their name to the group and the group responds by repeating it just as it was sung.
This is an activity used on Brain Gym to connect left and right brain and to improve motor co-ordination. The idea is to trace the shape of a figure eight in the air with one arm extended in front of you and the thumb pointing upwards. Try this with both arms independently and then with both your hands clasped together. Brain Gym, also known as Educational Kinesiology, was developed by Paul E. Dennison in the 1970s and involves the use of movement to enhance learning potential. It has been found that by carrying out such activities prior to reading/writing tasks, performance can be greatly improved.
Invite the students to sit in a circle and give a picture to one of them. Ask that person to make a simple sentence describing the picture – “There’s a woman,” for example. The picture is then passed on to the next person, who repeats the sentence and adds to it – “There’s a woman and she’s sitting on a camel.” Continue round the circle, with the learners either adding to the original sentence or adding new ones, until somebody forgets something. Although this is quite challenging at lower levels, the person speaking has the picture and this acts as a prompt.
This not only caters for Naturalist Intelligence but will also appeal to those who learn from movement and get restless when obliged to keep still.
The class stand in a circle, facing the middle and the “conductor” of the activity. By copying the movements made by the conductor, which are listed below, the effects of a storm can be created to set the scene for a role play or perhaps a story. It takes the form of a “Mexican wave” in that the participants only perform the actions when the conductor turns to face them and the conductor is constantly turning on the spot:
- Rub hands together (the wind)
- Snap fingers (the rain)
- Slap hands on thighs
- Stomp feet (full-blown storm)
Then the order is reversed as the storm blows past:
- Slap hands on thighs
- Snap fingers
- Rub hands together
- Silence
There follows an alternative version of the game, suitable for larger classes:
The participants start by tapping two fingers together, the point/index fingers. Then after a few seconds, four fingers together, then six, then eight. Then, back down to six, four, two. With a large group of rain makers, it can sound like a hurricane!
The Circle can also be used for dance. Circle dance has grown out of the European traditional folk dance community, thanks to a German dancer, Bernard Wosien, who believed that many traditional dances were being lost to modern culture. He travelled through western and eastern Europe collecting and annotating an enormous repertoire of circle dances, which he speculates were the first form of dance. In order to ensure their preservation, he brought them to the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland, which now serves as the guardian of the repertoire.
The story behind these dances is a living, evolving story, as is the case with any art form based in folk traditions. These dances have the power to transport the participants back to a time characterized by a greater sense of community and an understanding of our relationship to the natural world – a time when people still lived in villages and great forests still stretched across Europe. Some of the dances are so old that their origins are long since lost. All that is known is that they were preformed among the great standing stones of Gaul or in Armenian mountain villages. These dances give form to our images of that time, which rest in our collective unconscious, and the lyrics that accompany the music provide an opportunity to experience the oral traditions and poetic verse through which culture and history were communicated and preserved. In all of this the dances enable those who take part to experience celebration, a sense of community, grounding, affirmation, and healing – all so badly needed in today’s world.
Not to worry if you have two left feet because the dances can be very basic and the main purpose is to get into communication. For example, there is a very simple dance that involves everyone moving their left foot to the left on the first beat and bringing their right foot beside the left on the second beat. As in the case of all ceremony, the most powerful process is often the one you create yourself.
The teacher’s role as a facilitator involves creating a supportive environment in which learners can feel good about themselves and produce their best work, where they feel safe to experiment and take risks. The Circle of Compliments, described below, is designed with this aim in mind. It was adapted from an idea in Handing Over by Jane Revell and Susan Norman, published by Saffire Press.
The idea is for everyone, teacher included, to form a circle. Working clockwise or anti-clockwise, take it in turns to tell the person next to you something you like about them. Alternatively, everyone can speak as and when they feel ready to do so. The Circle can be used to help bring a group together or as a closing ceremony at the end of a course. As a lead-in to the activity, you might like to pre-teach the following language:
I really like/love
the way you
I’d like to thank you for
What I really appreciate/enjoy is your sense of humour
I think you’ve got a really good/great dress sense
You’re really good at
making people laugh
You’ve got a great way of
It can be used for reviewing vocabulary. Write the words for review with their meaning on the board. Tell half the class their job is to remember all the words and meanings. Meanwhile, give the other students one of the words each and ask them to write a question that will elicit the word, e.g. towel – what do you use to dry yourself with after a bath?
The learners then stand in two circles. The inner circle with questions faces the outward, and an equal number of students face inwards on the outer circle. The members of the inner circle ask their questions and the members of the outer circle answer.
Then all the learners on the outside move round one place to answer another question, and so on until all have had the chance to answer all the questions. To make the activity more competitive, students can keep a count of the words they got right and the person with the most words wins the fabulous mystery prize!
The learners form the “spokes” of the wheel and the teacher is in the centre. When one of the spokes needs help, they turn to the person closest to the centre in their line. That person has a dictionary, preferably an English-English one. If that person needs help, s/he turns to the teacher, to pronounce a word, for example.
All you need for this activity is a ball of string and for all the participants to sit in a circle. Decide on a topic and explain that everyone will have an opportunity to say something about it. Start by providing a model, and then throw the ball of string to whoever wishes to speak while holding on to one end. When the first speaker has finished, he / she holds on to the end of the string and throws the ball on to the next volunteer. After everyone in the circle has contributed, the string connects them. The fact that we are all connected and influence one another in the classroom can be demonstrated by tugging on the string. This enables people to see the effect they can have on each other and that each member of the group is a unique and important contributor to the process.
Draw a small circle on the whiteboard indicating your brain size. Then draw a much larger circle, indicating the combined brain size of all the learners in your class. This lead-in can be used to encourage people to share their questions, answers and experiences during your lessons. You are not a guru or a rainmaker and nobody should expect you to be one. Often a member of your class might well have a better answer to a question than you can come up with, especially if you are teaching Business English class where the learners may well know a lot more than you when it comes to their area of expertise, and it is important to remember this so you get things in perspective.
Invite the learners to stand up and form a circle. Give each person a card with one word of the chosen affirmation written on it. Ask them to memorize what is on the card, and then return it to you. The idea is for them to then rearrange themselves into the correct order to produce the complete affirmation. When they think they have found the correct order, they can each take it in turns to go to the board and write their word on it. If there are not enough words to go round, those people without cards can help with the rearranging. Some examples of quotations that could be used for the purpose are presented below:
‘Concentrate only on those moments in which you achieved what you desired, and this strength will help you to accomplish what you want.’
- Paolo Coelho
‘You have the power in the present moment to change limiting beliefs and consciously plant the seeds for the future of your choosing.’
- Serge Kahili King
‘We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.’
- Joseph Campbell
‘It’s only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth … that we will begin to love every day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.’
- Elizabeth Kubler Ross
‘A man can live out his entire life without ever finding more than what was already within him as his Beginning Gift, but if he wishes to grow he must become a seeker and seek for himself the other ways.’
- Hyemeyohsts Storm
Finally, why use circles in the classroom? Perhaps the answer lies in the following verses:
The Almond-Tree
As the kernel of an almond is spoilt utterly
If it is plucked from its husk while unripe,
So error in the path of the pilgrim
Spoils the kernel of his soul.
When the knower is divinely illumined,
The kernel ripens, bursts the husk,
And departs, returning no more.
But another retains the husk,
Though shining as a. bright sun,
And makes another circuit.
From water and earth springs up into a tree,
Whose high branches are lifted up to heaven;
Then from the seed of this tree
A hundredfold are brought forth.
Like the growth of a seed into the line of a tree,
From point comes a line, then a circle;
When the circuit of this circle is complete,
Then the last is joined to the first.
Intermingling
You are plurality transformed into Unity,
And Unity passing into plurality;
This mystery is understood when man
Leaves the part and merges in the Whole.
***
The above verses are taken from The Secret Rose Garden of Sa’d Ud Din Mahmud Shabistari, rendered from the Persian with an Introduction by Florence Lederer. London: J. Murray [1920], scanned, proofed and formatted at sacred-texts.com, September 2005, by John Bruno Hare, and in the public domain.
Sa'd ud Din Mahmud Shabistari was born in Persia, in Shabistar, near Tabriz, about 1250 CE. His best known work, The Secret Rose Garden is a set of verses that uses the rich Sufi allegorical language to explore the path back to God, to what we originated from, the only real journey we ever take.
Berman, M., Belak.M., & Rimmer. W. (2011) English Language Teaching Matters, Hampshire: O Books (The above article is an extract from this book)
Buzan, T. (2009) The Mind Map Book: Unlock Your Creativity, Boost Your Memory, Change Your Life, BBC Active.
Dennison, P. E., & Dennison, G.E. (1992) Brain Gym (Orange), Edu-Kinesthetics Inc.
Revell, J. & Norman, S. (1999) Handing Over: NLP-based Activities for Language Learning, Saffire Press.
Watts, J. (2006) Circle Dancing: Celebrating the Sacred in Dance: Celebrating Sacred Dance, Green Magic.
The Creative Methodology for the Classroom course can be viewed here
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