Editorial
This article was first published in Modern English Teacher, Vol 21/2, April 2012

More ideas in Activities for Bored Invigilators

Activities for Bored Invigilators: Part 2

Simon Mumford, Turkey

Simon Mumford teaches EAP at Izmir University of Economics, Turkey. He has written on using stories, visuals, drilling, reading aloud, and is especially interested in the creative teaching of grammar. He is a regular conference and workshop presenter. E-mail: simon.mumford@ieu.edu.tr

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Introduction
Memorable meals
History review
Estimating time
Lateral thinking puzzles
Noticing clothes
Prediction
Informal research
Mental calculation
Learning by heart
Relaxation
Conclusion
Reference

Introduction

At times, we all find ourselves in situations where we cannot do anything except wait, such as on long bus journeys, when stuck in traffic, or waiting in queues. Teachers usually have to invigilate exams, and this is another situation where it is impossible to talk, read or do anything that takes our attention away from the students. Times of enforced inactivity can be times of boredom, even frustration. However, it does not have to be like this. Instead, we can choose to fill the time with enjoyable mental activity that makes the time pass more quickly. Such activity, in the form of memory games, visualisation and problem solving, may increase our general creativity. Also, it may also have a direct effect on our teaching, because this kind of thinking activity can be adapted for classroom use.

To make the time pass in an enjoyable way, I suggest a number of activities which are all compatible with the duties of invigilators. Each idea is followed by a practical application for teaching, which is developed either directly or indirectly from the activity described.

Memorable meals

Remember a meal that you had in the past. I like to remember the Christmas dinners of my childhood. You can not only see the food but taste it, and feel the textures in your mouth in your imagination. Try to remember details such as the patterns on plates, the people present, what you were wearing, the order the food was served in, who served the food, what time the meal started and how long it lasted, what was talked about during the meal, what you had to drink, where people were sitting and the order they were served in, any special rituals, eg, pulling crackers and telling jokes, and any other details you can think of.

Teaching application

Getting students to remember events that were important to them can be a powerful activity. It may be best done with eyes closed. After the visualisation stage, memories can be reported in groups.

History review

This is a good activity for keen historians. Using the 24 hour clock, try to remember the events of the years represented by the time of day. For an evening exam from 18.00 to 19.30, you could recall the following important historical events:

18:07: the end of the slave trade
18:15: the Battle of Waterloo
18:32: the Great Reform Act
18:37: the first postage stamp
18:48: the Communist Manifesto
18:51: the Great Exhibition
18:60: Abraham Lincoln president
19:01: the death of Queen Victoria
19:14: the First World War
19:17: the Russian Revolution
19:26: the first demonstration of the television

Try to remember the events in as much detail as you can, eg try to remember who invented the first stamp in 1837, and its value. Morning exams will test your history of the earlier periods.

Even if you are not interested in history, you can use similar techniques in a more personal way. If you are 60, you can recall your whole life in an hour at the rate of one year per minute. Similarly, you can recall the past year of your life in great detail in 1 hour, allocating 5 minutes for each month, or a memorable day, with 5 minutes to each hour.

Teaching application

The idea of summarising something in a limited time period has many applications. Students can summarise a 45 minute lesson in 45 seconds, or a ten week course in ten minutes. They could be asked to summarise a two-hour film, or a two week holiday in two minutes. This should force them to focus on the important points only.

Estimating time

Look at your watch, then look away. Look back when you think 20 seconds have passed. Try not to count the seconds, just guess. Build up to longer and longer periods, eg 30 seconds, 1 minute, 3 minutes, 5 minutes. Time tends to go very slowly if you think about it so, try to distract yourself with a mental task, eg remembering the plot of a novel.

Teaching application

Give students a task with a time limit, e.g. have a conversation for two minutes, or write for five minutes. Give students a text to read and ask them to predict how long it will take to read. Then ask them to read it. When doing these activities, students should note the start time and finish time, but not look at their watches between, so that they can see just how accurate their judgements are.

Lateral thinking puzzles

These are problems that are stated very simply, but are not easy to solve. There are many of these on the internet, but it’s fun to make up your own. Here are three puzzles about exams I have devised during exams. Solutions are given at the end of the article.

1. A student is looking at the paper of another student in an exam. She is looking at the paper of the worst student in the class. Why?
2. Two students are having a conversation during an exam. They are in the exam room and taking part in the exam. The teacher makes no attempt to stop them. Why not?
3. A student has no electronic device, printed material or paper of any kind, nor has he got anything written on his body, clothes, or desk, or on any of his possessions, and he cannot see any other exam paper. He is still able to cheat. How?

Teaching application

Puzzles and Lateral Thinking problems are well-known in language teaching, and are recommended in task-based learning for group work, followed by presentation of the solution to the class (Willis and Willis, 2007: 98). The advantage of making up your own puzzles is that you can make them relevant to your students.

Noticing clothes

In this activity, you try to remember as much as possible about students’ clothes. By making connections between the different clothes students are wearing, you can build up a picture of the whole class. For example, you can remember students with black shoes in relation to those with red shirts and those with blue sweaters. If your students are wearing uniforms, focus instead on other aspects of appearence, eg length and color of hair, size, accessories such as jewelery or hair bands, possessions such as pencil cases and water bottles, and whether they are left or right handed. At the end of the exam you should be able to remember the positions of all the students after they have left the room.

Teaching application

Students can do the same activity to practise language of clothes, and talk about similarity:

• Two of the students at the back are wearing jeans.
• The three students on the left all have black shoes.
• Four people are wearing green, two at the back, one at the front and one in the middle.

Prediction

You probably are already in the habit of predicting which students are likely to attempt to copy, but if students are allowed to leave before the end of the exam, you can also predict who is likely to leave next. Look for signs of boredom and restlessness, or alternatively signs of confidence, e.g. writing quickly. Putting pencils away and collecting papers together are obvious signs that someone is getting ready to leave. As each student leaves, try to predict the next one to go. Try also to predict the first/last student to leave.

Teaching application

Predicting events in the classroom is a good way to practise will. Students can be asked to predict what will happen during the course of the lesson, write a list on the board at the beginning of the lesson and tick off each one as it happens, for example:

• Someone will leave the room.
• There will be a grammar exercise.
• The teacher will tell a joke.
• Someone will drop their book.
• Someone will clean the board.
• The teacher will say ‘very good’.
• Three students will ask questions.

Informal research

Exams are an ideal time to do informal research into students, because you have the opportunity to study them carefully. You can notice, for example:

• The balance of the genders and where they sit: Are there more boys or girls? Do they form separate groups or integrate?
• Exam behavior: Do students look away while thinking? Where to they look? (Many tend to lift their eyes upwards and to one side). Which part of the exam do they do first? Do they work all the time, or do they take breaks, eg look out of the window?
• Exam strategies: Do students repeat words or sentences to themselves to help them understand better? Do they underline parts of the text? Any other strategies?
• If you work in a university, you can also survey the latest fashion trends in hairstyles, clothes and footwear, and accessories such as jewellery, watches and bags, and even cars, if they leave their keys on the desk.

Teaching application

There is no direct activity here, but observing students closely, their appearance and habits will help with informal classroom chat, e.g. talking about their clothes, asking them why they prefer a certain position in the class, and asking questions based on personal objects which they have with them, eg keys, novels, cigarettes, pencil cases.

Mental calculation

There are many possibilities for calculations. You can count the chairs in your exam room. If you know the number of rooms on the floor or and the number of floors in the building you can calculate the number of chairs in the whole building/school. Similarly, you can calculate the number of lightbulbs, coat hooks, and windows. You can also estimate the area, and cubic capacity of the building, the amount of space per student, the height of your room from the ground if you are above ground floor, and the surface area of the walls in your room. If you have large square tiles on the floor, this is another potential area for calculations because they are easy to count and measure.

Teaching application

Mathematically inclined students will enjoy solving these kind of calculations in English, eg There are five floors in the building. Each floor has 12 classrooms. Each classroom has 30 seats. How many seats are there in the whole building? (5x 12 x 30=1,800)

Learning by heart

If you are not a native speaker of the country where you are working, you can practise language using any signs and notices in the exam room, eg university rules and announcements. Pick a suitable length of text, say 20 words. Learn one word at a time, repeating the whole text in your head each time until you can remember the whole text without looking. If you are a native speaker of the country in which you are working, try recalling a sentence in another language that you have learnt previously.

Teaching application

There are obvious benefits for getting students to remember short stretches of text by heart. Make sure the content is useful for students (eg important grammatical information).

Relaxation

I have found that, apart from duties at the begining and end of the exam, in most invigilations, the only requirement is to be there. The only part of you that you really need is your eyes. Sit so you are comfortable and gradually relax your whole body, so you are motionless. Slow your breathing and let your limbs relax. You can also reduce your mental activity, but keep your eyes open and make eye contact with students to show you are still awake. In this way, an invigilation can become a real rest!

Teaching application

Relaxation techniques can be useful for students when they are restless and excited. Reducing physical and mental activity can be a useful way to clear the mind at the end a period of work.

Conclusion

When we talk about lesson planning and preparation, we tend to think of using the course book and teachers book, teacher resource books, websites, grammar references and dictionaries. These are all important. However, there are many other things we can do to get new ideas for lessons and new perspectives for teaching, that do not depend on print or computers, and that can be done anywhere, anytime. Such an approach can help us pass ‘dead’ time in an enjoyable way, and perhaps make us more creative as teachers and as people.

Solutions to Lateral Thinking puzzles

1. It’s a multiple choice exam. She knows that if the worst student in the class has chosen one answer, there is a good chance that it will be wrong, and she will choose one of the others
2. It’s a speaking exam! Students are speaking in English and the teacher is assessing them.
3. He has seen the exam paper before and has memorised the answers.

Reference

Willis, D., & Willis, J. (2007). Doing Task-based Teaching. Oxford University Press

Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the How the Motivate your Students course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Building Positive Group Dynamics course at Pilgrims website.