Spotlight on the Teacher

Mario Rinvolucri, UK

Mario Rinvolucri, a Pilgrims Associate, brings you some activities that were current back in the 1980’s and 90’s as he believes the plethora of new options technology offers can make older colleagues forget ideas they once found useful . People at the start of their careers. will have been just out of nappies at the time some of the ideas below were doing the rounds. The books you might find them in may still be in your staffrooms but probably have their covers half-hanging off with age and over-use.

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Introduction
Get-to-know-your-teacher better questionnaires
Three stories – only one is true
My teacher is a landscape
My teacher’s story from pictures

Introduction

The ancient exercises that I am resurrecting for you this January, 2018, all have one thing in common: they focus attention on you, the class teacher. If you are in the habit of asking students to share their own thoughts, feelings and sometimes dreams with their classmates it is normal human decency to sometimes allow them to find out a bit more about you. The desire to get to know the teacher better is very natural with teenagers but I think you will find the same in many adult groups like the people who study at the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas in Spain and the many many groups in the VHS evening classes in Germany.

I would suggest that the activities that follow aim at students from the age of eleven or twelve on.

Get-to-know-your-teacher better questionnaires

Ask the students to take pen and paper and jot down 7-8 questions they would like to put to you about your life. Tell them you will go round and help them with words and grammar. Allow not more than 10 minutes for this question -writing phase.

Start the writing phase. Go round helping with language and correct students who you reckon benefit from this. If anyone is stuck for ideas pair them with a neighbour.

Before moving on to the oral questioning, ask three students to come and sit on chairs facing the group. Ask them to give you the questions they have written.

The group’s questions begin. The three do their best to answer them. You try to show as little reaction to their answers as possible. (If you have a scatty memory jot down on paper what the three say in role as you.) Now and then ask the panel of three one of their own questions!

Take as much time as you need to answer or elegantly half-answer the group’s questions. No, you are not stealing the limelight, you are giving your participants highly motivating listening comprehension and you are signing your part of the bargain to be reasonably open and frank in the foreign language class. I find it hard to imagine any coursebook listening passage with more psychological drawing power than the listening exercise just outlined.

Three stories – only one is true

In preparation think of a true anecdote and two anecdotes that did not happen to you. Prepare to tell them in class as if all were true.

Tell your students that you are going to tell them three stories about yourself and that one of them is very different from the other two. Refuse to tell them in what way one is different from the other two.

Tell the three stories with equal enthusiasm.

Let the students react to your tellings in any way they want. Answer all questions they ask.

If you find you have really managed to bamboozle them, help them by telling them one story was true and the other two were false. Go on taking their questions.

Round off the activity by asking them to write a paragraph about which story told them most about who you are. Take in the writing and respond in a short letter to Dear Everybody, commenting on their thoughts. Give them each a copy of your letter in a subsequent class.

(You may prefer to tell two true anecdotes and one false one – not everybody is a good porky-merchant!)

My teacher is a landscape

Ask the students to think carefully about you and then to take a deep breath and imagine you as a landscape
           a seascape
           or a cityscape

Tell them they have 15 minutes to describe the land or sea or cityscape you, their teacher, makes them think of.
Go round helping with language and, if you think it wise, correcting the texts they are writing.

Group the students in fours or fives and ask them to read out what they have written. I would suggest you stay aloof from this work, but collect their papers when they have finished. Reading their projections at home may inspire you to write a letter to the whole group, copies of which you give out to the students in a later class

This type of letter from you is likely to be cherished by some of the students.

My teacher’s story from pictures

Think of a story you are happy to share with the class about yourself. Think of some 8 things, objects, that are present or occur in the story.

In class draw a line down the middle of the white or blackboard. Draw pictures of the
eight objects to one side.
Ask a student to come up to the board and act as the class’s scribe.
S/he invites a first sentence from the group.
The sentence is offered and you nod if it is a possible beginning to the story. In this case the scribe writes it on the board.
The scribe asks for a second sentence. If you nod, s/he writes it down.

When the whole story is up on the board, silently underline the language errors , but do not correct them yourself. Silently appeal to the group to offer corrections, which the scribe then writes in. Continue until the text is fairly good English.

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I firmly hold that there are times in a language class when the teacher should listen, learn and be as quiet as she can and other times when she should be the riveting centre of attention. Both these roles and many others make teaching a complex, satisfying and mind-filling process.

Please check the How to be a Teacher Trainer course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.