Editorial : The presented material comes from Creative Resources, Bonnie Tsai and Judit Feher published (2003)Atlanta, USA: IAL . For a review by Tessa Woodward see HLT section : Publications

The Individual as a Resource : From Creative resources

Bonnie Tsai and Judit Feher

Bonnie Tsai is a teacher and teacher trainer who has worked around the world running teacher training courses for teachers of all ages, levels, and needs. She has been trained in such humanistic approaches such as Suggestopedia, N.L.P. and Psychodramaturgie Lingusitque. She has studied the theory and practice of Multiple Intelligence with Dr. Howard Gardner at Harvard University. Long time Pilgrims traianer.
E-mail : tsaibonnie@hotmail.com

Judit Feher is a freelance teacher, teacher trainer and author. Certified expert in curriculum development, ELT methodology, mentoring, evaluation and testing. Based in Hungary. She is also a Pilgrims trainer. She has taught language courses, teacher training courses, and gave workshops and talks in several institutions and conferences in Hungary and abroad. She is a board member of SEAL-Hungary.
E-mail : jfeher@enternet.hu

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Introduction
Activities

In spite of the fact that more often than not people study in a group, understanding and acquiring knowledge is strictly an individual process. Sometimes in our haste to ivolve students in pair work and group focused activities we forget that some people need the time and space to reflect on what they are learning. Sometimes it is a case of thinking about what we have understood and what we have not understood. We can all think of something we learned in school without ever really understanding it. Why is this? Perhaps because we were unable or never given the chance to analyse our own learning style and techniques best adapted to our own, unique way of learning. The activities here were designed as a discovery of what the intrapersonal intelligence is and how we can use it to better understand our own strengths and weaknesses as described by Dr. Howard Gardner in his now famous theory of Multiple Intelligence.
The activities will give participants the opportunity to explore and discover their own intrapersonal intelligence. Dr Gardiner sees this as an essential entry to the other intelligences. Questions that be asked and answered are: How can I develop my different intelligences? How can I better understand my own learning process and use them to enhance it?

One Fine Day

Level: Intermediate-advanced
Time: 20 minutes
Material: None
Focus: Multi-sensory and speaking

Procedure:
1. Ask students to think of a time when they spent a really good day. Ask them to remember where they were, whom they were with, what they were doing, what the weather was like, any special voices, sounds or music...
2. Give them some time to remember and ask them to make a film of their day in their mind. Ask them to add colour, brightness, and size, and then tell them to make their film bigger, brighter and bolder.
3. Now let them find a partner and a quiet place in the room so that they can exchange their experiences of what a good day is like.
4. Ask them to think about their day and to think about one thing that didn't happen but could have. One thing that would have fit in and made their day even better.
5. Students change partners and tell that person about their day including the part they have imagined.
6. After listening to each other, they decide which part wasn't a part of their partner's day.
Comment:
This kind of "mind's eye" activity, especially making changes and seeing how this could affect the outcome is an excellent entry point for people having a strong visual/spatial intelligence. It also is connected to sensory modalities in Neuro Linguistic Programming. It brings home to us the senses we use to structure our experiences. N.L.P. is also about change. Here we are working with a happy occasion, but what would it take to change a bad day into a good one?

"ME" Poster

Level: Elementary - advanced
Time: 5 minutes.
Material: Coloured paper, felt tip pens, paste
Focus: Personal qualities, self-description

The Intrapersonal intelligence is founded on the idea of self-knowledge and reflection. This activity allows students to use this intelligence as an entry to answering the question, 'Who am I?' emphasising positive qualities.

Procedure:
1. Each student needs a sheet of paper.
2. In the centre, students draw a self-portrait.
3. Around the portrait they write words that express some qualities they think/feel they have, e.g. helpfulness, loyalty, intelligence, kindness
4. Under the portrait students complete the following sentence stems:

I know I can.......
I can help others.......
I would like to be able to.......
My future goal is to......

Comments:
"Me" collages are kept until the end of the course or the end of the year. They are given back to students who can make any changes or additions.

It is amazing how everyone's self image improves as their self-esteem rises. Dr. George Lozanov, the genius behind Suggestopedia says that a learning experience cannot be considered a success if the learner doesn't come out of it feeling more positive about him- or herself. The most outstanding example of this was a young man who portrayed himself as having ugly bright red markings on his cheeks. He did in fact have acne, but not as badly as he saw it. At the end of his English course, he re-did his portrait without the deep red markings. He was able to portray himself in a much better and more positive way then at the beginning of the course. Not only did he learn English, but through learning English he improved his self-image.

Self Mandala

Level: Elementary-advanced
Time: 1 hour / spread over the course
Material: Large sheets of paper, felt tip pens, old newspapers/magazines, glue and a photo of each student (optional)
Focus: Self-reflection, personalisation of any grammatical structure and/or vocabulary items that can be connected to the individual, personal qualities, scanning authentic texts

This is a rather long activity. It can be worked on little by little over a period of time. Each part of the mandala can coincide with something being taught in class. e.g. writing your name in different ways to express different feelings corresponds to the vocabulary of "feeling" words.

Procedure:
1. Make available to the class large sheets of white paper and coloured felt tip pens. You will also need a pile of English language newspapers and magazines.
2. In true mandala style, students start in the middle by pasting a photo of themselves. This should be a photo they have chosen because it shows a quality they appreciate in themselves. Some students may choose to draw their own self-portrait or to take their own picture in a mirror. Encourage students to do it their way and let each student tell the class the quality they see in the portrait.
3. Moving outward from the portrait, students draw or paste pictures they have found in magazines/newspapers of activities they enjoy doing, e.g. skiing.
4. Students look through the newspapers and find words or expressions that are meaningful to them. Moving outwards, theses are pasted onto the paper.
5. Finally, students write their name over and over associating each signature with a different feeling or emotions, e.g. happiness, anger, boredom, excitement and so on. They express the feeling or emotion by finding different ways to write their names.
6. Once the mandalas are finished, a classroom exhibition is set up. Students move around visiting the exhibition and explaining and commenting on their mandalas with each other.

Comments:
1. You can adapt this activity to nearly everything you teach in any given class simply by asking students to do different things from what we have suggested. E.g. you could ask them to put down the names of the countries they have visited or the names of their best friends, or find a picture of a place they would like to visit, etc. It can be an inventory of what has been taught during a term or a course, thus providing a personal device for revision and recycling
2. Mandala exists in many world cultures. They are often made of coloured sand or earth. The design starts from the centre and moves outwards. The design is made up of a series of geometric shapes, which fit together within the whole. Traditionally Mandala's are circular in shape, but for our purposes, learners can work with any shape they like.

Acknowledgement:
To Micheline Flack, who taught us many things to do with Mandelas while drinking tea together in Budapest.

Bridges

Level: Pre-intermediate upwards
Time: 40 minutes.
Focus: Raising students' awareness as to what individual needs may exist in the group, group building
Material: Blank sheets of paper, art supplies, post-it, pictures of bridges (optional)

Bridges are beautiful metaphors of connecting things, connecting people. This metaphor is used in this activity.

Procedure:
1. Have a discussion with your students about different kinds of bridges and what they may be used for and how. In case you have pictures of bridges, show them to your students, if not, refer to bridges they may know in their own country or famous ones in the world like the Tower Bridge in London, Charles Bridge in Prague or Manhattan Bridge in New York. Here are some types of bridges: suspension bridge, viaduct, flyover, pontoon bridge (floating bridge), footbridge, cable bridge / rope bridge, draw bridge.
2. Give students each a sheet of paper and ask them to draw their personal bridge people can use if they want to come to see them. Ask them to invent a password and write a sentence instructing people how to use the bridge (e.g. Caution! If you want to cross this bridge shout "I love cats" three times.)
3. Get students to mingle and explain their bridges (e.g. My bridge is a foot bridge because I do not want any cars to use it. My password is "book" because I would like to have people who love reading.)

Comment:
It is nice to keep students' bridges on the walls of the classroom and use students' passwords if you want to tell them something important. It is also a good idea to encourage students to do the same with each other.

My Star

Level: Pre-intermediate upwards
Time: 15 minutes
Focus: Describing people and their habits
Material: Blank sheets of paper, preferably yellow

Procedure:
1. Give each student a sheet of paper, preferably yellow. Ask them to draw their personal star in pairs the following way:
- One of the pair, A puts their right hand on the paper with their fingers as far apart as possible. Say that this hand will be half of a star. The other student in the pair, B traces all the fingers in a way that they do not look like fingers but they look like points of a star.
- Now A puts their left hand on the paper in a way that the two hands form a star of ten points now and B draws the other half of the star around A's left hand.
- Now A does the drawing for B.
2. Ask each student to put their names in the middle of their stars. Say that this star is the star of the ten most liked features in them. To get to know what these are, they circulate the stars for everyone to write one or two things they like about each other on the star points (e.g. You always help me. I like the colour of your eyes.)
3. Put the stars up on the wall if possible. If there is some kind of a conflict, disappointment, frustration or bad behaviour in class, make a reference to students' 'star points'.

Comment:
You do not want to lose a positive quality once attributed to you. You try hard lest people think you do not really deserve it. To see yourself in a positive light is a great motivation for development.

Lego Story

Level: Elementary / pre-intermediate
Time: 25 minutes
Focus: Simple Present or Simple Past questions and answers, (auto)biographical data, years
Material: 6-8 mixed colour Lego pieces per a student

This activity enables lower level students to share information about their lives in the past even before they actually know the past tenses. Each Lego piece represents an important year in the student's past, e.g. the yellow one is 1999. Pointing to the yellow piece, you can say: 'This is 1999 now. We are back in 1999. How old are you? Do you go to school? What is your favourite school subject? Who is your best friend? Tell me about him/her. etc.' One by one, you can allocate a year to each piece, discussing what happened in students' lives in those years, building a tower of personal history this way.

Preparation:
1. Bring in class or ask students during a previous lesson to bring with them 6 to 8 different colour Lego pieces.

Procedure:
1. Ask students to put down 6 - 8 years that they think were important in their lives so far on a piece of paper.
2. Demonstrate what to do by making your tower of personal history, eliciting questions from students about your life.
3. Ask students to form pairs, and help each other to make their towers of personal history by asking questions about the years their partners selected.
4. When they have finished, ask pairs to swap their towers and ask students to choose a year from their partner's tower and tell everybody what happens in that year (e.g. 'This is 1988 now. Hilda starts school. She does not like it, but she meets her best friend, Maria. They go to the same class. etc.')
5. If you like, you can ask your students to write about their own or their partner's important years.

Comment:
1. Naturally, this activity can also be used with students already familiar with the past tenses for additional personalised practice.
2. Instead of Lego pieces, you can use a number of things like cuisenaire rods, sticks, cards, buttons or coins put in a line.
3. This activity also works very well in one-to-one lessons.

Vocabulary Build Up

A V SE SI MB

Time: 15 minutes
Level: Elementary
Material: Blank sheets of paper, crayons or coloured felt tip pens
Focus: Vocabulary development and practice

Procedure:
1. Ask students to take a sheet of paper and place it in landscape position. Next ask them to fold their paper vertically into three equal parts.
2. In the centre part of the paper, ask them to make a drawing. The drawing will depend on the set of words you want to work on. E.g. If your choice of vocabulary set is 'Clothes and Accessories', ask them to draw a picture of a person paying attention to the clothes and accessories in the picture.
3. On the left hand side of the paper, ask the students to write a list of all the articles of clothes or accessories that can be seen in their picture.
4. Students pass their paper to the person sitting on their right.
5. Ask the students to look at the picture and the list of words on the left side of the paper and associate each word with the part of the picture. Suggest that individually they trace their finger around the drawing naming each article of clothing and accessory as they touch it or to draw lines between the drawing and the word. How is this done? Does the teacher ask each individual or do they do it in pairs or on their own?
6. Ask them to look at the picture again and to decide what clothes or accessories they could add. On the right side of the paper, they list these items.
7. Tell them to pass the picture back to its owner. Tell them to look at the new list of words on the right and to integrate the articles on the list into their picture.
8. Students compare and describe their drawings in small groups.

Comments:

Hang the pictures on the wall or suggest to the students that they take their drawings home and put them up on the wall where they will be sure to see them for a few days. This will exercise their peripheral vision that is what they see out of the sides of their eyes. According to Dr. Lozanov, peripheral vision has a big impact in remembering information. This is why large posters containing grammar and lexical items are found in Suggestopedic classrooms.

What If…?

A V SI SE

Time: 2O minutes
Level: Lower intermediate-intermediate
Material: None
Focus: Question form "what if..", second conditionals and vocabulary

Procedure:
1. Ask students to take a blank piece of paper and fold it vertically into three parts.
2. In the middle part of the paper, ask them to draw an object. Choose an object that is of interest to students' age group and inspires their imagination. We have used computers, T.V.s, refrigerators. Here, we use a bicycle.
3. On the left hand side of the paper ask the group to write some questions about the bike beginning with What if…
You might get questions like:
What if it had a T.V.?
What if there were an armchair instead of the saddle?
What if it had a battery of drums attached to it?
What if it had a fridge?
What if it could fly?
4. Tell students to exchange their drawing with someone else.
5. Students look at the drawing and the list of questions. On the right side of the paper they re-design the bicycle integrating some of the what-ifs.
6. Pairs who exchanged drawings work together to explain the features of their new design and why certain "what if" suggestions were discarded.

Body Parties

H, GB, PS

Level: Intermediate upwards
Time: 30 minutes
Focus: Parts of body, persuasion, can
Material: None

Procedure:
1. Revise parts of body and their function.
2. Ask students to choose a part of body they think is very important and put down why it is important.
3. Ask them to mingle and find somebody who has chosen the same part of body and ask them to sit down together.
4. Students who have chosen the same part of body form a "body party" (e.g. Big Ears Party) and work together to make a poster why their chosen body part is the most important.
5. Now "body parties" meet to see if they can unite to make up a bigger party (e.g. Big Ears and Legs Party).To do so, they need to persuade each other how their body parts can work together.
6. United parties now work out a short speech for their campaign.

Comment:
It is also possible that the teacher chooses the part of body pairs work on.

Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.