Provoking Thought: Memory and Thinking in ELT

Hall Houston, Taiwan

Hall Houston has many years of teaching experience at universities in Taiwan and Hong Kong. His first book, The Creative Classroom, was published in 2007 by Lynx Publishing, www.lynxpublishing.com. His second book, Provoking Thought, will be published in 2009. His professional interests include task-based teaching and learning, discourse analysis, group dynamics, creativity and critical thinking. E-mail: hallhouston@yahoo.com

Menu

Introduction
It made me think
Great thinkers
The best sentence competition
Remembering the past
Speed date for speedy solutions
The front page

Introduction

Provoking Thought is a collection of activities that emphasize using students' thoughts as a resource for language learning. The book's chapters cover five main areas: thinking, memory, creativity, critical thinking, and expressing thought in writing. Each chapter opens up numerous opportunities for language practice through role play, discussion, kinesthetic learning, guessing games, brainstorming, and project work. The activities are easy-to-use, require little or no preparation, and are highly adaptable to a communicative or task-based approach. Provoking Thought also contains helpful tips for using thinking in the language classroom, as well as practical advice on error correction and getting students to use English more in class. Another highlight of the book is a selection of interviews with experts on memory, creativity and critical thinking.

Provoking Thought will be available in October 2009. Go to www.hallhouston.com for more information.

The following are 6 sample activities from the book.

It made me think

Aims – Listening, writing, sharing information, guessing

Time - 30 minutes

Preparation - None

1. Ask students to think of a book, a song, or a movie that greatly influenced their thinking. Give them an example from your own life.
2. Pass out index cards and ask them to write down the title of the work in English. Tell them not to write their names. Give them a few minutes to think and write.
3. Tell the class you are going to play a guessing game. You are going to read out the title on the card, and the class must guess who wrote it.
4. Collect the cards and read the first one out. Ask the class to guess who might have written it. Finally ask the writer to identify him or herself, and add a few comments.
5. Repeat the activity with the other cards.

Great thinkers

Aims – Writing, asking questions, fluency practice, speaking, listening, note-taking, guessing

Time - 45 minutes

Preparation – Bring a stack of index cards, at least 7 for each student

1. Put a chair at the front of the class. Give each student 7 index cards.
2. Tell the class to imagine there is a great thinker, a very wise person in the chair. They need to write down several questions, one on each card, to ask the great thinker.
3. After 10 minutes, collect the cards and shuffle them. Call on a student to sit in the chair. This student will act as the great thinker. Suggest that the student invent a new name, and list a few of his or her achievements for the class.
4. Call on another student to come up to the front, choose a card, and read it to the student in the chair. The student in the chair will answer in the role of the great thinker. Tell the rest of the class to take notes. They should write down the two most important statements of the great thinker. Call on two other students to draw cards and ask the great thinker questions. Next, replace the great thinker with another student.
5. Repeat step 4 several times until most of the students have participated.
6. Now have all the students return to their seats. Read out a few more questions, and ask students to write down what they think the great thinker would respond with.
7. When they are finished writing, call on a few students to read their answers to the questions.
8. Next, call on a student to come to the board and draw a frame. Ask the student to draw a picture of one of the great thinkers in your class, and write a quote from the thinker below it, without identifying the student. Ask the class to guess who it is. Repeat twice.

The best sentence competition

Aims – Review, writing sentences, judging sentences

Time - 1 hour

Preparation - None

1. Ask students to rank these three sentences:
   
   Halibut is good.
   
   Halibut is delicious.
   
   I caught a halibut when I went fishing last Saturday.
   
   Which sentence best explains the meaning of the word?
2. Tell students to write down the ideal qualities of a good example sentence.
3. Put them in pairs to compare their lists.
4. Call on several students to tell you their ideas. They might include some of the following: An example sentence should make the meaning of the word clear without being too long. It helps if the sentence paints a picture or appeals to the senses. In addition, it doesn’t hurt if the sentence is clever or funny.
5. Put students in groups of three or four. Ask each group to produce a list of 7 useful words for review.
6. Call on several groups to read out 4 or 5 words from their lists. Write them up on the board, and stop when you have 20.
7. Next tell the class you are going to play a game where they will work in teams to think of a good sentence for some of the words on the board.
8. Choose three students to come to the front of the class. Arrange for them to sit on the side. They will be the judges who will choose the best sentence. Now put the rest of the students into two teams.
9. Circle a word on the board, then give 2 minutes for each group to think up a good sentence. Then have each group send a student to the front to read out their sentence. Give the judges a couple of minutes to choose the superior sentence. They announce the winning team and explain why they chose their sentence. The team gets one point.
10. Continue the game until one team has 10 points, or when there are no more words on the board.

Remembering the past

Aims – Fluency practice, speaking, listening

Time - 15 minutes

Preparation - None

1. Tell students to sit quietly and close their eyes. Ask them to think of a happy memory from the past. For example, a time they spent with a close friend, or something that made them laugh a lot. Push them to remember all they can about it.
2. Put students into pairs and ask them to tell their classmates about the memory. Encourage students who are doing the listening to ask questions to get more information.
3. Ask a few students to tell the class about the memory they talked about.
4. Finally, toss out a few yes/no questions, such as “Did your memory involve your family?” or “Did it happen on a trip?” and ask students to raise their hands if their answer is yes, to see what their memories had in common.

Speed date for speedy solutions

Aims – Fluency practice, speaking, listening, writing, reading

Time - 20 minutes

Preparation - None

1. Ask students to think about a problem they are currently facing. Ask them to sit silently and think about how they would explain this problem to another person.
2. Now arrange chairs where you have two rows of seats facing each other.
3. Tell students they are going to share solutions using a "speed-date" format. If your students don't know what speed-dating is, tell them it's a dating activity where singles can meet a lot of different people in a short period of time. Assure students that they will not be looking for romance, but seeking solutions for their problems.
4. Here's the format: During each interaction, students need to decide who wants to seek advice and who wants to offer advice. The student with the problem must share his problem and the other student must give some advice. Each turn will last only 2 minutes, and then they will switch partners. They do this by having each student in one row move down, while the students in the other row remain where they are. The student on the end of the moving row must move to the empty seat on the other side of the line.
5. When they have done this five times, ask students to move back to where they were sitting and write a short paragraph about their experience. Read out these questions to get them started:
   
   Did you get any useful advice?
   
   Who gave you the best advice?
   
   How did you feel about giving advice?
   
   Do you plan to make any changes based on what you heard?
   
   What steps could you take to follow someone's advice?
6. Get students to put their paragraphs up on the walls for everyone to read.

Variation: Instead of having each interaction last 2 minutes, you can make the first one 4 minutes, the second 3 minutes, the third 2 minutes, the fourth 1 minute, and the last one 30 seconds.

The front page

Aims – Reading, discussion, speaking, summarizing, listening

Time - 20 minutes

Preparation – Bring the front pages of four newspapers, along with some tape. The website Newseum (www.newseum.org) features the front pages of newspapers from around the world. Tape up four front pages of newspapers in the four corners of your classroom. Make copies of the discussion questions.

1. When class begins, ask students to look at the different front pages and go to the one they like the most.
2. Ask students to stand in front of the page, and discuss with the other students why they chose it.
3. Pass out copies of these discussion questions:
   
   What made the front page you chose attractive to you?
   
   What made the other ones less attractive?
   
   What factors do newspaper editors consider when creating a front page?
   
   Do any of these factors contradict the newspaper's role as a means of informing the public about important events?
   
   How do these front pages compare with newspapers in your country?
   
   If you could design an ideal front page, what would be on it? What would you leave out?

Put students in groups of five or six to discuss the questions. Ask one person to take notes. After 10 minutes, ask the note-taker in each group to visit another group and give a summary of the notes to the other group.

Follow-up: Ask students to design their own front pages and show them to the class.

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