TEACHERS DISCUSSION FORUM
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#1 Parent Martin McMorrow - 2006-06-27
Ideas for discussion etc *Link*

Those seem all good classroom activities and it looks like you're giving your students a mixed diet! I think that it makes sense to aim for a balance of routines and innovations within a particular lesson, a course of lessons and for that matter within one's career. For teachers to achieve this, they need planning time and opportunities for observation, for being observed and interacting on various levels with other teachers. In (relatively) newer EFL contexts like China, it's more difficult to find the right context for professional growth, but I think motivated teachers should be able to create the conditions to make this happen - which may require some political (with a small 'l'!) action over conditions, resources etc. The lack of local expertise in many cases (with too many "directors of studies" only having a year's experience and an introductory certificate themselves) is a real gap, but, fortunately, nowadays, the internet does offer various other sources of input / inspiration etc.
The aim, I would say, is to try to both broaden and deepen one's awareness and repertoire of classroom activities.

I think Jeremy Harmer's website www.eltforum.com - which requires about a 40 dollar annual subscription - is a very good example of the kind of professional development / mentoring resource which can help teachers develop even in the absence of immediate professional support and guidance. Other excellent free sources include www.onestopenglish.com and www.teachingenglish.org.
But I think the benefits of these great materials and ideas are enhanced if they're shared, discussed, evaluated and possibly adapted by teachers on a group level.

In case my posting seems a bit over theoretical and wishfulthinkingish, I'll end it with some practical teaching ideas - obviously all of these depend on context etc. I think an excellent source of all kinds of integrated skills work would be today's news story about Warren Buffet / Bill Gates. One way of exploiting it would be through the BBC "have your say" link at:

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=2295&&&edition=2&ttl=20060627060716

I've also added this link below so it's clickable.

Just a few ideas for exploiting this. Reading - cut out a range of the viewpoints and have students read and sort into for or against giving money away. Reading / Speaking as a mingling activity with each student starting with one short text, walking round and sharing it. If a student hears a text that expresses their own opinion, they join the speaker and then go around in a pair .. let it go till a whole group has formed. Consider having them memorise their text to make it more oral. Grammar: third conditional .. what would i do with 37 bn. Writing: a letter to Warren Buffet / Bill Gates asking for 1 million dollars for a socially useful project for their town / school etc. Also, clearly, students could work together to plan some postings to add to the webpage or even make their own 'webpage' on the classroom wall with their postings. Listening: Well, there's some audio stuff on the BBC site, but as a low-tech option, you could choose 10 of the texts and read them out, giving essentially the same task for students to write down for each one a + if it's for and a - if it's against giving money away. Or perhaps as an alternative, you read out ten texts, but only 5 are actually from the webpage - the other five you've made up yourself. Students have to guess which five.

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