Teaching in the age of the coronavirus or The cloud that saved us from the bug

I am writing this in the days of the coronavirus or Covid-19 so I would like to share some of my teaching experience with anyone out there who would lend an attentive ear.

I have been teaching mostly in a real classroom with only the odd online class with a few adults, and I intend to continue this way when the crisis is over. But right now, I am having all my classes online, (I am using Skype) and this is no easy task especially with young children. However, as my ancestors would say “Ουδέν κακόν αμιγές καλού” or every cloud has a silver lining.

To begin with, as a teacher I am obliged to find novel ways of adjusting to the medium, and though I feel stretched, I am gradually rising to the challenge. How? It is in large part improvising so that I can maintain the children’s interest and make up for the real contact. In a real classroom, I used realia but to a limited extent whereas online I am making the most of the fact that the children are at home and I can ask them, for example, to play hide-and-seek, where the children hide and ask the rest of us about their whereabouts in the house using and practising  Present Continuous and prepositions of place as well as vocabulary related to rooms and furniture.

Where am I hiding?

Are you hiding under the bed/in the wardrobe/behind the door?

This not only provides good practice but gets the kids to move about as this –lack of exercise-- is one of the problems of a prolonged quarantine.

Thanks to the features of different platforms, we can share sound and screens so we can still use our course books and practise all four skills, but the exciting part of it is that I am looking for material readily available to the students and me for that matter. Let me be more specific: you may wish to overlook some of the material in the course book, at least for the time being, and focus on word groups such as cutlery, food, fixtures in the house or as the fancy takes you. You could ask the students to look out of their window and describe their garden or street or whatever the case might be. It can turn into a guessing game when the surroundings of different students are unfamiliar to the rest. in a nutshell, take advantage of all the new opportunities presenting themselves.

I will now move to another important issue facing parents and children these days: the trauma of seeing parents and grandparents falling ill or even passing away or the trauma of being confined in their homes with no contact with the outside world. There is not enough we can do about the former but perhaps we can intervene so as to reduce their boredom and bring hope to them in the guise of a poem or a story. Let us not forget that art can be liberating and a great healer. Children need reassurance that this nightmare will come to an end and, as a friend, says we shall overcome.

So I wrote a story for my young students called The Cloud that Saved Us from the Bug, in which a young girl with the help of a cloud embarks on a long journey to a faraway corner of the universe, the pool of wishes and dreams, to lodge her wish written on a wax tablet with a stylus. (In ancient Greece it was a medium of writing)

As my intention was not to offer a ready-made story but to stimulate my students’ imagination and activate them by casting them as the heroes who will rescue us all,  I also prepared a slideshow where I provide some cues on each slide meant to encourage them to think of a story of their own before they can watch or read my story.

Here is the story:

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gjVBX4K40s3m19T_mVgi0gAJoVit7z6k/view?usp=sharing

And here is the slideshow:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XFJAIeL5Ud8ROOiXxc7GskKiojlpDl8w

Wishing you all the best. Hope we come out of this unscathed or at least with a few minor injuries.

In Topsy Turvy Land: doubting "reality"

A poem that would capture your students’ imagination is Topsy-Turvy Land by H. E. Wilkinson. It would be appropriate for elementary to low-intermediate level.

Children love paradoxes; adults, if put up to it, do too. What if things were exactly the opposite of how they stand now? What if the sky was in the place of earth? (We would look down rather than up) What if the law of gravity pushed us up rather than down? (It would be the law of lightness) What if our eyes were at the back of our head? (Would we walk backwards?)

Questioning the status quo is the way forward; challenging the norm is progress.

So you could introduce the poem by inviting your students to ask what if questions. In a topsy-turvy world anything is possible.

To stimulate your students’ interest and develop their creativity, show the following slide show of the poem in images and ask them to supply the line of the poem that the image suggests.

It is best to provide the last line of each verse which is almost invariably the same.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RbCsz9BAPCW8BRcvoJUCuC6fgLhmqvMN/view?usp=sharing

When this is done, you can show them the slide show with both images and words and get them to compare their version of the poem with the actual poem.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RbCsz9BAPCW8BRcvoJUCuC6fgLhmqvMN/view?usp=sharing

Winter is the season of mystery and darkness, of battling with the elements for survival, of no time for romance.

The following is a poem I wrote a few winters ago:

Love and the Elements

A sneaking darkness folded

 Trees and buildings alike

A flight of birds

Ruffled the night sky

Some flickering stars

Played hide-and-seek

The sea lashed mercilessly

Flailed with a limitless freedom

Some snowflakes danced

The last dance of their life

The howling wind

In hot pursuit

And you stood there

Out of the gaping window

With a torrent of blackness

Down your back

I loved you then

Like never before

But the elements knew

How futile love was

Teaching as a process and ... reality shows

Teaching is a process and not necessarily a controlled one – quite the opposite, I would say. A great deal depends on the response(s) of the students to what is an intended teaching point. Their understanding of it will allow the teacher to move on to the next step. On the other hand, difficulty in comprehension could mean either that the teacher has to expand this particular step in the process or even that it should be deferred to the future, when the students will be more mature and ready to assimilate the new item.

Rather than following a series of steps suggested in a course book, particularly at a more advanced level, I prefer to design a process myself taking into consideration my students’ knowledge and needs. In this manner, I manage to cut out activities which are pointless because my students have already consolidated their knowledge of those particular items.

On the other hand, in a lesson plan of my own I have the opportunity to fit in material-- exercises or vocabulary-boosting activities -- which will be more relevant to my students. What is more, I can variegate the process rather than follow a routine, which is the rule in course books. The result is a convoluted venture which is, however, well worth undertaking.

I will illustrate.

·       Topic: reality shows

·       Warm-up questions (source: COMPLETE CAE Student’s Book page 77)

What do you think about reality shows in general? Choose one of these statements:

a.    “I don’t watch them but I don’t have any moral objections to them.”

b.   “I watch them and I don’t have any moral objections to them.”

c.    “I don’t watch them because I am worried by the ethics of some shows.”

d.   “I watch them but the ethics of some shows worry me.”

e.    “I don’t know/don’t care.”

·       Show video on BBC

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-50148299

·       Hand out the news story about Nicole Prince, the Australian reality TV star who won a landmark compensation case for being harassed.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xEbOLIXONVQBDUkWdOVY2iDIfiiYdJsm

·       I have created a derivatives exercise for my students and a few transformations which the students are supposed to do without looking at the text after they have finished reading it and completed the gaps with the right form of the words in capitals.

·       The first transformation brings to the students’ attention a structure which they don’t normally find in advanced grammars as there is so much you can categorise and include in a grammar. This is: Something is yet to + passive infinitive

You can follow this up with more practice:

They have not confirmed the date yet.

The date

We haven’t determined the extent of the damage yet.

The extent of the damage

They haven’t signed the contract yet.

The contract

·       The vocabulary exercise provides plenty of practice on the new vocabulary. I always include lexical items which I have already taught in the past but need to reinforce.

·       Finally, the derivatives exercise brought to mind an excellent semantic questionnaire by Mario Rinvolucri and Paul Davis in their resource book More Grammar Games.

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-bKxVyTyA6mIYREu-ejlovzv3xT0f2aa/view?usp=sharing

The end result is a much more stimulating and enriching experience for the students.

Smithereens or breaking poems down to gold nuggets

My thesis is that you can do anything you put your mind to with a poem as long as you let your mind wander off. What is more you can crank up the depth of the perusal of a poem tailoring it to the level of your students. Perhaps this is not always feasible, but a lot of times it is and the result could surprise you.

I will use a simple, linguistically, poem to illustrate the endless possibilities poems offer teachers. The poem is entitled Smithereens and the poet is Roger McGough.

I spend my days

Collecting smithereens.

I find them on buses

In department stores

And on busy pavements.

At restaurant tables

I pick up the leftovers

Of polite conversation

At railway stations

The tearful debris

Of parting lovers.

I pocket my eavesdroppings

and store them away.

I make things out of them.

Nice things, sometimes.

Sometimes odd, like this.

I suggest you walk into the classroom with a heap of glass fragments in one hand and another of tiny pieces of paper in the other. Show your students one and say the word “smithereens” and repeat with the other. Challenge the students by asking them what you can do with those smithereens:

·       You can put them in a jar.

·       You can throw them away.

·       You can blow them in the wind.

Then go on to tell them that you collect them and elicit a response out of them. This might work better with more advanced students. For example:

·       Are you out of your mind?

·       What use are they? They are practically worthless?

·       I don’t see the point in hoarding stuff like that.

You could then present the first verse of the poem, which doesn’t let on much about the particular meaning the smithereens will take on in the next verse.

Many times, in both factual reading and literature or poetry students come across words for the first time used in a figurative sense. I feel very strongly about preparing your students to understand and appreciate the metaphor, and this is only possible when they are aware of the literal meaning of the word.

So before moving on to the next verse, find some images of leftovers and some more of debris. In this way, your students will realise that when we say “leftovers” we usually mean food. You could even start a conversation, at the end of the poem presentation, about how leftovers could be put to good use.

When you show images of debris make sure to ask your students what debris is usually the result of. They are expected to come up with words like disaster, accident, crash, explosion, erosion etc.

You could also show lovers in tears parting at a railway station or, more excitingly, play a relevant film scene.

The parting scene in the ET film is well-known, and the words are: I’ll be right here. You could tease the students’ brains by first showing the words and asking which film these parting words come from, and if they don’t ring bells, simply show the following YouTube clip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75M1XXEZciU

The time is now ripe to read out the second verse of the poem and let it sink in.

Before the third verse, explain the word “eavesdrop” by miming or paraphrasing it and go through the motions of putting some pieces of paper in your pocket. Ask what you have just pocketed, which might generate various responses – hopefully, “eavesdroppings” too! Do not become daunted if “eavesdroppings” doesn’t come up.

You are now set to read the last verse and ask the one question which is left:

What is meant by “nice” or “odd things” like “this”?

More mature students could be invited to elaborate on the “raw material” of poems and the process of composing a poem out of this material.

I also have some suggestions for more straightforward language work:

·       Find all the adjective+noun collocations in the poem.

busy pavements, polite conversation, tearful debris

·       Extend the above simple task by asking the students to find more nouns that collocate with those adjectives.

·       Take out the prepositions and get your students to fill the blanks with the right ones. (“On”, “in”, “at” can be challenging even for intermediate students.)

Here are also some more creative projects your students could engage in:

Think of an alternative title of a poem, which will denote the stuff poems are made out of. The answers can turn out to be unpredictable, but do use a couple of them and set the students a writing assignment – individually or in groups, depending on how well-matched the students are.

For instance, if some students come up with “Memories” for a poem title, they could be asked to write a poem keeping, if they find it easier, the mould of the original poem. It could be something to this effect:

I spend my days

Retrieving  memories.

I find them in drawers

On dusty shelves

And at the back of my mind.

(my example)

If writing a whole poem is tough, they could limit themselves to one verse of their choice –the first one would be more doable for young, less advanced students.

The rest of it I leave to your imagination!

Course book materials, exams and approaches to language learning

A question that has puzzled me over the years I have been teaching English is why most course books contain exercises modelled on the ones that are set in the exams five or six years later.

To my mind, material writers should be striving for as much variety as will accommodate learners’ widely differing approaches to second language acquisition. Ideally, the activities should suit individual learners’ needs, which vary depending on the mother tongue, age, exposure to English where they live, learning difficulties and many others. Of course, this would involve more varied course materials aimed at different markets and, potentially, less profit for publishing companies. And this is where our mindset and genuine concern for equality is pitted against homogenisation and globalisation.

Exams, in their turn, should reflect the different approaches to learning, which takes a good deal of research and the will to set aside convenience and time-saving considerations when creating exams.

How sound is it scientifically to subject a dyslexic candidate to the same test as non-dyslexic ones and content oneself that the extra 25% of time allotted to the former will compensate for the inequality especially when we know that there is even a special font – Dyslexie font -- to help people struggling with reading? One would expect updated exam types to reflect those new facilities meant to support different learners.

Even if one thinks of the weight of the different parts of most tests administered nowadays for the total grade, some steps towards equalising the results are imperative if fairness is to be ensured. For instance, in class we acknowledge the fact that dyslexic students perform better in spoken English both passively and productively than in written English. How can we take this into account when we calculate the grades of dyslexic candidates?

I may have focused on one group of “different” candidates but the same applies to all other groups of students with special needs, and in an age when “difference” is glorified perhaps more should be done to really prove our commitment to this attitude.

Stories, videos and imagination

Rare occurrences almost invariably hold the attention of learners -- both children and adults.

What would offer a couple of hours of fun and suspense is the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin followed by the video The town that nearly danced itself to death available on BBC, which is about the dance epidemic which led to a shocking number of deaths. A similar outbreak of dancing mania in Germany is thought to have been the basis of the tale of The Pied Piper.

The level of English required is B2 or post B2.

The original story is available online, plus there are several video versions available on YouTube. But I prefer to stick to the original so I can introduce new vocabulary and provide more practice on it.

Here is where you can read the original story:

https://www.wattpad.com/81958501-the-original-grimm-brother-fairy-tales-the-pied

A key concept you could start with is “plague”. An explanation in the students’ mother tongue would be appropriate -- accompanied by some images. It is a great opportunity to present relevant words such as “infest”, and “infestation”.

I have prepared a vocabulary exercise to use for extra practice:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SEhXOpJH5W6_adLhd7FO97Lf9eHeoryF/view?usp=sharing

The story of the Pied Piper is an enchanting one: man’s powerlessness to deal with nature’s strange ways, the power of music to tame, human greed, vengefulness. You could explore one or all of these themes depending on your students’ eagerness. The students could be even asked to think of or bring to class other stories revolving round those themes.

The video on the other hand about the outbreak of dancing in Strasbourg in 1518 contains more sophisticated information about the way the incident manifested itself and the possible explanations for people literally dancing themselves to death: from purely physiological (typhus or epilepsy) to socio-cultural ones (mass hysteria).

Here is the link for the video about Strasbourg:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161028-the-town-the-nearly-danced-itself-to-death

Mature students, especially those who specialise in Medicine or Psychology would find some food for thought in the video. It could serve as the springboard for an oral session on what motivates people to become self-destructive.