I like daydreaming and
improvising. The latter is an acquired habit which formed after many years of
planning. I dare say it is the inevitable concomitant of meticulous preparation
for every single class – the privilege of taking students by surprise or challenging
them to do what they don’t believe they can accomplish. And as children also
daydream and improvise profusely, especially when they haven’t got a clue about
the “right” answer, it is not hard to sweep them away with your
enthusiasm.
When students have to
talk about a specific subject, they often lack the ability or the patience to
structure their speech. As a teacher, I feel I have to show them that
structuring their ideas and thoughts can take on many different forms, and all
of them can be valid.
Stories, like questions
on a passage, can be open-ended or we can reach the solution or a resolution
following different routes.
By way of illustration,
I have created a slide show, which starts with the image of an unfinished tale
and the question why this story was cut short, left untold. The fourth slide
puts an end to the story by implicitly attributing the sound on the door to a
figment of the mother’s imagination.
But the story could take
a twist and instead of stopping short it could continue in the realms of
fantasy.
The slide show could be presented without the narrative so as to get the students to supply their own ideas about why the story was interrupted and what happened afterwards. Besides, I have written out a two-tiered narrative for intermediate and more advanced learners – and thence the three slide shows. (videos)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Wx33pNfmFcJv3BwOuWOA-dFlGaoah2RP/view?usp=sharing
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