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Hirameki with young learners (via Emily Bryson)

A very quick post to say thanks to Emily Bryson! She recently shared this interesting post on using the Japanese art of Hirameki as way to teach life skills and encourage creativity.

This worked a treat with my 6-year-olds! We are currently doing a module on animals and have just covered animal body parts. Emily’s activity was a great way to review/use this language. The learners turned their colourful splodges into animals and then labelled the various body parts. Simple, engaging, effective… and they were speaking in full sentences: ‘I think it looks like…’, ‘What can you see?’ Great to hear!

I can’t really share the learners’ own drawings on my blog, so the feature image is my own example (using one of Emily’s images).

Hey, that’s the great thing about reading other blogs! So much inspiration. Cheers Emily. Buying your book as a thank you, hopefully more inspiration in there!

Lesson idea: environmental issues

We did this activity a few weeks ago as an intro to our module on environmental problems/issues. It’s a context builder more than anything, and introduced some of the language that the learners needed for their final task (produce a leaflet describing an environmental problem and listing solutions). So, basically…

(Oh, sorry, learners were 10 years old, A2).

Step 1:  Learners list all the natural features of a beach they can think of: sand, sea, birds, cliff, etc.

Step 2: A4 paper, fold into quarters so there are four boxes.

In the top left-hand box (landscape) instruct learners to draw a beach. BUT they can only include natural features, nothing manmade.

Give them a time limit, like 3 minutes or something. I did a quick 30-second sketch on the IWB as an example. So… um… don’t laugh…

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Lesson idea: Celebrities, morals and ethics

This is a discussion task to introduce a sequence of lessons on fame and celebrities. One of the set reading texts in the sequence included some comments on celebrity ethics. I thought this was a good springboard, so after a brief chat/some questions about what learners consider to be ‘ethical’ behaviour in the context of celebrities, I gave them these three scenarios to discuss:

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Writing lesson: online dating profiles

This is a lesson based around authentic texts from the eHarmony website. It is aimed at adult pre-intermediate level plus, but these texts are full of rich language so it would ideally suit intermediate level students.

Aims: 

· Share personal experiences and attitudes towards online dating

· Identify key features of an online dating profile

· Create a short online dating profile for yourself or a friend

· Evaluate the effectiveness of other online profiles (more…)

Lesson idea: the ideal classroom

My secondary class (age 14+, B1) are exploring education in our latest module. We are building up to a ‘design your ideal school’ task. The first step was to consider what makes a good classroom/learning environment.

Step 1: General discussion questions as a lead-in, about what they think of their education system, their schools and learning environments, etc. Brief critique of our own learning environment.

Step 2: Brainstorm these concepts

A traditional classroom is / has… A non-traditional classroom is / has…
 

 

  
An inspiring classroom is / has… An uninspiring classroom is / has…
 

 

  

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Learning to read the world through other eyes

I’ve just come across this booklet as part of the reading on the PGCEi at the University of Nottingham. It’s a brilliant open access resource for exploring global citizenship. It offers a series of cross-cultural exercises, which help learners to…

  • develop understanding of different belief systems and values
  • explore how these values may impact of development agendas
  • examine western and indigenous interpretations of notions such as equality, education and poverty
  • consider ways to improve dialogue and mutual learning.

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Lesson idea: Great British Bake Off

It’s the penultimate week of term. State schools are on holiday, so the students have already requested something ‘fun’ and ‘light’ for lessons this week. The current topic is food. It’s lacked a creative task so far, and I don’t want to go over old ground (designing a themed restaurant, menus, crazy recipes, and so on). It’s time (I think) for the Bake Off…

Note: this lesson does not involve baking! (more…)