* Classroom Routines

Finally enlightened! (Sept.)

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This course is about YOU using the language and me HELPING YOU LEARN.

We won’t use a textbook, but a great deal of different original materials, and you will be required to get those, to expand your mediateque (most will be free), to develop your personal relationship to the language so you can find reasons for using it every day, and you will be required to have a LEARNING LOG or DIARY which I can ask you to show me any time.

Every lesson should start with Questions, Announcements, yours or mine. Blog Updates, Your Questions on whatever (except info given at the School Office), so we can decide when to answer them, Your Comments, News, Announcements on whatever… Please, try your hardest to be punctual. You can be late, but when a lot of people are late it’s very disrupting. I will never say you can’t come in, but if you are late, be the least disruptive possible and have a look at the whiteboard so you can see what we’re up to without having to ask a student. (This is why I write the Lesson Plan we agree on, very especially for people who are late.)

Next, people will always be welcome to SPEAK: share with us info about their work outside the classroom, an anecdote that happened to you that day, that week, an assessment you were mulling over, some news you heard, a timed monologue (3-5 minutes) which you will NEVER write down in narrative, just have an OUTLINE for (because learning the monologue is not learning to speak: you learn to speak by using an outline; you practice learning to speak by using the same outline many times, trying to do the same exercise), or a timed Dialogue they have practiced in pairs or groups or three (5-8 minutes) — never learned by heart! The timed exercises are NOT about learning lines. They’re about practicing speaking, or improvised interaction. The ideal situation is that we have 1, 2 people doing this in every lesson. They get feedback from the teacher, which is excellent for everyone, because it helps everyone to learn about mistakes and how to work constructively with their List of Mistakes. It also helps us to review grammar, and see if we need to do some extra activities on any particular language item. It helps us to learn what teachers notice from students’ performances when they speak, review communicative strategies, oral textual formats… Everything! Together! At Plenary! This means it’s far more than giving individual attention to 1 or two people and private feedback. When you speak in public and get feedback in public it’s beneficial for everyone, a very good opportunity for everybody to learn. Plus, people get the chance of listening to different ways of speaking and pronouncing.

When people don’t volunteer, I tend to tell stories, to give you the learning chances this activity involves. I tell these stories for professional reasons, though it is true that I tend to tell more stories when people are interested and active listeners, even if there are volunteers doing mons and dials, because I’m an interactive teacher! Telling you about things is very important because it helps us USE THE LANGUAGE for real communicative purposes, it’s hours of listening you need to do (LISTENING IS KEY FOR LEARNING TO SPEAK AND WRITE), which means it’ll be an informal listening exercise, too, and it inspires you to also share your stories in class. It creates a positive atmosphere so that people can overcome the fear of speaking “in public.”

The next block in the lesson will depend on what we arranged to do: listening exercises, reading exercises, project teamwork, speaking in pairs, reviewing language issues, learning about cultures, discussing things, watching videos, working on techniques and strategies… We need to have Lesson Plans and agree on the lesson plan for the day at the beginning of the lesson.

This kind of teaching demands you get involved in what many consider the teacher’s business. As an interactive teacher, I don’t see I’m the one responsible for creating every lesson plan. I can, if nobody takes part. And I actually have plans, as you can see on this blog. But you are all welcome to help to design the sessions, and you should. If I find that some proposal is not a good idea (I don’t think I will), we can adapt it or move it to a different moment in the course. You should simply speak your mind and then we’ll construct the course together.

We’ll try to save 10 minutes at the end of the lesson so you can jot down stuff in your LEARNING LOG or DIARY, and/or so we can agree what to do in our following lesson. It’s kind of awkward that you use those minutes to leave earlier. Please, don’t do that. People are free to leave the room whenever they need to do so. (Again, as for the case of tardiness, try to be the least disruptive.) But try to do that just when strictly necessary, not as a routine. If you are very tired, those 10 minutes of thinking in silence will be good for you.

IMPORTANT: When you come to class, we expect you share with us your work outside the classroom, not only that you learn from what we share. YOUR LEARNING HAPPENS MOSTLY OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM, BUT IN THE CLASSROOM YOU CAN MAKE QUESTIONS THAT CAME UP WHILE YOU WORKED ON YOUR ENGLISH OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM, YOU CAN EXPAND WHAT YOU ARE LEARNING OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM AND GET FEEDBACK BECAUSE THE TEACHER IS THERE AND YOUR CLASSMATES, AND BECAUSE YOU GET THE CHANCE TO INTERACT AND PUT EVERYTHING YOU ARE LEARNING INTO PRACTICE.

In any case, we are in public education, not in private education. Instead of 6-10 people, always the same, coming every day, and speaking every day getting feedback from the teacher, as it happens in pay courses, we’ll probably be many more, not always the same people and I’ll have to improvise a lot to make up for all the hardship this involves, but you too. You need to understand you should be practicing speaking at home every week. We can talk about this in class.