Day five

Today, we started the morning with a board game to review the vocabulary of the jigsaw reading we did on Thursday.
In groups of 4, we had a dice, 4 counters and the board (an A3-sized photocopy with content questions and expressions from the texts). We played for nearly 45 minutes and it was nice, as it was a mixture of vocabulary revision, reading comprehension and fostering of critical thinking.
Then we dealt with a European exhibition called Collecting Europe, carried out by the British Council, the Goethe Institut and the Victoria and Albert museum, which commissioned some international artists to imagine Europe in 2,000 years from now. The aim of the exhibition, in its educational part, is inclusion, labeling avoidance and tolerance of difference.

After the break, we continued with the second period of Language Development. This time we dealt with most foreigners' nightmare: idioms. In groups of 4, we did a quiz in which the teacher displayed an image on the IWB and we had to infer the idiom. Then, the teacher wrote an idiom and three possible definitions (only one was correct), from which we had to choose the good one. Finally, in pairs, we were given several idioms with their definition, and we had to choose one idiom and add two fake definitions of it. Then the rest of the group had to guess the real definition of the idiom. We finished the lesson with the typical fill-in-the-gaps worksheet on idioms.

After the lunch break we had Methodology, as usual. As we had agreed with our teacher, today's lesson was devoted to vocabulary.
First, we had an interesting discussion on how we teach and recycle vocabulary and how we encourage our pupils to record new vocabulary. Then the teacher presented us lots of new ways to deal with vocabulary revision.
Although I liked all activities and I think students would also enjoy them, the part I will describe here in detail is the one devoted to team games with a Vocabulary Box, which is a simple shoe box with strips of paper with all the new vocabulary and structures students have been learning all week long.
In the first activity, we were in teams and we had to invent a name and a buzzer for our team. Then the teacher took out a piece of paper from the Vocabulary Box and defined the word. If you recalled the word, then you made your team's buzzer and were allowed to try and guess.
We were also given an idea for those fast-finishers not to get bored in class while the others are still working: students take out 10 words from the Vocabulary Box and try to make up a written story. I liked this suggestion because it is posible to have this Vocabulary Box in our English classrooms at school: it is cheap and easy to find, you can keep it in the classroom cupboard and fast-finishers can reach for it whenever they feel like.
We also did an activity called Vocabulary Disco Party. We picked up a few pieces of paper from the Vocabulary Box and stood up. The teacher played some music and we danced and moved around the classroom. When the music stopped, we had to find someone to define one of our words. If the classmate could remember the word and could define it properly, they kept the label. If not, you kept it. When the music started again, we started dancing and moving around. When the music stopped, we looked for a different person to talk to. At the end, the person with the most labels was the winner.
To finish the lesson, and the week, we did a more emotional activity, but I know that students love activities where they can express themselves, so I think I will also use it somehow. First, we read the poem "I have", by Rhys Burton, which by the way is an excellent tool to teach the present perfect tense:

 
The beautiful poem, a personal reflection on life experiences, led way to the following activity: writing our own version of the poem using a set of given verbs, like "I have seen", "I have touched", "I have tasted" or "I have heard". I think my students would like to do this activity because teenagers usually like talking about their experiences, since it is a way to differentiate themselves from the rest.



After a week packed with new experiences, new people, new knowledge and new expectations for my future teaching, the time has come to say good bye to my wonderful teachers and classmates, to the school, to Scarborough... Thank you for everything.

My wonderful group of classmates.