Running dictation: race to the top!

Children race through the classroom, read part of a poem, then run back to their group, breathlessly repeating what they just memorized. Another child sits at the table, writing everything down. Every once in a while, I shout "change roles!" and the writer gets up, races to the poem, while the runner takes a breather. …

Language awareness in the plurilingual classroom

Last September, I traveled to Graz, Austria, to attend a 2-day workshop entitled “Early Language Learning”, hosted by the European Center for Modern Languages.  Each participant at the workshop represented a different European country, and I had the honor of representing the Netherlands.  During the round of introductions, it soon became apparent that each country …

Mixed-ability dialogue cards (2.0)

Last time, I shared an idea about how to create dialogues that allowed learners of mixed abilities to talk together in a meaningful way. After that, I practiced using the dialogue cards, and soon discovered that while I had hit upon a great idea, I still needed to refine the process of creating these cards.  …

Mixing and matching in the mixed ability group

One of those things every language teacher has to learn to deal with is the broad ability range in any given class.  No matter how homogeneously (single-leveled) the class has been put together, there are always students who are far ahead of the group, and a number of learners who are far behind.  That's just the way …

Rubrics: a basis for qualitative feedback

This is one of those things I wished I'd learned about years ago, because it would have made my own life as a teacher so much easier.  I've learned about them now, however, so I'm shouting my joy from the rooftops.  Hurray for rubrics! What is a rubric, one might ask.  A rubric is a …

Teaching from the top-down: flipping Bloom’s taxonomy

How many of us have learned about Bloom's taxonomy, back in the days we went to college?  Very likely, one learned to start teaching at the base: knowledge and comprehension, before moving on to the higher levels of application and analysis.  And maybe, just maybe the children would be clever enough to move on to …

Not all equal, but moving forward all the same

At one time or another, we teachers are confronted with the need to assess our children's learning.  Many of us have thought long and hard about the use of a single, standard test to find out what our children have learned.  There are, of course, things to be said in favor of standardized testing: one …

The ZPD, not just for kids

How many of us have learned about the Zone of Proximal Developent (the ZPD) when learning how to teach our young learners?  I've written about this in earlier blog posts, in relation to how we teachers can best decide on what material to teach our young learners.  However, as a college teacher, I'm realizing more …

BINGO! …activating those speakers

"B-6, O-68, G-55..."  How many of us have ever played this form of Bingo in the ESL class?  It is an excellent and well-known way to review the numbers we've learned.  Some of us have already discovered the joys of downloadable bingo cards covering clock-reading, animals, fruits, and a whole host of other topics.  Often, …

Differentiation, why bother?

For the ESL teacher, it's a rare thing to have a class in which all of the children operate at exactly the same level.  Very often, there's the child who doesn't speak, the near-native speaker, and a whole bunch of other levels of ability in-between.  Writing a single lesson that will engage all of these …