Giving kids a head start with pre-teaching

We like to think of education as the road to equality. It should be that one place where background doesn't matter and equal chances abound. But that's not entirely true, is it? Weaker learners start every lesson behind the rest of the class. Where everyone else is at the starting line, they start meters behind. …

The ART of conversation: CLIL and Art

Sometimes children don't want to talk.  They just want to draw.  Or paint.  Or play with clay.  Making art is a natural way for children to relax and express themselves without having to say a word.  I remember a child at school who cried every morning as him mom said goodbye.  He was unconsolable - …

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 …

scaffolding the online task: step by step

One of the joys of the digital age is allowing children to work on the computer, playing games and doing web quests to further their language development.  Computer games allow children to work at their own level, and computers never tire of the endless repetition of drilling certain grammar patterns, something I cannot say of …

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 …

Please pass the salt – eh – question!

Instead of practicing table manners during the English lesson, I like to get all of my learners going by having them play "Pass the question".  It's quite straightforward, and works like this: We practice a simple question and answer structure as a class. A child and I demonstrate the same question and answer structure in …

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 …