Halloween Presentations
Here are pictures from the 2nd Graders Halloween presentations. They had to go talk to older students, teachers and so on and bring back a ghost story about Seishin. Apparently there are MANY! Wooooooo.
Date: 18:10｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
This Week's Small Group Presentations
This week, my students did Small Group Presentations. Small Group Presentations differ from Class Presentations in two important ways. First, students sit in groups rather than getting up in front of the whole class. Secondly, they receive TWO grades: one for their presentation, and one for asking questions when other members of the group give their presentations.
My students were really outstanding.
My first graders tried really hard and did really well considering that this is still new to them. They did presentations about Christmas and the O Henry story "The Gift of the Magi" (our final reading this term).
My second graders were AMAZING! They really got into the questions and they were so active and aggressive that I was really impressed. I can't wait to see how they do when we get into debates more. They're going to be so great at it! Their presentations were about Rudyard Kipling's "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" and questions about keeping exotic animals as pets.
My third graders, though, were really, really surprising for me. Their presentations were so intelligent, and so insightful. We read about The Christmas Truce of 1914 when German and British soldiers temporarily stopped fighting during Christmas, World War I. Their presentations were about war, and they talked about SO many topics related to war and peace, including the Olympics, how eating can calm aggressive feelings (those were two of my favorites), and one students brought up an amazing number of points related to war. All of the students in my third grade class are just brilliant!
Date: 21:13｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
Third Grade Class Discussion
This week, the junior high third grade NELP students had a GREAT discussion about one of our stories: "The Rock Garden" by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston.
We talked about the Manzanar Internment Center and about WWII. The students did a great job.
Date: 18:44｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
Pronunciation
Teaching pronunciation is very important in helping our students communicate clearly and effectively, especially in teaching them presentation skills.
In teaching pronunciation for public speaking, I use this:
I bought this at ToysRus. It was in the educational toys section. It's a "Dental Model" by Edu-Toys.
I removed the original plastic backing and replaced it with screws and springs I bought at TIME home center.
This allows me to open it up.
This was I can also fit my hand through the back and use my fingers to illustrate the position of the tongue.
This is far more effective than using my OWN mouth as an example because it is much easier to illustrate the tongue position, and there's no 'icky' factor of looking intently into somebody else's mouth (not to mention the various dangers of halitosis, drooling, or spinach between the teeth!).
In teaching pronunciation it is vitally important that the teacher understand the physiology of the mouth and how it is used to produce sound.
In this way, it is very useful to know, understand and be completely comfortable and familiar with the International Phonetic Alphabet for English.
I use the Cambridge Phonemic Chart that I studied during the CELTA course (at the very excellent Language Resources in Kobe):
This is very good for teaching students the relationships between sounds, and it's very useful to understand the layout of the chart and how it corresponds to the mouth positions. It's really very logically set out.
The vowels for example, from top to bottom are arranged according to how open the mouth is, while from left to right, they are arrange by shape of the mouth and the position of the corners of the mouth.
Several important aspects to consider include differences in how much air is used in the vocalizations of vowels in English and Japanese, and the fact that many English vowels include more than one sound, that in fact we tend to blend our vowel sounds, twist them, warble them even (particularly in relation to American Southern dialects, of which I'm guilty).
My most common use of my artificial teeth, though, is in teaching the TH sound. Beginning speakers of English sometimes encounter difficulty with fricatives such as V (often confused with B), soft TH (often confused with S) and hard TH (often confused with D). Even many advanced students still need practice in their hard TH sounds because they tend to press too hard. This is typically because they don't realize the need for air to pass between the tongue and teeth to produce the vibration that we need for a softer and more natural voiced TH.
I would encourage native speakers who are teaching pronunciation to analyze their own pronunciation and learn how THEY make sounds before teaching pronunciation to their students.
If possible, get some teeth. In the future, I'd love to find a cool rubber tongue, because me fingers just look a little weird when I'm using the teeth. I've joked with my students that I'd like to build a puppet around the teeth, but I likely will never do that. It might make it difficult to see the teeth clearly!
Date: 09:21｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
New Oral Communication Exams
Starting this term, I'm going to be making a number of improvements to the Junior High School NELP Oral Communication Final Exams.
Starting this term, the tests will be 25% longer, going from 60 questions to 75. Tests will have five parts, 15 questions each:
1. Comprehension. Students will be given a target sentence, followed by four choices: a, b, c and d. Students must choose the answer that has the same meaning as the target sentence. This is good for testing comprehension of vocabulary and grammar structures.
2. Response. Students will be given, alternately, a sentence or a question followed by four possible responses. Students must choose the response that best follows the question or statement they hear.
3. Completion. Students must choose the answer that best completes the target fragment.
4. Conversation. Students must listen to a conversation between two people and answer questions about it.
5. Short Talks. Students must listen to short passages such as statements, announcements, etc., and then answer questions about it.
Parts 1 through 3 will be listening only. For Parts 4 and 5, the questions and answers will be in their test booklets.
Date: 09:16｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
Tuesday Speaking Activities
Tuesday is our day for speaking activities. The speaking activities are related to the topics and themes we read about in our reading classes, and the kinds of activities can take many forms.
We give class presentations (in front of the whole class). In their reading packet, students will generally have their choice of three topics: easy, intermediate and advanced, and students can choose which they'd like to do. Easy topics are often directly related to the reading, and often involve personal experiences, a presentation of research, or other factual kinds of presentation. Intermediate topics often require the student to give opinions about something and support those opinions. Advanced topics generally require students to attempt a persuasive or analytical presentation on a deeper level. Each presentation is followed by a review by the class. I ask the students two questions: "What was good about this presentation?" and "How could this presentation have been better?" Sometimes I ask the student who gave the presentation, and sometimes I ask the class. I generally follow with my own comments.
We sometimes give small group presentations. Again, students generally have a choice of easy, intermediate and advanced topics. The students sit in small groups, and one by one they present. After each presentation, the other students in the group ask the presenter questions about their presentation. Students receive two grades: one for presenting and one for asking questions.
We sometimes do class discussions, where I ask the whole class questions and try to get students to talk about their feelings. In their reading packet, students will be given a list of questions to think about, or points to discuss.
We also do small group discussions where students answer a questions in a small group. Again, students will have a list of questions to answer or points to discuss to guide them, but are encouraged to move beyond those questions as their discussion progresses.
We also do class debates. Students will be given their choice of sides on an issue, and students can individually choose which side to join. Students are given points to consider, and are asked to support their opinions in class.
We also do team debates. There are generally two sides: red and blue. Students are assigned to a team. They are generally given time to discuss their topic and strategy. Then we set the teams at tables facing one another. The teams are encouraged to think about and respond to points made by the other team. I moderate these to keep them orderly.
On Tuesday, the first grade class had a class debate on shyness and whether shyness was 'good' or 'bad'. I asked students to think about positive and negative aspects of being shy or outgoing, and I asked students whether we should try to change shy people, or help them to be more outgoing. Unfortunately, although the students had a great deal of fun with the topic and we laughed a lot during that class, I'm afraid we really didn't make much progress on the topic itself. However, it was a good introduction to the concept of class debate ... except that the students all agreed with one another ...
The second grade class had a class discussion about rising food prices and poverty. I put them in groups of two, had them discuss the questions on their list, and then switched groups every three minutes. I encouraged students to: give opinions about what the other person said, ask questions about what they said, and challenge them on what they said. It was an EXTREMELY productive class. They talked A LOT! What really made me happy was that communication wasn't one way. They were actually engaging one another in CONVERSATION. By stressing the part about listening and response, it was elevated from students taking turns giving opinions, and became actual conversations! I'm very pleased with the results. They all did marvelously!
The third grade also had a class discussion. Their class discussion was about a father who smashed his daughter's cell phone because she ran up more than $4,000 (US) in charges by sending nearly 10,000 text messages during a single month while she was at school, dropping her grades from As and Bs to Ds and Fs. Again, I switched groups every three minutes, and the students did marvelously.
In switching groups, my 'group cards' are working very well. Rather than having group 1, 2 or 3, or group A, B or C, on the advice of a colleague, I use a non-hierarchical system of colors and shapes. I have five shapes: circle, triangle, square, heart and star. I have six colors: red, green, blue, yellow, magenta and cyan. This allows me to make a wide variety of group types, and to mix and match. For example, I had four groups of two, so I set up a system so that each round, each student would be with a new partner, and at the end of the seventh round, they would have been paired with each of the other seven students in the class.
I'm going to be trying to build my students' conversation skills a lot more from now on.
Date: 09:12｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
New Speaking Curriculum
Just as our reading classes have been going through an overhaul, I'm now turning my attention to my oral communications classes in the hope that we can fix some weaknesses there as well.
I've added variety to the reading classes by introducing a broader variety of reading: poetry, fiction, non-fiction and current issues. I'm now laying the foundations of a similar revolution in oral communication. Up to now, my speaking tests have focused almost exclusively on presentations. We've dabbled in discussions and debates, but to be completely honest, I've had a little reluctance to giving up control of the class.
However, I've recently noticed a weakness in the curriculum. My students have become fantastic speakers. Their presentation skills are progressing wonderfully. Unfortunately, they are becoming proficient at only ONE kind of verbal communication. What I want to do is give them more opportunities to speak, more opportunities for EACH student to speak, and that's going to mean giving up some of my control and moving the oral communication classes to something a bit more learner centered.
I've already experimented in that direction, and the results were VERY well-received by the students, and the activities were very productive.
A few changes ...
One, there will now be a greater variety of speaking assignments. Some of these will be assessed by me, but others will not. These will consist of presentations to the whole class, presentations in small groups (that will include question and answer sessions, feedback sessions and so on), class discussions, discussions in small groups (including topic-based brainstorming sessions), and so on. One of my second graders REALLY, REALLY wants to do debates, and I somewhat hesitate because some students are not entirely comfortable with the adversarial nature of debates ... but I think we're going to do it anyway. Agreement and disagreement is an area of communication it wouldn't hurt to look into now and then.
In addition, I'm going to add more opportunities for students to speak amongst themselves. This week, I tried letting the students answer their reading questions in small groups, then checking their answers quickly in the last five minutes, rather than the previous style of checking the answers in class (in a more traditional teacher-centered style). It went over wonderfully. Students were speaking actively to one another in English in my second grade class.
As well, in the independent reading class, I set aside fifteen minutes for students to talk to one another about the books they are reading and/or books they recommend. This went over very well, for the most part, with my first grade reading class, but there was a little stress there, so I'll have to perhaps guide the students through the process a little more.
In my first grade writing class, I added fifteen minutes of cooperative learning. I use my Thursday writing class as an independent writing time, where students can do brainstorming and work on their rough drafts for their essays. This time, I had students show their work to one another and asked them to explain their essay topic (they had a choice of three), go over their development, and then get suggestions from their groups about how to develop the essay, things they could explore, some group brainstorming and more. It worked so well, that I wonder why I hadn't done it all along!
As I see it, the biggest weakness in oral communication, in a nutshell, is that my students are improving in presentation, but not conversation. I want them to be able to speak, listen and respond to questions and comments in a less formal task than simple prepared presentations.
I think this will be a very good addition to the speaking curriculum.
In the future, I may give a little thought to the first grade writing curriculum.
Date: 23:05｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
Final Projects and Presentations
The students have been doing very well this term with their final projects. The second grade students particularly have impressed me this term.
Their final presentation, ten percent of their final oral communication grade, is to give a report comparing two countries. The presentation should be about 3 minutes long. The presentations have particularly impressed me because the topics have become so well-focused. Very few of the presentations have been a general comparison of countries. Although many have chosen, understandably, to compare food, the presentations have been very interesting.
Likewise, the first graders made their first final presentation: in this case, about their homes. They gave very good descriptions of their homes, and made good use of the prepositions we studied in class. The best presentation, in my opinion, was a very well-organized presentation that took us from the front door on a kind of imaginary walk through the house.
Date: 10:38｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
Presentations and Listening Tasks
My students do a lot of activities in oral communication. Up to now, we've had presentations, discussions, interviews and even a debate. However, up to now, presentations and discussions have been on prepared topics. Starting a week from now, students will attempt their first improvs. Each student will be given a choice of three topics. They will then have two minutes to think and prepare, after which they'll have to speak about that topic. I'm hoping to do improv role-plays in the future as well.
For presentations, a big question has been: What should the other students be doing while a student is making a presentation. Obviously, they should be listening, but we all know that junior high school students don't always do what would seem obvious to an adult. The question, though, is what tasks could we give students that would keep them on task, reinforce the skills we use when we listen to a presentation, and not turn the presentation into a merely academic exercise. In other words, I want the students to listen, but I want the students to perform tasks that reinforce the way we would listen 'in real life'.
As such, I have devised three listening tasks that we're going to start using in our oral communication classes during presentations.
1) Re-communication. What's one of the things we do with newly acquired information? We pass it on. The first task will be for students to paraphrase the main points of the presentation: in other words, to re-communicate what they have learned.
2) Assessment. What do we do when we listen? We assess. We think 'Is this something I really want to know? Is this something that is important to me? Is this true? Do I trust the information this person is giving me? Do I agree or disagree?' In a larger sense, we can learn from the WAY a presentation is made. 'What was good about this presentation? Is there something here that I'd like to do in the future when I give presentations? Is there something here that's not working, something I should pay attention to and learn not to do?' Assessment is a natural activity when we listen, so I want students to be conscious of ways to assess a presentation, and different things they can focus on when they assess newly acquired information.
3) Response. How often do people give us new information and we simply accept it? How often do we have a question, but are too shy to ask? One important skill is learning how to request clarification, request more information, fill-in the gaps, and most importantly: learn to challenge weaknesses, inaccuracies and fallacies that could damage the effectiveness of new information. I want my students to learn how to formulate response to what they hear. However, I want to emphasize with students that a response need not be critical. Sometimes a valuable response is to ADD information, reinforce the things that were good or right in the presentation, and encourage the speaker to present more.
By implementing these listening tasks, I hope to help students develop some very important listening and analysis skills.
Date: 12:37｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
Pronunciation Model
During winter vacation, I bought a new toy: I bought ... TEETH!
Now why, you might ask, did I buy teeth? Well, the reason is so that I could teach pronunciation. By showing students an accurate dental cast of the mouth, I can talk a little about the parts of the mouth: like, for example, where the alveolar ridge really is! In the past, when trying to show pronunciation to students, I've used my own mouth as an example. For showing TH, that's pretty good, but L and R are a little harder to get across because it's difficult for students to see into my mouth to see what's really going on there, and I'm a little self-conscious about doing it. Like, for example, I often think: did I brush?
The model teeth are perfect because they're always clean and never smell (at least not like anything except plastic), and I can open it wide and take it apart, and better demonstrate where the sounds of English pronunciation come from.
I'm hoping this will be more useful next year.
Date: 14:14｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
Oral Communication Class
Today, we were visited by members of the English Department as well as a university professor who came today in order to give advice about my lessons and our program.
The students were awesome. We enjoyed some conversation before class ...
Students presented a dialogue from the book ...
Students did conversation practice ...
Students practiced asking questions using 'have', 'like', 'want' and 'need', using questions including 'how many', 'when' and 'where' (things we've been studying recently ...
I felt the lesson went very well. The professor who visited us today gave me some very good advice that I shall be incorporating into future lessons.
Date: 18:18｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
A visit with students from America
Today, in our first grade oral communication class, we had a chance to talk with two students from American who are visiting our school. The students all enjoyed a nice visit, and I was very pleased by how much English they spoke. I hope the students from America enjoyed the visit as much as we did.
Date: 18:02｜Permalink｜Author：nelp
Performing Dialogs in Oral Communication
Today, the first grade students in Oral Communication class had a speaking test. For the speaking test, they had to memorize and perform a very short dialog from their textbook. They were graded (very lightly) on memorization, pronunciation, intonation, gestures, volume and so on. I'm happy to say the students did quite well.
Date: 14:29｜Permalink｜Author：nelp