Phoenix from the Flames Presented by Martin McCloud How to Make Unsuccessful Activities into Great Activities. Phoenix Fireworks Display, Nagaoka

Introduction About the workshop Suggest ways to an iterative approach to improving classroom activities About me Martin McCloud 4 th Year ALT based at Tsunan Chuto Lessons of 20 or 40 students

Activity Demonstration To help you see the lesson from the students point of view Give us something to improve Fight-off the post-lunch nap!

Dengon Game – how to play Teams arranged in lines down the classroom Person at the front gets a message from the ALT The message is passed to the person behind them When the message reaches the last person, the last person must run to the front and write the answer on the board.

Dengon Game – how to play Where do you live? Start Finish! runwrite

Dengon Game （日本語） どこにすんでいますか Start Finish! runwrite

Dengon Game GO!!!

A Quick Think about the Dengon Game A) How many rounds did we play? B) How many times did you speak during one round? C) What where the answers needed to win the rounds?

Questions I Ask Myself How can this activity become more interesting? Can it be more fun? Can it be more educational? Can it be fun AND educational?

Why should we question our activities?

Because we re-use our activities

Why should we re-use activities? Saves time we don’t have to spend time thinking of new ideas we an re-use materials we have already made Less risk we know that the activity ‘works’ we know the benefits of the activity but, we also know the problems of the activity

The Main Benefit of Re-use...

...Iterative Improvement By re-using activities, we will have an opportunity to improve the activities Use Activity Find Problems Make Changes

Iterative Improvement - 'Use Activity' We played a dengon game. Let's use this as an example.

Iterative Improvement - 'Find Problems' What problems did the Dengon game have? how much speaking practice did you get? how entertaining was the game? how competitive was the game? anything else?

Iterative Improvement - 'Making Changes' What changes could we make to the dengon game? Can the game: be more entertaining? be more competitive? give more practice and feedback? have more interaction for the students?

Dengon Game v2.0 Have two messages: one going backwards and the other going forwards Have messages that make a small dialogue Have answers at the back for the last student to find

Dengon Game v2.0 Whose is this camera? It’s Mark’s camera Answers Start Finish!

Activity Demonstration 2 To see if the changes we’ve made have improved the original activity Practice a little more Japanese

Dengon Game v2.0 ( 日本語 )‏ これはだれのカメラですか マークのカメラです Answers Start Finish!

Dengon Game v2.0 GO!!!

A Quick Think about the Dengon Game v2.0 A) How many rounds did we play? B) How many times did you speak during one round? C) What where the answers needed to win the rounds?

Moment of truth Which was better? The Original Dengon Game or Dengon Game v2.0?

What are the problems? (1)‏ 1) Losing the student’s attention (i.e. not fun)‏ The activity is boring Students have no interest in the activity Activity is just dull activity fatigue Activity goes on for too long Activity has been used too much too much to learn Students shocked by the amount they must learn and give up

What are the problems? (2)‏ 2) Students not acquiring enough English (i.e. not learning) Not enough English used in class Students waiting for the translation Not enough practise Students need to process language to learn it practice constructing and expressing their own sentences

What are the problems? (3)‏ No immediate feedback after giving an answer, students need to know if it is correct or not as quickly as possible. Too much to learn students shocked by the scale of the task and just give up

Solving these Problems (1)‏ 1) Keeping the students attention (more fun!!)‏ problem: activities are boring Make the activity entertaining Students are very competitive. Distract the students by making activities competitive problem: activity fatigue Don’t let an activity run for too long Don’t do the same activity too often problem: too much to learn Limit the amount of new vocabulary

Solving these Problems (2)‏ 2) Increasing the amount of English students acquire (more learning!!)‏ problem: Not enough English used try to use only English in the classroom (on materials, during explanations, checking answers etc.)‏ problem: not enough practise try to use activities that encourage speaking as much as possible. have students speak with the ALT and JTE

Solving these Problems (3)‏ problem: no immediate feedback try to use activities that provide instant feedback (quizzes, short interview style dialogues)‏ problem: too much to learn Limit the amount of new vocabulary

In Summary… To improve a lesson, we want to add: Entertainment Competition Limits on the vocabulary More practice and feedback More interaction

Improving Other Activities In groups, we will discuss improvements we can make to other activities.

Conclusions We should think about our activities after we have use them. We might re- use the activity in a future lesson. We should learn from our mistakes and improve the activity.

Conclusions Good TT activities should have: Entertainment Competition Limits on the vocabulary Practice and feedback Interaction

Any Questions?

More information Slides for this workshop can be downloaded from: Any other comments or questions can be sent to: