1. TeachingTeenagers
Gordon Lewis
2007

2. Teens get bad press!

3. Who’s a Teen?
10-12: Tweens

4. Young Teens physical changes social pack animals
longer concentration span than primary children
abstract thinking
Think they’ve figured things out
Black and white thinking
believe what they think and what everyone else thinks is essentially the same.
they have one foot in the adult world and one in the world of their childhood.

5. Middle Teens physically they are adults
clear attraction to opposite sex
more independent, less group behaviour.
individual relationships grow in importance
accept that there is more than ONE answer to a question.
differentiated world view.

6. Be friendly, but don’t expect to be your students’ friends
Classroom Management
Treat Teenagers with respect
Do not condescend or “teach down”
BUT
Do not pretend to be a teen or act “cool”.
You are an authority figure
In other words:
Be friendly, but don’t expect to be your students’ friends

7. How do we motivate teens? Challenge them to think!
Language Awareness Activities
engage teenagers by creating language awareness activities which foster an understanding of and interest in how languages function.
Critical and Creative Thinking Tasks
encourage logical thinking and reasoning
generate new ideas.
Teenager Topics
focus on topics and themes that are important to teens.
set up contexts and let students provide the content.

9. Language Awareness Activities
The Archeologists
Unearthing students’ language skills. i.e. give opportunities for them to see what they can do already / Elicit as much “raw material” as you can from students, which you then use for activities. / Get Students to explore their own capacities (mind-mapping, find everything you can to do with...)
Repair English
Applying language skills: Students apply all the rules they know already in an attempt to make English a more easily learnable language: e.g. produce easier grammar rules, spelling rules.

10. Critical and Creative Thinking
Glass Half Full
What if…?
What Would Inanimate Objects Say?
Writing a first person narrative

11. Teenager Topics
Teen (or teacher) Alphabet Book
Anti-rules

12. Technology and Teens GOAL: Invisible technology
Great for Differentiation
Forget about why or should we.
Stop seeing technology as an add on.
Remember for teens, technology is as common as the telephone.
GOAL: Invisible technology

13. One Internet Framework
Communication
Web Search
Web Creation

14. Internet is a Third Learning Space

15. Pbwiki (or other collaboration sites
pbworks.com
wikispaces.com
Online tools resource page: