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Classroom language

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The following section offers a wide spectrum of both resources and expressions that English teachers would surely find effective to use within their classrooms. Specifically, future teachers can find here tools to handle three kinds of classroom language that are always present when teaching English: classroom management language, scaffolding language and teaching language. If we want our students to speak properly, we have to be a model for them, which entails to deliberately think of the language we are going to employ within our lessons. Added to that, by carefully planning the language to be used, we can better adjust the way we speak to the students' level, so that they understand us more easily. Based on my intervention in Practicum V, the grids below provide useful expressions that teachers can use to avoid complex sentences and maintain a natural and correct grammar when speaking. 

LANGUAGE STRUCTURES

  • Does anyone volunteer?

  • All together now, please

  • The whole class, please

  • Say it with me

  • Let’s all say it together

  • I’ll help you if you get stuck

  • Who would like to do this?

  • What do you think?

  • What's your opinion?

  • Who would like to start?

  • Raise your hand if you want to speak

Classroom management language

This type of language allows the teacher to organize and keep the classroom structured.  

RESOURCES
RESOURCES

​Tip: Call-and-response strategies are outstanding ways of having students to listen when they are out of focus. The idea of these sentences is to start saying the first part of the expression and have students respond with the end of the line. As these expressions are very catchy, they usually work with students, who automatically stop whatever they are doing to respond. I strongly recommend trainee teachers to get familiarize with such a catchy technique. 

LANGUAGE STRUCTURES

  • Could I have a bit of quiet, please?

  • Speak softer, please

  • Please, stop chattering there

  • Call- and- response strategies:

- In three, two, one, everybody clap, clap, clap; everybody click, click, click; everybody tap, tap, tap; everybody shhht, shhht, shhhhhhhht.

- One, two, three eyes on me, one two three eyes on you

- Class, class, yes, yes!

- If you can hear me put your hands on your head, on your knees, eyes, etc.

- Hocus pocus, time to focus

- One, two, three... Everybody freeze!!

RESOURCES

  • Colored sticks

  • Soft ball

  • Microphone

  • Roulette app (http://wheeldecide.com/)

  • All girls/all boys

  • One at a time strategy

​Tip: It is of paramount importance to make participation rules clear from the very beginning. Otherwise, students tend to talk all at once and it is impossible to understand them. Indeed, using such resources allos the teacher to listen to all the students, and not just the most confident ones. 

LANGUAGE STRUCTURES

  • Good morning everybody!

  • Hello girls and boys!

  • How are you getting on?

  • Is everybody ready to start?

  • I’m waiting for you to be quiet

  • Let’s get down to business!

  • Today’s class will be awesome!

The teacher’s attitude plays a crucial role on the lesson’s chances to success. Thus, beginning the session with a big smile and a lot of energy and willingness is indispensable to motivate the students from the very beginning. My idea is to accompany those classic expressions to open the session with lots of gestures and a lively voice pitch that transmits my enthusiasm to start the class.

Opening the session

My project requires students to work in groups most of the times. To settle these groups, I will use several strategies, depending on the linguistic demands of each lesson.  For those lessons requiring students to use English through familiar tasks, or through topics that they can easily deduce by their context, I will arrange them randomly. This can be done by numbering students from 1 to 5 and asking 1s to form a group, 2s another one, and so forth.  Another resource that I will use to form groups randomly is to write the name of each student in a different stick and pick up 5 sticks haphazard. Finally, for those tasks demanding higher order thinking skills, such as writing, I will plan the members of each group beforehand to ensure a mix of skill levels. My idea is to place in the same group an unmotivated student, a struggling student, two “intermediate” students and an “advanced student”.   This way, I will ensure that more advanced students in English are intermingled with those needing more assistance.

Arranging groups

What concerns me the most about classroom management is handling talkative students, since I have observed that even my mentor finds it sometimes very difficult to deal with excessive talkers. Apart from verbal reminders to have my students listen, I will also try other strategies, such as conveying to one student of each group the role of controlling the volume levels of their group, or building a noise-o-meter with a clothespin and 3 bands: “low”, “moderate” and “very high”, to make my students understand that the clothespin must always be between the “low” and “moderate” bands, so if it is in the “very high” stripe, they will have to lower down their volume levels. Apart from that, there is the “bouncy balls” app, which is an online tool that controls the volume levels in the classroom. Thus, when the volume is too high, the app reminds students to lower down their voices by making a noise simulating balloons exploding.  Finally, if I notice that it is those days (especially at the afternoons) in which students find it very difficult to focus on the activity we are doing, or they are very tired, I will ask them to change of place rapidly to awaken them or I will even stop the class for a while to dance a catchy tune, such as the “banana, banana meatball song”.

Classroom management

  • Gestures, active voice pitch, predisposition and big smile. ​

​

Tip: standing at the door greeting the students individually while they arrive calms them down and enables the teacher to create a quiet atmosphere. If they get into the class in a great mass, it would take the teacher more time to start the class.   

To get all my students to participate (including the shyest ones) and avoid having always the same ones speaking, I will introduce into my lessons other strategies than the classical “raise your hands”. Some of these strategies will be: to write the name of each student in a colored stick that I will pick up to choose volunteers; to throw a soft ball to those students that I want to have participating; to pass a micro to the student that I want to listen to (so everyone must respect the turn of the person holding the micro, which is an effective strategy to administer talking turns); to use the roulette app, in which students will be selected randomly by the roulette; or to ask specific students to participate at the same time (all girls, all boys, all the students with red T-shirts, etc.).

Participation
LANGUAGE STRUCTURES

  • Work in twos/ fours/fives

  • Number yourselves from one to five

  • Find a partner picking up a stick

  • I want you to work in groups of five people

  • Please, split up in groups of four

RESOURCES

  • One to five numbering

  • Colored Sticks

  • Deliberately planning of groups: a struggling student, two intermediate students, and an advanced student.  

​

Tip: ensuring that there are different group arrangements along the different sessions is indispensable to provide dynamism to the lessons and to ensure that children learn to work with different classmates. Thus, a balance between the students' choices and the teacher's decision becomes crucial to enhance the students' teamwork skills. 

  • Cards: "Repeat after me" and "Use a complete sentence". 

LANGUAGE STRUCTURES

Evaluative feedback

  • Yes, you’ve got it!

  • Well done/Fantastic/Terrific!

  • Very nice pronunciation

  • I’m afraid that’s not quite right

  • Good try, but not quite right

  • You sound very English!

  • That’s more like it!

Corrective feedback

  • - Are you Sure?

  • - Sort of, yes

  • - Have another go

  • - Try to pronounce that again!

Scaffolding language
LANGUAGE STRUCTURES

  • Speak up

  • Say it louder

  • Once again, please

  • Say it again

  • Let’s try it again

  • Repeat after me: “It’s a blue car”

  • Use a complete sentence

RESOURCES

​Tip: By having the students speak in English, the teacher will be aware of where they are in the learning process and which particular skills do they need to practice to reach the lesson's objective. Thus, ensuring that everyone participates in the class becomes essential to scaffold learners. Having the habit of showing these cards to make everyone repeat a sentence will surely increase the students' outputs.

Scaffolding language allows the teacher to support the children's learning of the contents taught in English and of the language itself.   

RESOURCES

  • Gestures, face-work and pitch tone.​

​Tip: Even though showing to students both when their responses are correct and when they are mistaken, I find it highly important to place special focus on what they are saying right. Thus, praising the children's efforts, even if their responses are not perfect, appears to be essential to transmit them that our expectations towards them are very positive. Otherwise, receiving constant corrections without positive utterances will cause the students' frustrations. 

LANGUAGE STRUCTURES

  • Are you following me?

  • Are you with me?

  • Is this right?

  • Could you give me an example?

  • Can anyone tell me…?

  • Do you know the meaning of…?

  • Do you understand what I am saying?

  • Who wants to be the teacher now?

RESOURCES

  • Wait time for students’ responses

  • Paraphrasing and modelling

  • Role-reversal tasks

​Tip: Children need time to put their thoughts together before answering. Being patient and allowing students time to respond is an indispensable technique that teachers sometimes forget. Instead of revealing the students the answer of a question they do not know, we have first to provide them with sufficient time to think, which is not that obvious. 

I have planned several utterances to use during my project and my co-teachign activity to encourage my students to speak in English. I would like to place special emphasis on the last two sentences “Repeat after me” and “Use a complete sentence”. As I see it, to ensure that learners are internalizing those new linguistic expressions introduced during the lesson, it is not enough to provide them with an input, but it is crucial to constantly reinforce their output. As teachers, we are sometimes so focused on reaching to teach all those contents that we had planned to explain on a limited amount of time, that we usually forget about the importance of making children participate. To avoid falling into this error, I will create two big colorful cards with these two sentences, and I will show them to my students every time I want them to repeat a sentence in English.

Repetition and responses

Giving feedback becomes essential to scaffold the students' language and make them know at which point they are in the learning process. During my implementations I will use two kinds of feedback: evaluative and corrective. On one hand, evaluative feedback will be characterised by the presence of a judgement word. On the other hand, corrective feedback will consist in identifying an error and guiding students to provide the correct version.  

Giving feedback

Solving directly the communicative problems of the students time and again is a huge mistake that I do not want to commit. It is for this reason that I propose to myself to have my students continuously verbalizing what they learn, which will consequently help them to self-regulate their learning. To do so, it is crucial to be patient and provide them with the necessary wait time to response, since sometimes teachers expect to have immediate responses from the learners, which do not allow them to think what they want to say. Apart from that, I will try to avoid revealing them the answers when they get stuck, but I will use scaffolding techniques such as paraphrasing and modeling their answers (e.g.: In this painting there is….) to support them. Also, introducing role-reversal tasks, such as having students to adopt the teacher’s role to explain a concept, can be very beneficial to check their level of understanding towards a topic. 

Checking for understanding
LANGUAGE STRUCTURES

  • What do you know about Art movements?

  • How many Art movements are ther ein the world?

  • Does the word “Surrealism” ring a bell to you?

  • What can be something Surrealist?

  • Now that you have played the game, do you have the same opinion?

  • Have you ever heard about Dalí?

  • What do you think is a Dalinian symbol?

  • Can we feel something when we observe a painting?

  • ...

Teaching language
LANGUAGE STRUCTURES

Asking students to write the date

  • What day was it yesterday? What is the date of today? What day will be tomorrow?

  • Do you think this is correct?

  • What are we missing here?

  • Which one is the past/present/future?

  • Instead of a period, we write a comma when write numbers in English

  • How do we write ordinal numbers? 1st, 2nd, 3rd... 

​​

Sharing the lesson's goals

  • Who wants to read today's objectives? 

  • What are today's objectives?

  • What are we going to do today?

​

RESOURCES

​Tip: Writing on the whiteboard enables visual learners to remember information better, since contents are often greater retained when students can visualize them. That is why using the whiteboard is a resource we must not forget to exploit while we are teaching, since information will surely reach to most students. Sometimes, trainee teachers are nervous in the classroom and write rapidly and in a chaotic way. Bearing in mind form the beginning the importance of being organized in the whiteboard is essential to convey this idea of structure to the students.

  • Writing on the whiteboard

  • Calendar with envelopes containing the lesson's objectives

​

Teaching language refers to those expressions used by the teacher to introduce new contents to the students. My Teaching Unit does not contain teacher-centred explanations, but hints to make students reflect and build the knowledge by themselves. 

RESOURCES

  • AnswerGarden

  • Throw the ball into the basket

  • Scaffolding grid to get students to talk

​

​Tip: Instead of building teacher-centred activities in which students are passive learners receiving long explanations, I recommend to plan activities in which students build the knowledge by themselves. In so doing, the teaching language will consist in posing key questions that aid students to sharpen the ideas learnt and critically think about them. 

LANGUAGE STRUCTURES

  • How far did we get last time?

  • What were we talking about last time?

  • Let me refresh your memory.

  • Last time we talked about…

  • Let’s get back to what we were doing

  • Who recalls what we learnt in the last session? 

  • Do you remember what was Surrealism? 

  • Soft ball

  • Kahoot

  • Big microphone contest

​

RESOURCES

​Tip: Having students recall what they worked on previous sessions is also an outstanding way of having them reflect. Here, the teaching language is essential to guide them and make them recap ideas. 

There will be 2 different routines taking place at the beginning of every lesson of my project:

1. First, I will ask three students to come to the blackboard to write the dates of yesterday, today and tomorrow (each student will be in charge of writing one date and underlining its main verb). E.g.:

  • Student 1: Yesterday was Wednesday, 14th March 2018

  • Student 2: Today is Thursday, 15th March 2018

  • Student 3: Tomorrow will be Friday, 16th March 2018

2.  Secondly, I will create a calendar with 6 envelopes, one for each day of my project, and we will post it on the wall. Each envelope will contain the objectives of every session, so before beginning the lesson, one student will pick up the objective of the day from the envelope and will read it aloud to the whole class. I think this is a nice way of sharing with the children the purpose of the lesson, since they will probably feel more involved by having a clear idea of what they have to do from the very beginning.

Routines

Before and after introducing new concepts, I would like to check my students’ knowledge on the topics that will be addressed during each session, so as to adapt the contents to their previous experiences and be able to track their progress at the end of each session. To do so, I will be combining two different strategies apart from oral reflections. On one hand, there is the online tool “AnswerGarden”, in which students can pose their responses through a computer or a tablet (which can be shared between groups of work) and then, their answers start to appear on the class screen. This is a really feasible strategy to get students answers because, apart from being a funny way for students to brainstorm, it allows them to respond anonymously, so that they would not be afraid of participating.

The other strategy consists in having students to form a circle and write what they know about a topic on a piece of paper. Then, I will ask them to make a ball with their paper and try to basket it to a paper bin. I will pick up those papers inside the bin and read them loud.

Reflections

During my lessons I would like to place a lot of importance to the recap of the project, since reminding learners continuously about the concepts learnt will surely help them to internalize knowledge and give more sense to future lessons. It will be pointless to introduce new concepts without ensuring that the “old” ones have not been forgotten.  To do so, I will mainly use a soft ball that I will pass to different students while I ask them a question and when they got the ball, they will hold the turn to answer. In those lessons in which we have more time, we will play a “Kahoot” in which students in teams will have to compete to answer multiple-choice questionnaires faster than their classmates. Finally, another strategy that I have used many times and students love is the “big microphone contest”. I invented this simple game for my private English lessons and it was a success. It consists of splitting the class into two groups lining up in front of the blackboard. The teacher, who is in the middle of both groups holding a big microphone, asks a question and the first student in the line from each group must run to pick up the micro and answer to that question. The first student taking the micro and answering correctly to the question gets a point for his/her team.

Recapping
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