October 2011 – Five against one: Teaching against the odds.

Prize fighter

Ladies and gentleman. Welcome to tonight’s T.E.F.L Dogme lightweight regional title fight. It’s a packed crowd here in Santander, where we are expecting to see a closely contested fight between a relative newcomer and one of the sport’s veteran fighters. In the red corner, we have Adam ‘el gordito’ Beale. A new face to theContinue reading “Prize fighter”

I cannot find the comfort in this (Dogme) world.

“I cannot stop the thought, running in the dark, coming up a which way sign, all good ‘teachers‘ must decide” (E.Vedder) I don’t normally write about my lessons until Sunday night, when I have had the weekend to wind down and put my reflection/blogging head on. But tonight I feel the need to blog hereContinue reading “I cannot find the comfort in this (Dogme) world.”

Black hole sun

With the relative success of the previous lesson I wanted to try to continue with the same topic of family and introduce the other two skills we hadn’t really concentrated on, listening and writing. The start of the lesson was based around discussing the relationships with our families, whether they had a big family orContinue reading “Black hole sun”

Up in my (family) tree.

At the beginning of the week I found myself flicking through the course book that I should be using with the class. Lo and behold the first chapter opened up on an interesting reading about the BBC programme ‘Who do you think you are’. Interest stirred, I picked up ‘Teaching unplugged’ and flicked to an activity called ‘What’sContinue reading “Up in my (family) tree.”

Do the evolution!

I decided that for this lesson I would get the class moving about a bit and try to make the class a little more dynamic. I had come across this lesson from Sandy Millin, http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/a-twitter-activity/#comment-638, and thought it would be a really interesting and thought-provoking lesson for the students. I started the class by showing fourContinue reading “Do the evolution!”

Wish list

The project was well and truly under way, so I decided that it might be a good time to dip into ‘Teaching unplugged’ (Thornbury&Meddings, 2009). I picked out two activities. As a warm up, ‘something we did’ (pg36), and as a main activity Three wishes (pg46). I decided to use ‘something we did’ as anContinue reading “Wish list”

Q & A

So the first lesson had come and gone. The seed had been planted and now it was time to get down to basics and begin teaching. The first lesson was dominated by me and delivering the idea of the project. Now it was time for the students to get to know each other and theirContinue reading “Q & A”

Baptism of fire

So the new term finally began this week, meaning that Project unplugged is underway. So I thought that there was no better way to spend my Saturday night than to blog about the project’s baptism of fire. I can’t say I wasn’t nervous before going into the classroom on Tuesday night. Every class so far in theContinue reading “Baptism of fire”

Lesson bytes.

I just wanted to write a quick post about some of the unplugged lessons and moments that have happened over the last couple of weeks. I will try to keep it brief. Audio upgrade – I wanted to record my morning group and get them to listen back to an audio extract to practice someContinue reading “Lesson bytes.”