Welcome to the British Council, SCERT and Delhi Department of Education

English Cascade Teacher Development Programme

Booklet 2

Materials produced by:

The British Council

The British Deputy High Commission

737, Anna Salai

Chennai

INDIA

600 005

Introduction

Welcome to week two of the cascade course of the British Council’s Teacher Development Programme for senior secondary and secondary school teachers in the NCT of Delhi.

Overview of Course

Coffee and tea breaks at ______and ______.

Lunch at ______.

Attendance sheet to be signed twice a day.

Course overview: Week 2

Day 6 / Session 21
Reflection and Review: Sharing experiences / Session 22
Reviewing Vocabulary / Session 23
Demo Lesson ‘Going Places’ Grade X11 / Session 24
Reviewing the lesson
Day 7 / Session 25Teaching Speaking 2 / Session 26
Vocabulary practice activities:
Textbook-based activities for Secondary teachers
‘Sound of Music’ / Session 27
Bringing texts alive / Session 28
Correcting students mistakes
Day 8 / Session 29
Demonstration lesson for Secondary teachers
‘Rights of the Tiger’ / Session 30
Reviewing ‘Rights of the Tiger’ lesson / Session 31
Group planning for micro-teaching / Session 32
Video observation
Day 9 / Session 33
Macavity / Session 34
Group planning for micro-teaching / Session 35
Micro-teaching / Session 36
Micro-teaching
Day 10 / Session 37
Micro-teaching / Session 38
Micro-teaching / Session 39
Test your Knowledge! Reflection and action planning / Session 40
Feedback and certificate distribution

Week 2: Day 6

Session 21: Reflection and Review -Sharing Experiences

By the end of the session you will have:

  • watched a video of a Delhi teacher playing noughts and crosses
  • remembered some of the key ways you can increase learner participation
  • shared your experiences of trying out new ideas and activities in your classrooms since the first phase of training
  • shared new knowledge and activities gained from the British Council’s website

Activity 1: Back to the Board/ Hotseat

You will play a game called ‘Back to the Board’.

After the game, make a note of all the stages your trainer followed to play the game successfully in class.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Reflection

  • What is the aim of this activity?
  • When could you use this activity in your classes?
  • What vocabulary would you use with your students?
  • Would you need to adapt this activity? Why, or why not?

Activity 2: Increasing learner participation

  1. Read the tips on increasing learner participation.
  2. Fill in the missing words.
  3. Check with your partner.
  • Ask questions rather than giving ______.
  • ______activities with learners rather than explaining them.
  • When speaking allow learners to finish their own ______.
  • Make use of ______and ______work to maximise learner interaction – think of what your role is in this situation.
  • Don’t feel you always need to be at the ______of the training room. ______around the class.
  • Move ______from a learner who is speaking too quietly and encourage him or her to ______
  • Don’t ______everything a learner says (even quiet ones) encourage them to listen to ______
  • ______input from learners rather than giving it all yourself.
  • Don’t feel you have to ______every question. Allow other ______to do this.

Now discuss:

  • Have you tried any of these with your classes?
  • Have you used any other techniques to encourage your learners to contribute more in class?

Activity 3: Sharing experiences from your experiments

You were all asked to try out some ideas and activities with your classes.

  1. Have a look at your action plan and tell your partner or group what you managed to achieve and the impact it has had on your teaching.
  1. Share any new knowledge or tips you gained from accessing the British Council’s website.
  1. Share any difficult situations or challenges and how you resolved them, or ask the group to give you some ideas as to how you could resolve them next time.

Activity 4: Video Watch

  1. Have you used any games in your classes since the last phase of training? Talk to other members of your group about games you use.
  1. Watch the video and answer these questions.
  • How does the teacher check that students know which groups they are in?
  • Which team is O and which team is X?
  • What system do the students use for choosing a square on the noughts and crosses board?
  • Why does the teacher play the game of noughts and crosses first before the activity begins?
  • What do you think helps students to communicate more, when they paraphrase answers, or when they read answers directly from the script?
  • How does the teacher change questions to make the students understand?
  • If the students get an answer wrong what does the teacher do?
  • What do you think are the benefits of having competitions in lessons?
  • Can these competitions cause any problems?

Session 22 - Reviewing vocabulary

By the end of the session youwill:

  • have been exposed to some activities, games and techniques for revising vocabulary
  • have participated in, analysed and considered how to adapt these vocabulary activities
  • be more aware of the need for regular vocabulary revision

Activity 1: Sharing experiences

How do you currently ask your students to review and learn vocabulary?

Activity 2: Activities

You will try out a number of activities for reviewing vocabulary.

When you finish, discuss the following questions:

  • Which activity did you like best and why?
  • Read the procedure for each activity (in Appendix 1) and decide what you think the aim is for each activity.
  • Now decide if you would adapt it for your class. For example, would you change the vocabulary, the way the activity is managed?

TRY / Look at these activities for reviewing vocabulary on the British Council’s website by following these links:

READ / Read about how to improve your student’s ability to remember vocabulary here:

TALK / Talk to other teachers about how to teach collocations:

Session 23: Teaching Senior Classes – Demonstration Lesson ‘Going Places’

You are going to experience a demonstration lesson for Class XII which has been taken from Flamingo class XII text ‘Going Places’, pages 77 – 88, NCERT

Time:90 minutes. Can be divided into 3x 30 minute lessons.

Time / Aim / Procedure / Materials
10
mins / To recycle vocabulary of professions
warm Ss up with fun activity, (appeal to kinaesthetic learners – second option) and begin to activate previous knowledge / Option 1 or 2 (pre-reading)
1. Vocab brainstorm* - Put Ss in groups and ask them to brainstorm all the vocab of professions and jobs. Grps appoint one scribe. Give a blank piece of paper to each grp. Tell them this will be checked by another grp, so writing must be legible. Give them a strict 2 minute time limit.
*more challenging option – tell Ss they can only use professions or jobs containing two or more words, e.g. civil servant, computer technician, fashion designer etc.
After grps swap and check, find out which team has the most accepted words. Don’t spend time checking each word or sorting out disputes – move on!
2. Ball game – Put Ss into grps of 10, tell them to quickly brainstorm all the vocab of professions and jobs they know orally (1minute), then take them outside or wherever you have space to form large circles. Tell Ss to throw the ball in a circle to one another randomly and give a profession. The receiver catching the ball has to then give a profession that begins with the last letter of the previous word, e.g.
thrower 1: civil servant
thrower 2: technician
thrower 3: nurse
etc.
go around all grps monitoring. / Blank piece of paper for each group
OR
One ball per 10 Ss
10 mins / To lead in to the theme of the text, to activate previous knowledge, personalise the whole lesson and give Ss a reason to read later on / Lead in (pre-reading)
Draw or stick a picture of you as a teen on the board, elicit that it is you. Draw a time line like this:
Past now future
and draw an arrow from your picture to a place on the line before now to show you are young. Ask Ss, is it me now? No. When? When you were a teenager / in class XII.
Draw a large thought bubble coming from your head and either stick or draw pics of your dream job / fantasy and your hero in the bubble and elicit from Ss, e.g. Ss can see an Indian flag, a person playing cricket and Shah Rukh Khan. Give a chance for group discussion as you elicit. Give encouragement and praise for good / creative guesses.
Q. What was I dreaming of as a teenager?
Elicit: Playing cricket for India
Q. Who is this?
Elicit: SRK
Q. What was my fantasy?
Elicit: playing cricket for India with SRK
Ask Ss if they have their own dreams and fantasies that involve a hero. Ask them to think of their own and put them into pairs. Ask Ss to share and discuss their dreams, fantasies and hero stories in pairs.Give them 5 minutes and conduct feedback. Ask one or two of the pairs to share and report the stories they heard to the whole class. / Old picture of you, preferably when you were a teenager (optional)
Pictures of your chosen hero and any pictures of your chosen fantasy –or you can draw them on the board
10 mins / To develop prediction skills, create more of a reason to read and practise skimming skills. Reading for gist / Prediction and first reading
Regroup Ss and tell them they are going to read a text called ‘Going Places’ – read the introduction about the author.
Tell Ss you want them to predict some content before they read.
Tell Ss in the text there is a teenager who is also dreaming of a dream job and fantasising about a hero. Ask Ss in grps to discuss and predict what the dream job might be, what type of hero they think is in the story (elicit types of hero if necessary, e.g. actor, sports star, comic book hero, singer etc.) and what the teen’s fantasy is. Give them 2 minutes and conduct a brief feedback – listen to one or two ideas.
Tell Ss they will do a timed, speed reading where they have to skim over the text just to find out if their predictions were right or not. Ask these concept check questions:
  • Are you going to read every word from start to finish? No
  • Why not? Because the aim of this activity is to get familiar with the main point of the text
  • Are your eyes going to move quickly forwards, backwards, down and up and up and down over the text? Yes
  • How will this help you? To understand main point of the text quickly before reading in detail (this is also a skill they need in their exams so emphasise this)
Tell Ss they will have just 2 minutes and you will be strict. When you say stop, everyone must close their books / turn the text over.
Ask Ss to compare in grps and see how many of their predictions were correct. Feedback.
Answers:
Dream profession: Boutique owner (actress as well)
Type of hero: sports star / footballer (football player)
Fantasy: A date with Danny Casey (famous footballer)
Ask Ss if they like football and who their favourite football players are. / text
15
mins / To read for detail, test understanding, take learners beyond the text through a creative and constructive comprehension activity / Creative & constructive comprehension - second reading
Tell Ss they will read the story a second time at their own speed. Tell them not to worry about unknown words (they can underline them for later). Their task is to find and underline similarities between themselves and Sophie. Stress that the similarities don’t have to be identical. Give an example, e.g. if they watch cricket on tv with their families at the weekend, that is similar to watching a football match at a stadium in the UK.
Give Ss up to 10 mins to read and then regroup and ask Ss to share, discuss and compare in new grps. Conduct feedback by asking whole class questions, e.g. how many of you have a similar father to Sophie? How many of you have older brothers? How many of you have an older brother who is a mechanic / a mechanical engineer?
Ask one or two stronger Ss to share their similarities with the whole class. / text
15 mins / To practise speaking fluency through role play. Reading for specific information / Role play (post reading)
Divide the class into grps. Assign one character from the text to each grp and tell them to prepare for a role play by getting into character, and as a grp, discussing and deciding how best to play their character, e.g. Sophie, Jansie, the father, Geoff and Danny. Set the scene, e.g. the role could be a fantasy where Sophie brings Danny home to meet her family and friend.
Encourage Ss to refer back to the text. Ss can use / make props if they wish. Allow 5 mins.
One Ss from each grp goes to form a new grp so that new grps have one of each character represented from the txt. Tell Ss they have 8 mins to conduct a role play. T monitors and notes down any points to bring up at the end.
T conducts feedback, raises any issues that came up while monitoring. Asks Ss how they enjoyed the role play. 2 mins / text
30 mins / To practise talking about a personal dream / fantasy. To practise writing a biography based on a peer fantasy / Personalised poster and speaking activity (post reading)
This activity can be done as an optional extra or instead of the previous activity if you have more time. If you are short of time, you can ask Ss to produce a poster for homework before hand.
Tell Ss they will produce a poster based on their dreams, fantasies and heroes. They are not allowed to use words, just pictures. Tell them to be as creative and colourful as possible – using all materials available. Allow 15 minutes.
Put Ss into pairs and ask them to sit face to face with their posters. Each person takes it in turns to describe and talk about their poster. Allow 5 minutes
Ask Ss to write about their partner’s fantasy story. Give each Ss a blank sheet of paper. Allow 10 minutes
Collect all posters and stick randomly around the room and redistribute written stories to Ss randomly. Tell Ss they will all walk around the room, reading and trying to match their poster to the correct biography. When they think they have found the correct match, tell Ss to stick their poster next to (under / over) the written text.
Conduct feedback. Ask Ss to walk and check the poster does actually match the correct text. Allow 10 minutes
If time, they can correct each other’s work before handing it to you for final corrections.
Option 2 – if space is an issue, follow this option.
Take Ss outside with their posters and form two concentric circles (one within another). Make sure each circle has the same number of Ss. Tell the inner circle to stand facing the outer circle. Tell the outer circle to stand facing the inner one. When you blow a whistle, Ss in the inner circle walk clockwise in a circle. When you blow the whistle to stop, Ss stop walking and turn to face their partner in the outer circle. Each Ss should have a different partner. The inner circle Ss then describe and talk about their posters, while showing their posters. When the whistle blows, they stop and continue walking. Repeat the process a few times and then change over, so that the outer circle moves and the inner stays still. Allow / Ss posters
Blank paper for each Ss
Old magazines
Colouring pens / crayons
Glue and scissors

Session 24: Analysing the demonstration lesson ‘Going Places’

By the end of this session you will have:

  • reviewed the lesson ‘Going Places’
  • considered what you might need to change if you taught this lesson, or a similar lesson, in your classes

Observer’s name / Comments
Outcomes / How were the outcomes of the session made clear to the learners?
Pace and timing / Was the timing of the activities too long/too short/just right?
How was the pace? too fast/too slow?
Variety and dynamics / List the different activities the trainer used
List the different dynamics whole group/small group/pair/individual
Instructions and checking / Were the instructions clear?
Was the activity set up effectively?
Did the trainer check that instructions had been understood?
Interaction and involvement / Did the trainer elicit ideas from the learners?
Were all learners involved?
What skills (R,W,S,L) did learners use?
Monitoring and support / How effective was monitoring?
How did the trainer support learners?
Feedback / How did trainer give feedback to learners?

In groups think of at least 10 challenges teachers would you face if you they were to try this in their classrooms?