Making a Bar Graph with Post-It Notes

Purpose: To help students create and interpret a simple bar graph

Preparation Time: none

Materials: white board or flip chart, markers, post-it notes, pens or pencils

Preparation: Choose a question related to the unit or theme you are working on. This will be the basis of a survey that the students will conduct in class.

For a housing unit, the question might be:
Do you live in an apartment, duplex, townhouse, mobile home, or house?

For a transportation unit, ask:
Do you come to school by bus, by car, by bike, on foot, or by train?

Procedure:

I do it:

1) Write columns across the top of the whiteboard. For example, make 5 columns, one each for apartment, duplex, townhouse, mobile home, and house.

2) Model the activity by asking 2-3 students the question regarding housing. As each student answers, write the response on a post-it note and place it in the correct column.

We do it:

1) Ask a student to take your place and ask the question of several more students.

2) Ask another student to write the responses on post-it notes.

3) Ask the group in which column you should place the post-it note.

You do it:

1) Ask the students to find a partner, preferably someone who speaks a different first language.

2) Students take turns asking each other the question and recording the partner’s response on a post-it.

3) Each pair then goes to the whiteboard and places the post-its in the correct columns.

Note: The teacher/tutor may need to assist learners to make sure columns are clearly separated, so that the final result looks like a bar graph.

Wrap-Up:

1) Ask questions about the bar graph to practice “reading” the information. How many people live in apartments? Do more people live in apartments or houses?

2) Ask students to write sentences about the information on the bar graph.

3) Practice summarizing the information on the graph. For example: Four people live in houses, one lives in a townhouse, and six live in apartments.

Best Practice: What is Teacher Talk?

“Teacher talk” is everything you say when you're in the classroom. If you are someone who habitually thinks out loud, pay a lot of attention to your “teacher talk”!

Focused, deliberate speaking is most critical in Beginning and Intermediate ESL settings, but even Advanced and GED instruction can benefit from it.

Here are a few points to ponder:

Which do you think is easier for ESL students to understand?
A. "I'm gonna go ahead and ask you all to turn to page 34."
B. "Please go to page 34."

Which statement is the most authentic?
A. "I'm going to introduce myself to you now. 'Hello, my name is Emily.'"
B. "Hello, my name is Emily."

Which definition is most useful to your students during a lesson on the American K-12 education system?
A. "The word Kindergarten comes from the German, meaning 'a garden of children.'"
B. "Kindergarten is school for young children. It's the level before first grade. There is a lot of reading, art, and play."

The answers are all B because they are comparatively clutter-free, authentic, and relevant.

Try tackling a section of your next lesson with your teacher talk in mind.

Think, Pair, Square

Purpose: Students from traditional academic backgrounds may struggle with the idea and practice of group discussions, which are more common in U.S. classrooms. Here’s a technique that may help them ease into the activity.

Procedure:

1) Give the class a discussion question.

2) Ask students to think and talk about the question with a partner.

3) Next, each pair goes and talks to another pair.

4) Now lead a whole-class discussion.

Giving Directions for Worksheets

The best time to give directions for completing a worksheet is BEFORE you hand it out!

Let's say that as part of an intermediate level unit on making a schedule and setting goals, you are using a worksheet that asks your students to look at Sadia’s schedule in chart form, answer questions about it with a partner, then write sentences about Sadia’s activities using adverbs of frequency.

Before handing out the worksheet, plan to:

• ask questions to find out what experience students have maintaining a written schedule of their daily activities (activate prior knowledge)
• pre-teach any vocabulary that might be new
• review adverbs of frequency if necessary
• explain the purpose of the worksheet - what will the students be practicing?
• check for comprehension of instructions

Show students the worksheet using an overhead or document projector. Talk about or show them the different parts of the worksheet. Starting with the first part, look at the example. Talk about the process for arriving at the answer given in the example. Do the next one as a group, with you as the leader, and then ask the group to complete the next one together. Check for comprehension. If the learners can’t repeat instructions or show you, spend more time modeling the activity.

Introduce each part of the worksheet in the manner described above. Demonstrate as much as possible, even when giving verbal instructions. For example, if you want students to underline the adverbs of frequency in their sentences, show them what you mean or ask them to show you.

Now hand out the worksheets.

Qualities Brainstorm

Purpose: To practice speaking; review nouns and adjectives

Preparation time: None

Procedure:
1. Choose a quality, such as round.
2. Have learners name as many things as possible that have that quality (e.g., wheel, sun, moon, clock, etc.).
3. You may write down what your students say or you may have them write a list themselves.

Here are some categories:

Things that …

Are red/blue/black/white
Are round/square/oval/flat
Are hard/soft/liquid
Are sweet/sour/bitter/chewy
Fly/float/jump
Come in twos/threes/fours
Have holes/handles
Use electricity
Are made of plastic/wood/metal/glass
Move quickly/slowly

Variation:
To turn the activity into a game, have each student read his or her list while the rest of the class tries to identify the quality.

Best Practice: Pre-Teaching

Every activity has three parts: the introduction, the activity itself, and some kind of follow up. The introduction to an activity is called pre-teaching. This involves getting students ready to a reading, writing, listening or speaking task by:

• activating students' prior knowledge to link the new material to something they may already know
• teaching key, unfamiliar vocabulary using visuals, props, and examples
• asking questions to find out what learners remember or think about the topic or grammar point so they can start thinking about it
• enabling learners to anticipate content, facilitating comprehension
• explaining the purpose of the activity
• clarifying the learners' task

Examples

Before playing a song

1. share the title of the song and ask learners to guess what it will be about
2. ask true/false predictive questions based on students' guesses in #1
3. discuss the topic and/or grammar focus of the song
4. show a picture that sets the scene
5. talk about the singer/musician and why he/she is important
6. look at some words and phrases form the lyrics to pre-teach key vocabulary
7. clarify what the listening task is

Before reading a story

1. set the scene with pictures
2. talk about the title and ask learners to predict what it will be about
3. administer a questionnaire to find out what learners think or know about the topic
4. generate some questions from learners related to the topic and revisit the questions after reading
5. ask true/false questions about the topic
6. do a word web, eliciting vocabulary from the students related to the topic
7. clarify the reading task, e.g. reading for the main idea, looking for specific information, reading to form an opinion
   

Who Did What?

Purpose: to practice the past tense in yes/no questions and affirmative and negative statements

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Materials: paper and chalkboard or whiteboard

Preparation: Plan to review past tense forms with the students before the activity. Pre-teach any vocabulary that might be unfamiliar, but try as much as possible to use vocabulary that the students already know. On a sheet of paper, make two columns. In the left column write the names of seven people. In the right column write seven actions in the past tense (e.g. wrote a letter to the teacher, played soccer with friends, studied English all weekend). Then draw lines connecting each of the seven people to one of the seven actions. The result will be seven sentences that make sense and are grammatical. Try to avoid using his and her to make it more challenging. These seven matches are the "correct" answers.

Procedure:

1. Write the two columns (people and actions) on the board. Do not draw lines connecting them.
2. Explain to students that they will ask yes/no questions to guess which person did which action. Be prepared to model this a few times, but use extra names and actions and erase them when you're finished modeling.
   
3. Divide the class into two or three groups that will compete to solve the mystery. In turn, have a student from each group ask you questions, such as Did Maria write a letter to the teacher?
   
4. If the answer is yes, then another student from the same group can ask a question. If the answer is no, then the turn passes to another group. When a group guesses the correct statement, they earn a point. Because there are seven sentences, a tie is impossible.
   

Variations: Have the students work in groups of three. Each student creates an original list, in two copies: one with the lines drawn (the answers), another for the other to students who will ask questions to solve the mystery of who did what.