Affective Teaching

Week2 - Task3: Take a picture that symbolizes affective language learning for you and sahre it with the group explaining why you took it. I chose this picture because when I look at the students faces, I can see happiness, connection, surprise, respect, willingness to participate, affection, surrender, confidence. And all of those elements are our goals to an affective language learning... where learning becomes interesting, memorable and challenging! And they can genuinely experience that English is easy! English is fun!

I planned this activity for a group of 12 stuents that range from 9 to 10 years old. In this lesson,, we have a story. The leading character (Vicky) calls her friend and asks if she´s ready for the party, and what she is wearing. The target language of the lesson is naming different clothing items and describing what one´s wearing. Chunks: come on! I don´t believe it! I´m wearing...get ready! Sounds great!! What about you? After pre teaching the history, reading the history and the dialogues, it´s time to manufacture the telephones so that they experience the language communicating in a funny way. I use plastic cups to make telephones. Each student decorates a plastic cup with tape color and I help them. For this, we need a plastic cup, a pencil, clips and strings. ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF1CzqOzgGk )

Discussion 3 - Task 1: Getting ready for story telling Storytelling is a memorable moment in which learners establish strong connections with the language. What aspects are important in your opinion to take in consideration when planning a storytelling activity? Find stories your children will like and appreciate. Stories should match their age and language level. They should have simple structure and positive attitudes. Stories that children could connect with their daily life and their thinking, curiosity and interest. How do they affect the moment in which we are with our studants? When the story´s background is considered; the vocabulary is mostly familiar to the students; or if the story has a lot of unifamiliar vocabulary (but is comprehensible, or can be pre taught); if the teacher uses pre and post storytelling activities; or employs the teachniques for both phisical actions and oral modulation to tell the story; then storytelling is likely to become an interactive way of enhan...

Discussion 4 - TASK 2: Right audience and meaningful - what effective strategies have you used that achieved these goals? I believe that activities in which students can experience and practice orally what they're going to write are very important. This kind of activities are meaningful ( because they are talking about themselves and about their friends) and make them feel comfortable with the language. I also believe that, in this case, it's important to talk about themselves first and then talk about the other person, so that they'll experience clearly the difference between them: I'm x He/she/it is. Another important strategy is to give them challenge while giving instructions.. So they have the chance to deduce write answers!

Discussion 4 - task 1 - designe a writing activity in which young learners can experience both: grammar and writing in a criative way usingconcrete props. I have a group of kids that ranges from 9 to10 years old. This is a lesson which the aim is the question: how old are you? The verb: to be (am/is). They already know about months of the year and numbers). First, I ask one of them: How old are you? Then, in pairs, they ask each other. Second step, I ask about some friends: How old is Luana?? Luana's ten!! Then, I show 4 different pictures of different kids with different ages. I ask them to try to guess how old are they. ( Guess! How old is Bruno?) After that, I show the same 4 pictures and more information about them (for ex: bruno - 12 - green bike - june). They have to make true sentences: Bruno' s 12. His bike is green and his birthday is in june. (First orally). Then, the'll choose two from the four people( or two friends), who they are going to write about on their n...

TASK 2: Getting ready for storytelling. I have a group of 12 kids ranging from 7 to 8 years old. They are already familiarized with the characters of the book (Tina the tortoise, monkey, own, duck and rabbit). The leading character is Tina the tortoise. This is a pre-teaching activity and I bring realia objects to the classroom like: football, a coat, socks, a cap and a mug. I ask kids where Tina is: where is Tina? ( I act like I'm looking for her..) Oh look! Tina is in her shell! Tina come out and play! ( sound of a negative answer) Help me kids! Repeat: Tina come out and play! ( sound of a negative answer again). Let's try again but louder! Tina, come out and play! Tina answers: No, no! It's cold outside! I say: Tina let's swim! ( I make the gesture) Tina answers: no, no! It' cold outside! I let children have ideas showing the objects inside the box! Let's play football! Children keep trying to convince her (Put on a coat! Put on a cap! Put on your socks!). A...

TASK 3: Circle time (C.T): What are the benefits of having it with English Language Learners? During the C.T they have the oportunity to talk about their feelings, opinions, personal experiences. They can support each other and have the experience of a safe, respect and affective enviroment. It helps kids to feel they belong to the group and they start supporting each other. They are prepared for learn and as a result they get more attencious, excited, they want to participate and communicate. What challenges may arise when having circle time? I,ve had the need to stablish some clear rules for C.T. Some studants speak at the same time, or more than others, or for a long time. So I time the spaktime and who´s gonna talk is holding an object or wearing a hat (for ex) the others have to listen carefully. They already know that all of them are going to have the oportunity to talk. And it´s being a import way to work as a team, they are getting used to listen to each other and colaborate.

TASK 1: What do you understand by affective language learning? For me, affective learning happens when studants are confortable with the teacher and the language, they feel safe as they got used with it and they can be who they are and share their feelings and opinions. It happens when they have choices, work toguether as a teem and at the same time express themselves with all their particularities. The teacher responds to studants demands and create memories throught criative activities, using songs, dialogues and playing characters. Also, by creating an affective enviroment using circle time, warm up, criative communication to get their attention and surprise elements. The teacher is concerned about studants compreension, if they had enought time to live the language and always gives them feedback about what they learned and worked in the classroom, celebrating each step. What are some ways that you can foster it next week. I´ll tell you about my experience. I always sing hello and g...

Hello everybody! I have been absent until today because I have had loads of work, a teacher training and a I travelled. Let me introduce myself! My name is Graziela I´m from Brazil and I work with children for 5 years. I graduated in Musictherapy and started working with children at a private bilingual school. For 4 years I teached music classes for children there using English. Last year I moved to a small town, where my family lives, and I also started to teach English for children at Cultura Inglesa´s school. I brought my experiences form classroom managenment but taching a new language is something knew and that´s why I´m looking for more preparation. (This is my first online course and google community. rsrs)

Discussion task #1: Choose one everyday object which was not presented in the session and create an activity with it. I created a fishing rod (using a stick, rope and a small magnet) which I used with vocabulary cards with has a paper clip each. I used it in the practice stage after presenting new vocabulary. I put all flashcards / word cards (ready or created by Students) in a box . Students fish a word/card and they have to say what it is or use the word in a sentence. In pairs, they can fish a couple of words and put them in one sentence. At the end of the term, when we have covered many words, we can ask some to fish words in a small group and create a story using the words they fished from the box. I believe it can be used with any language point as well and in different ways. The idea of fishing gets students excited and they feel the're taking ownership for their choice (though they can't really choose) , and thus feel relaxed practicing the language in a game-like and f...

Discussion task #2: Introducing puppets and engaging learners (I'm going to introduce my first puppet ever). It doesn't look charming, but I meant to have it look like this and with the glasses - maybe to use it as a wise character later on !! He's called Mody ( a very popular nick name for many Arabic names) T : Hello Mody, why are you sad? M : I can't finish my English project. T : Why don't you ask for help? M : I'm shy to ask anyone for help. T : Why? you can ask any of your friends. M : But they might think I'm not smart and just laugh at me ! T : Oh, what do you think kids? Can you help Mody? SS : Yes, we can (hopefully, or they might ask about the project) T : Ok, great , so go ahead Mody and ask your friends here. M : But they will laugh at me (whispering to T.) T : Will you ? (Whispering to sts, facial expressions !) SS : No. T : Good, so what do you want to ask about Mody? M : (Ask a question that relates to a previous lesson or a language point ss...

Discussion task #3 : Write ten questions you still have about affective language learning. The idea here is not for me to answer them, but to make you identify some areas you might want to engage in future research. That is really interesting and challenging to think about. I will try after all the inspiring ideas Juan shared with us to think of ten questions !! 1. Can affective learning help teachers involve new students joining the course late (after having built an affective kind of atmosphere in class) ? 2. How can affective learning help us get learners of different nationalities engaged in a course more? 3. How different can affective language learning be with adults ? 4. How can we use a Needs Analysis at the beginning of a course to decide what kind of affective learning we need to adopt? 5. Is affective learning an approach / method? I need to research when it started or where it came from? How much is it related to psychology? 6. How different / similar is it to building a go...

Discussion task #2 Finding the right audience and making writing meaningful are two of the major challenges teachers face when designing writing activities. What affective strategies have you used that achieved these goals? 1) I try to personalize writing as much as possible. I usually start talking about myself to get students at ease and more open to share their own feelings and ideas towards the writing topic. Then I adapt the task to allow students to express themselves in a comfortable and confident way. 2) Finding the right audience is definitely a key issue in all writing tasks but it's even more important with young learners as they need to feel their writing is authentic and will be read by real audience. That's why I try to do peer check/correction before I read it myself. Whenever possible, I try to have students write to each other and reply back. As a different version of it, we created at our center (A wise owl) which students write to and get personalized replies...

Task #1 : Getting ready for storytelling I believe that besides all the wonderful features shared this week (the routine, the place, being fun, tone and voice, ..etc.), we should plan for how we will extend and personalise the storytelling session to go beyond just telling a story. While planning, I usually start as usual with exploiting the language in the story and the morale. But as our students create their own visualization of the story and that imaginary world (that's the bit they enjoy most), we have to give them more time to live with the story and enjoy their world. I think carefully about how to create post storytelling activities such as; arts and crafts work (draw and create characters or items used in the story), role play, a letter to a character in the story, imagining they were one of the characters and sharing how they would react, creating a poster or a wall chart, or even creating their own version of the story (using comics). These kinds of activities are often ...

Discussion task #3 This is a photo of one of my classes a few years ago. I have always been proud of this photo. It was taken after one stage of a whole day project. It represents affective learning because all the students were so excited and eager to go through all stages of the lesson (as you can see in those enthusiastic, excited and happy faces). I started simply by asking sts to bring a camera to class (one for each group) which was an exciting start for all of them. They had to take photos of different items around the school starting with the alphabet letters, then create a story with these words. You can read more about that project in my blog post here http://ayat-pdiary.blogspot.com.eg/2013/04/the-alphabet-photographing-game.html

I was doing some research and found this amazing blog called For the love of learning by Joe Bower. I liked it so much that I even sent him a email asking him to recommend me some of his favourite authors. A few minutes later I saw this post by his widow. So sadly he passed away only recently. Some of you may already know him. He was from Canada and had quite alternative views on education. I hope you are interested. http://www.joebower.org/p/abolishing-homework.html

Finding the right audience and making writing meaningful are two of the major challenges teachers face when designing writing activities. What affective strategies have you used that achieved these goals? Imagine asking a ten-year old student to write about the impact of the economic collapse in the USA. This student will not have much to say and he/she will feel frustrated. Now imagine asking a 17-year-old student to write about his/her favorite toy. This student will not feel excited to write about this because it is not part of his/her reality anymore. Of course, these are extreme examples, but we do have to take into consideration many aspects such as students's age, background, reality and interests when designing writing activities. Besides relating to students lives and realities writing acitivities should also cover three moments: pre writing, writing and post writing. In the first stage, we should activate students memories, feelings and senses providing them with the ...

Students react to being called IMPORTANT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFaJdBq78lc

Hi everyone, I would like to share my affective goodbye to my students in the practicum. I chose a special course of students who are in an improvement program because they have repeated course. They can be difficult to handle at times but everything turned out great. I had told them that I had chosen THEM and that I trusted them. These cakes are called "palmeras gigantes" and have become very popular in Spain for parties. One student had said that he would like to have one the last day, and they really deserved it, so I ordered this one with a thank you message. The last day they were doing the exam, and when everyone was finished, I brought it in. They were so excited!! I tought them how to say tablecloth, how to make a toast in English... with orange and pineapple juice. We took photos of the group and the cake... They all came to give me two kisses as we do here, a and then, right before leaving, I said. Just a moment, let me tell you this joke! I put on my sunglasses, an...

Task #1 1. Eyes-closed, each S picks up a card from the deck of fruit names. (5’) 2. Then, the task to do is to imagine that they are that fruit, and to write a small biography, using the simple tense. (20’) E.g.: Hello, my name is Jack, the Lemon (LOVE the actor;-), and this is the story of my life. My dad was a big and bright yellow from a lemon tree in a quiet Andalusian patio in the South of Spain. I was a little seed inside him, that got planted in a small pot. I grew up little by little, then got transplanted to a bigger pot. Then I grew flowers, which the birds loved to visit… 3. When everyone is finished, teacher collects the biographies and reads them out lout. The rest of the students need to guess who wrote each biography (not exchange them, because they might recognize the handwriting). (15’). 4. T then hands the biographies to different SS, who need to write a short continuation to the story, and share it with the rest of the class and give it back to the original writer. ...

Task 1: I teach teens aged 14 to 17 in a secondary school. They are not really into writing,  but I have tried a creative writing task that worked pretty well with them. They enjoyed writing and they had much fun. I give them flashcards or pictures of vocabulary that they should use in their writing. Then, in small  groups I initiate the first sentence,  everyone will write one single sentence to proceed the story and so on and so forth. Hence, they both read what have been written by their friends and then write another  new sentence. The story is composed creatively by them and the end product of the story is funny and amazingly imaginative. Grammar is easily combined with writing in this activity as the teacher can urge the use of a structure from the start and the students will imitate the same structure as they try to finish the story. Let say, for instance, that the objective is to consolidate the use of the simple past tense, so I initiate the story with a sentence containing th...

Task #3 1. What is the relationship, if any, between affective learning and positive discipline? 2. Shouldn't all teaching be affective by nature? 3. Aren't many teachers affective but they just don't know about it? 4. Is affective learning exactly the same as humanistic learning or are there any differences? 5. Is affective learning included in the curriculum in any country? 6. Is affective learning as we know it only applied to teach a foreign language? 7. How would an affective teacher best deal with a teenager who rejects English altogether ---as I have found during my practicum? 8. What are the best ways to carry out proper differentiation with slow and fast finishers according to affective learning? 9. Should there always be evaluation in affective learning? 10. In compulsory education, would an affective learner fail his/her students or envisage doing without the pass/fail system?.

Week Four: Discussion Task #1 A writing activity in which young learners can experience both grammar and writing in a creative way. One of the challenges of teaching grammar to young learners is showing them grammar is relevant and important. And in my humble opinion educational games make this very clear. The cross-curricular contexts mean that pupils build on their previous experience and use grammar to learn and communicate about something new. This makes learning grammar both motivating and memorable. I have successfully incorporated the Sentence Strips as an activity in which young learners can experience grammar and writing a new vocabulary in a creative ways. Here, let me describe this activity in a greater detail. Activity type: Whole-class Level: Beginners Time: 20 minutes Prep-time: 20 minutes Materials: Sentences cut into strips for each student (see attached picture) Pre-teach: Various (depends on sentence strips) Procedure: Hand out the sentence strips to the students. Eac...

Discussion Task #1 Once again, I’m focusing on the very young preschool language learner as I suggest my activity. Repetition is a key element in getting our very young learners (toddlers and preschoolers) familiar with the English sounds and words, as well as sentences and grammar. But, repetition can be quite boring unless it is done in a playful and fun way. To help my young students, I often build lessons around songs and books that have repetitive patterns. The students hear the same songs each class and begin to anticipate the patterns in the song and start to sing. I like to use flannel boards that help the students visualize the song as they learn it. Alice the Camel is one song that my students love. Before we begin to sing, I place a camel with 5 humps on the board. Then as we sing each verse, the students help me remove one hump. By the end of the song, there are no more humps, and Alice becomes a horse, of course! ☺ Verse 1 Alice, the camel, has 5 humps. Alice, the camel, h...

Discussion task #2: Encouraging a young, preschool student to write requires extra effort to ensure that it is a meaningful activity. It’s quite important that it be designed so that a student can attempt to write, without any negative feelings, especially because he or she is just learning to write. This is often even more difficult when the child is learning English as a second language. To get a very young ELT student off to a good start, I give the student time to share about something that is important to him/her, through a Show and Tell opportunity. The student brings one item to share with the class, or with me in a tutoring session. After he/she shares, I ask (or have the class ask) a few questions about the item. Then after sharing orally, I ask the student to write a few words to describe their item, in a one-on-one session. I help the student remember the words used in sharing, as needed. Next I have the student put those word/words into one or two sentences that describe th...

Task #1 Bottles An activity to work motor skills, empty/ full, and to make a nice toy, students had to put sand and sticks inside the bottles. Later they played bowling. They had a lot of fun.

Discussion #2 What is important when designing writing activity? First of all the activity should be appropriate to the age level and sts English level. Secondly, the writing activity should be interesting, involving fun and movement as well. When I pre teach vocabulary to teenagers I usually let them guess the meaning from the context and I almost always make cards with the new vocab words and others with their definitions, and I give them to match. They usually find the right match, before we go thru it together. We do activities like they rate the words from easy to difficult, giving numbers from 1-10 and we have a Vocab Board where we stick the new words. Last year we made a big paper tree, we put it on the wall, and on the leaves we wrote all the new words we learned that semestar. With young learners, writing activities must be fun and entertaining or they easily get bored. They can write with sticks, glue them on the paper in the shape od the word, the enjoy writing with chslk o...

Week 4 Task #1 Teaching vocab : nouns ( a doctor, a school a cat...) Grammar point: Personal pronouns in negatives and questions Visual props: colorful bricks, puppets from the Goldilocks story and flashcards and everything that I see useful in the classroom. I sometimes get my motivation during the class so I use it instantly Age group: 7-8 years old Kids enjoy playing, when they see learning English as a game and fun, they will learn it with ease and joy. That is how I think grammar should be taught to young learners - through games. For teaching personal pronouns I use the characters of the Goldilocs story: he - the Father bear (puppet)+ the blue brick writte HE. She - the Mother bear (puppet)+ the red brick written SHE..... We all sit on the floor while presenting the pronouns. Then, I mix the bricks and the puppets and kids try to match them. They enjoy doing this. Next I tell them I am going to be a student and they are my teachers: I put the picture of my daughter with the HE br...

Task 1: Sorry again for posting late! it's now that I have listened to the recording and I regret twice not being able to attend the live session. it was full of insightful ideas and joyful fun. Story telling is a great way not only to learn in a funny atmosphere but also to build strong affective connection with our students. To my mind, the important aspects when planning a storytelling activity are preparing an interesting hook , the secret to a successful storytelling is initiating well the story to catch the students' attention and keep them interested. Teachers should also prepare the necessary pictures, visual aids or flashcards that help the students visualise the content of the story and understand the new unfamiliar vocabulary. Visuals are generally captivating and students love them. Besides, it is crucial that the student prepare some elements of suspense in order to surprise the students and keep them attentive to the story. That can be possibly done when knowing e...

Task # 1Design a writing activity in which young learners can experience both grammar and writing in a creative way using concrete props. This week I worked with a book project with my  six/seven-year-old students. The idea was to create a book using the vocab and the grammar structure learned. Vocabulary: zoo animals Grammar structure: can/can't  For them, it is not an easy task to read and write in English. Since English is a non phonetic language, at this age it is very difficult for them to read and write the words without mispronouncing or misspelling them. These are the steps I followed. 1 - To practice the spelling of the words, I gave them plastic letters. I said a word and they had to find the letters and organize them. I did this activity as a game. They had lots of fun; 2 - To practice word order, I gave them cards with some words: CAN, SHE, HE, YOU, CAN'T, SWIM ... I projected a picture on the board  and showed a question mark or a period. They had to organize the c...

Week Four: Discussion Task #2 Finding the right audience and making writing meaningful Having earned some experience with the writing classes I am in a good position to recommend a proven strategy for the meaningful writing, which includes affective elements. The below step-by-step guide reflects one of the strategies I used successfully with elementary school students. I. Introducing Strategy 1. Introduction of a writing strategy (storytelling thru sequencing, describing, introducing people, 5 Ws or any other) that structures and unifies writing process as well as familiarize students to critical thinking. II. Reading Stage 2. Vocabulary and pre-reading activities with flash cards that help learners expanding the background and reinforce them how to use new words in the passage. To deal with grammar the language garden tasks were employed sometimes. 3. Exemplary passage with engaging reading topic that serves as a basis for the subsequent discussion topics. Introduced with fun, illust...

Discussion task #3: Building puppets with students for a specific purpose Please watch the Funtastic world of puppets video and choose one puppet your students can build and use during the English classes. Then design a guided activity that your students will use their puppets for a specific purpose. They could use their puppets to practice a dialogue, read, review, etc. Please share your puppet choice and your activity with the group. I find it amazing that, in my head, creating puppets was so hard and after showing the video, how wrong I was! Creating them can be so simple and it doesn't demand too many resources, just creativity. And as a result, here's my activity: I tell students they are in Potato city now. I ask them about a different name if they want to (e.g. Potatoville, potatoland, etc) and make potatoes doing different activities (e.g. playing soccer, watching TV, using a cell phone). I ask students to name them as they like it. Then, I say a Potasteroid crashes in...

ASSIGMENT 3 - TASK #3 This assigment was dificult to acomplish. I did this task with two groups and none of them like the idea puppet in the classroom. First the oldest students, they really dislike the idea. there were problems such as presenting their puppet or interact eachother. The second group like doing the puppet but they were younger students so, it was difficult for them to comunicate. After reflecting i consider that my students need more activities like charades or mimics for them to feel comfortable using new materials such as puppets.

ASSIGMENT 4 - TASK 2 When i am planing writing activities i usually choose topics where my students feel comfortable writing about, due to the fact that i work with almost teenagers and it is challenging for me that they do not get bored. 1. selection of an apropriate topic according to level, age and likes 2. i start the class with a warm up of ideas an write those ideas on the board. 3. i plan a game that include the same topic, maybe a vocabulary game for students use during the writing. 4. before to tell the students what are they going to write i tell the students the begining of an invented story i tell them that they are going to help me to complete the story. all the students participate by telling a shor sentence. This is funny or scary some times, my students like to invent scary stories. 5. i give the students a related topic and i tell them that when they finish writing they should include a draw that represent it. My students write a journal after class and as a homework, ...

ASSIGNMENT 4 TASK 1. writing activty warm-up: Std. did a brainstorm of moods and feelings on the board. After that, std played on a board game to review second conditional. Std. cut out an activity from the book Thumbs up! 6, there were some pictures were students describe what was happening, the dicusssion was in groups of three. After that, std glue the cut out on their notebook and write a sentence for each picture. As a homework studets write their ideas and their thoughts in their daily journal. During this class we review second conditionl, std have the oportunity to practice in communicative activities and to interact eachother to come up with ideas. The writing activty showed to me how some students are able to to print those ideas in their daily journal and include them in their daily life, and to see how sow students still have problem dealing with second conditional. I am going to share a picture of the material and activity. i can not share a picture of the journal becau...

I've been very busy lately that I missed the live sessions but I'll try to catch up now! and here I"m posting my assignment for week 2: #Task 1: it is  a speaking activity aimed at encouraging students to use the English language and improve their speaking skills, it is performed with a pair of dice but instead of numbers I put words. They roll the dice to see what "poisonous words" they will get, they need to talk for 2 min non stop about a specific topic and without uttering these poisonous words! it is much fun and students love it so much.

Task 2 I have used what Juan called “breathe and relax”, though I call it “Relaxing time”. I learnt this activity in Neurolinguistic Programming with Jane Revel. Before my one of my classes starts, students have Physical Education and when they come to me, they are really “energetic and talkative”. So I usually take 5/10 minutes to do “relaxing”. First of tall, I give them the chance to do or not to do the activity. Then, those who want to do the activity lie on the floor as if they were on their beds. I tell them to be comfortable and be silent so as to listen to my voice. I start speaking very slowly and in a different tone of voice. I start telling them to relax the feet, then the arms and hands and so on. As the activity goes on, I create a different context so they can image themselves in that situation. When I see they are all relaxed, I start telling them to go back to “reality” by moving their bodies. When they are all “up” again, they tell their experiences and write about the...

Task 1 My activity is called SUPER CLUE. You need flashcards with words or pictures related to the vocabulary you are teaching. One student comes to the front of the class, facing the rest of the group. S/he sits down and we (teachers) put the flashcard on his/her head so the rest of the group gives clues to this student to guess the word. The aim of the activity is to guess the name the word or picture written on the flashcard. After this oral activity is done, students have to write down as many sentences as you decide with the vocabulary provided in the flashcards. As we all have different kinds of memories, some will remember “seeing” the word, others will remember “listening to the clues” of the word and others will remember “doing” some actions done while giving the clues. As we are using only vocabulary, the grammar can be provided by us (teachers) according to the contents we are working with in class.

Hello! I just wanted to share another type of puppets I did with my students. In this case they had to create themselves and talk about their family with their classmates.

Task 1: Storytelling is a memorable moment in which learners establish strong connections with the language. What aspects are important in your opinion to take in consideration when planning a storytelling activity? How do they affect the moment in which we are with our students? Seeing this question reminds me of my favorite teachers back when I was a kid. They always had an interesting tale, there was a hook, building tension and the outcome would always makes us laugh, or at least get startled by it. And as a teacher, I try to implement these elements in the stories I create for students: there should always be a hook, where I draw all students' attention to what I'm doing, and there must be some kind of conflict/tension we need to solve. I try to involve students in the story as they are co-authors in it (even if they don't know it) by asking questions, letting them decide which way the story should go and not letting it drift too much off track (or maybe doing it, ofte...

Week 4 discussion: task2 finding purpose and audience for a writing task. I wanted ss to write a descriptive essay of a place. So I asked them to choose a picture for a place they like in Egypt. Students would put the picture with the descriptive paragraph around the class on an event called ' in the love of Egypt '. Parents and teachers and students from other classes are invited to come and read. They put a star next to the paragraph of the place they want to visit. Other classes have different themes like film reviews or countries to visit or restaurants. And students go around different classes to read and choose what they prefer.

Week4 task 1: an activity in which students experience both writing and grammar. I love doing the dictogloss with my students (reading a text for the students then ask them to reconstruct it as close as possible to the original one read by the teacher). For example: the lesson's topic is music to review different grammar tenses. I play some music and ask students some lead in questions. I put a couple of questions on the board and ask ss to listen to me and answer the questions. I read the paragraph again and ask ss to take notes. Then students rewrite the paragraph . Then they compare it with the original one. Of course they find it a bit difficult to remember it exactly so they need to justify their choices of tenses. After that the teacher reviews the tenses and ss are finally asked to write about drama or acting.

Week Three: Discussion Task #3 Building puppets with students for a specific purpose Personally, I am interested in Dr. James Asher's method called the Total Physical Response that use commands in action to teach, which is also excellent for total beginners. In fact, if I was going to teach a class of total beginners tomorrow who had zero English, and I also did not speak their language, so I could not do any translating, I would use actions in my first classes probably for about the first month I would use teach using actions like he said: “Stand up.” And then I would stand up and they would look at me. Then would say “Sit down” and they would look at me. Eventually they would understand “Stand-up” means stand-up and “Sit down” means sit down. Then I would use more and more command and building sentences long, long commands using several parts and this would give them a core of language. They would start to understand English. And then, I would use the same vocabulary and start cr...

Hey! I was wondering if you guys had some suggestions about some community builders for 6-9 year-old kids. My kids seem to be really mean to one of the kids in class and I want them to be more inclusive. Any suggestions?

Task 3 : Building puppets with students for a specific purpose There are so many ideas for making a puppet in the video! Love it! I have often been using stick puppets. They are easy to make and kids love them. I would like to share with you my activities when teaching " Hey diddle diddle" song with my kindergarten students. It is a funny song and in the song ate mentioned a cat and the fiddle, a cow, a moon, little dog, a dish and a spoon. They can all be made puppets but for the first class I choose the funniest part of the song " the cow jumped over the moon " . First I introduce them with the puppets, then I tell them the song like a story using the puppets. They especially like the part when the cow jumps over the moon and when the dish runs away with the spoon :)))))) I play the song while making the cow and moon puppets. They are easy to make and after we are done with them we sing, using the puppets. The next class, we make the rest of the puppets and we act...

Week 3: Getting ready for story telling Discussion task 1 I use lots of stories in my classes. They are excellent way for learning the language, they are fun and the teacher can create lots of activities from the story. What is important when storytelling? Act, pretend, change your voice, use puppets and the kids will enjoy! I act the stories, prepare story puppets, use simple words if I think they can not understand the language in the story. They do not even breath while listening with their mouths open :)))))) There are some easy to remember phrases in the story and we act them together. Kids enjoy acting. We retell the story several times together, and they make their own puppets and I often see them during the breaks playing with the puppets, acting and enjoying, which means we had a successful class.

Task#3 Questions I still have 1-Why didnt I hear affective learning before? 2- Why most private language schools around the world are looking for native speakers (ONLY) and don´t care about affective language learning? 3-Speaking a language perfectly doesn't mean we are going to teach effectively, does it? 4- Is there an affective language learning framework for lesson planing? 5-How can we feel the difference between an affective teacher from a regular teacher? 6-Were we affective teachers before this course? 7-is there a experiment of behavior between kids taught with affective teaching strategies and kids from teachers that do not apply it? 8-How can I motivate my co -workers to be affective teachers? by telling them? By acting like one? 9- Can I say that in the school I work we promote affective learning thru affective teaching skills? 10.Is there a follow up course?

Task #1: I am teaching reading and writting with my 6 years old students, they are young so I am teaching phonics and short words. e.g COW HORSE CAT PIG I do thefollowig pracitice: I write 3 options for each word: CAW CUW COW **Students will wrtite down the correct word. (there we practice writting at their level) For older students, I love to put the scramble sentences: e.g COW IS THE BLACK They have to write the sentence in the correct order. I do the same with teens in a competition way, so they enjoy a lot and practice grammar and writing at the same time. I also work by bringing letters or words in a bag, students must make up words and sentences and write them down on the board.

Discussion task #2: I have a reasonably high-level adult class who I recently did a writing task in class with. The whole 2.5 hour lesson up to that last half hour of writing was about the language of memories. We read a similar story (taken from a magazine) in the text book. They all read it individually to familiarise them with the style, format and length – short and full of rich description. And then I asked them how it made them feel. Then we took a break for them to reflect. After the break I asked them to close their books and listen and I read them the story aloud again. I turned off the AC and read expressively. (Here, I could/should have had them close their eyes and visualised...) Then, in pairs they reflected on the discussion questions in the book. The one that caused the most confusion was, interestingly, the one that asked whether the article had been written in an appropriately 'chatty' style for a magazine audience. But we discussed who we expected to read it e...

Discussion Task #3: Ten questions I still have: What is the history of affective learning? When and where did it come from?  What's the difference between an affective and a humanistic language teacher? How popular is affective learning and where is practised, by who and in what kinds of environments and institutions?  How do I default to an affective style for planning a lesson for YL whenever possible? How do I make finding/identifying the moments in delivering a lesson when an affective approach would be the best? How do I balance the dual and mostly opposite demands of affective learning planning, delivery vs. curriculum completion?  How do I use affective learning with older YLs i.e 11+? How do I assess learners when using an affective learning approach? Are there hard 'don'ts' in an affective learning approach? What are they? Juan mentioned that in affective language learning it is important for life to m...

Discussion 2: Finding the right audience and making writing meaningful are two of the major challenges teachers face when designing writing activities. What affective strategies have you used that achieved these goals?  One way is to use a penfriends program. Cambridge has a good online one where you upload your letters and they pair you with another school. So this gives students purpose.  One time we were doing a map activity in a text book. After the book activity students designed their own island and described it in writing (fantasy islands). After that students made their maps into a gallery for students to look at.

Task 1: Design a writing activity in which young learners can experience both grammar and writing in a creative way using concrete props.  I was looking at kids songs and I was thinking you could use the googly eyes from this song. Play the song.  The following week each student brings an object into class or finds something outside.  For younger students it could be using can. They bring a rock into class, put the eyes on it then ask "What can your rock do?" "He/she can run." For older classes in groups of four they put the eyes on their object and need to make a story relating their objects together. For example connecting the onion, to the rock, to the book to the shirt etc... I think Googly Eyes could take your students to many magical places. What are some of your ideas? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1eZXClDGQ0