Affective Teaching

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

Discussion 3 1) Where do reward systems such as Classdojo sit in an affective classroom? 2) How do you help teachers feel comfortable teaching affectively, in particular using puppets in the classroom? 3) Is Dogme: Teaching Unplugged written by Thornbury and Meddins a adult version of teaching affectively? 4) Education systems around the world are shifting towards more tests is this at odds with affective teaching? 5) Is technology an appropriate tool to use in the affective classroom? 6) Is affective teaching embraced in many countries at a national level and integrated into the curriculum of all schools? 7) Has there been much research in to the effectiveness of affectiveness in the classroom? 8) Most course books are still organised around a grammar type syllabus if you produced an affective coursebook series for ESL how would you organise it? 9) How do you counter the argument from the parent who says this is just lovey-dovey crap you need to be teaching my child grammar and how to...

Discussion task #2: Introducing puppets and engaging learners A bit of puppetry; I think I need to work on not moving the puppets mouth when I'm speaking and sound a bit more lively! How can Norton get home?

Task 3 This is part of our summer school course where students make a toilet roll puppet. We use instructional language in English and show them how to make a puppet. They then get to design their own puppet. Finally in the video they introduce their puppet.  https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Ftectrat%2Fvideos%2F1266142120064348%2F&show_text=0&width=560

A nice example of storytelling in the classroom with preschoolers.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd8A2f6rBmU

Wilbur's story reccommendations has a great list of stories to use in the classroom. Also the book is Teaching Children How to Learn is really good. http://www.deltapublishing.co.uk/downloads

Discussion Task 1 Part B Some pictures to go with the activity. Can you guess what the box is, in the photo?

Discussion Task 1 Part A I recently tried out this activity and it worked well in the classroom; it is using the humble cardboard box. I was inspired by the story book Not A Box. Goals or Aims: In this lesson, the children will: ·         Revise shapes (circle, triangle, square and rectangle) ·         Draw a picture using a shape. ·         Describe that picture to a partner Target Language ·         I think it’s a…… ·         It’s not a circle! It’s a….. ·         I like your picture because….. Instructions ·         T: What is it? S: A box T:It’s not a box. It’s a…… (mime different things with the box) ·         T: Watch the story Not a Box and tell me the box is. ·         T: Guess what I’m drawing. It’s not a circle. ·         T: Draw your It’s not a circle. Give out handout with blank shapes.            T: You have 5 minutes ·         Get some students to take the role of teacher and choose the shape they want to use for their drawing and draw it on the board. Other students gues...

Anyone keen on doing an interview as a part of discussion part 2?

Me introducing the Monk into the classroom last week. Can anyone suggest a name? Maybe he is a distant relative of Buddy. I missed the week 1 discussions but maybe this picture illustrates what affective learning is about.

Hi, I missed the first week. Does anyone have the circle time video link? Thanks Damien

Hi my name's Damien. I run a language school in Thailand, Trat English Community (TEC) and a teaching with technology blog called Technology English Community (TEC²). I've had to relearn the teaching craft as I taught English for Academic Purposes for nearly ten years without a young learner in sight. The last two years I've been reading up and trying to get as much info about teaching children as possible.  In the beginning I thought there were no real comparisons but now I think a lot of the ideas I've learnt about teaching young learners apply to adults as well.  I'm a fan of creativity and using puppets in the classroom, that's why I was interested to find out more about these techniques from Juan - and Buddy. Looking forward to week three! Nice to meet you all.  Here is my school FB page https://www.facebook.com/tectrat/ and my web site www.tecsquared.com .