MI Update

Dear Canterburians,

How're you doing? Hope everything's ok with you. The blog has been slow on posts, so my guess is that you're probably just as busy as I am: life gets in the way of our blogging, right? Anyway, I'm writing today because, honestly, I needed a break from work. And what better way to do it than to chat with you for a while?

So, here's my MI update: I've been trying some of the new things Mario taught us, and it's been

great! Students seem to really enjoy it and I feel very good about it. Obviously, I chose activities

which suit my personality and the groups I'm working with...

#1

One MI activity I've tried was the one on page 67 of Mario's wonderful book. Before working a text from the coursebook, I chose some sentences and asked the students to put them into categories created by them. Most categories were based on vocabulary (these sentences have the word "John"; these start with the word "She", and so on), but one student surprised me and created the category "these sentences rhyme". They were not used to this kind of exercise, so it was exciting to try to find a pattern in the chaos.

#2

Remember when we had to hand words to eachother? My 9th graders (about 15 years old) were having a hard time saying the words "through" and "choir". Out of the blue, I had a flashback and remembered this activity, so I just told them to stand in

a circle. Because they were not used to their previous English teachers asking them such a thing (and also because it happened very suddenly), they just kept staring at me with that "is-she-serious?" look on their faces... Then I asked them to imagine the word was an object and to hand it round the circle, making it go back when they didn't say it right. I'm now proud to announce that ALL of my students can correctly say those words! Then I asked them to each choose a word they thought was difficult to pronounce and did the same with the words they selected.

(by the way, their drama teacher loved this and started using the same exercise in his classes...)

#3

In order to ellicit vocabulary from a text, I adapted the "Interactive Loops for Groups" (page 94). On the cards I wrote selected "difficult" words and their definitions. This way, each student had a card with one word and one definition. For instance, when a student called out the word "Feed", they all had to check their cards for its definition ("to give food to"). Because they didn't know some of the words, they sometimes called out wrong meanings, so I didn't let them continue until they got it right. Then, they could take notes on the meaning of the word. This way, reading the text became much easier...

(I think I'll try this with the beginner group, only with the definitions in L1)

#4

With an upper-intermediate adult group I tried, on the first lesson, what I now call the "question-

bombing activity". We did it in Canterbury, when we had some time to ask as many questions as

we could think of, and then the other person had the same ammount of time to answer them all. It was really funny, because they asked the most unlikely questions! When we finished the exercise, I asked them their opinion about the activity and guess what they said...? They loved it! They told me it had given them the opportunity to get to know eachother, and one lady told me she appreciated the fact that she only answered the questions later because this way she "conveniently forgot" some questions the other student had asked and she didn't want to answer!

#5

I also asked that group to write letters to their own selves by the end of the course. I assured them I

wouldn't read them, and the envelopes were sealed, but I don't think they believed it. They were very worried about making any mistakes and kept asking me to check their letters to see if it was ok... I wasn't expecting this and for a while didn't know if I should check it and read parts of their letters or if I should tell them to just keep on writing. Because they were having a hard time writing without any feedback and seemed to be stuck with their texts, I ended up reading parts of their letters, correcting some of their mistakes. What would you do in this situation?

#6

Back to my 9th graders: we were studying the Simple Past vs Past Continuous, so I decided to write them a letter about something that had happened to me earlier that week (I met an old friend of mine. I'll post the letter in the "comments" section). This was really a surprise for them and for me, because I wasn't expecting their enthusiasm over a simple letter. First they didn't believe that the situation I was talking about was really true (they're not used to their teachers sharing personal information with them...). They got the chance to ask me questions about it and I asked for their advice. They felt so important because I was asking for their opinion that they were really talking and discussing ideas in english, telling me about similar situations they had gone through. Then, when they were in the right mood, we gradually moved on to the grammar.

Have you also been trying the MI activities we learnt? Which ones? Tell us all about it...