Tag: Sandra Heyer

Back to the Future: More Low-Tech Activities for a
High-Tech Classroom

Posted on | by Pearson

2013_Heyer_SandraSandra Heyer

In a previous newsletter, I described my state-of-the-art classroom and its hidden drawback: It was making my students and me a little lazy. I was glued to a high-tech console, and my students were glued to the seats of their sleek gliding desks. Concerned that our sedentary class-style might have a detrimental effect on our health, I looked for a remedy.

Fortunately, the problem caused by technology had an easy low-tech solution: simple interactive activities that got us out of our seats and moving around. We took a look at two activities, the Moving Line and Conversation Stations. In this article, let’s consider the Walking Dictation and Find Your Match.

Activity 3: Walking Dictation (also called Messenger and Scribe)
Levels: All

Almost any text suitable for dictation can be the basis of a walking dictation. Because students do this activity independently, it is best to choose a text that is a little less challenging than one you might dictate yourself. During a walking dictation, half of the students are out of their seats at any given time.

  1. Number each sentence in the text to be dictated. Then post the text on a wall in the classroom or outside in the hallway. (If you have a large class, you will need to post more than one copy.) Alternately, you could scatter single numbered sentences on walls around the room.SH_5
  2. Students pair up. Student A stays seated. Student B walks to where the text is posted and memorizes a sentence.
  3. Student B returns to Student A and recites the sentence. Student A writes it down.SH_6.
  4. Halfway through the activity, students switch roles.
  5. Write the text on the board or project it on a screen so that students can check their writing. Continue reading →

Back to the Future:
Low-Tech Activities for a High-Tech Classroom

Posted on | by Pearson

2013_Heyer_SandraSandra Heyer

I recently had the pleasure of teaching in a classroom renovated specifically for English language teaching. From a console at the front of the room, I could access the Internet, project documents, or play music with a few taps on a user-friendly touch screen. Even the students’ desks were carefully chosen with language lessons in mind. The lightweight ergonomic desks were on casters, so re-configuring their arrangement for pair work or small-group work was a breeze. In fact, the desks moved so easily that my students could move them without getting up—they just shoved off with their feet and glided over the low-nap carpet.

My students and I loved our state-of-the-art classroom. However, a few weeks into the semester, I realized it had one hidden drawback: It was making us all a little lazy. Because I was at the console a lot of the time, I wasn’t moving around the classroom as much as I usually do. And my students weren’t moving at all.

This lack of physical activity was somewhat troubling in light of recent research indicating that being sedentary is dangerous to one’s health; it is linked to serious illnesses like heart disease and type 2 diabetes. “Sitting,” Dr. James Levine at the Mayo Clinic has famously proclaimed, “is the new smoking.”

My class met every afternoon from 1:00 to 3:30—a total of 2 1/2 hours of sitting. Was all that sitting adversely affecting my and my students’ health in a small but cumulative way? If so, what was the remedy? Jettison the high-tech console? Replace the sleek gliding desks with wood-and-metal clunkers? No way!

Fortunately, the fix was quick and easy. I looked through my repertoire of activities for ones that would get us all moving. Then I began incorporating one or two of them into every class. It’s hard to say whether the activities will have a long-term health benefit. But the short-term benefit was obvious. After just ten minutes of moving around, my students returned to their seats—and I to the console—with renewed energy.

In this newsletter and the next three, I’ll share the activities that worked well in my class. They are interactive, can be adapted for almost any level or learning environment, and—most important—get students up and out of their seats.

Activity 1: The Moving Line
Levels: All

This low-prep activity, which facilitates a lot of interaction in a short amount of time, gets the whole class out of their seats. Continue reading →

Hitting the Right Note: Extending the Theme of Your Song / General Tips

Posted on | by Pearson

2013_Heyer_SandraSandra Heyer

One way to extend the lessons in True Stories Behind the Songs and More True Stories Behind the Songs is to follow up each unit with a supplemental song that connects to the theme of the unit, plus an activity to go with the supplemental song. Each month, I’ve shared a song-based activity that has worked well with my beginning and high-beginning students, for a total of six activities. Last month, we considered the idea of using a checklist to quickly find an appropriate activity for a song. This month, in the final article in this series, I’ll share some general tips for using songs in the classroom. Continue reading →

Hitting the Right Note:
Extending the Theme of Your Song / Activity #7

Posted on | by Pearson

2013_Heyer_Sandra Sandra Heyer

One way to extend the lessons in True Stories Behind the Songs and More True Stories Behind the Songs is to follow up each unit with a supplemental song that connects to the theme of the unit, plus an activity to go with the supplemental song. Each month I’ve shared a song-based activity that has worked well with my beginning and high-beginning students. In the past six newsletters, we’ve explored these activities:

  1. The Targeted Cloze
  2. Summarizing the Song’s Story (and making the summary “disappear”)
  3. Personalizing the Song’s Theme with Draw-Write-Share
  4. Building a Lesson Around a Repeated Phrase
  5. Writing New Song Lyrics
  6. Singing or Speaking the Chorus

This month, let’s take a look at an efficient way of matching a song with an activity. You could begin by choosing an activity, and then look for a song that works with it. For example, if you chose Activity #2, Summarizing, you would look for a song that tells a story. But it’s usually easier to pick a song first, and then match it with an activity. To quickly find a match, convert your list of favorite activities into a checklist, run the song you’ve chosen through the checklist, and–voilà–the activities that are a good fit will naturally emerge. Here is a checklist based on the activities above. Continue reading →

Hitting the Right Note:
Extending the Theme of Your Song / Activity #6

Posted on | by Pearson

2013_Heyer_SandraSandra Heyer

One way to extend the lessons in True Stories Behind the Songs and More True Stories Behind the Songs is to follow up the song in each unit with a supplemental song that connects to the theme of the unit, plus an activity to go with the supplemental song. Each month I’ll share a song-based activity that has worked well with my beginning and high-beginning students. This month, let’s look at how to further connect the song in the unit and the supplemental song by enhancing both songs with the same activity: Singing or Speaking the Chorus. Continue reading →