https://youtu.be/6FmYiJhTqVI?

si=zPYu1jQFyN5Bq3Ke
Dennis Johnson, ESL Teacher - City College of San Francisco
"For one reason, I'm a visual learner. I'm passionate about using visuals, and I've always liked
using visuals when I have learned languages. Visuals are so important because they connect
words with reality, with situations, and they connect words with meaning.
Good morning.
How are you?
Fine? Good.

Today, we're going to talk about work.

Today, we begin a new unit: work.

Before using visuals, create interest in the topic

"Tell me some jobs. I want to write some jobs on the whiteboard."

Student: Teacher.
"Teacher, yeah."
Students come into the class with a lot of knowledge already—a lot of work experience, a lot of
real-life experience—and this is something you tap into. It generates a lot of interest for the unit.

"Who has a job now?"

T: Daniel, you have a job. What's your job?

Daniel: Baker.

T: "Yes! What kind of baker? Do you bake bread?"

Daniel: Bread and bagels.

T: Neem?

Neem: Home care.

T: "You're a home care worker?"

Neem: Yes, home care worker.

T: "Do you work with older people or young people?"

Neem: Old people.

Use visuals to activate prior knowledge

"Again, students come into the classroom with a lot of prior knowledge, and one visual can just
unlock a lot of things. It helps the teacher understand what students already bring with them to
the classroom. Maybe they know a lot about work vocabulary already; maybe they don't know
anything about it."

T: "Okay, I'd like you to open your book to page 96.

Do you see a big picture there? There are a lot of rich things that come out of a big picture."

Activities with visuals:

1. "Where is this picture?"

o "The first thing to do is just have fun with the picture and get a general context."
o "How many people do you see?"
o "Talk about actions: What are they doing? What are they wearing? What time is
it?" get sense of the context and then move to my goal which is talking about
occupations
2. "What do you see in the picture?"
o "What are some of the things you see?"
o "There's a man fixing the lights."
o "Why? Why is he fixing the lights? What's wrong with the light?"
o Student: "It doesn't work."
o "Yeah, the light doesn't work. He's fixing the light. What else Do you see - a
computer?"
 o Student: "Yes."
o T: "Is this a big computer ?
o S: No, small?"
o T: "Notebook computer." "Laptop computer."
o Student: "Yeah, laptop."

Use visuals to build vocabulary and grammar

After talking about the big picture and the occupations, we move to a pointing activity where
students actually physically point to the picture to identify vocabulary and show me they
understand it.

"Okay, point to a waiter."

"When students are pointing, it's really important for me to go around the room and see what
they're doing. It's always a little surprising—and even humbling—to realize that some of them
are not doing this correctly."

“a nurse”

but it's important for the teacher to know if the students are connecting words with meaning
appropriately or not

• T: "Here's a nurse."

 T: "What color are her clothes?"

 Student: "White."
 T : "Look at,... Is she a construction worker?"

 Student: "No."
 T: "No, she isn't. Is she a...?"

Use questions to reinforce understanding

"There are three different kinds of questions I can use."

1. Yes/No Questions:
o "The most basic question is a yes/no question. I point to a picture and say, 'Is she
a nurse?' The question has the vocabulary embedded in it, so it’s the easiest for
students to answer." and they were getting those very quickly yes no. "Yes, she is.
No, she isn’t."
2. Or Questions:
 "I move to a little higher-order question, which is an 'or' question: ‘is she a cook
o
or a cashier?” i'll point to a person i'll say is he a doctor or a construction worker?'
Again, the answer key is embedded in the question, but they have a choice “yes-
no"
3. WH Questions:
o "The most difficult, third order of question, would be a WH question: 'Who is the
man with a pencil and a paper?'
o Student: 'He’s a waiter.'"

Use visuals to review grammar

"Now, let's review something we studied before."

"The cook is cooking."
I demonstrated some of the grammar that came naturally from the picture. In this case, it was a
review of the present continuous, which students had already studied.

"Look at the busboy." And the picture enables me to bring that grammar out and in a very natural
way where i can say "What is he doing?", "What is the nurse doing?"…

it's a good way to review something that we’ve already covered

Use visuals to prompt pair work

"Before I ask students to do anything, I think it's very important to model that activity."

1. Modeling progression:
o Teacher to student: "I say the word; the student points."
o Student to student: "Then, I invite another student up." right here and the first
student then is speaking the second student is pointing and then we switch roles
2. Pair work:
o "One student points; the other student speaks. There's a movement there from
teacher to student and then to everyone participating in the activity."
o "When students are working with partners, it’s very important that I walk around
and see what they're doing. With a large class, it's even more important to
circulate because I can't invite everybody to the front of the room."

Final accountability with visuals

"After the pair activity, I invite two more students to come to the front of the room. This is a
final piece of accountability where students have been practicing with partners but. If students
know that perhaps the teacher is going to ask them to come front and demonstrate this activity in
front of the whole class, I think they're going to be a little more accountable for the activity."

Importance of visuals

"No matter what the level of the class is, visuals are important because they:

 Generate interest in the topic.

 Provide a vocabulary-rich environment.
 Bring students' experiences to the classroom.
 let the teacher know how much students already know about a particular topic
 and then visuals can be a great spin-off you can just take off in many different directions
 Help the teacher understand how much students already know about a particular topic.
 Serve as a great spin-off for many different directions."
https://youtu.be/_YIOE8_JVdk?si=1qBR7n5HXe4etmO1
listening skills are very important
this is for language Begins for most of us
if you think of a infant if you think of a child learning a language
the first stage of that language development is listening and it's receptive is
passive
and this can be true for students, too
if you're moving towards communication
listening is such an important skill
you can imagine a person with a very well-developed question
who's not prepared to hear an answer speaking without listening doesn't go
too far
T: “okay we just learned some words for names of jobs what jobs do you
remember”
this is a listening lesson we can generate a lot of language before the
listening begins because in a real-life situation you're going to have a certain
set of expectations before you go into a listening situation . the lesson
begins with a big picture and the big picture
is a great way to provide the context to set up the listening and to give a
little preview of some of the words that students are going to hear in that
listening activity
To set up the listening we want to make a lot of references to the big picture
there's it's a vocabulary rich kind of picture where there are all the
occupations that
we're going to be listening to talking about
T: “who fixes the lights” you're pulling vocabulary you're pulling
pronunciation you're pulling grammar structures out of the big picture
T: “electrician electrician” “who clears the tables”
Ss: “a busboy”
for our first listening activity in a very non-threatening way we want
students to be able to understand the general sense of what's happening in
this conversation or dialogue or story whatever it is
we're going to listen to a tape: listen circle the words you hear
you're not worried about listening for every word and understanding every
word but you are struggling to get the context and to get the general
meaning and the general idea of what's going on
what did he do before he was a construction worker
T: “okay what words did you hear. I want to volunteer to come in circle what
did you hear”
listening is actually a very threatening thing for a lot of students students are
convinced that they don't listen well and they're a little anxious when they
listen. they are afraid that they're not getting it .
what we want to do is create a very non-threatening environment so that
listening is very comfortable and one way we can do -> this is to sequence
the listening so that they're listening for more and more
we give them more than one opportunity to listen do
T: “we need to listen again okay let's listen again”
Circle the words you hear conversation A: what does she do? she's a teacher.
really conversation E: what does he do? now he's an electrician. what did he
do
before? he was a construction worker . he's a manager at a restaurant really
what
did he do before he was a cashier
cashier are we okay now is this right no
which one is wrong missin dings
receptionist yes
no no receptionists okay very good
let's take this out good let's look at page 97
that's followed by an activity where they are looking at different pictures and
they have to actually match a set of pictures to a conversation that they
hear which is a little more
detailed listening
construction worker
T: “ what's the big picture number one”
and we give them opportunity to listen for different things and so the
listening just builds and it grows and grows and they get more and more and
it's okay to listen to something repeated times because they're getting more
and more out of it and in a very comfortable way
electrician electrician now we're going to listen to these conversations and
you're going to put the letter in the box
hey listen Circle the words you hear
conversation A what does she do she's a teacher really. what did she do
before she was a waitress
is it number one number two number three number four number two so.
we're gonna put a a in the box do you understand all right . how about
conversation B somebody said number three is this B number five. maybe
we need to listen again
how about conversation C
the last thing I wanted to do was to remind students that they have a CD in
the back of their book in the back of your book we have what's this CD and
the listening continues because they can take the CD anywhere and they can
listen again.
I know some students listen to the CD in the car and they're excited to have
the
CD and students tell me that they listen at home they listen in the car
students
have told me they listen at work . hopefully at break time and they're
developing their listening skills and taking the initiative to work on these
skills on their own.
there's a certain logical progression in terms of steps for listening and in my
mind I think of it as before you listen listen and then follow up listening
listening is always a continuum and we want to set up a listening task with a
context this is what I call before you listen and then there's a listening task
which is often a listening for the gist it's a general listening and then it
moves towards the more detailed more specific listening where they listen
for specific things and so there's a logical movement through the exercises
Key Points from the Listening Skills Lesson

Importance of Listening Skills

1. Listening is fundamental in language learning:

o For infants, the first stage of language development is listening, which is passive
and receptive.
o For language learners, listening is crucial for communication since it prepares
learners to comprehend and respond appropriately.
2. Listening without understanding makes communication ineffective:
o A well-formed question is pointless if the listener cannot process the answer.

Setting Up the Listening Lesson

1. Generating Language Before Listening:

o Teachers start by creating expectations, similar to real-life listening situations.
o Example: The teacher asks students to recall job-related vocabulary ("What jobs
do you remember?").
2. Using Visual Context:
o A "big picture" is used to provide a rich visual context for the listening task.
o The big picture introduces vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation related to the
listening activity.

Example:

o T: "Who fixes the lights?"

o Ss: "Electrician."
o T: "Who clears the tables?"
o Ss: "A busboy."

The Listening Activity

1. General Listening:
o Students listen to get the general context and meaning rather than focusing on
every single word.
o Activity: Listen and circle the words you hear.
2. Encouraging a Non-Threatening Environment:
o Listening is often anxiety-inducing for students, as they fear misunderstanding.
o Teachers make listening comfortable by sequencing tasks:
 Begin with simple listening tasks and gradually move toward more
detailed ones.
 Repeat the listening as needed.
 Example:

o T: "Let’s listen again. Circle the words you hear."

o T: "What does he do now? What did he do before?"
3. Detailed Listening:
o Activities progress to matching pictures with conversations based on detailed
listening:
 Example: Listen to conversations and match them to numbers (e.g.,
"Conversation A matches picture 2").

Follow-Up and Independent Practice

1. Reinforcing Listening Practice:

o Students are encouraged to continue practicing with the CD included in their
book.
o Teachers emphasize that listening can happen anywhere: at home, in the car, or
during breaks at work.
2. Progression in Listening Tasks:
o Before Listening: Set up the context and introduce expectations.
o During Listening: Focus on general understanding (gist) before moving to
specific details.
o After Listening: Follow up with related tasks to reinforce comprehension and
vocabulary.

Summary of Steps in Listening Instruction

1. Before Listening:
o Introduce the context (e.g., using visuals or generating vocabulary).
2. Listening:
o Start with general listening (gist) and gradually move to detailed comprehension.
3. Follow-Up Listening:
o Use CDs or additional tasks to encourage independent learning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNaG1uN40gI
Grammar's a really important piece of learning English, students want
grammar.
It gives them a handle on the language, helps them to become reflective
about
the language and helps them build fluency.
The goal of the grammar lesson is to present the grammar to comprehend
the main points and then to move into practice, which starts with more
controlled practice and then moves to freer
Goal of the Grammar Lesson
practice, and the goal really is for them to develop fluency with the grammar
structure.
It's important to set up the grammar and the first thing I did was bring in my
own
personal experience which is a clue that this grammar point we are talking
about has meaning.
Okay now I am an English teacher.
Piano teacher,
I was a piano teacher. I'm using this grammar point to talk about my life, and
I talk about my wife, I talk about different students in the class.
Using the Grammar Point
I want to establish the fact that this grammar point is very useful in
communications, very useful to talk about things like what we did before,
what we're we're doing now, so it also pique their interest in the grammar
point,
Now, what time?
Before.
Danielle where are you from?
I'm from Mexico.
Mexico, in Mexico
did you have a job? Yes.
And now, what's your job now? A baker.
A baker, uh... what was your job in Mexico?
I worked at the foreign hotel, holiday.
A hotel worker,
We identified two students who had jobs present and past and students tried
to make sentences about these students.
Okay, tell me about Danielle?
Danielle is a baker. He is a baker now. He was a hotel worker before. Good.
Using the Grammar Chart
Open your books to page ninety eight.
Once students open their books
the first thing that we did was focus on the grammar chart at the top of the
page.
Please listen, questions were you a student? And we went over that model
pronunciation,
this is already rooted in meaning because of what I have brought before
the students opened the book.
Let’s look at exercise two.
Do you see exercise two?
We move from the grammar chart to the first exercise which is a check your
understanding. Amy chose?
What is that? It enables the teacher to see if students are really
understanding
that grammar chart.
And look at two thousand to two thousand six, is that now or before? Now.
two thousand two two thousand six.
Can somebody read number one?
Julie, would you read number one?
She was a teacher before. Yes good, and... And now
She is a nurse. Nurse, okay good.
I want you to look at number two, number three, eight and number four, and
I want you to write the answers.
The best way for me to check to see if students are understanding the
grammar
is to circulate to watch them as they write responses and then later to listen
to them as they practice grammar points.
Before he was.
Before she was.
uh... okay good, let's listen
Listening and Checking
and check your answers.
Lesson B.
4:28
It's very important to check for students understanding because if students
aren't grasping the main grammar point, if they're not making these
distinctions between
was and were, if they're not picking up cues for he, she, they and so on
uh... they can't really be successful in the other activities that follow.
He was.
He is.
Any volunteer to write on the whiteboard?
Can you come up?
Thank you, cross-checked.
Is that okay? Okay.
Are you sure? Yes.
One hundred percent? Yes.
Guided Practice
Look on the next page, page ninety nine, exercise two b.
After the first grammar activity which is uh... a check your understanding
activity
we move to what we call guided practice.
I see many pictures, how many pictures? Six. Six pictures.
Are these new pictures or old pictures? Old. The goal of guided practice is
fluency.
Are they coloured pictures?
No, they are black and white.
We want students be able to use these grammar points fairly automatically
and to be able to use them easily and comfortably.
Now we're going to make some questions,
here's the first picture.
Before students begin to practice with a partner the teacher has to make
sure the students understand the focus of the practice. Is this a was question
or a were question?
Uh... were.
were they receptionists? This is a question
and when I ask a question with was or were my voice goes up.
Was he a waiter?
Can you hear my voice go waiter? waiter?
Let's look at the example
number one at the top of page ninety nine, a do you see number one a and
b?
Okay, I am a and you are b, I ask a question and you answer.
Was she a teacher? Yes she was.
If we don't model what we expect students to be doing we can't expect
success.
Now let’s change. So we take a lot of time setting up their activity modeling
teacher - student, student - student
before we turn students loose on pair work we have to make sure that they
have
very clear models for what they are expected to do.
Yes she was, number two.
no they weren't,
they were uh... viruses. Good,
Communication
Now we're going to practice with partners.
The guided practice is a student centered practice where students are
working
with each other, with partners, and the goal is for the teacher to get out of
the way let students practice, developer fluency and also enables the
teacher again to circulate and monitor students and to observe that fluency
as it develops.
The last activity in the grammar lesson is a communicative activities, this is
really
the culmination of the lesson.
Ok please do something for me, I want you to write in your book page ninety-
nine on the side or on the corner. write your job before, what was your job
before?
Were you a nurse, were you a student, an army officer?
Please write your job before
this year. Engineer,
Now looked on page ninety nine
do you see a chart at the bottom? It's a blue chart.
Students were working with a chart where they had to find the name they
had to find information about a job
now, a job before.
I want you to get up take your book, take a pencil ask three people.
it's a very interesting activity for students because they enjoy talking to each
other they're finding information that they don't know there's no right
answer there's no wrong answer.
I want two students to come up and you're going to write sentences about
your partner.
One sentence now, One sentence before.
OK... who's Jade, who is Jade?
Jade ok.
Are you a student now or before?
Student now.
The whole point of the grammar lesson is to move from understanding to
controlled practice to fluency to real communication, we want grammar to
talk about real things that's the way I set up the lesson today, I'm talking
about my life and I want students to be able to use this grammar to talk
about real things in their lives, real communications.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHmkQbG9WAw

the goal of today's lesson is to teach reading skills and that means the
sequence of skills starting with pre reading activities going to reading
activities and then follow-up to the reading activities. In an important part of
the pre reading activities is to
activate students prior knowledge and to encourage prediction of what's
coming.
good morning how are you today
to start the lesson today I ask students questions about jobs finding jobs not
only in this country but in their own countries and the purpose of that was to
set the stage for the lesson and to introduce the topic
how do you find a job? how can I find a job?
computer Oh online oh maybe I'll look on the Internet yes yeah good idea.
many
jobs are on the Internet
the purpose of that exercise is to kind of hook the students to get them
engaged in the topic to relate the topic to their own lives and to generate
some of the vocabulary that's going to be needed in your country how do
you find a job
this is very important we say a friend can recommend a friend can
recommend me everybody recommend recommend okay look on page 102
I'm looking at the small picture on page 102
what's she doing? playing cards. is she playing cars with her sister? no who's
she with? her father maybe senior citizen
what's a senior citizen and a young person or old person an old person there
many different ways to teach readings one way is for students to read
silently. I also has students to underline words. they didn't understand we
talked about those words and gave definitions
again recommend recommend do you remember I
another way is for this teacher to play the audio tape and have students
follow along listen and read
dear Miss Carter I'm writing this letter to recommend my student my min
mum
another way is to do a listen and repeat, repeating chunks of the reading
exercise
so there are lots of different ways to go about it
I will read and you will repeat are you ready everyone
again miss Carter I am writing this
letter to recommend my student my Linh
let me ask you some questions
as soon as the students finished reading I did a comprehension check. there
are
different ways to check comprehension one way is to ask or questions.
T: “ is Miss Carter the writer or Elaine Maxwell the writer? Elaine and Maxwell
“
building up to sequence of questions perhaps ending in WH questions
where is my Linh from Vietnam. what is her job now? nothing it says that
being missing nursing assistant
by asking these simple questions I'm able to gauge how much of the reading
the
students were able to process the first time they went through it

document illiteracy is so important for students because students encounter

documents in the real world they encounter job application forms every time
they go to the DMV they're going to get a form and forms and documents are
just a part of modern life.
this is a school form these are things like TV schedules or food labels or
medicine
labels or forms we need to be familiar with all of these
it says application for what employment
do you understand employment ? what is employment?
what is employment a job yeah
forms are documents that have different sections , different parts and
students need to
first orient themselves to the document to know what the various
components are
it's important to orient students to the schema of the form so that they have
a general sense of what they're looking at. they need to realize that the
document in this case has lines it has sections and first I had to orient them
to the form itself.
this is line one what's this
line two what's what's this ? where do you put your name on line three where
do you put your telephone number on line four what do you put here zip
good area code
are there any words you don't understand
after putting the application on the board students open their books and
looked at the form and had an opportunity to ask me about words that didn't
understand students need to feel comfortable with this form some of them
have more understanding than others of vocabulary and it gives a chance to
nail down words that they don't know.
What line is that
Kim line six
you see position
what is position? position is my job my job desired. what is that? want want
what
when students are taking tests they often have to scan they have to move
quickly they have to find the answers without reading an entire reading
passage or an entire document
when you have a form and some questions? what do you do first?
first you read the question and then you look for the important words in the
question and then you look for the answer and then you look at the choices a
B C or D and you circle the best and
effective strategy for dealing with multiple-choice questions is to read the
question first and then look at the document and try to find an answer and to
do that students have to be able to scan a document first thing they need to
do is actually scan the question and see what are the important words in that
question that they're going to get at in the document and then they need to
scan the document and match the words and to get the answer that way.
I assigned this form as homework and I wanted students to fill out the form
of their own information their own name their own jobs and so on because it
allowed them
to practice filling out forms as something that they would be doing in the
future. the purpose of using life skills reading with the ESL students is to
prepare them for documents that they're going to come across in the real
world the reading skills that students are developing enable them to become
successful not only with document reading but with all the kinds of reading
that they'll come across in their daily life
https://youtu.be/97VjvpAbLOk?si=X_vEtEVvDdC9K0b9
writing is especially challenging for ESL students. most students tell me that
that's the hardest skill to learn it's the skill they have the least practice with
and the skill that they're most uncomfortable with but it's important because
giving the students opportunity for writing is something that's going to
improve the level of their fluency it's
important to teach press process writing in ESL because students need to
feel successful and all of us know that when we write a first draft we don't
always feel successful about it we're self-conscious about mistakes and we
need to realize that writing is a process that we move from our initial writing
to final drafts and that we see
writing as a Continuum
good morning. how are you you how's the weather today today
it's beautiful it's sunny it's a beautiful day we're talking today about skills
Skills
since the goal of the writing lesson is for students to write about skills the
first thing we talked about was skills and we generated a list of skills I
worked with students to
brainstorm a list of skills which then I wrote on the board
can you play soccer? yeah play before
let's read these together everyone
please repeat I can cook I can cook I can drive a car I can drive a car I can
play pingpong I can play ping pong I can play soccer I can play soccer soccer
and uh then we started thinking about the idea of work skills versus life skills
okay now some skills are work skills we talk about
work skills uhhuh these are skills that you have when you work .some skills
we
call life skills
the purpose of that activity was to sort of claim the vocabulary to be using
the vocabulary and also for students to really be thinking about whether they
had various
skills or not
Models
the next step in the lesson was for students to read a model for the writing
and the models are so important at every level students need a model for
writing
and the model was in the form of an email for their own writing
is this a letter? what is it exercise letter what is it email email it's an email
yeah this is an email do you sometimes send email yes M yeah I send emails
too I want you to read the
email and then we're going to answer two questions at the bottom
models are so important for students because there are many different kinds
of writing tasks , sometimes students have facility writing but they aren't
used to a particular style of writing and at beginning level students follow the
model very closely and almost copy the model and we think that that is just
fine after reading the model students had to write answers to two questions
about the model. The purpose of that activity was for
students to begin generating the language that they would be using in the
follow-up writing
Writing
after the modeling activity we went to some actual writing what I would call
pre-writing chunks sentences related to skills and workplaces. I generated a
list of four questions which we used to discuss the model and then I used
similar four questions as a prompt for my own writing and I generated
another model related to my own life and I talked about my own job my own
workplace and my own skills
the purpose of this activity was to provide yet another model one that they
could relate to very closely so now the students have two models that they
can be looking at when
they begin their own writing
I'm going to ask you to write at home. this will behomework
today I assign the writing as homework there are advantages in doing it that
way because we maximize our class time and use the class time more
efficiently another way to do this writing is to have students write in class .
they'll have questions. I'll
be able to circulate help them answer the questions in some cases they'll ask
their classmates for help and use dictionary and all the resources that they
can in the classroom
Peer Review
after the students finished their writing, there was a peer review activity
which. actually involved three different parts
the first part was students reading, their work out loud to their partner bus.
the second part was students exchanging papers, reading their Partners
work silently and then the third part was the opportunity for students to
comment on their partners work and make suggestions for Corrections
Publishing
the follow-up activity to peer review would be students working on their
writing making revisions, making corrections as to mechanical problems.
maybe changing adding content and generally making a second draft
the last step in the writing process is something that we call publishing. the
purpose of
the publishing step is so that students realize they are writing for an
audience. someone is going to read their work. it can be something more
complex like posting the students work around the room. so students can
walk around and see the different works. it can also mean making binder
with students works or publishing on the internet and so on.
using process writing in the classroom is very helpful to students because it
gives them the sense from the beginning that writing is a process, it's a
movement. it's something that evolves. it's something that grows. it's
something that can always be improved on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMNHkG6ZKQA

my class can be called a single-level class but the reality is that there is no
such thing as a single-level class in fact any class that has three of our
students is probably going to be a multi-level class because students move
at different rates. they have different abilities different skill areas that they
excel in. one student is very good at listening, one
student is very good at speaking another student is good at grammar
another student is very skilled at interpersonal communication another
student is more perhaps quiet and introverted
a lot of teachers are challenged with the fact that their students are actually
at different levels even though it might be considered a single level class and
providing different materials different levels for students is a good way to
address this.
in today's lesson we have three different worksheets : the one at the lower
level the one at the mid level the one at a higher level
sometimes the student is ready for a little more challenging work or
sometimes the students may be having a bad day
we've been talking about jobs do you remember some jobs what are some
jobs construction worker teacher yeah
where does a teacher work in a school. I'm going to give you a worksheet
today
and I have three worksheets on the table. on this side I have a worksheet
that's a
little easier a little easier. in the middle, I have a worksheet that is so so not
so easy not so difficult and then on this side I have a worksheet. that's more
difficult
how many worksheets do I have? three are they the same no
they're different a little different
another way to address the problem of different ability levels is to have
different grouping strategies within the class
I'm going to have you decide do I want in this one or do I want this one or do
I want this one. you are going to come up to the table take one worksheet.
only one grouping is organized so the students sit in likeability groups and
they actually move to different sections of the room and then I'm going to
have
you move so on this side I want the people to sit who have the first
worksheet the easier worksheet you're going to sit lower students move to a
particular area where they can sit
together work together the mid-level
students sit together the higher-level
students sit together and distinct parts of the room so I think you should take
your books and your pencils and come up and take a worksheet and then sit
over here the easier worksheet here medium and here more difficult
worksheet
I think it's important to have students have the chance to self-select their
materials another option could have been for me to choose a particular
worksheet for a particular student based on that students needs and that
would have allowed things to move a little faster
yeah you're going to sit over here
the benefits of using this grouping strategy is that students are able to share
information with someone who has the same paper and so they're on the
same page they're doing the same things and they can directly know what
each other's doing
another advantage of this grouping is that students are moving relatively at
the same pace and you can work together you can talk
for the second grouping we move students into crossability groups which
means the
students with the three different worksheets are working together sitting
together and sharing information together. the purpose of the cross ability
grouping is for students
to share information sometimes the lower level students actually share
information with the higher level students this group is bigger
today when I was organizing the crossability groups, we ended up with an
odd number actually it's very rare that we have class dividing into thirds
perfectly so it's very easy then to take those extra people and to move them
into groups where maybe there will before working together
before you move you're going to sit together and you're going to share your
papers and share your answers because
you have different paper but the answers are the same answers so you can
help your neighbor, check your neighbors paper do you have the same
answers or different answers .
After the crossability grouping, we brought the class back to the whole class
actually
students returned to their own seats and then we did a kind of a recap and
this is a kind of a closure to the exercise. it allows room for questioning or for
clarification and it just gives students the opportunity to know if they were
able to answer the questions correctly or not
another benefit of bringing the activity to a close with a whole class is that it
provides an opportunity for questions for clarification and it's also a
community building thing for everyone to share their answers with everyone