We had a Teaching workshop with a 10th grade class, at Undervisningsverkstedet.
The focus in this teaching session was communication between the students using the English language. We wanted to do this, using tasks that were both fun and structured, to catch the students’ interests and make them motivated to work. One of the tasks focused on writing a news article using Book Creator, where they got guidelines which helped them with the structure of the article. The other one was a game called “Keep talking”, which focused on communication to disarm a bomb. This game is a great tool to express themselves fluently and varied, in context of a specific situation. In their curriculum, this is part of a competence aim.
There were 20 students in this teaching session. We had 45 minutes to work, containing an introduction, the main session, and an evaluation at the end. The students were divided into groups of 3 or 4, which was a fitting amount for this session. The class was totally new to us, and we did not have clear expectations on how familiar they were with using only English in the classroom, or how well they worked together in groups. The students were already familiar with Book Creator, which led to them not needing any instructions on how to use the program. They managed to start working early, and only a few questions appeared in the beginning. The “Keep talking game” was a big help with the students’ motivation. They focused on solving the task they were supposed to, by talking to each other and giving clear instructions. It was a great tool to rehearse their language, since they had to find new words explaining how to disarm the bomb. This method forced the students to speak more English than traditional teaching, since they had a time limit before the bomb exploded.
There was a lack of computers to play the game, and therefore we had to improvise and divide the pupils into bigger groups than we originally planned. To make the most out of the teaching session, we switched computers instead of moving the students to new stations. This made the session more efficient. An exception was the computer game, where they switched places. Apart from this, the groups worked well together, all of them managed to get through both stations and they communicated better than we expected. A lot of them were able to defuse the bomb, while some were not. They thought it was a difficult, but fun exercise. We wanted to help them when they needed it, so that they could stay motivated. This way they kept talking and working, instead of losing their interest in the activities.
These activities can be used in an ordinary classroom if you have the licence to the game. Book Creator can be used by everyone, and it is quite normal to use in a lot of schools. If another teacher were to use this, they must make groups that can work well together. It can also be used as a form of assessment in the teaching. To sum up, this was a successful teaching session, and the students learned that communication is important.