A (New) Silent Way

 Today I woke up to find out that my voice was hoarse – and as a teacher who has little monsters in the classroom can you imagine what that means?

To my big surprise my kids were quite understanding. I went to the class and told them that I was not able to speak loudly but they needed to be OK with my moving lips. First they did not get it, thinking I was only making a joke; but then they understood that I was really serious -I could barely make any noise! Then they all said "Get well soon Ms Aysu." =)   (It's nice to see them being kind in English)

The rest of the lesson went very quiet. For the first time in my teaching life I literally did not speak at all -reducing my TTT to zero level while thinking my lovely CELTA tutor. 

In one of  my 3rd grade class we were to do a listening lesson, which I felt lucky! I wrote some of the instructions on board, and did some  miming, and asked them what they could do with the task. I don't know if it is because we are almost at the end of the academic year or they love me more, but they were more focused than before. They tried to read my mouth for the answers or instructions.

Then I had an epiphany : I don't need to be loud in a Turkish classroom! So I decided to use this "silent talking" more and turn it into a game -maybe. I think I can say the vocabulary without a sound, for example, and they can try to guess.  More words mean more points.

In this way I ended up with the idea that the louder the teacher speaks, the louder the kids will get. When I calmed myself down, the kids became more quiet +.+ 

P.S:Have you heard "The Silent Way"? It was developed by Caleb Gattegno in 1960 to leave all the speaking to the learners. I wasn't using that method, but I immediately thought of that.

( You can find out more from here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Way )

Grammar Revision with Pictures

Hey Hey!

Have you heard boredpanda.com? It is a great website to follow and I have been following it on my Facebook. A few days ago I came across with this news that is about "astonished animals". As a teacher I cannot "just" read news -or listen to music- , but I look at everything as a lesson material. So, when I saw the "astonished animals", I wondered why. Then I thought that I could use these pictures as a tool for creative writing as well as grammar revision. 

Here are some ways that I came up with to use these lovely animals:

* You can ask why these animals look like this. What have they seen? And they can describe the vision through the animal's eyes including where they are etc.

* You can revise Present Perfect Tense by making some sentences such as "The koala has seen an alien."

* You can revise modals either in past or present: "The koala might have seen an alien and he must have been frightened." 

* You can revise if clause: "If the koala saw/ had seen an alien, he would/ would have run away, so he can't have seen an alien." Or as the teacher you can ask "If you were this animal in the forest and got frightened, what would you do?"

If I can come up with any other idea, I'll add to the list ^.^

http://www.boredpanda.com/astonished-animals/

Story Starter

Hey Hey,

There is this website -that I found out during a teaching course- where you can create your own stories with your kids. This website offers you the start of a story according to your kids' level. 

First, you sign up for free and choose the theme including fantasy, adventure, sci-fi and scrambler. Then by spinning you will see the beginning of your story. Besides, if you do not like it, you can change each part of the story.

After you decide your story, you can write it on a format that you choose (a notebook, a letter, newspaper or postcard). You can even draw a picture online. After you finish you can either download your story or print -or both !

http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/story-starters/

An Idea on Introducing The Past Simple Verbs

It was only last year that I had to introduce verbs in The Past Simple Tense to kids. I did not want to write all the verbs down with their past forms. I wanted something that my kids could enjoy in the process and had a chance to see the past forms all the time. So, I came up with this tree idea.

We designed a cardboard tree where kids can hang leaves on which they wrote the verbs. On each leaf, they wrote one verb with the past form on one side. They coloured the side with the past form brown, and obviously the other side green. The tree is still hung on the bulletin board. It really helped them to memorise the verbs, and when they do not remember, they just walk over to the board and check!

Moreover, to better enable my kids’ ability to use the past forms, I prepared cards with the verbs both in present and past forms and sometimes as a warm-up activity I show one verb –either in past or present- and ask for the other form. The student who claps her/his hand first gets to answer first.

Also, though I have never done it due to the size of my class, each kid can have one verb –again either past of present form -  by mingling in the classroom they can find their pair. I actually did it on the board and asked them to come to the front and match the verbs. 

Below you can see  my tree. It's not that big since the board was not big enough. Still I hope you can get an idea.

P.S: You can download the verb cards that I prepared from here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bzi_uqEZ0_7qZmE2TmZaUmk3ZFk&authuser=0

A Book Review

Again with my 3rd graders =)

We decided to write a book review after we read a few books. I searched online to find a proper template for my kids to write on, but I left with nothing in my hands. Thus, I tried to create my own book review template. It is not perfect, but it worked in the class. I will keep trying anyway=)

I used Microsoft Word for it. I found an image of an open book on Google images and copied and paste it on a blank page. Then with the help of "add text" box, I wrote "First, Next, Then, Last", which they have learnt recently. Then, along with their and the book's names,  I added some stars so that they could rate their books. 

It went well in the class since a great amount of them chose to create their own books, which is totally fine by me. 

Here is the photo of my template a couple of examples from my kids: 

You can download the template from here :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzi_uqEZ0_7qQ2tKdHY1eDAzMDQ/view?usp=sharing

Hope you'll like it !

Post-reading Activity

Hey Hey!

With my 3rd graders we have finished reading Cake Test book recently. As a post-reading activity they created a mind map using the characters from the book. Since this book is a non-ELT one, some of them found it difficult to follow the events. With this mind-mapping activity I saw that the story got clearer for them.

First we talked about the characters starting from the main character. In the middle is the name of the main character. Then, others followed behind him. Last, they described the main characters with 1-2 sentences. 

You can also use an online tool like www.mindmup.com , but I wanted them to write by hand as they still have spelling mistakes.

A Note on Dyslexia

Have you ever had  a dyslexic student in your classes? How do you handle that? 

Generally speaking, teachers do not know about dyslexia since there is not enough information given at universities on the issue. When they encounter with such a child, their behaviours can be so destructive that it can be traumatic for that child. They do not try to understand or be sympathetic- this may be the result of long hours of working or overpopulated classrooms. While teachers turn their heads away, children do struggle in the process - and they even get lost. They feel outcast, less smart, and -no surprise- they hate school. With the current education system, nothing much is being done for these children. 

The major problem is that it is often confused with different kinds of mental disorders. However, it is certain that it is not classified as a mental or learning disorder. It is simply a reading disorder -maybe I shouldn't say disorder since who decides "order"? Children with dyslexia have a different way of reading than the children without it. As in the example below, they just mix the letters like "b" and "p" or "a" and "e". For me it is just like being left-handed in a world full of right-handed people. Yet, the struggle is not to compare . 

I have been reading around about dyslexia ever since I found out that some of the brilliant minds in history such as Da Vinci and Einstein had dyslexia. So, it doesn't need to stop a child to be creative - or simply be themselves. That's why when I heard that there was a work on dyslexia displayed in Istanbul Design Biennial in 2014, ı got fully interested. It was the work of  Christian Boer, who is a designer. He designed a font for dyslexic people that makes reading easier. You can learn more and even download the dyslexie font from here:

http://www.dyslexiefont.com/en/dyslexia-font/

As an English teacher, even though I tell myself over and over again that dyslexia makes no difference and that not every child needs to write properly, in today’s education system I cannot prevent them to get hurt, to feel lonely, to be "different". However, I try  to learn more on the issue. I am going to follow an online course on dyslexia for teachers on this website starting from April, 20. If you are interested, you can also join for free! (and there are also lots of courses on lots of different subjects.) 

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/dyslexia/?lid=8e19a050-950c-4133-b225-5abedb398c2c

P.S. : Author Tom McLaughlin shared some tips for dyslexic children in The Guardian that are amazing. You can also check it here: 

http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2015/jan/22/a-dyslexic-authors-writing-tips-for-dyslexic-kids