The TEFLer is a companion for teachers of English, written by Simon Pearlman
You can take a horse to water but you can't make them drink.
You can take a student to class but you can't make them think.
We really want and need our students to think. If we can get them thinking, we can get them engaged and engagement most surely leads to learning.
It seems however that instead of thinking many of our students prefer not to, or maybe they're just out of practice? How can we help our students to think in the classroom? How can we make thinking fashionable again?
It seems like so many of our students prefer to leave the thinking to someone else and hope that we don't ask them questions directly. They hope to work in pairs or groups with someone who knows the answer who will tell them what to do. It seems like our students want things to be easy, they want to stay in their comfort zone, it seems like they don't want challenge, they don't want things to be difficult. Of course we need to get the level of challenge right, too difficult isn't right either.
This brings to mind work by Lev Vygotsky on the Zone of Proximal Development as we push into the next stages of learning. It also resonates with Demand-High ELT by Jim Scrivener and Adrian Underhill who suggest that we should expect and indeed demand more from our students.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/zone-of-proximal-development.html
Which words do you know?
How often do students look an activity and assume they can't do it before they've even really tried? A typical group of 8 year old have an activity where they need to match the questions to the answers. It turns out that it is a little tricky, they're learning the question words and aren't yet comfortable with them and there's some extra tricky vocabulary in there too. “Teacher, I can't do it, it's difficult.” What options do we have here? We could abandon the activity altogether as too difficult, we could project the activity and work through the it together with the teacher asking help concept check questions, filling in the gaps and some of the students might learn something. This second is a good option of course if we can get students to focus.
Or we take a slightly different approach, we can revel in the difficulty and say “Good, I was hoping you'd need to think with this one!”, “It's good for things to be difficult, we need to think, we can do hard things. Let's think about it.” And then we can ask students, “ok, which words do you know?”, can they complete the activity with the words they do know? Can we help our students to feel positively about difficulty and about challenge? Do they believe they can do hard things? The more we do it, the better they will be at it, they will come to class expecting to have to think.
Hands down, have a think.
So often we ask a question in class and a few hands shoot up, generally it's the same people and the other students are safe in the knowledge that those students will do the work and that they can relax.
We all have students who understand that to be “a good student” means to participate and show willing, they know that they should put up their hands. We've all got students, mine is called Maria, who puts her hand up for everything, I call on her and she says with a big smile, “I don't know!” I love the Marias for their efforts but it makes me wonder how much of this goes on.
We often ask a question and want an immediate response. We get out the flashcards, “What’s this?”, some hands go up, “Banana”. Good job, next flashcard. And on we go hoping that everyone will join in sufficiently for some learning to happen for all our students. Why not ask them to think a little, after the question why not, sometimes, ask students to think before they put their hands up? “What's this? Think 3, 2, 1.” OK, now let's see the response. Or what about “Think, 3, 2, 1”, check with a partner, then ask for feedback. Are students more engaged after a classic round of “Think, pair, share”?
This sort of approach will help to normalise thinking in the classroom, to encourage sharing in pairs, to build classroom community and hopefully to help more students engage with the language more of the time.
"I think it's a…"
Words are good but sentences are better, and questions are really classroom gold.
So instead of “banana” we might ask students to say, “It's a banana”. We could also, ask students to say “I think its a banana”, younger students could point to themselves for “I”, then their head for “think” and maybe a tick up to emphasise the “k” sound. Oh yes, this brings thinking right into the heart of the classroom and our students are making wonderful longer sentences.
If we want to go even further we can ask students to say, “I think its a banana. Is it a banana?” and then they get to practice the question forms too. Even better. If we give them support, the scaffolding, they can do it, then over time we can give them less and then nothing as it becomes normal for them.
Thumbs up, thumbs down and a wobbly hand
We can always nominate students to give us the answers instead of asking students to raise their hands and this can help us mix things up and keep students on their toes but it could also make students feel a little worried, what if we choose them and they don't know. It should always be ok for students to say “I don't know”, of course.
Whether we go for hands up or nominating students, how much are we really finding out about all the students? We can see who's confident and willing to answer but how much information are we getting about the rest?
As an alternative feedback method, after asking the question, we can ask students to make a fist and hold it in front of their chest, they make a thumbs up signal if they know, a thumbs down if they don't and a wobbly thumb in the middle of they're not sure. This, very quickly and efficiently, gives us information about each and every student, before we just had a few hands up, almost always the same hands too. We then have a choice for a quick pairwork moment or not, but now we have information about each of our students.
Thinking time and inclusivity
When we're thinking about “each and every” student, we're thinking about inclusivity, about including everyone in the thinking and learning process. Some students need more thinking time, some students prefer to check with a friend. Thinking time and getting feedback from all students is another good way to make our classrooms more inclusive, hopefully we can encourage our students to aim higher as we demand more, demand high.
Try playing with these techniques and see how it goes. We'd love to hear your feedback.
Hopefully you've enjoyed this edition of the TEFLer, we'd love to here your thoughts on thinking, please leave a comment wherever you find this. It is massively helpful for you to leave us a like too.
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