visible learning

I think we should discuss learning…but MY students can’t do it!

/ textploitationtefl / 1 Comment

Mark and I write and speak a lot about Overt Teaching. If you’d like to know more about what that is, you can read our blog post here or check out our handy dandy book, available on all good book websites and probably in the dark corner of a bookshop where they keep the rest of the EFL methodology books.

The core of Overt Teaching is that we believe we should be involving our learners in the discussion of learning throughout our lessons. We should be discussing the objectives of our lesson and helping learners to relate it to their lives and goals; we should discuss why we do what we do with our students, what our aims for a task are; we should give students the tools they need to reflect on their own success and give their peers feedback. And why? Because a more aware and invested student will be more engaged and make more progress.

In general when we talk about this at conferences or just one to one, our points and ideas are met positively. We’ve met very few teachers who really believe that it is a bad course of action or who do not want learners engaged with the learning process. However, we do often encounter some push back and it tends to be in the form of:

This is great but my students couldn’t do this.

There tend to be a number of reasons why teachers believe that their students would not be able to discuss learning but below are some of the most common, and a summary of some of the discussions we’ve had.

This is fine with higher levels but my students are too low. They don’t have the language you need to reflect.

Of all the levels, learning is most tangible at the lower levels. It can sometimes be as simple as “at the beginning of the lesson, you couldn’t talk about the past, now you can”. Very often reflection is viewed as a complex abstract topic that must be delved into in great detail. However, at beginner, elementary or pre-int, reflection at the end of a lesson can be a simple discussion:

  • What vocabulary did you learn today?
  • What grammar did you learn today?
  • How will you use it outside class?

Success for a task can be laid out as using a specific piece of grammar or a number of items of lexis. Students can easily give peer feedback with short tick-boxes. The below can be easily used so students can choose their own lexis and their own level of success. It can be used as a peer-assessment or adapted for self-assessment.

This is fine with lower levels but my students are advanced and it is harder for them to see progress and reflect.

100% agree with the core of this statement. At higher levels it is more difficult for students to see their progress as it’s much less tangible. This, however, makes it even more crucial that learners are given the opportunity to reflect on and discuss what they’ve learnt. Without these discussions, students may come to the conclusion that they are not progressing because it is less tangible and visual.

At higher levels, students can converse easily on a range of topics. They can draw on their known, safe language and complete communicate tasks with relative ease. It is important therefore that we give them the opportunity before the task to make decisions about new language and skills they want to attempt, encouraging them to move outside their comfort zones. And then to reflect on how successful they were and what they want to try next time.

This is fine with adults but my students are too young to reflect and discuss their learning.

Most of my experience has been with older students, and while I have taught younger students, it is a number of years ago now. However, recently I got the chance to sit in on my 5-year-old son’s lesson. He was writing some words about a picture they had drawn. They were learning to write words to describe body parts. The teacher modelled it and then checked success criteria:

  • Where do we write? Chorus: under the picture.
  • How many words do we write on each line? Chorus: one.
  • Which words are we writing? Chorus: body word.

Students went off and wrote their words. Afterwards the teacher asked them to give their partners feedback using thumbs up or down while she moved around. She called out the success criteria again and students gave their partners thumb-based peer feedback.

Like anything, we grade the task. It’s all possible but needs to be scaffolded for the age or level. Here’s a nice idea for teaching writing using images of cupcakes the visualise layers of success.

This is fine but my students are from an educational background where they expect the teacher to give input the whole time. They’re not able to reflect.

There are so many things that we take for granted in an English language lesson that are not standard in every educational background. Depending on your age or culture, working with a partner may not be something you expect in class, but we do it because we know the value. For many students, being taught lexically might jar with their expectations but many teachers will persevere, confident that this is the best way for their students to learn.

Like anything, given the support and scaffolding, students will learn what is expected of them in class. Patience and understanding will often be necessary but if you feel that the discussion of learning is worthwhile and beneficial for them, then it’s worth spending the time helping your learners to develop those skills.

This is fine by my students want to focus on grammar and vocabulary input. There is not time for reflection and discussing learning.

As above really. If you value it, then it’s worth spending the time on it. The expectation of many students is that their lessons should be full of input so they can fill their notebook with notes which they may never look at again. What’s more important than every student knowing how much they’ve progressed in a lesson and knowing what they need to work on. Without discussing learning, this won’t happen. We’ve got to value these discussions and make the space in the lesson.

This is fine but I tried to do reflection tasks and my students couldn’t do it.

Giving peer feedback, reflecting on success or discussing your progress are not easy skills. However, they are skills that will help our learners in language learning but also in their lives beyond the classroom. They are valuable skills. The first time you try it with your students, they may struggle or balk as reflecting on input isn’t as easy as receiving and recording input for many. My advice would be:

  • Scaffold it carefully.
  • Do it little and often.
  • Don’t be put off if it’s tricky the first time. Persevere…it’s worth it.

This is fine but there are 50 students in my class so I can’t do this with them all.

The bigger your group, the more crucial it is that your learners are developing the skills they need to self-assess, peer-assess, reflect, and give feedback. With a large group, there is no way that a teacher can be expected to give meaningful feedback to everyone or assess their progress. The best we can do is develop the skills above and help our students to become more autonomous.

Let’s bring it all back home.

It’s not that we disagree with any of the above challenges. They are all challenges. However, if we believe in the value of these discussions and so we urge you to persevere and make it possible for your learners. They can all do it…they might just need your support.

Harness the power of Learner Goals to increase engagement.

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Let’s begin with the picture for this blog. I promise it’s not a beer-related blog. I was going to Italy on holiday for a week with my family recently so I decided to download a popular language-learning app to learn some key phrases in Italian. I was super motivated to learn the phrases I needed to get by for a few days…but unfortunately, that didn’t last long.

We began by learning the Italian for “a man”, “a woman”, “a child”. Now, this is technically what my family is but I’m not sure it was necessarily what I needed at that time. Not to worry though, my motivation was still high so I persevered. Next I learnt to say “a man eats”, “a woman drinks”, “a child speaks”. Again, I definitely expected these three things to occur regularly throughout the week but I just didn’t see myself needing to describe the individual habits of my family to Italian passers-by. My motivation dropped and I abandoned the app.

Instead, I stopped and thought about what my goal was for the holiday. I had very simple needs…you might be able to guess what some of them were from the picture. I wanted to be able to:

  • Order beer, wine and juice.
  • Order food.
  • Ask where the toilets were (very important when travelling with a 6-year-old).
  • Ask for the bill.
  • Say “please” and “thank you”.

Armed with my goal, I was suitably re-motivated but this time I took my learning into my own hands and with the help of Google Translate and a few Google searches, I had the phrases I wanted. In the end, it was all for naught as I was in an all-inclusive resort and if I tried to speak in Italian to anyone, they just ran away and returned with an English-speaking colleague.

My lack of Italian aside, this experience got me thinking about the impact learner goals have on motivation and engagement. For the most part, when someone is learning a language, they have a goal. Mine was quite narrow but for many they will be broader. Perhaps it will be to study at a university, to travel to a country, to improve job prospects, to migrate, or to converse comfortably with friends or family members. Whatever the goal, this is what drives them. It drives them to pay for a course or a private tutor; sometimes it even drives them to travel at great expense to a country where they can fully immerse themselves in that language. If we can help our learners to see how each lesson chips away at their goal, we can get real engagement.

How can we harness the power of these goals?

I work for EC English, where students are encouraged to set goals before they begin their course. Recently a student set their goal. It was a simple, real-life goal. They wanted to be able to understand football match commentary. The student was coming to our school for a month. Here’s the issue, much like my Italian experience, this student is very quickly going to realise that not all of their lessons are related to football. And, unless they have the good fortune to join a class during the unit on sports and games, it’s quite likely that football will not be mentioned at all in that month. This student’s motivation might not last the first week, let alone the month.

Unless…

Step 1: help the student to break their goal down into meaningful steps to achieve it.

To be able to understand football commentary, one doesn’t just need to know football-related vocabulary. On top of that, if this learner is interested in football, they probably know a hell of a lot more sports language than I do (my friends still get frustrated when I ask if their chosen team has won their sports game). So what else might they need? Perhaps:

  • Decoding weak forms & fast speech.
  • Understanding intonation and shades of meaning.
  • Present tenses (simple, continuous, perfect).
  • Will / going to for prediction.
  • Certain stock phrases (e.g. “at the end of the day”, “they gave it everything”).

None of which are crazy or out of the ordinary in a general English class.

Step 2: give the student space to reflect

Very often we encourage students to reflect on what they’ve learnt in a lesson or in a week of lessons. We ask them what vocabulary, grammar or skills they’ve acquired. But perhaps we’re missing a step. Perhaps the question is not just “what have you learnt?” but “what have you learnt that will help you to achieve your goal?”.

By keeping our learners’ eyes on their goal and constantly highlighting how what they’re learning in class chips away at that goal, we can harness their motivation and turn it into lesson engagement.

What’s next?

Consider book-ending your lessons, or your week of lessons (or an appropriate number of lessons depending on your context) with this two-step discussion. The first is helping them to refine their goals and the final is asking them what impact your lessons have had on those goals. The resulting conversation can help inform your future lessons as well as ensure engagement from all your students.

And, as the picture shows, I can order beer in Italy…even if I didn’t get a chance to do it in Italian. Next time…

For whom do aims and objective toll if not for thee

/ textploitationtefl / 3 Comments

I LOVE clear aims and objectives in a lesson. When I see a group of students and a teacher who know what they’re learning and why they’re learning it, I go all warm and fuzzy inside. But I hate useless admin, admin for the sake of it. I can’t stand the statement “we’ve always done it this way” it makes me the opposite of warm and fuzzy inside…chilly and smooth?

Recently I had a conversation with a teacher that made me go a bit chilly and smooth but I do not think this is an isolated occurrence. In fact I remember feeling this very way in my early years as a teacher. We were discussing aims and objectives and he said:

“I don’t know if anyone else feels this way but I always write my aims and objectives because I know I have to but I don’t know who they are for? Are they for me, are they for my students or are they for the British Council?”

And there it is…I’m chilly and smooth. The one statement worse than “we’ve always done it this way” is “we do it for accreditation” or in the UK, “we do it for the British Council” [shudders]. Because yes of course there are things that we do in a school that when our accreditation bodies arrive, we will display proudly. And there are things that accreditation bodies will look for in a school. And one of those things will be aims and objectives…but not so they can tick a box, not so we can tick a box, but because behind every accreditation criterium lies a very good reason, a justification for its existence.

Aims and objectives for aims and objectives sake are not a good thing…but a learner who knows what they are learning and how it will help them in their real life is most definitely a good thing. Aims and objectives are one way of achieving this.

So to answer this teacher’s question (and I should add here that this was an incredible teacher who was just trying to figure out how best to use aims&objectives in their lesson) I said:

“Aims and objectives are for your students first and foremost and should never be a tick box. They should be a talking point.”

From Tick Box to Talking Point

First of all a few tips on writing effective aims and objectives:

  • Write them in student friendly language. Remember who they are for.
  • Begin with your objective (what you want them to be better at by the end of the lesson)
  • Work backwards to write your aims (what do they need to learn to be better at this objective by the end of the lesson)
  • Make your objective real-life and relevant for your learners (“be able to use the present perfect & past simple” is not real life but “be able to describe your career” is)
  • Focus on function over form: Consider the difference between “learn to use the present perfect” and “learn to describe ongoing situations in my career using the present perfect”
  • Follow a pattern: Don’t change up how you write your aims & objectives every lesson. Follow a recognisable pattern and display them in the same place each lesson. This reduces the amount that learners need to process. They can focus on the key message.

If you follow the above, you should find yourself with effective aims and objectives but if you don’t do anything with them, then they are little more than a tick box. We need to move them to a talking point. They should be the basis of a discussion with your students. Consider the following:

At the beginning of your lesson:

Use the some or all of the questions below to open up a discussion:

  1. How will this objective help you in your real life?
  2. Which of these aims will be most challenging for you?
  3. Which of these aims are you already confident in?
  4. How confident are you?
  5. Is there anything else you think you’ll need to achieve this objective?

During your lesson:

Keep the conversation going. Learners will always focus on what’s in front of them. Just because you know why something is relevant, doesn’t mean it is immediately apparent for the students.

  1. Why do you think we learnt this?
  2. How will this help you achieve the objective?

At the end of the lesson:

The ideal situation is a learner who can take what they’ve learnt in the lesson and bring it into their real lives but too often the lesson ends at the door. Keep it going:

  1. How well do you feel you achieved the objective?
  2. How will you practise this in your real life?
  3. How will you apply what you learnt to your real life?
  4. Is there anything you need more practice on?
  5. How will you practise it?

Using the word “will” can be more powerful than “can” or “could”. It’s not about what is possible, it’s about them making a promise, a commitment to try this outside the classroom…and then it’s on you to follow up with them.

So if you’ve ever felt like you were writing aims and objectives for the British Council, try out some of the ideas above and remember who we should be writing them for.