ENGLISH LANGUAGE SYMPOSIUM 2

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Mentoring Activities: Priming Our Students to Learn

Amir Wahab, EL Pedagogy Specialist, ELIS

Presentation Outline

1. The Magic of Metaphor: A story

2. Where did this journey begin?: Background and Context

3. Theory and Practice

4. Connecting: • as individuals • as groups • with perspectives • with how we see and do things 5. Reflection: Why is this relevant to the Singapore context?

6. Questions and Answers

The Magic of Metaphor: Learning the Rules

1. It is important to think about: a. how to understand our students.

b. how to build productive relationships.

c. how to connect by understanding where are students are, and what we need to

do to stop them drifting away.

d. how we behave towards our students, them towards us, and their peers. 2. Therefore, sometimes it is necessary to do something different, and extra to build that understanding.

3. Here stories with rich metaphors can be used to raise awareness about how we and students learn, e.g. Owen, N. (2001). The magic of metaphor: 77 stories for teachers, trainers & thinkers. Carmarthen, Wales: Crown House Pub.

Background and Context

Teaching situations can be complex: What you initially see may not actually be what is there. My situation: a. Term 2: Female students, preparing for exams (IELTS), half the class failed,

and put into other programmes.

b. English as a second language, so very little English spoken outside the class or even amongst themselves.

c. Motivation and self esteem low, but they were clever, able.

d. Their position in society, family.

e. How others saw them.

Theory and Practice

• Malderez (1996) uses the metaphor of an iceberg to illustrate how surface features, such as language proficiency and behaviours are underpinned by deeper learning processes, concepts and beliefs.

• The experiences we have at home, school, society and culture help shape who we are, and in turn we help shape.

• Learning is dialogic: takes place with information exchanges between T and S, and S and S.

• Use of knowledge and not knowledge in itself: how do I apply and use what I know.

• Constructivism: learning is continual. We learn from input from each other (social), from how we interact, from media (books, internet, etc.), by doing things. Through this interaction we actively construct and re-construct our understanding of the world (reflection and reformulation).

Theory and Practice

What is a mentor? An experienced person who advises and helps a less experienced person, someone who knows about learning, is aware that students come to the classroom with some experience. (Longmans exam dictionary) What does a mentor do? Inspire, demonstrate, show “the ropes”, support, provide opportunities to learn and try out, a safety net, to help achieve learning objectives. How does a mentor do it? • Tasks and activities, direct instruction, practice. • Helping to make the implicit, explicit: using activities and tasks to raise awareness of

specific issues. • Reflection. • Knowledge: creating a need to know based on what we already know, and then go

and find out more about it. • Skills: practice based on understanding.

Connecting with ourselves as individuals

Task: Visual hooks This task gives students an opportunity to think about themselves as individuals and learners using visuals. It also gives them to practise oral and written skills. Finally, it gives teachers an opportunity to find out about their students, and how they learn. Procedure: Get students to make a collage using images from a variety of magazines. Get them to describe and write about themselves using prompts such as: I’m a person who… I’m a learner who… I’m a student who… Get them to explain why they have chosen those images? Adapted from Malderez & Bodoczky (1999)

Connecting as a group

Learning is as exciting as the a night safari at Singapore Zoo. Learning is as challenging as finding a seat on the train during rush hour. Learning is as rewarding as sharing ice-cream with a loved one. Learning is as hard as carrying home shopping. Adapted from Malderez & Bodoczky (1999)

Learning is as…(adjective)…as…

Task: Group Poem This task is useful for helping to develop group identity and cohesion. It is also an opportunity for the teacher to find out about what their students perceive about learning. Procedure: Get students to brainstorm adjectives they associate with learning and write these on the board. Now get students to choose three of the adjectives they like, and elicit what other things they associate with the adjectives to construct a group poem.

Connecting with perspectives

Task: Turning negatives into positives This task gets students to think about how negatives in any given situation can also be turned into positives. It is a useful first step in getting students to think about challenges they face in the learning of a language, and what they can do to address this themselves. Procedure: Use strong negative images, such as smelly cheese, or smelly socks and elicit how the students feel about these images. For each negative thought, ask students to write down a positive thought, e.g. cheese is smelly, but it can help keep the mosquitoes away. Now get students to think about areas they find challenging in their learning, e.g. grammar. Get them to tell you why they find it challenging. Then get them to think about ways in which these challenges could be over come. Adapted from Malderez & Bodoczky (1999)

Connecting with how we see and do things

YOUR

MONEY OR

OR YOUR LIFE!

From Malderez & Bodoczky (1999)

A reflection: Why?

Questions and Answers

Reference

Google Images. https://www.google.com.sg/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi Malderez, A., & Bodoczky, C. (1999). Mentor courses: A resource book for trainer-trainers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Owen, N. (2001). The magic of metaphor: 77 stories for teachers, trainers & thinkers. Carmarthen, Wales: Crown House Pub. Wiseman, R., (2013, November4) Colour changing card trick. Youtube.com. Retrieved November 4, 2013 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3iPrBrGSJM

Thank you!