AT TIMES, A CHANGE OF ROUTINE CAN BE There are some general communicative techniques that work well as
MOST HEALTHFUL. whole-class activities. These include drama, writing tasks, games, jazz chants and music. They can be applied as desired (and as
ARNOLD LOBEL, FABLES appropriate) in any phase of the lesson.
DRAMA
Drama is a popular language learning technique that works well with lessons on literature and content subject matter and helps develop social skills. You can ask the class to act out an event from a story or a content area. For example, thesprouting-harvesting cycle of a plant, studied in biology, can become a creative skit; or,
stu-dents may want to dramatize a scene from a published play, even one of Shakespeare's. You may even wantstudents to demonstrate their negotiating and paraphrasing skills through a mock trial.
You have the option to assign roles impromptu as role plays or have the class research and write dialogues or even a play before
perform-ing. And do not forget to use mime. This works well in a large, multilevel class with students of both beginning and advanced levels of English proficiency.
WRITING
LANGUAGE EXPERIENCE Writing, Pc you know, can take many forms. One way to involve the APPROACH (LEA) whole class simultaneously is through an LEA exercise. The LEA,
originally developed to teach literacy skills to adults, works well in a multilevel class. After your students engage in an activity, such as going on a leaf collection hunt, picking up litter, or making rehy-dration formula, they dictate a summary of what happened for you or for an advanced classmate to write onthe board. Students then work together to organize the written ideas and, if desired, make corrections. You may want to copy the dictation to use another day
for review, motivation, or even alesson on grammar and editing.
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CREATIVE WRITING Another writing idea for large, multilevel classes is the traditional creative writing exercise. It may be possible that your students are not ready to free-write, so you want to provide some structure. One way is to show them a picture and, as a class, list someof the
objects or characters depicted and brainstorm some possible story lines around the scene. Some students may copy words or make simple sentences using the class' ideas. Others may branch out and extend the lists or take a different tack entirely. A variation would be
to use the picture as a stimulus for writing a dialogue.
A technique that can help students write comparative essays also uses pictures. Try to find two pictures thathave similar characteris-tics but different details. For instance, you may have two pictures of
floral bouquets. Begin by asking students to make a list (as a class or individually) of the similarities and a list of the differences. Accord-ing to their abilities, the students can use those lists to write sen-tences, paragraphs or an essay about the pictures.
Some other familiar writing techniques will work well too. Tell half a story and ask the students to finish it or havestudents read or listen to a story and then retell it from the pointof view of a different character.
JOURNALS The use of journals is another writing technique that appears as a whole-class activity, but actually prepares students for individual work. By starting students with journals you offer them opportuni-ties for self-expression, unpressured writing and reflection. You can decide how often you want students to write (maybe daily or twice a
week), and ifand how oftenyou will read the journals. Some
students may even volunteer to read aloud. For less proficient stu-dents, you can ask them to start with illustrations in their journalsand slowly move into writing. In this way, all students in your multilevel class can participate.
You may choose to let writing topics be entirely selected by the stu-dents or you may want to provide the writing topics, at least some
of the time. To tie the journals into your lessons, you may use them for lesson closure by having students summarize what they learned in the lesson that day or for motivation the next day by having them summarize a previous lesson.
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GAMES
GROUP JOURNALS A group journal is one variation that may be usedfor whole class writing. It is set up in this manner. The teacher designates asingle
notebook as the group journal. The teacher starts off thejournal with an entry on a particular topic. Students thentake turns writing in the journal. Turns are not assigned or regulated.Some students may choose to write frequently; others not at all. Students may initi-ate topics or respond to somethingalready written. Any entries may
be read by anyone who writes an entry. The teacherwrites entries occasionally, but not in response to each pieceof student writing.
All writing is to be done in the classroomthenotebook can never be taken home by a student. There are no grades, no error correc-tions, no "character attacks," only written interactionabout the
con-tent of the entries.
DIALOGUE JOURNALS This variation of journal writing may be lessrealistic for your large classes. In dialogue journals teachers respond tostudent writing.
They do not edit student work; they add positiveand supportive comments, ask questions or shareideas, and model, in their
responses, correct languageforms. The teachers let students know how often they will read and respond to thejournals. Some teachers will respond to every piece of writing; otherswill respond once a week or less. The teacher comments may vary inlength and depth too. If you do want to trythis technique, pace yourself carefully, especially if your class is large.
Games provide a nice break from a traditionallesson format and capture the attention andenthusiasm of a whole class. Many games can reinforce learning vocabulary, grammar rules, stories and
read-ing selections. Students may play gamesindividually, in pairs, and in groups. By using games as an occasional"treat" or "aside" from the lecture or whole class discussion, a teacher cancasually prepare the students for the group and pair workthat will be expected of them later.
Bingo can be played in many variations. Forbeginning students, the teacher calls out what is on the cards:
numbers or letters;
sight words or vocabulary based on a theme theclass has been studying.
More advanced bingo cards could includethese:
numbers that represent a sum or product, forexample, and the teacher calls out "eleven plus five" or "ten timestwenty;"
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new vocabulary, and the teacher calls out thedefinitions;
antonyms or synonyms of the words the teacher calls out;
irregular past tense forms of the present tense verbs the teacher calls out.
RINGO
BPOLLEN
IIN
FRUIT
I
LEAF
C 1
SEED
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MINERALS