Purpose
Activity 5 is a multi-layered activity in groups. It has the purpose of
raising participants’ awareness of the various strategies teachers can exploit to help students better understand and follow classes in the L2.
Procedure
Please refer to slides 36-43 of the Power Point presentation of this module.
- Participants are asked what strategies teachers can use to support students’ learning in a general brainstorm activity. Some examples may be given. (2 minutes)
- Participants are given post-it notes and in groups they have to write one strategy per post-it (10 minutes).
- Participants are provided with a graph and they have to decide where to place / plot their post-it note strategies in terms of learner gains and teacher investment (5 minutes).
- Once they have finished plotting their own strategies, participants are given a set of post-it notes with more scaffolding strategies that they may or may not already have considered. Some of these are based on recommendations from the literature, others are strategies that they may deem not to be worthwhile (high teacher investment and/or low learner gains). Participants have to decide where to plot those strategies that they had not thought about before (5 minutes).
- After finishing, participants pin their graphs on the walls and in groups walk around to see where other groups have plotted their strategies. One member from each group can stand by the graph and present it to the other participants who should consider similarities and differences across groups and whether they would plot them alike or not and why (10 minutes).
- General brainstorm of these similarities and differences, and other reflections as a plenary. Invite participants to share the low teacher investment / high learner gains strategies that they use. (5 minutes)
- Ask participants to discuss in their groups which strategies also help develop intercultural competence / foster intercultural collaboration and which strategies could hinder this. Debrief as a plenary. (5 minutes)
- Invite participants to think of five strategies they would like to ‘take home’. (5 minutes).
Resources needed
- Activity 5 Worksheet Axes or a large sheets of paper to sketch them on
- Activity 5 Worksheets Strategies
- Post-it notes
- Marker pens
- Pins: to hold the graphs on the wall
Room / space needed
The room, participants stay at their tables before walking around the room for the poster presentations.
Time frame
45 minutes
Possible variations of the procedure
It may also be interesting to ask participants to think about strategies that they use but that do not work for them. The different groups could be asked to select their top three strategies and share them with the group during the plenary.
