Classroom Activities

Overview:

      The process of education must be accompanied by the school activities that help to enrich the process of teaching, presentation and learning inside the class and outside the classroom.

Definition:

       Classroom activities are activities done by student inside the class as part of applying or doing the practical part of the lesson after listening to the theoretical part which is presented by the teacher.  Activities outside class enable learners to explore more knowledge through visiting libraries , responding to and using the environmental realia, using electronic programs and accessing to the  relevant sites of the internet .

1-Pair Work:

  The idea of pair work is to improve listening and speaking skills by requiring students to exchange information with each other. Dialoguing with one's self and dialoguing with others are implemented in pair work.  Pair work should always be accompanied by some sort of ‘test’ to ascertain whether or not information really has been exchanged. Pair work strengthens the learner's self-confidence and self-esteem.  It develops critical thinking

Pair work can be seen when 2 learners do a conversation, an interview or a debateinside the class. The 2 learners participate in exchanging personal ideas to solve a problem.  The can play the role of evaluation.

Activities which lead to pair work:

• Roll the ball
  This can be used to practise any language that requires a question/answer pattern. They can roll the ball to each other and have to say the appropriate sentence as they roll the ball.  E.g. “Hello” “Hello” “What’s your name?”" How are you today?"....... etc.  Remember the sentences they practice should be fairly short.

• Information gap
  Give each pair a picture. The pictures should be nearly the same with two or three elements missing from each picture. Without showing each other the pictures they should describe the missing objects. They will practice color, prepositions of place, and adjectives such as big, small… Then they can compare their pictures.

• Telephone conversations
  Sitting back to back they can practice telephone language or just simple exchanges that don’t have to be connected to the telephone itself. Sitting back to back should arouse their interest and help train them with listening skills. It’s a challenge, but a fun one!

Pair work benefits:

1-It enriches the skills of listening and speaking.

2- It creates fun and allows the teacher to use games, increase learners' motivation and concentration.

3-If the whole class work in pairs, this will increase learners' attention.

4- It is used in error correction.

5- It increases language fluency.

6 - It is used as an exam practice.

7-It increases the class dynamics as it enriches communication.

8-It offers intensive, realistic practice in speaking and listening.

 9-It promotes a friendly classroom ambiance that is conducive to learning.

2-Group Work:

The basic teacher finishes the theoretical part of the lesson . He claps with hands to refer to the practical part.  Pupils are divided into groups.  Each group gathers according to its interest .

Group A gathers together as all its members like to do a research through accessing to the internet.

Group B members gather to practise their design activities through using the material available to make some designs of wood, cartoon, paper and so on.

Group C members gather to do their research through watching relevant video films , CDS or through listening to a cassette tape

Group D members gather to hold a small meeting to arrange their agenda to do an actual visit to the actual fiend in the environment around to gather data abut the lesson assigned. They will come back after certain period to do an interview with the classmates. The teacher will witness, watch and evaluate. The classmates will become the inter viewers and 2 friends of the group will be the interviewees.

The interviewees will be asked by the classmates about:

1- The resources of their task

2- The tools used in their task.

3- The role played by the assistant teacher for each group.

3-Co-operative learning:

   It is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping team mates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement. Students work through the assignment until all group members understand and complete it.

Electronic programs:

 Learners can learn through electronic programs like:

the Hotpotatoes program. This program is used for presenting vatious exercises of: ( j.match, J.mix, J.cross, J.puzzle and J.close.)

Co-operative learning results: 

All group members:

• gain from each other's efforts. 

• recognize that all group members share a common fate. (We all sink or swim together here.)

• know that one's performance is mutually caused by oneself and one's team members. (We can not do it without you.)

• feel proud and jointly celebrate when a group member is recognized for achievement. (We all congratulate you on your accomplishment!).

4-Other activities inside class:

1- The learner can listen and answer exercises in his workbook.

2- The learner can listen to a tape and speak.

3- The learner can listen to a situation and answer questions.

4- The learner can read, think and answer and he learner can read a passage or a topic and write a report.

5- The learner can listen, imagine and guess.

6-The learner can think, compare and evaluate.

7-The learner can correct others' mistakes through pair work.

8-The learner practices critical thinking through group work .

9-The teacher can do interaction with his learners to enable them to participate in learning.

10-The teacher enables learners to share in actual situations

11-The teacher enables the learner to express his opinions and solutions to the problems.

12-The learners answer puzzles, sing learning songs with jazz music and do:( Interactive games, Card games, Classic games, Miming games and quiz games ).

13- The learner understands, draws , paints and designs real things out of the available  teaching material.

14- The learner can consult a dictionary, an encyclopedia, listen to a tape and watch a video tape , a CD or a power-point program.

15- The teacher gives the learners the chance to listen, see, listen and see, watch teaching films and overhead projectors, demonstrate, act the roles, exchange roles to illustrate the learning process and change the theoretical tropics into real and actual situations.

16- The learner must think, pair, share, notice, observe, agree with, disagree with,dialogue with himself and with his peers .

17- How wonderful if the teacher transfers the outer environment into class as real things to be used in learning.

18-The learner can learn through doing, dialoguing, discussion, debates and conferencing.

19-The learner transmits what he learns to others through the principle of learning through teaching.

20-The role of the teacher becomes the rol of a facilitator, a monitor, a guide and an adviser.

Activities outside class and outside school:

learners investigate knowledge by themselves through :

1- Independent learning and answering the invetigating questions starting with question words like ( what, why, how, how come, where, when ) through self-exploration and navigation.

2-Visiting the school library to do researches.

3-Visiting the school science laboratory to do experiments and see practical results to find solutions to the problems.

4-Touring the internet sites to gather more knowledge.

5-Visiting the community to listen to the people in real life and see the role of society and environment to reach the right objective.

6-Holding actual meetings with people in charge .

7- Sharing in the school broadcast, projects and exhibitions.

8-Watching teaching TV programs or data show programs.

9-Completing the process of learning through adding the personal experiences to solve the problem in a kind of a strategy called constructivism.

10-Sharing in school parties and journeys to museums and real place of real knowledge.

11-Having the chance to think, create and innovate to serve his society.

12- The class changes from a classroom into a place of an assembly of some promising scientists and experts.

13- One day, Mr President, Bell Clinton called for establishing green schools as a step to serve the whole community. This great call spreaded all over the USA states.

5-Evaluation:

   The basic teacher with the help of the assistant teachers give grades to each work. The evaluation focuses on the efforts made, the spirit of the collaborative work among the group members: ( Leader, organizer, timer, writer, evaluator, dictator and a presenter ). Group B members can interview Group A members' work or project in a form of a debate to evaluate other groups' work in a way of crtical thinking. Also, group D members can interview group C members' work in the same way. The teacher monitors, motivates, encourages and guides.

6-Rewards:

    Each brilliant work can be rewarded through a small festival as a kind of motivation to the learners to go on achieving  more and more progress and competition.

The benefits:

1-The learners learn about the spirit of co-operation

2-They learn about the significance of sharing.

3-This work creates a kind of competition among learners and groups.

4-They create an atmosphere of imagination

5-They create the spirit of innovation , creation and participation.

7-The Results:

      This kind of education, accompanied by these classroom activities creates a generation of scientists, inventors, writers, poets, thinkers, experts and witty people that can give a hand in the country developmental reform.