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 .
The term "Classroom activities" applies to a wide range of skill-based
games, strategies and interactive activities that support students'
educational development. The goal of all activities is to enhance
students' understanding, skill or effectiveness in a specific area by
engaging multiple styles of learning. School activities also serve to
infuse fun into learning as well as bolster student confidence and the
ability to think critically.
A good design of classroom activities could not only help the students handle the relationship of “input” and “output” during their speaking process, but also mobilize the interaction between teachers and students inside the classroom. This design is, guided by the Task-based teaching method, based on the correct choice of teaching content and reasonable arrangements for classroom tasks, and with a variety of classroom activities, to stimulate the students’ interest and successfully complete the speaking process in the oral course classroom. It’s helpful to both the students and the teachers to make satisfying achievements for the teaching task.
calssification of "CCA":
Subject-Based Activities
Each discrete subject has a series of topics that can be taught or reinforced through activities in which students directly apply knowledge and information to discover meaning. For instance, educators may use role play in a social studies class in which students act out opposing sides of an issue to better understand the content. In earth science, a teacher may initiate a search and discovery activity in which students identify real world phenomenon they have studied.
Technology-Based Activities
There are numerous Internet and computer-based activities that allow students to experience multimedia learning of subjects such as math and science. These kind of activities include media literacy and software and hardware design projects.
Career-Skills Activities
Often used in secondary education, career skills activities function as a method to prepare students for the world of work. Typically, there is little time for activities focusing on career skills within the normal school day, but out-of-school time and after-school programs can provide this level of learning.
Collaboration Activities
Post high school, however, an individual's success relies largely on her ability to work with others. Collaboration activities cultivate skills such as team work, communication and tolerance. These activities are non academic in nature, interactive and enjoyable.
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:
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gain from each other's efforts.
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recognize that all group members share a common fate. (We all sink or swim together here.)
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know that one's performance is mutually caused by oneself and one's team members. (We can not do it without you.)
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feel proud and jointly celebrate when a group member is recognized for achievement. (We all congratulate you on your accomplishment!).
The Role-Play Classroom Activity:
The ultimate goal of language teaching is to develop students' Verbal
Communication Competence. Verbal practice is the crucial factor of
Verbal Communication Competence construction. Communicative Classroom
Activities are important classroom forms for verbal practice which are
concerned by many language education workers. Role Play Classroom
Activity is one of the most commonly used Communicative Classroom
Activities which is an excellent way for developing students' Verbal
Communication Competence because it can create simulating real-life
situations in classroom. However, currently there are some problems with
the theoretical research and practice of Role Play Classroom Activity,
which handicaps its teaching effectiveness. This thesis makes a
theoretical and practical exploration towards the application of Role
Play Classroom Activity in Chinese Teaching. We discuss how to use Role
Play Classroom Activity to develop students' Chinese Communication
Competence.
After theoretical analysis and classroom observation we find that the problems of Role Play Classroom Activity lie mainly in design, organization and evaluation. So our research will focus on these areas with the purpose of resolving these problems and finding out the way to optimize the teaching effectiveness of Role Play Classroom Activity.
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.
Course content for the co-curriculum activities:
10-Classroom Activity 10
11-Benefits of Classroom Activities
12-Pums, puzzles and Riddles.
13-Story Jokes for real communication
