BBW - Warschauer Straße

ESL Projects English Team Trainers
1

Me and my very lively and friendly group of five learners have got off to a wonderful start. What has been most enjoyable has been the energy and enthusiasm they put in to team games, and they’re amazing ability to work as one team as well. A very dynamic group !

Here are some of the activities we covered over and beyond the “first lesson format”
1, Narrative stories. The first one was my invention to which they then drew some very elaborate detailed pictures. We then discussed both the story and the pictures.
2, Noughts and crosses game testing knowledge of the present simple.
3, Mixed sentences. I had written several sentences on long strips of paper which were then cut in to segments of one to four words each. The learners then had to both try and find the original sentence, and make up any new workable combinations they could find. We finished off with nonsense sentences !
4, Pelmanisn. I had made about 24 cards with oposites e.g. hot / cold etc and the learners had to take it in tuns as teams to find the pairs. I hadn’t realised that due to the paper being thin, the words were just detectable from the blank side, but amazingly the learners still managed to polish off this game in double quick time from reading THROUGH the paper !
5, An animal crossword
6, Studying a “job application letter”, and a “general business” type letter which the group had asked for. The learners were very mutually helpful as a team in coming to an agreement as to the correct translation and comprehension. We discussed presentation and style.
7, Same as 1 above with the blank strips, but the teams made up their own sentences and then gave the cut strips to the other team to decipher. Great fun !
8, Categories game. We chose 6 categories for instance clothes, food, animals etc, and then as teams they had to answer as fast as possible with one example based on the letter of the alphabet i said.
9, We looked at conversation tags, and the teams came up with their own examples after study.
10, The three conditionals all together as a unit.
11, I showed my own workbooks and scrapbooks and the methods i use personally to try to learn german. We discussed various techniques.
12, We played many games with a softball, where the holder of the softball asked a question, and the recipient of the ball then had to answer it - and similar exercises. Very popular !
13, We played 20 questions where the group asked questions to guess the word the initiator had chosen.
14, Missing words. Print outs of sentences where the missing word had to be filled in.
15, A little study on various easy points of grammar with text book.
16, Narrative game revisited, but this time the teams made up their own story, drew a colourful illustration of the story, and then told it to the other team.
17, Garment game. Multiple questions from the learners to find out what item of clothing had been chosen. Each learner got to choose one item to be questioned.
18, Mathematics game with the softball. One learner would ask e.g. “what is the square root of 81”. We also covered “divided by” and “multiplied by” as well as plus and minus.

Some games were so much fun that by a majority vote, some were played twice !

The learners have given me ideas of areas they want to cover in future, for instance the “ing” form, and telephone interviews. I found myself simply steering the classes - all the energy actually came from the learners themselves. They particularly loved the softball and responded energetically to team work.

2

Hi Noel,

Thank you very much for your detailed report. You sure did an a great job and the group obviously enjoyed working with you. Maybe next time you can incorporate a short dictation and a listening comprehension task as well. Please make sure the group is comfortable using the the English alphabet, the numbers and other basic information. You might also do an exercise that involves asking for and giving directions as well as describing objects using colours, shapes, materials and sizes.

Have a good weekend.
Torsten[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC short conversations: Assessing bids[YSaerTTEW443543]

3

Thanks
a great lesson i enjoyed and i learned some new words for interduce of my self, wish you success in all life,

david

4

This is a review of my further two days teaching at BBW Warschauer Straße on 17th and 18th August.

Thanks for the advice there Torsten, all of which i incorporated in to the following twelve hours with the group. Here is a precise review :

Dictation : I wrote a short script for dictation on the Monday, and on the tuesday i chose a short extract from Christopher Isherwoods Goodbye to Berlin. All was understood and read back correctly by the group. In my sketch, I had left it open ended for the learners to write their own individual conclusions to the stories, and we had five totally different endings !

Memorising game. I got each member of the group to find five words each which each then taught to the rest of the group. We then did a few preliminary fun exercises with the soft ball in memorisation of everybodies words, and then a game again with the softball whereby first to ten won.

Present and past, both simple and continous. Again with the softball, game of making up either just three word or short sentences with each category here, each of which was stayed with and practised until i felt all the group were comfortable and happy with each concept. We then mixed and matched past cont with past simple, e.g. “I was walking in the park when i heard a band playing”. Multiple exercises with the softball until all seemed happy with the idea.

Describing. I asked all the group to describe the items in the classroom, all of which was successfully done except that one learner exceeded this requirement by describing what the group members were doing in the class and the class dynamic in general. It added a very humorous additional note to the classes activty here.

Pelmanism game. Based on the Present and past simple and continuous as above, I provided the slips of paper, and the learners wrote their creations on the slips after i had checked that their creations were correct in the first place. I was worried at first that it would be too dry and academic an exercise but in fact it turned out to be as much fun as normal pelmanism. The learners had a lot of fun and of course it reinforced the concepts introduced - with passion !

Stories. Class divided in to two teams who then created pictures in accordance with a story agreed in advance. Story was then related to the other team and me with the aid of the diagrams / pictures drawn. This is the groups favourite activity with some intense input.

Another pelmanism game which i created for associated words, e.g. “China” and “tea”, “mortgage” and “rent” etc. Great fun. Played on both monday and tuesday, and the learners remembered the associated pairs from the previous day.

Phone call job interview. This had been requested as an exercise by one team member. The main benefit that came out of this was the realisation of how difficult it is to have a conversation in another language. Possible necessary words had been prepared in advance.

Alphabet. Using the softball, each learner in turn had to follow the alphabet and come up with an english word. So i for instance said Apple, and the next person who owned the ball came up with a word for “b” etc.

Conditionals. We revised the first conditional only. I had intended throughout the two days to revise all three, but the remaining two conditionals somehow got left out.

Giving directions. We did a team exercise in construction a et of directions. Team 1 had to say how to get from BBW to Warschauer Straße station, and team 2 from the station to Schönefeld airport.

Numbers. Again using the softball, we revised plus minus, divided by, and multiplied by. Person owning the ball would come up with a convoluted question like "whats 5 x 5 plus 25 divided by ten etc.

Competition game. 4 sections of Missing words, Crossword pclues, Multiple Choice answers, and spelling. First learner to get a point in all four sections won.

Written studies. We did some very easy exercises / studies which seemed to benefit everyone, as some basic concepts were initially misunderstood and therefore clarified.

My general modus operandi was with each concept, to ensure it was thoroughly understood, thoroughly rehearsed, and then to be made fun with a game. There might have been a few additional factor, but these were the fundamentals of what we did. The lessons concluded with the learners asking if i might be able to teach one additional day.