English Nightmare
As I ask a question,
Silence
Blank stares
Silence
Blinking eyes
Silence
Student cough
Silence
Student yawn
Silence
Bobbing heads
As I ask a question,
Silence
One hand
Silence
Eyes meet
Silence
Teacher's pet
Silence
Always Answering
Silence
New Ideas
Silence
help
help
HELP!
Now before all of you English Educators freak out, allow me to provide you with some advice on how to create a more lively classroom evironment.
The "How to get more Group Discussion in the Classroom" List
1) Like i've said so many times before, get texts that students actually enjoy!
2) Have students write questions about the text before starting the next part of the lesson.
3) Enable the students to start the discussion and keep yourself (the teacher) as the discussion navigator not enforcer.
4) Have classroom debates.
5) If you are going to be the discussion leader, come up with thoughtful questions. Make the questions relatable to their everyday lives if at all possible.
6) Perhaps do more small group discussion leading up to whole class discussion.
7) Maybe this would be an unfair game to play, but put a card on every students desk. The catch to this card game is that some cards have questions on them; and the students that have those question cards must answer. Another catch to this game is that other cards have the answers to these questions. With these answer cards, those students have to announce the correct answer (it would be better if the teacher received the answer from a source different from their own insight). Now, those students had answered the question from the start has the right to challenge such an answer. In fact, it would be great if the teacher actually asked the student the with proper answer card, "Do you agree with the answer?" Careful though, you want to make sure that this card game goes along with more open - ended questions for it will spark more debate about whether the answer is right or not.
8) Ask a question to the class, have the students write their answer on a slip of paper, collect all the answers and put them in a hat; and once an answer has been selected do NOT have the student who wrote that answer to raise his or her hand, allow the the rest of the students to chime in first. This activity would be a great way to gather questions as well.
9) At the beginning of class, ask every student how they are doing on that particular day. Then ask them how a certain character is doing today (referring to the characters in the current text). This is a great and informal way to see if the students are keeping up with their reading - you are asking first about emotion and then the actual character in the story - catch my drift?
10) To get rid of those not feeling very out spoken jitters, at the beginning of the class ask the students to get out their books; have them go to the current section that the class is reading, ask them to pick out a passage that they like; and all at the same time, have the students read those passages. Hopefully in this tornado of sounds students will realize that they are the same as other students or will pick up a different connection to the story that they thought they never would through another student's voice - relating.
2) Have students write questions about the text before starting the next part of the lesson.
3) Enable the students to start the discussion and keep yourself (the teacher) as the discussion navigator not enforcer.
4) Have classroom debates.
5) If you are going to be the discussion leader, come up with thoughtful questions. Make the questions relatable to their everyday lives if at all possible.
6) Perhaps do more small group discussion leading up to whole class discussion.
7) Maybe this would be an unfair game to play, but put a card on every students desk. The catch to this card game is that some cards have questions on them; and the students that have those question cards must answer. Another catch to this game is that other cards have the answers to these questions. With these answer cards, those students have to announce the correct answer (it would be better if the teacher received the answer from a source different from their own insight). Now, those students had answered the question from the start has the right to challenge such an answer. In fact, it would be great if the teacher actually asked the student the with proper answer card, "Do you agree with the answer?" Careful though, you want to make sure that this card game goes along with more open - ended questions for it will spark more debate about whether the answer is right or not.
8) Ask a question to the class, have the students write their answer on a slip of paper, collect all the answers and put them in a hat; and once an answer has been selected do NOT have the student who wrote that answer to raise his or her hand, allow the the rest of the students to chime in first. This activity would be a great way to gather questions as well.
9) At the beginning of class, ask every student how they are doing on that particular day. Then ask them how a certain character is doing today (referring to the characters in the current text). This is a great and informal way to see if the students are keeping up with their reading - you are asking first about emotion and then the actual character in the story - catch my drift?
10) To get rid of those not feeling very out spoken jitters, at the beginning of the class ask the students to get out their books; have them go to the current section that the class is reading, ask them to pick out a passage that they like; and all at the same time, have the students read those passages. Hopefully in this tornado of sounds students will realize that they are the same as other students or will pick up a different connection to the story that they thought they never would through another student's voice - relating.
**NOTES: The poem was written by yours truly. Honestly, it is not meant to be colorful but literally meant to depict the voice freaking out in a teacher's head when the class is as silent as an empty classroom. Now my list is an answer to the shouts of help from the poem. Now, the order doesn't count for most important or least important, they are literally ten ideas that I have just come
up with. Obviously some seem more reasonable than others, but they're all out of the box and worth a shot!**