Classroom management

….you do group work but the moment when you are not around any of the groups they switch back to their mother tongue?

I would give them a task to work on silently and then present it, one group at a time. The others listen and take notes, ask questions and evaluate the groups.

For example, dialogues on being worried about a lost wallet. (situation/ place/ characters involved)

 

Intercultural education

Heaven is where the cooks are French, the police are British, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and everything is organized by the Swiss.

Hell is where the cooks are British, the police are German, the mechanics are

French, the lovers are Swiss, and everything is organized by the Italians.

These jokes are fun to be taught as a warm up, in order to identify positive – negative aspects of different nationalities/people.

British cooking is renown not to be quite tasty. German mechanics are the best at designing cars. Italians are best at being affectionate and good at wooing girls but worse at organizing events – they are Latin… What does this mean? Nations are defined by things that they are best at and also by things that they are worst at.    

 

Intercultural education

 I would use the joke link to teach relationships in different countries and how to choose a partner – from which country… Advanced level, because it should address older students, if the joke is about relationships, physical and emotional.  But I m not sure if it s a good idea.

 

 

Classroom management

www.selfdirectedlearning.com/,

I chose this link, because I have tried such an activity and that is I gave Ss a topic to teach in class – 11^th graders. They could use hand outs of their own, power-point, pictures or whatever they wanted to make their teaching interesting and easy to understand. It was fun, because one of the students *reenacted* my gestures and words and the way I teach in general – you always have to have the date, title, and lesson structure on the blackboard! They enjoyed it, had fun with it and created all their worksheets on their own…some with mistakes, some needing more explanations, but all in all it gave them confidence. I will go through the link and see what else I can find.