Relegate worksheets to the sidelines!

When I was a student teacher countless moons ago, I would spend many an evening designing  oh-so-necessary worksheets for my students. This was hard work. I not only had to come up with relevant content, no, I also had to insert little dinky pictures to increase student motivation (?!). Worksheets were important because worksheets help students to learn.

Are worksheets really that effective?

Have you ever practised the simple present tense (statement, negative, question) using at least six different worksheets only to find at the end of two weeks’ work that the students had awful marks in the final test? They should have understood everything! They completed the WORKSHEETS, didn’t they?!

Since reading bits of the Lazy Teacher’s Handbook yesterday, I decided not to photocopy two worksheets to practise the different forms of the simple present that we discussed yesterday. As Jim Smith so rightly says: Worksheets are often for teaching, not for learning.

Ask yourself…

Jim Smith – the “lazy” teacher – suggests answering a short catalogue of questions before you take your place in the queue for the photocopier wasting at least 5 minutes of your valuable coffee break.

Here are a selection of the questions:

1) Why do I want to print paper copies?

2) What types of activity will this lead up to?

3) Are these activities to do with learning or filling the time or crowd control or something else? (How true, how true!)

4) How is the sheet going to be marked?

5) How is the learning going to be assessed?

6) How could the work be done without any photocopying in the first place?

Today’s warming up – the worksheet-free version

OK, usually I would photocopy a few exercises for the students to complete at the beginning of the lesson, have them work on the answers, ask the students to compare the answers in plenum, give them the next job and walk around the classroom to see if they have missed any mistakes when we discussed the correct answers.

Not today.

This morning while brushing my teeth and bopping around to Prince in the bathroom, I had an idea. I told the students in the first class:

“I listen to Prince in the morning because his music makes me feel bouncy.”

The next student repeated what I said and added his own sentence (“Ms. X listens to Prince in the morning because his music makes her feel bouncy. I listen to Goth music because it makes me feel happy.”) Each of the six rows in the class spent a few minutes collecting each student’s favourite kind of music and we discussed the similarities and differences. Each student said something, the students started correcting any mistakes without me asking them to and it was fun to find out the different styles of music that students listen to (The Exploited, Sex Pistols and the Ramones are still popular among 17 year old Germans:). The students are in their third week of the first year of vocational training so they don’t really know each other that well. This exercise helped them to see that there are other people in the class with the same taste in music. Reggae seems to be really popular…

On the blackboard I wrote the internet addresses of a few sites that have online grammar exercises so that the students with problems relating to the simple present(he, she, it – das “s” muss mit) could practise at home at leisure.

Oh, and I gave a student the task of preparing a short presentation for next week explaining the present continuous/progressive:)

Save time on marking and discussions about grades!

The classes, they are a-growing…

This year I have three classes comprising 34/35 students. Of course, during the next few weeks, 4 or 5 will drop out of each class because they realise that they’ve chosen the wrong profession (they’re the lucky ones, some of them only realise this when they flunk the second or third year).

It’s not the number of students that is the problem. The students at the school are usually relatively civilised, we have very few problems with violence or vandalism, so the atmosphere is usually relaxed.

The new buzz word is “individuelle Förderung” = individual student support

The problem or challenge is to help the students overcome the deficits in major subjects in the first half term. German, English and Maths are the subjects that cause the main problems.

This year I have 3 45-minute lessons in the large classes.

To evaluate the students’ standard of English, I had them write a test in the first lesson after I had explained that although I would be recording the grade for information purposes, the grade would not be included in the final English grade for the first half term. I just wanted them to write the test so that I could evaluate the strengths and weaknesses.

Here’s a link to the test:

http://www.cornelsen.de/erw/1.c.1852645.de/material/1.c.1970867.de?root_node=1.c.1970392.de&current_node=1.c.1970888.de

And here are the answers which you’ll have to photocopy onto a transparency to lay over the answer sheet in the test:

http://www.cornelsen.de/erw/1.c.1852645.de/material/1.c.1970866.de?root_node=1.c.1970392.de&current_node=1.c.1970888.de

I saved marking time by reading out the answers to the questions at the end of the lesson and then took the answer sheets home for further evaluation.

After analysing the test to identify which grammar points were relevant for which question, I drew up an evaluation form and marked the areas which needed improvement by highlighting them with a bright pink pen. I then used my teacher software program to record each student’s results  and print off little graphs to show their grade and the average grade of the class.

This took me three hours for each of the two classes.

In the next class, I had the students complete the test, asked them to swap the answer sheets with their neighbour, had them mark the papers, then they were given the table listing the grammar aspect for each question. I told the students to mark the areas of grammar that needed working on. Then I collected the papers to work on at home, recorded the test results for each student and printed off the labels to show the students’ marks and the average marks of the class.

Reduce marking time

Jim Smith – the “lazy” teacher – suggests the following steps for reducing the piles of papers that teachers mark. Important: Ask yourself the following questions BEFORE you set a task.

1)  W’hat will be produced?

2) How will it be presented?

3) How can it be assessed?

4) Who will assess it?

5) What role will I have to play in this?

6) What role will the students have in this?

Since I am the proud owner of a netbook as of yesterday, I will download my teacher software onto my new computer. The next time I have the students complete this test or a similar test, I can record the students’ results directly in the lesson using my netbook and then print off the graphs at home to hand out to the students in the next lesson. I will save valuable marking time that I can invest in developing a curriculum to help the students overcome their problems with grammar.

Nip discussions about grades in the bud

I use the teacher software Notenbox7 which has taken the hassle out of grading a term’s worth of work.

You’ll probably already have something similar on your PC:

http://www.awin.de/NotenBox7.html

It has the advantage that the student always knows what his / her grades are at any time of the week during the term. Everytime they write a test or complete a homework assignment, they get a little sticker showing them the grade for the completed work and the average grades for all the other tasks they have completed so far. After a class test, I can print off the stickers to show each student’s test grade, his/her average grade for the term so far and a little graph that shows the distribution of grades within the class.

Yes, I need quite a lot of stickers during the year, but discussions on grades are no longer a pain because – as I tell the students – “I don’t determine your grades, you do.” Weaker students are also more motivated to go the extra mile if they see that their grades are slowly improving.

Are you still a walking dictionary?

The ESL teacher is usually a jack of all trades

If you’re an English teacher in Germany who is employed by a college of FE, you’d better be flexible….

For example, I completed teacher training at a college of economics. Then I went off to teach part-time at a college of mining for one and a half years. Jobs for English and German teachers were scarce, so I was really lucky to get a job teaching English for specific purposes full-time at a technical college.

I really worked hard to learn all the specialist lingo. I never knew  in which department I would be teaching until the end of term and so far in my ten years of teaching at the school I have taught English in the following classes:

mechatronics, electricians, chemical technicians, IT technicians, A-level students (technical English), metal engineers, skilled workers in the chemical industry, computer programmers, technical draftspeople, train the trainer…

Last term, for example, I was given a class of electricians and had to buy a few new books so that I could familiarise myself with the specialist vocabulary. This year I’m no longer in the class.

“What means this word?”

I don’t know if you also teach English in  a foreign country but one of the main problems I’ve experienced is the inability or unwillingness of students to use their dictionaries to find out the meanings of words. It almost seems as if they switch off their brains at the doorway and expect to be spoonfed by the teacher. It’s not that they don’t know how to use a dictionary, they don’t seem to be able to OPEN the blasted things.

Of course, I am partially to blame for the problem.

1) It’s kind of cool to know specialist vocabulary and impress others.

2) It reassures me that I am still cerebrally fit if I can blurt out the right word within 2 seconds.

3) I’m supposed to know every technical term that the students need, aren’t I? I am, after all, the all-round, all-knowing, all-singing-and-dancing-teacher.

After a few years (I think it was five), I got a little grumpy about having to know everything. Especially if a student asked me for a word like “Zerspanungsmechaniker” on a Monday morning and my typical reply of “Context?” (to give myself an extra 10 seconds to skim through the pages of the dictionary in my head) was becoming rather tiring.

I told the students I wouldn’t be their personal dictionary anymore. They didn’t believe I wouldn’t help and so they kept asking. I gave in.

The turnaround

“The Lazy Teacher’s Handbook” has a wonderfully apt quote on the first page of the book. In one book review by Dr. Barry Hymer, John West-Burnham’s suspicion is mentioned:  Children go to school in order to watch their teachers work.

Wednesday morning (today). 9.15: First lesson of the day in a class of 34 students studying full-time to become chemical technicians.

I quoted John West-Burnham’s suspicion about pupils’ motives for attending school and asked my students whether this was true. They nodded and laughed. I told them that they were now going to familiarise themselves with the first stage of becoming independent learners and they stopped laughing.

Today – thanks to Jim Smith – I finally rid myself of the title of “The Walking Dictionary.”

Here’s how it works.

If you have the book, the method is on page 55. I used it with a new text that the students read to each other and then paraphrased in English. There were quite a lot of new words so this method seemed appropriate.

3B4ME

I wrote the following four words in capital letters on the board under the heading 3B4ME:

BRAIN – think before you ask

BOOK /BOARD – look up the word at the back of the book in the dictionary or look at the board for help

BUDDY – ask a friend for help

Only when you have done this and still have no answer can you ask the

BOSS (i. e. me) for help.

The students started work, no complaints, no grumbling. And not one question relating to vocabulary. Not one. The students helped each other, used the vocabulary list and got on with working.

In the coffee break I talked to the deputy head and asked for a rail to be put up in the classroom so that I can hang up a few posters. One of them will show the 3B4ME steps.

It was so easy to implement. And very overdue.

Why this blog?

1. Jim Smith forced me to write it

“Have you ever had the niggling worry that the more effort you put into your lessons, the worse things become? Have you ever thought it wrong that you are the one crawling home on your knees at the end of the day whilst the students seem to find a new lease of energy as soon as the bell goes? Does it ever cross your mind how everyone else you know seems to have a life and you don’t?

Ever wondered if the hours and hours you spend every day on your job could be better time spent? Ever thought there must be a better way?

… Ever wondered what would happen in your classroom if you stopped teaching?”

Jim Smith’s book “The Lazy Teacher’s Handbook. How your students learn more when you teach less” arrived yesterday and rocked my world.

I started reading it at about 21.00. Initially, I put aside half an hour for a quick flick through the introductory blah-blah but when I next looked at the clock, it was 23.30.

I’m not going to quote long passages from the book, firstly because this would probably violate some copyright law or another and secondly, if you have the chance to buy, beg or steal your own copy of this book, you should. I found the book so eye-opening that I ordered another book called “The Big Book of Independent Thinking” by Ian Gilbert & al for a further dose of inspiration. (Any book that includes a rough translation of a Chinese saying stating “Whoever stands with one foot in the past and one foot in the future pisses on today” is guaranteed to be interesting).

2. Teaching esl is my job

In fact, to be more exact, I teach English and German in Germany at a college of further education in the Ruhr area. My students are usually trainees (electrical, metal, chemical engineering with IT thrown in for good measure) on three-year training courses. Some of my students attend school in the evenings three times a week for a duration of two years so that they can attain their Fachhochschulreife which can best be described as vocational A-levels covering English, Maths, German and a technical subject such as electrical or metal engineering or chemistry.

3. We teachers need to stick together

Once in a while, I feel like standing up (especially at parties when you are asked “what you do”) and saying: My name is (insert name here) and I am a teacher” in true AA style.

A lot of my colleagues, usually men, do not mention their profession while on holiday. They prefer to call themselves engineers. From my point of view this is perfectly understandable. Teachers in Germany tend to be seen as lazy civil servants who spend their mornings at school and then go home in the early afternoon to play tennis. If a teacher notices another teacher going home relatively early in the day, he/she will usually ask (jealously), “What, you going home already?!” Typical reply “Yes, but I still have to mark papers/prepare lessons/etc., etc.” This reply is then repeated one hour later by the same teacher when he/she meets his neighbour.

This need to show that teachers really DO work is not only felt at school or in the neighbourhood. Many German teachers, especially those who come out of the pedagogical closet when on holiday while talking to complete strangers, feel the need to explain why teachers are not lazy, exemplify how much work they have to do, discuss why the education system so often fails, and provide details of  the daily stress caused by financial restraints, staff shortages, etc., etc. 

It’s time that we puff out our chests, smile and say “Well, actually, most of the time we do a good job.” 

4. I want to enjoy teaching (again)

If teachers in Germany are generally viewed as lazy, is it then really that wise to write a blog discussing strategies of how to become a lazier teacher?

Now, that depends on what you mean by “lazy”, doesn’t it? For me, lazy doesn’t mean I don’t want to work anymore, it means I want to work differently. I want to step back and allow my students to work effectively. I want them to learn from each other instead of the pupils expecting a teacher to drill a hole in their skulls, stick a funnel in and then pour all the knowledge the pupils need for life, the universe and everything into their heads to fill the space between their ears.

5. I want to learn from others

This blog will document my quest to become a lazy teacher, it will describe the successes, the failures, the joys and the woes of an average ESL teacher on a mission.

I welcome comments and ideas from other ESL teachers around the world. It would be great if we could collect strategies to make teaching a lazier, less stressful profession for most of the time.