The slight build-up of excitement appeared on the day before the start of year - face-to-face lessons. How would my students feel in a socially distanced classroom? Can they completely avoid touching role cards in simulation or role play practice? Would they get bored or frustrated by not being able to mingle or work with their classmates beyond their social bubbles? Would they be worried about falling innocent victim to some invisible viruses (google 'long covid'), even though they agreed to come to the lesson in person?
A million questions went with me on my first proper commute to Milan this morning. At 8°C, the autumn air is brisk - what a pleasant surprise for September in Italy.
I taught two groups of teens today - FCE preparation and PET preparation.
Some reflections on teaching socially distanced face-to-face classes
What worked really well:
To let my students give their personalised responses to the pandemic situation, I used a PET-style pyramid discussion task in the context of various modes of learning. They discussed the pros and cons of online, face-to-face, asynchronous (graded down to 'forum' or 'online exercises'), and flipped classroom (graded down to 'video tutorials'). The 'New Normal' it is.
My students also discussed their learning goals - what they wish to achieve on their course. This gave them the chance to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses, which helps them set learning priorities. In one class, this led to a brief discussion of our attitudes to mistakes. Feeling I've got some shy, self-conscious (or maybe they're pushed by their parenrs) students, so we've set the slogan/motto of the class: mistakes are OK.
In my FCE class, we touched on study skills training too - the use of Cambridge Learner's Dictionary online for pronunciation.
What worked okay:
Dogme-style (more like strong-end TBL) post-task focus on language. I'm still new to the part of whipping out a practice activity - thinking on my feet. The language point was quantifier, or too + quantifier. I elicited 3 things each person had eaten; when we had a list of food and drinks on the board, the students told each other about what food or drinks they'd like to have more or less/fewer than now in general. Change of conrext was set clearly, a model given - I eat too much ___. The activity took off nicely, but the langauge clarification bit could have been more complete to include too many, too few, too little. Devising materials-free communicative practice (not just any) on the spot is the fun challenge of Dogme.
What didn't go as planned:
The lessons' digital role cards were prepared and put in one place - a Powerpoint file, which changed into Google slide once uploaded to Drive. This was intended for my students to bypass the touching and passing bit with materials in the traditional paper format. They can use their own smartphones to access role cards. While I could have shared my documents on Drive directly, the URLs were too long to type.
QR codes were trialled but some students had older smartphone models without QR scan function. They might have to install a QR code scanner app which could potentially be unsafe. We went back to taking photos of my laptop screen as a contingency plan.
Next experiment: shortened URLs like bit(dot)ly.