I was teaching several week-long English immersion courses at a local high school in outer Milan last month. The students and I met for three hours every morning, and there were more or less than 20 teenagers in each class. Their level was on average early B2 Upper-Intermediate.
In our lessons, the students explored teamwork, collaboration and communication through listening, reading and spoken discussions in English. For the final lesson, the students needed to complete a mini-project.
While spoken presentation is obviously the go-to option for the mini-project, I decided to experiment with something different in my final week. Adding to their spoken presentations, the students needed to design an activity, which involves teamwork, collaboration and communication (in English), for their classmates. Not only did they have to talk about the above three topics, but each group of students also took turns to be the 'teacher' in planning and running their own activity. The rest of the class, of course, had the opportunity to put theory into practice.
It might be a bold move, but the students did very well. One group came up with a problem-solving puzzle that involves moving a wolf, a sheep and cabbage across the river; another group designed a revision task (with material!) modelled on what the class had done on good and bad teamwork. Finally, a tech-savvy group of students designed a Kahoot quiz to revise what they had learnt about teamwork, collaboration and communication.
What better way to learn something than by doing (and teaching) it?
