Lessons worth applauding!

The secondary English teachers at Meyna School have really taken the professional development workshops I presented to heart.

Here Anil, made some of my instructional strategies his own.

Anil took the little boats I'd brought from Thailand, and rather than using the numbers I'd placed on the back, he put the student's names.

In the classroom, Anil learned to first ask the question, pause, and then pull one of the boats.  This process keeps all the students on the toes.... not knowing who might be called on to answer the question.

"You've got 30 seconds!" 

 Use of the timer, one I brought along from the States, too is a great way to keep the lesson moving and the students engaged.

The "Starter Activity" was a series of true of false statements.  Anil randomly called on students to state whether a statement was true or false.  Student stand, when answering a question.

Rather than just leaving it at asking one student, Anil would randomly call on additional students, to see if they agreed with what the first student had said.

In this case.... three students said the statement was true, before the fourth student answered correctly.... the statement was false.  "Why is it false?"  asked Anil.... again a great extension of the lesson... so that the student now had to give details to support what they'd said.

As soon as Anil passed out this reading assignment, the students, on their own, numbered the paragraphs, and drew a box around the title.  Another instructional strategy straight from my workshop!

New vocabulary.... randomly calling on students to identify key new vocabulary words, paragraph by paragraph.

Writing the definitions of the new words on the board, for the students to copy.

I'm seeing this throughout the English classes, where the teachers have taken what I taught them during the professional development sessons, and have begun incorporating these new strategies into their daily lesson plans.

Simple tools can make a big difference in the classroom!





A timer and a method for randomly calling on students by giving each student a number and then drawing a boat (with numbers on the bottom) after having asked a question.

I gave the teachers an assignment today to identify three main summary points in a text they'd read yesterday in the Reading Comprehension workshop.  They were given 30 seconds to indentify the points.  I then used my random method to call on teachers to give me the answer. 

Within a very short time, the pace of the workshop increased substancially and the anxiety level of the teachers also increased substancially!  They knew they had limited time to search for the answers and that at any point in time, any one of them could be called on for the answer!

Good pacing and keeping a certain level of student anxiety during the lesson can be a good thing ..... it keeps the lesson interesting, keeps the students on task, and it reduces classroom behavior problems.

A couple of keys to the successful use of calling on students randomly.

First.... always ask the question first, allow some "thinking" time,  and then randomly choose a student to answer.  If the student is chosen before the question is asked, all the other students will check out and not listen.  By asking the question first.... everyone knows they could be called on!

Second ..... if the teacher calls on a student and they say "I don't know" the teacher can not let that student off the hook.... or every subsequent student when asked the question will say... "I don't know!"  Instead, tell the student that you'll be coming back.... even if that means having that student repeat the correct answer given by the next student.