841. Have your students think



One day teacher of English A said to teacher of English B, “I think carrying out a project-work at school is a pretty good activity within part of the essence of school: learning to learn and think.

Drills and speaking in English are good practice in the class. However, don’t forget the major aptitudes of your students, for example thorough thinking. This thinking will push up their process of acquiring English toward a high level.

One possible activity: assign your student to make up groups of three, or set the groups yourself, to carry out a project-work. A topic might be the recent history of your country and its influence on today’s society. The goal could be that one or all of the members of the team should present that issue by means of utilizing the smart board. The duration may be 45 minutes. Their age? 15 years onward.

You can tell them some clues before the actual making up the project-work, as examples of possible steps they could implement during the development of the project-work: the final presentation in front of their classmates should be clear – the first aim is for the listeners to understand the presentation and to enrich their culture;

what material they could deal with – from the Internet or from whatever;

what the specific goal of the final presentation is – like for instance the listeners should think and ponder the influence of recent past history on today... The core is twofold: let the students think, and have them organize a serious research on some topic. Ah, obviously you can make them decide what topic they would like to work on and then they would let you know what that topic would be.” / Photo from: chrisspeck wordpress com. One day a workman was up on the roof of his house mending a hole  

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