Closure Activity for Assessment - Demonstration

Here's an example of a Closure Activity for Assesment I had a couple of years ago. The activity is called Triangle - Square - Circle and it's used for gathering information at the end of a course (in this case I had it at the end of a three-day course on TKT - Module 2)

The aim of the activity is to assess the learners' learning and see three main areas (as you will see in the video) and I will also show the information I gathered at the end.

After the activity I gathered the following information:

  

As you can see, the information gathered showed me what the learners knew and confirmed as a result of class, what they learned and what is still confusing them after the three-day course. If I were to teach them again, I would have enough information to cover the last chart and make the lessons more effective.

Triangle - Square - Circle is a good activity if you want to check how effective your class was and what areas you need to spend more time on the following lesson.

I hope this helps you and you use it some time in class.

Thank you for stopping by and reading this.

Happy teaching!



Erick Maguiño Matusaki

Closure Activities!

Do you want your students to attach personal meaning and relevance to what they glean from your daily lessons? An effective "Closure" activity at the end of each class period can help with that objective, creating what psychologists call the Recency Effect, otherwise known as a last impression.

Ideally, closure activities create powerful learning effects at the tail-end of the class, something that will reverberate for hours after the lesson is over, something a little sticky.

The defining element of the closure activity is that which your students will soon come to realize: class isn’t over until it has taken place. The bonus added-value factor, of course, is this: as they come to realize that the closure activity is an essential part of the overall lesson, your students are more likely to think twice before leaving early!

Closure activities also help define both your teaching agenda and the intended learning progression, weaving today's lesson with yesterday's while providing a look ahead at what tomorrow's will bring. As a deliberate part of your planning process, these activities summarize the current lesson, provide it context, and build anticipation for the next. Properly implemented, they will help you establish and maintain course momentum.

Reinforcing what students have learned, closure activities also serve as an assessment tool with which to evaluate your students retention level—Did they get it?—as well as your own effectiveness.

Including a closure activity with a SET Activity in every lesson is an effective classroom management strategy. It establishes a clear classroom framework for your students, with a clearly delineated and articulated BEGINNING and END, a format they will come to expect and on which they can depend. 

Powerful Closure Activities

These activities have been designed to get the best out of the last minutes of your class and your students as well. I decided to group the activities, so you know which one to use depending on what you want to focus your closure on.

Take a look at them, apply them and enjoy your future teaching experiences.

Activities for Summarizing what the lesson has tried to achieve:

-          One-minute sentence: This activity can be used to check summarize what the lesson was about. The teacher asks Ss to write a sentence on a piece of paper describing what today’s lesson was about, they exchange that ´piece of information with their partner and discuss about it (Ss might have different idea of what the lesson was about) and at the end the teacher takes the pieces of sentences home and checks them to see what the Ss thought of the class

-          Snowstorm: Ss write down what they learned on a piece of scratch paper and wad it up. Given a signal, they throw their paper snowballs in the air. Then each learner picks up a nearby response and reads it aloud.

-          The Important Thing: Ss write three important ideas/things from the lesson today.

The important things today are ___, ___, and ___, but the most important thing I learned today is ___.

-          Word Splash: Ss are given a “splash” of the key words from the lesson. They must write a few meaningful sentences (summarize the learning) using these words

-          5-3-1 (alone, pair, group): Write a question/topic, Ss brainstorm 5 answers. Then they work in a pair to come up with the 3 best. Then the pair joins with another pair to come up with the 1 most important.

Activities for Checking understanding:

-          Beat the Clock: Ask a question (vocabulary, grammar, functions, etc). Give students ten seconds to confer with peers before you call on a random student to answer. Repeat.

-          Review it: Direct Ss to raise their hands if they can answer your questions. Classmates agree (thumbs up) or disagree (thumbs down) with the response.

-          Name the word: Divide the class into groups of five Ss. Have one student from each group comes to the front of the room and show them a word. Then these Ss return to the group and use a nonsense word (beep) in place of the chosen one in a short dialogue. For example, if the word is book, the person might say, I bring my "beep" to school every day. I like to read mystery "beep" at home. I go to the library to find "beep." The first team to guess the meaning of "beep" wins the point.

-          Tell your partner: Ss work in pairs (one facing the other), one will talk and the other one will listen. The T asks a question and Ss work on the answers in pairs:

            Example:

            ·  What is the opposite of boring? (vocabulary)

·  What is the past tense of ride? (grammar)

·  How do you spell library? (spelling)

·  When is Remembrance Day in Canada? (culture)

·  What another way to say good-bye? (conversational discourse)

-          Odd one out: Divide the Ss up into small groups. Tell the Ss that you will read a list of four words. The should find the word that does not belong and say why. One example would be a list of words composed of the following: doctor, architect, office, and lawyer. The word office is not an occupation, so students should choose this word. T has to use words Ss  have learned during the lesson.

Activities for Assessing student’ learning:

-          Exit ticket: This is an activity for assessing the students’ overall learning during the class. The teacher asks Ss to get a piece of paper and write their names on them. Then the teacher asks a couple of questions for the Ss to answer or T / F sentences, the Ss answer the questions of mark T / F and hand in the paper as they leave the class. This serves as a way to assess the day’s learning.

-          Check list: The T prepares a check list of the objectives of the class and hands in  a copy to every student, these Ss check what they feel confident about after the lesson and return the check list to the T.

-          My learning: This is similar to the check list but students rank sentences the T has previously prepared as goals for the class. Ss rank from 1 to 5 the sentences.

Example:

A. I totally understand everything in this class.

B. Reading the textbook really helps me understand.

C. Listening in class is easy for me and helps me.

D. I put a lot of effort into this class.

E. Being able to talk about the ideas with others helps me.

F. Acting things out helps me learn things.

I really hope this helps and if you have any question, do not hesitate to drop me a line and I will try my best to answer.

Thank you for stopping by and reading this.

Happy teaching!


Erick Maguiño Matusaki

Teaching Writing - Process Approach

I believe one of the most overlooked skills in class must be writing. I think this is because students do not like to spend time doing this activity and teachers do not want to ask students to do something he knows they hate doing. Writing is, quite possibly, one of the weakest skills for Latin American students and the one that takes the longest to skilfully achieve.

The reason I chose to work on process writing is because I have already done product approach and I found it particularly helpful. I just want to see the benefits of this new approach for me, since I have never really worked on it before, and see how it compares and differs from its counterpart.

But, let’s start from the beginning. What’s writing? According to Teaching Writing Skills (Byrne 1998), “On one level, writing can be said to be the act of forming these symbols: making marks on a flat surface of some kind. But writing is clearly much more than the production of graphic symbols, just as speech is more than the production of sounds.”

What is the process writing approach?

Process writing may be a more effective method of teaching writing as it helps students to focus on the process of creating text through the various stages of generating ideas, drafting, revising and editing, a number of activities which can be represented as in Figure 1.

White and Arndt (1991:3) describe writing as a form of problem-solving which involves such processes as generating ideas, discovering a ‘voice’ with which to write, planning, goal-setting, monitoring and evaluating what is going to be written as well as what has been written and searching for language with which to express exact meaning.

In a simplified manner, Figure 2, tries to demonstrate the complex and recursive nature of writing and the interaction between the different operations which may occur simultaneously (White and Arndt,1991:4; Hedge, 2005:50). Our cognitive process or thinking is not linear. However, writing is linear and a writer must know how to organise his/her thoughts and message in an appropriate manner. Many writers often do not know what they want to write beforehand and many ideas are only revealed once the writer has started. They then move backwards to revise and change words or structures before they move forwards and they continue doing this until they are satisfied with the end result. Thus, writing is a ‘process through which meaning is created’ (Zamel, 1982,195).

  How does the process writing approach work?

It is possible that teachers assume students know how to organise their ideas and write as they have ‘picked it up’ in their reading or they have transferred the skill from L1. This may pose a problem as not all languages (and cultures) follow the same patterns of written discourse. Much contrastive rhetoric research has focused on these differences to aid writing teachers (Brown, 2001:338). Since writing involves a process of ‘generating, formulating and refining one’s ideas’ (Zamel, 1982:195), writing practice in class should reflect the same process where attention and adequate time is provided for revision and re-drafting while the teacher intervenes throughout the whole process.

What are the steps of the process writing approach?

I recognize three basic and main steps:

Generating ideas: The first part of the lesson may almost be considered the

pre-writing stage to develop ideas. An example might be a descriptive essay which follows a lesson or section on adjectives. An opinion essay could follow a class discussion about a specific topic. Another good pre-writing activity is the use of 7 brainstorming, especially if we consider the complexity of writing and how generating ideas is an essential stage in the writing process (White and Arndt, 1991:17). The objective of brainstorming is to stimulate the imagination to produce ideas on a topic or problem. This is particularly useful for those less imaginative students who do not exercise their creative abilities frequently and thus find it difficult to generate or recall encyclopaedic/world knowledge and link ideas together. Is it not possible to assert that like many other skills, creativity and imagination must be developed through practice?

There are many ways in which students can brainstorm ideas, this is one I like the most and I mostly use with my students. It lets students generate all the ideas they can and group them at the same time, you’re basically doing 2 jobs ate the same time (listing and grouping)

Focusing, structuring and writing the first draft: After the initial stage of brainstorming, student gather their ideas and subsequently select and outline them to write the first draft. As a follow-up of brainstorming White and Arndt (1991) and Hedge (2005) suggest the technique of fast-writing (free-writing) and loop writing. The purpose of free-writing is to write without any inhibition concentrating more on content rather than on form. With loop writing the student writes about one idea, then summarises that stretch of text in one sentence. This sentence then leads to another loop. This technique could help students avoid vague statements, the repetition of ideas and help to produce natural flowing text. An example for text 4 might be:

Concentration must be paid to the global organisation of the text depending on the purpose, as information must unfold in a structured form in order to achieve coherence. Students must be made aware of this. A good idea to help those who have problems organising their thoughts might be to make a visual plan for the text.

The text is usually divided into introduction, body paragraph(s) and conclusion. In addition to being aware of the possible text structures, students should be aware that effective paragraphs contain good topic sentences which introduce what the topic is about as well as the purpose of the paragraph, and these should be written in such a way as to attract the reader’s attention.

 

Introduction Paragraph 1 Childhood memories last forever; they will never go away no matter how small they are. Memories like going on vacation and playing outside with friends are the most remembered and treasured by children all over the world.

Main body Paragraph 2 Travelling with the family is always a good chance to spend time with your loved ones.

Main body Paragraph 3 Playing outside gives you that unique experience of interacting with children your same age.

Conclusion Final Paragraph In conclusion, I believe that there is nothing more important for a child than all those memories they accumulate during their childhood.

Revising and Redrafting/Editing: Revising is part of the writing process which entails assessing what has already been written and is an important source of learning (Hedge, 2005). Sommers (1982:154 in Zamel, 1985:96) states We need to sabotage our students' conviction that the drafts they have written are completed and coherent. Our comments need to offer students revision tasks ... by forcing students back into chaos, back to the point where they are shaping and restructuring their meaning. This is one of the most crucial and beneficial stages in the writing process, when the most meaningful learning will take place that will aid students in future writing as they will have the opportunity to receive feedback while the experience is still ‘fresh in the 12mind’ (Hedge, 2005: 121). In general, students receive feedback from teachers’ days after the writing task has been completed, mistakes are highlighted and corrected, suggestions for improvement are provided. In certain occasions students may be ‘spoon-fed’ and this may account for why there is no real improvement in subsequent drafts or writing tasks. The teacher has done all the work; consequently learners do not mentally correct their mistakes as meaningful learning may not have taken place.

Once again there is an opportunity to transform this task into a student-centred activity thus promoting real communication amongst students. Students may work in pairs or groups and correct, provide feedback on each other’s text. This collaborative work generates discussion and activities which may increase students’ awareness of problems they may have in their own writing when they have to clarify ideas or expressions used in the text (Hedge, 2005:122). By providing students with the opportunity to correct and provide feedback on their classmates’ texts, they are learning by doing and as Hedge points out (2005:18), ‘accuracy work which is comparatively spontaneous’ is ‘certainly more meaningful and motivating’.s.

I hope you find this interesting and apply it in your classes.

Happy teaching,



Erick Maguiño Matusaki

Problems with giving instructions

Here's a video of a teacher giving instructions in four different scenarios. What problems can you identify?

Please comment your answers in the comments box!

The importance of giving instructions...

Have you ever wondered why your students don't perform an activity well? Maybe you've thought about changing the activity because it was nos realistic. Maybe you've even considered giving them more time to finish the activity because you thought they needed more time. Have you stopped and thought about checking the instructions you're giving them instead of anything else?

Let's think about our job for a minute. It is true that our main activity in class is to teach, but when we are setting up an activity giving instructions is even more important than the teaching aspect. Why am I saying this? Because the success of the activity depends, in a way, on the students understanding what they have to do and how they have to do things in class.

How can we make sure we are giving clear instructions?

There are certainly many steps we can take to make sure our instructions are clear and easy to understand. Here is what I call "golden rules" to give good instructions:

- Plan your instructions and practise them: Everything you say in class should be planned ahead of time; the best way to do this is by thinking, during your planning stage, what you're going to say and how you're going to say things... and practise them. That way you'll know how you sound and if there are things you need to change.

- Get your students attention: One of the reasons why activities don't work out is the fact that there might be one or two students who did not listen to you, and as a result, become a problem during the activity because they don't know what they have to do. Remember that giving instructions is the main part before the activity; everybody has to listen to you while you're telling them how they have to do the activity. Maybe a loud clap will get their attention before you start with your instructions.

- Speak clearly and project your voice: This is linked to the first idea (practise) and considered an important part of giving instructions. Make sure everybody listens to you - students in front and students at the back of the classroom. The best way to know if they all listen to you is by practising.

- Use short sentences and simple language: As teachers we like to say nice things and long instructions, but these complicate more the students. So, instead of saying "So, Julio, could you tell me where the coffee shop is?" we should simply say "Julio, where's the coffee shop?" There is actually no need to give fancy instructions when they just need clear ones.

- Speak to the whole class: When giving instructions make sure you are talking to everybody and not just a group of students. Look at all of them while you're setting up an activity and make them feel they are all part of the moment. If you need to stand right in the middle of the class instead that in front, don't be afraid of doing it. Sometimes we need to stand at the corner to have a clear view of the whole classroom, and then give the instructions from there.

- Use gestures, body language: Some students are more visual than others and so they need to see things rather than just listening to them. Use your body when you are giving instructions, you are already helping the auditory learners, do not forget about the visual ones. Point if you need to, at the board if you've written something there or at the book if you need to get their attention.

- Check understanding: Make sure they understand what they have to do before they start working. One way to do it is be asking ICG's (Information Checking Questions) so, for example, after you've told them to do a speaking activity you ask them, "Do you have to write something?” However, avoid questions such as, "Do you understand?", "Is it clear?” etc.

- Don't give hand-outs before the instructions: If you are going to give them something to work with (hand-outs, flashcards, laminated material, etc.) do not give them these before you've set up the activity. Otherwise you will have a bunch of distracted students while you're giving the instructions and they will not listen to you. Instead use the hand-out, flashcard or laminated material as part of your instructions. 

Photo: Remember to "chest and point"

 - DEMONSTRATE: This is possibly the most important part of giving instructions, when you demonstrate what they have to do. You can do it yourself or you can use a strong student to help you model the activity. If they need to fill in a gap or ask and answer a question, do number one with a student and that will set an example of what they have to do with the rest of the activity. Always remember to model the activity.


I know there are many things to remember but that's only because this is a serious topic and we need to be 100% sure that we are doing things well. If we don't give clear instructions then we cannot ask students to do the activity well because they will be confused during the whole process... and that is something we should not let happen.

I really hope this has been helpful and you've learned something from here. If there is any comment you would like to make or any other aspect of giving instructions you would like to highlight, you can always comment and share your ideas.

Happy teaching,




Erick Maguiño Matusaki