ELT in Brazil

If you are one of my students reading this, cease immediately so you don’t potentially spoil your next class! 

I’ve been away from this blog for quite some time now (classes to teach, MA underway, some freelance work, and a new expansion on Elden Ring) but I’m back with more TBL ideas.

These are teaching ideas aimed at either student-teachers or students who are interested in education. I subscribed to Lindsay Clandfield’s blog/substack (is Substack a blog?) and I’ve been getting some very interesting posts on his “6 things” posts.

In this one in particular, he shared six quotes about teaching. Here are two of them (so [a] you get the gist of it and [b] I don’t spoil the whole post so you can give him a click!):

1. “To be good is noble, but to teach others how to be good is nobler – and less trouble.” Mark Twain

2. “A poor surgeon hurts one person at a time. A poor teacher hurts thirty.” Ernest Boyer

There are six quotes about teaching in this post, and here’s what you can do with them:

Option 1.

Ask students to discuss all quotes and say whether they strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree and justify their opinions. Make sure you do not allow students to sit on the fence, as this often disrupts the activity. Allow students some time to talk, take notes, and, as they finish, give them some feedback and work on some emergent language.

Option 2.

Show all quotes and ask students to rank them in order of how accurately they think these quotes describe the teaching profession. Allow students some time to do the activity individually before sharing it with their peers. Encourage students to reach a consensus and produce an ordered list with which the group agrees. Again, take notes as they speak, give them feedback when they are done, and work on some emergent language.

Option 3.

Following the idea in Option 2, ask students to ‘fix’ the 3 quotes they mostly disagreed with. Don’t forget to take notes on their production for feedback and emergent language work.

Let me know what you think of these ideas and, as always,

Happy teaching!