MBMS_timer from ellen shrager on Vimeo.
Do you find your good students talking to one another while working on assignments?
In my experience, most teachers teach students how to make requests, but rarely teach student-to-student interactions. So when I teach my survival vocabulary in the beginning of the school year, I include 10 expressions that students need to communicate with one another. They are also found on their survival sheet that they keep in their folders.
Ask the students what they need to talk with one another and teach them those expressions.
But what if they are chit chatting and you really don’t want them to do that while working on the assignment?
Here are three suggestions.
- Play authentic music with a timer – it focuses them and discourages talking.
- Take a hard look at the length of the assignment. Most children can focus their age and two minutes, but but I have found that students really can’t work beyond fifteen minutes unless they are on a computer. Can you break it in half and play a one minute stretch song in between?
- Play the 1-2-3 song before starting an activity and if students start speaking out in English, playfullly remind them 1-2-3 adiós ingles.
_61 Estiren por un minuto – trimmed from ellen shrager on Vimeo.
