Creating a communicative context

Questioning techniques, realia and visual aids can stimulate learner contributions. It's also essential to understand your students learning styles as this can make a learning process more effective

Primary children already have ideas about the world, they already know what they like doing and what not. They can make decisions about their own learning, they can judge what happens in the classroom and they are beginning to question teachers’ decisions. 

A teacher should be able to make the classroom a place where there is meaningful interaction and learners are allowed to say what they want to say – where the questions asked require real answers, and taking part in the lesson is seen as a natural aim for the learner.

Strategies that you can use at the start of a lesson to encourage participation

• Have an activity ready for learners as soon as they come in.
• Use a fun ice-breaker to create an immediate positive learning environment (e.g. play a game like hangman to revise vocabulary).
• Tell the class the objectives of the lesson so they are aware of what they are going to do.
• Laugh with your learners. Learning should be fun and it will help the learners relax.
• Put learners into small groups to help them get comfortable talking with their peers.

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At the lesson a teacher is more fixated on it rather than on involving learners. This can be achieved by adapting how you approach the stages of your lessons.

How to increase learner involvement during the stages of a lesson

• Clarifying listening task instructions

The teacher asks volunteers to explain what they have to do so she/he can check they have understood.

- The teacher checks learners have been paying attention.

- Learners express their understanding – probably in a simpler way so the instructions are clearer for the rest of the class.

- It helps to make the instructions more memorable.

• After the listening

The teacher asks learners to compare their answers in pairs. She/He then asks for feedback.

- Listening tasks can be difficult for learners – they have to do several things at the same time (e.g. remember the questions, listen to and understand the information, write the answers) – and this option gives learners an opportunity to check and compare their answers before giving feedback in open class. (Remember that many learners are reluctant to contribute in open-class feedback in case they are wrong.)

-  It encourages learners to cooperate with others and ask others for help.

• Developing a speaking activity

The teacher writes two questions about the topic of the listening task on the board and asks learners to tell each other the answers.

- Giving learners a concrete activity, with the questions on the board, helps them to focus.

- Being in groups means all learners have the opportunity to contribute and formulate ideas before being asked for open-class feedback.

• Getting feedback

The teacher elicits feedback and encourages learners to expand on their answers. She/He sets up a short discussion of their ideas.

- It shows the teacher is listening to the learners’ ideas and values them.

- It allows more opportunities for everyone to contribute.

•  An extension activity

The teacher puts the learners in groups and tells them to create a poster about what they remember from the listening task.

- The teacher is varying the type of interaction, which maintains motivation and increases participation.

- Group work provides more opportunities for participation.

- Learners have an opportunity to be creative – another way to encourage involvement and motivation.

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Questioning techniques, realias and visuals

Teachers need to ask learners questions in order to assess their knowledge and understanding, to encourage their thinking. However, learners should also be able to ask questions and teachers should encourage them to make questions of their own. This will result in a conversation where both learners and teachers are active. Moreover, learners will be happy to participate if they see that their teacher is listening to them and is considerate to them. 

A teacher should be able to ask effective questions. 

The effective features of the questions:

• They are open-ended questions – they don’t just require a yes/no answer, so they provide more opportunities for the learners to participate. 
• They are carefully chosen to challenge and encourage thinking.  
• They encourage contributions. 
• They allow learners to take some initiative in their responses, therefore not dominating their contributions.

Improving questioning techniques requires time and patience. Learners will also need time to get accustomed to that sort of questions as they require long answers and learners are not always confident and are afraid of making mistakes. Give them some time to prepare their answers as well.

Apart from good questions real objects and visuals can also help a teacher to encourage learners to take an active part in the learning process.

• Using visuals and real objects helps to stimulate learning because they can show immediately what a word or phrase means.
• Real objects bring the real world to the class as it is more memorable to look at real objects rather than at pictures in the coursebook.
• It is a good ides to ask your learners to bring posters, some small objects etc to the class as this helps to make the lesson more memorable and cooperative. 

Learners always like having real objects at the lesson as they can touch them, see them, smell or taste them sometimes. This makes the learning process more enjoyable.

If you bring some realias or visuals to the class, learners will see that you care for them, that you want to make the lesson more interesting and they will definitely appreciate this. 

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Weaker students and their motivation 

However, even if you ask good questions, even if you have brought visuals and realias, there can be still learners who are not eager to participate in the lesson process. Our aim is to motivate weaker and less confident learners to participate, and make everyone feel included.

Ask yourself these questions:

• How can I give everyone a chance to participate?
• How can I include visuals, audio or hands-on work? - There are students who are more visual so for them you need to bring pictures, for example. But there are those who are auditory. So, think about different kinds of activities. 
• How can I allow for different learning styles? - The same thing, think about learning styles of your learners. Maybe they need to sing a song rather then write the words on the board. 
• How can I help weaker learners to join in successfully? - Motivate weaker students. Perhaps, you need to differentiate activities. 

There are three main learning styles

• Auditory learners have to hear written information as they remember things more easily when they hear them. 
• Visual learners find it easier to learn when they can see things written down or in a picture. Visual displays like flash cards or videos help these learners. 
• Kinaesthetic learners learn more easily by doing things physically. They need to move around and explore the world around them and find it hard to sit down for a long period.

Activities for different learning styles:

• Show a picture and introduce new vocabulary 
• Visual learners like writing for display
• Play some sounds and learners are to guess the animal 
• Sing a song with new vocabulary 
• Read a text for dictation several times for auditory learners.
• Bring some fruit and learners are to touch them and to guess what it is with their eyes closed 
• Hand out the sentences on cards and the children put them in the correct order
• Put some of the words on the board for the children to put them in order

Links:

http://www.cambridgeenglishteacher.org/courses/details/18777/teaching-primary-learners-communicatively