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| from pixabay.com Photograher: weisanjiang |
Schools are closing worldwide. While some remain open, they need to take cautious steps to stay diseased free. For the other learning establishments, they are left wondering what to do now. We all realized that being on house locked down is not a forced vacation and learning still needs to be done.
So, what to do? The following is advice for schools who are closed/closing and for those who are still open.
We're Open
First of all, if you are in an area that has reported cases of the disease, you are on borrowed time. There is no telling when you will be pushed to close. Use this time to train your students, how to self-study. Show them how to review sections of their textbook or worksheets, by writing vocabulary from these parts and making dialogue/sentences with them. Practice grammar the same way or write drills like,
Example:
(Write on the board)
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Students’ Answers:
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Present Continuous
Verb: take
(+) Affirmative: She
(-) Negative:
(?) Question:
Short Answer:
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(+) Affirmative: She is taking a pen.
(-) Negative: She isn’t taking a pen.
(?) Question: Is she taking a pen?
Short Answer: Yes, she is. / No, she isn’t
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- Spray some hand sanitizer in every students' hands as they enter the classroom.
- Have students sit in rows to limit contact.
- Use online games where students shout out or use hand gestures to give their answers. (Example: Using the multiple-choice in a game from eslgamplus.com, students put up one finger for the first option, two for the second option and so on.)
-Instruct students to cough into their elbow, not their hands and don't let them go to the toilet, except for an emergency. And always have them wash their hands afterward, adding a spray of purell before they come back to class.
-More writing and independent practice need to be incorporated into your lesson plan.
-Speaking practice should have students a foot away from each other.
- Encourage elbow taps when they wanted to say a good job to other classmates or take on the "Demolition Man" hand clap
Yes, we have reached this level. No matter how silly it may seem. It keeps us safe.
Closed Down
School closure makes learning suffer. But some things can be done about it. You don't want students to come back as if its the first day of school with 3 months of summer wiping out their memory of English. Remember if you don't use it, you lose it. So here are some ideas to help homeschool students during this difficult time in our history.
-transition your class into online teaching. There are many platforms to broadcast an online course. Here are some free ones:
*Moodle
*Zoom
*Udemy
*Rcampus
*Peer 2 Peer University
*Thinkific
*Teachers Pay Teachers
*Google Hangouts
*Google Classroom
- you could even set up a YouTube channel for lectures or links to other videos to teach learning points in your lesson.
It will take from half a week to a week to set up and get familiar with the system but once that hard part is done, it's easy sailing.
Either way, in this day in age, there is no excuse not to continue teaching. A good teacher knows when to adapt. So, with the right preparation and attitude, you can make this temporary crisis not completely stop our way of life. Get out online and teach those students English!
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Let me know how it goes. Write a comment about your experience with planning and/or what happened when you tried my method.
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This is a resource for teachers in ESL. To help the community, please leave comments about other ideas that have worked for you, or how some of these ideas have been successful in your classroom. Thank You.