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Marta Tena
PRIMARY & ENGLISH TEACHER
CLASS RESOURCES
The main purpose of this section is to reflect about different topics related to the internship experience based on the observations done at school.
Awesome teaching strategies for getting the silent student to speak
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THE COLOR STICKS
The color sticks are a nice way to make all the children participate in the classroom. This strategy consists on taking sticks of different colors and write the name of the students in every stick, does not matter the color since they do not have any special meaning. Then, every time we want students participate, we take one stick randomly with one name, in that way we make all the students participate.
Besides, we can make students choose which color they want to take. Colors can also be useful to arrange groups, we can make groups by taking the sticks of the same color, or taking one of each color, etc...
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PASS THE BALL
The use of manipulative objects in the classroom make students be engaged and paying more attention to the lesson. Hence, one nice dynamic to do in the speaking activities is the "pass the ball". This activity consist on having a small ball preferably a foam ball, and throw it to one student, so the student who has the ball has to answer the question, or talk about the current topic of the lesson. Then, this student can throw the ball to another student to continue with the dynamic.
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CLASS DOJO
Class dojo is a fantastic platform mainly focused to deal with classroom management. However, it can be used for many other purposes, for instance to engage students participate more actively in the activities with some rewards, or giving them extra points, etc... Furthermore, the platform allows to create groups randomly and select students, which can be useful to choose some participants for the speaking or other activities.
Strategies for checking comprehension
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EXIT TICKETS
In order to check the students comprehension we can use many different strategies that can also be fun and engaging for students. Exit tickets are one of them, the main function of this is to make students write at least one thing they have learnt during the lesson before leaving the class, so in this way the teacher can check whether the lesson was useful for them or not. This can be adapted to any context and situation, and the teacher can ask students whatever she/he wants in the exit tickets.
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KAHOOT
Kahoot is one of my favourite ways of checking the understanding of the students, since it is very dynamic and motivating for them. It is a platform in which the teacher can create their own multiple choice questions, so students with their devices can play alone or in groups answering the questions in live. Then the results are shown in a graphic style, hence the teacher can check them.
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THUMBS UP
Finally, another good strategy to check the understanding of the students is the “thumbs up”. As the other strategies are more aimed to the end of the lessons, this one can be used during the lesson at any time we want. It consist on giving children some flashcards with the thumbs, and we can ask whatever we want, so students have to raise the flashcards putting the thumbs up or down depending on their feelings. This dynamic works very well because as all the students do it at the same time, they feel more comfortable to say that they have doubts, or they do not understand something.
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