Vocational studies

  1. ACTIVITIES designed by Isaac Nebot

WORKING WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

2nd) PRACTICING THE PRESENT PERFECT WITH BRANDY'S SONG HAVE YOU EVER:

- Class: 1st of a Vocational Training Course ("Ciclo de Grado Superior de F.P." in Socio-cultural and Tourist Entertaining).

- Timing: 25 minutes.

- Lesson plan: 

After teaching the grammar of the Present Perfect and practicing various exercises in the previous days, I explained to stds that we were going to watch Brandy's clip (without lyrics) for them to note down as many present perfect phrases (just "Have you ever + p.participle...?", without finishing the question), and so did they. Then each said one of those phrases aloud and wrote it on the blackboard until they finished with all their answers, lacking just a few of the past participles . On the second playing (without lyrics nor image), they were to complete the few missing verbs together with all their following words up to writing the whole questions sung by Brandy. They got all the verbs but one, i.e. "...searched...?", and most of the question endings, completing what it was written on the blackboard and conveying orally each entire question. At that moment I also clarified some problems for understanding some questions and at the end, we replayed the clip but this time with lyrics displayed.

- Students reactions: on the whole, they liked the activity and the song, although all of them (except one student) didn't know neither the singer nor the song. The students who have a lower oral English level obviously found it more difficult but dazzlingly enough, two of them, Nerea and Alba, who are sitting together and are usually pretty awkward at listenings, did a great job there. 

- What would I change or improve? As I could feel that they weren't that keen on the song as I was, I would skip the 3rd song replay in these cases. Perhaps I should've asked if they understood the general meaning of the song in the end or alternatively, depending on the class level, I should've explained it to them in the first place, which I think was unnecessary in this case.


2. PLACES IN TOWN, by Milagros López

CLASSROOM FEATURES:

There is one group of 13 male students and one group of 14 male students, ages 16 to 18 years old. They are at the vocational training school. Students are training to be carpenters and mechanics. Some of them have such a poor level of English that they do not know how to pronounce or what the personal pronoun “I” means, whereas others are able to understand and answer short and elementary questions in English. 

This is the human material I am working with.  Needless to say, they are not very enthusiastic about the English language. However, they like to play and they enjoy competing, so the activities I used in the class where structured as contests in which the winner or winners would have a prize (in spite of being teenagers, they still love winning a chocolate or chewing gum or any short of candies)

ACTIVITIES:

As we are dealing with the vocabulary related to places in town at the moment, some of the activities you suggested in the course suited me down to the ground.

The first activity I used in the class was the one in which they had to guess what the building shown on the screen were. 

I chose the slaughterhouse in Madrid, which is now an exhibition room, “El matadero”; the Clink Prison Museum in London; the Start Point in Devon, a lighthouse, which is now a rural hotel; a factory in Cáceres, “El Embarcadero”, which is now a leisure centre; the Episcopal Palace in Astorga, which looks like a castle but it is not; the  Rocamador” restaurant in Badajoz, which used to be a convent and the building of Royal Courts of Justice in London, which looks like a church but it is not. 

Students were divided in groups of three or four. 

They were given 15 seconds to write on a piece of paper what they thought the buildings were. They could write only one answer. Once the time was over, each group said their answer. If only one group had the right answer, they got one point if there were other groups with the right answer, they got 0,5 points. In order for the groups not to cheat, they interchanged their papers with their answers on them, so that each group read other’s group answer. Time limit made them concentrate on the activity and they were very excited about getting points. 

Despite speaking in Spanish while deliberating, they wrote the name of the buildings in English and used “spanglish” to give the answers, for instance: “Eso es una ‘prison’” (at least they said the names of places in English!). 

After that, I showed them some videos about these buildings. They were really surprised with some of the buildings.

    2. The second activity was related with giving directions. 

      Once again, I divided the class in four groups of three or four students. I elaborated four maps with buildings on them but no names. Each map had instructions on how to arrive to a place from a point marked in the map. By following the instructions, students had to know where the building was and write the name on it. They had 40 seconds to solve each map. When the time was over I checked the maps. Most of the groups did it well. Directions were very simple: “Go straight on and turn the second left”, “Turn the first right and go straight on. The (bank) is on the left”. 

The second part of this activity consisted of creating a map in the class. Students drew symbols of places on a piece of paper and put in on different tables. Then, in pairs, they performed a dialogue in which one of them asked for directions to the other. After that, they tried to arrive to the place in our imaginary town. All the dialogues were recorded so that students could listen to their performance. Each pair of students was assessed by the rest of the class. Co-evaluation is of utmost importance in the process of teaching-learning as students feel they are an important part in the educational process. In addition, they loved being recorded. They had lots of fun when they listened to their own dialogues and how they expressed themselves in English.

1.     The last activity I did with my students was to give them a word so that they could write as many words as possible with the letters of the original words. I chose “lighthouse” and “supermarket”. They had one minute to do it. They worked in pairs. Most of them were really excited and worked hard to find words. However, some of them, due to their lack of interest and low level of English, lost interest in the task and just waited for the activity to finish.