Day Two of the online conference experience, and I have
whiled away the evening flitting around the British Council Glasgow Online website, and collecting various interview
nuggets which I plan to apply to my own classroom. Here they are:
Adrian Underhill’s “portable” mantra: “See what’s going on.
Do something different. Learn from it.” An appealing idea, but Adrian
himself was quick to point out its limitations. How do we see what is really going on in our own classroom?
Alan Maley’s ideas for teaching creative writing to learners
of all levels. It’s a common assumption that creative writing should only be
tackled with higher level learners, (it’s certainly one I’ve been guilty of
making) so it was really nice to hear Alan’s suggestion for a simple metaphor
poem which can be attempted with lower level learners. He suggests writing two
columns of nouns. Learners then match the nouns from each column together to
create metaphors and then write a line to explain each one, e.g.
Love is an egg,
Be careful you don’t
drop it.
Freedom is a flute
I look forward to trying this out!
Finally, I really enjoyed hearing from Adam Simpson, blogathon
winner. His tips about blogging have given me food for thought, as well as
pointing me in the direction of his erudite (and very entertaining) blog: http://www.yearinthelifeofanenglishteacher.com The blogathon sounds like fun - I'll be keeping a look out for a repeat event!
