Using Balloons in the EFL Classroom

One of the facilities on the hit counter that I use to keep track of the number of visitors to the ELT Notebook is the possibility to see what people have typed into the various search engines to bring them to this site. One search yesterday was for Using balloons in ESL.

The searcher ended up on this site because in the post Warm-Up Your Classroom! I’d mentioned the idea of using balloons to create a more fun environment in the classroom. But it got me thinking – how else could balloons be used?

Here are a few ideas I’ve come up with. If you’ve got any more, leave a comment.

• Use them to present emotions : Draw different faces on each balloon to introduce She’s happy, he’s angry etc.


• Dialogue presentation : There are occasions when you haven’t got, or don’t want to use, a recording of a dialogue you want to use, but students can sometimes get lost and lose track of who’s speaking if the teacher just reads it out. Use a different colour balloon with a face drawn on it for each character. Introduce the characters before you start, and then hold up the relevant balloon as each character speaks.


• For practising numbers and colours with children : Take a large number of different coloured balloons into the classroom and put them in the middle of the room. Divide the class into three teams. They have three minutes to make as many balloons stick on the wall as they can, by rubbing them on their hair or clothes to create static electricity. At the end of the three minutes get them to count their balloons – the team with the most wins. And then take it on to other questions – How many red balloons are there? How many yellow balloons are there? How many balloons are there all together?


• A general knowledge quiz for teens or adults (1), possibly as receptive practice for subject-object oriented questions : Write a series of general knowledge questions on slips of paper, fold them up and tuck one inside each balloon before you blow it up. Put all the balloons at the front of the room, and divide the class into teams of three or four. One person from each team runs to the front grabs a balloon and takes it back to the team who then have to burst it in any way they like. The team then tries to answer the question, writing down either the answer or We give up on the back of the slip of paper. Another member of the team then takes the slip of paper to the teacher, and goes to get another balloon. When all the balloons have been used up, the teacher reads out the questions which each team got, the other teams suggest what their answers would have been, and then the teacher reads out the original team’s answer. If it’s correct, they get a point. The team which answered the most questions correctly wins. (2)


• A present perfect/simple past practice game: Before the game starts everyone thinks of a few questions they want to ask the group, starting Has anyone ever …… (for example, Has anyone ever climbed a mountain? Has anyone ever seen a UFO? Has anyone ever ridden an elephant ?) The students stand in a circle and the first person hits a balloon into the air and asks their question. Anyone who wants to answer steps forward into the circle and catches the balloon as it comes down. While they answer, explaining when, where etc they did whatever it was, they must keep the balloon bouncing gently in the air. When they finish they ask their own question, an if someone steps forward to answer, sit down. If no-one wants to answer, they must ask another question. The game ends when everyone has asked and answered a question and is sitting down.


• To practise a particular lexical field – for example, fruit and vegetables, animals, clothes etc. The students are in pairs, and each pair has an inflated balloon and a marker. They write one word connected with the field on the balloon, and then at a signal from the teacher, everyone sends their balloons into the air and catches a new one as they come down. They write a new word and the balloons go up again. Each time they get a new balloon they must, of course, write a word which is different from those already written there. The game goes on till there are nine or ten words written on the balloon, at which point the teacher gives each pair a second, plain balloon. They then have to draw on the new balloon all the items that were written on the old one, and the picture balloons are then sent into the air and redistributed. At that point there are two possibilities : each pair looks at the pictures and writes a list of all the objects it shows. The first pair to take a correct list to the teacher wins. And/Or : the pairs then have to go and find the balloon with words written on it which matches the balloon they now have with pictures. (3)

OK, balloons aren’t strictly necessary for all of these games – you could do them just using pen and paper. But if you want to get your students moving around a bit, to add a kinaesthetic element to the lesson, then balloons can be a useful aid.


Notes

1. Games involving bursting balloons are not recommended for children’s classes.

2. An article describing another game along similar lines can be found on One Stop English

3. Another balloon game practising lexical fields can be found on Genki English

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Using DVD and Video in Your ESL Class Part Two

In this article Keith Taylor continues his overview of useful ways you can exploit DVD and video in the classroom.

Have you ever wondered how to use video in your ESL classes, without just sitting your students down in front of the screen and hitting Play? Here are five more activities for you to try.

1 Vocabulary in context

Choose a scene (no longer than two or three minutes) with some dialogue rich in vocabulary. Make a worksheet with ten to twenty words that are used in the scene, or that describe the scene in some way. Give the worksheet to each pair of students and have them discuss some possible contexts in which the vocabulary might appear in a movie. (Giving students the context of the movie as a whole can make this task easier). Play your chosen scene once, asking students to listen for the contexts in which the vocabulary is used. Pairs can then compare their information and report back to you.

2 Subtitles

A big advantage of DVD over video is the subtitles feature. Playing a scene with subtitles in the students own language or in English is good for building confidence. Try playing it with the sound down first, letting them read the subtitles, then with the sound up, again reading the subtitles, and finally with the sound up and the subtitles turned off. Keep the extract you use to about two or three minutes.

3 News

If you have access to TV news in English, record a news story with plenty of visual footage. Play it with the volume off and have your students discuss in groups what they think the item was about. Then give them a pre-prepared list of vocabulary, containing words essential for understanding the story. Using this list and what they have seen, students reconstruct the story in pairs and report back to the group. Dont forget to play it with the volume up at the end, so that students can compare their version with the original.

4 Cultures

This activity could be used in a conversation class about cultural differences. Find a short extract which shows a typical aspect of British culture, or American culture, or any culture you want to focus on! Have students discuss the differences between what they see and their own culture. Students do not necessarily need to understand the dialogue for this -- the visual aspect of the cultural scene is usually enough.

5 Voices in my head

Choose a short scene with some interesting and expressive dialogue between two or more characters. Show the scene normally and check students comprehension. Put your students into groups, so that you have one group for each character in the scene. Their task is to imagine what is going on inside the head of their assigned character. Play the scene again, several times if necessary, for students to "get to know" their character, and have them work together to imagine his/her thoughts. Finally, play the scene once more, hitting "Pause" after each character has spoken, at which point the groups say what their character is thinking.

A short video sequence with a clearly focused activity is an effective and motivating way to bring variety to your ESL classes. Your students will go away with more than if you sit them down in front of the screen and hit play.

Keith Taylor is the founder of http://www.eslbase.com, providing free resources, information and advice for TEFL teachers, as well as the latest job opportunities and a directory of TEFL courses worldwide. He also maintains the eslbase language exchange, an easy way to practise any language online.

TEFL jobs, TEFL courses and ESL resources from eslbase.com

Notes

• Article Source: ezineArticles.com Reprinted with permission.
• Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by balcony via flickr

Further reading ...

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Using NLP in ELT

In a recent article I mentioned how noting students’ eye movements can help the teacher understand when they are ready to start a task. This is an insight that comes from NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming). I am not an expert on NLP, but over the last ten years or so have found various NLP techniques extremely useful in the classroom. What I’m going to write here is a vast over-simplification of the theory, and focuses only on the elements which I have used most, ignoring other things completely. But I hope it will give you a taste of how NLP can be relevant to EFL/ESL teaching. If you’re interested, the best introduction to using NLP in the classroom are the two books by Jane Revell and Susan Norman In your Hands and Handing Over, both published by Saffire Press.

The basic idea behind NLP, as I understand it, is that our outcomes – our “successes” and “failures” (but there is no failure in NLP, only feedback) – are determined by the thought and behaviour patterns which we use unconsciously all of the time. By recognising our own patterns, we can change the ones which are not getting us the outcomes which we want.

And as teachers, we are also involved in helping others achieve the outcomes that they want – in particular to learn effectively and in a way that is enjoyable, to become a valued member of their learning group and so on.

For me, one of the most important core concepts of NLP is the recognition of differences in cognitive style – or what NLP calls “representational systems”. There are five of these systems (Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic, Olfactory and Gustatory) of which the first three are most commonly used. Everyone will have a preference for one of the styles even if they use all five at times, and this will determine how they take in and access information and thus how they experience the world. This is often reflected in the metaphors that people use. Two minutes ago I found myself writing give you a taste of – a gustatory metaphor. In the classroom, your non-conscious teaching style will tend to reflect your representational preferences, but your learners will probably learn best if activities are geared to their predominant systems. For instance, my predominant system is kinaesthetic and my favourite classroom activities reflect this. My learners are often on their feet and walking around, manipulating flashcards, or discussing past experiences and how they felt in certain situations (the kinaesthetic system involves both tactile and emotional feelings). I use the visual system a lot too, but tend to ignore the auditory unless I really concentrate on including it. For example, I naturally prefer written explanations to spoken ones, tend to limit the amount of listening comprehension I do with students, and so on. But if I only followed my own preferences, there would be a mismatch between my teaching style and my students’ learning style. I need to look consciously at the activities I plan for each lesson to ensure that all styles are catered for, not just my own. Or if I’m teaching one-to-one, I can gear activities specifically to that learner’s style.

Some common classroom activities and the three main representational preferences which they match are in the following list – one may surprise you :

• activities involving story-telling, listening to cassettes, oral explanations, songs and music, repetition, silent planning, conversation (Auditory)


• mime, drama, roleplay, activities involving movement, the manipulation of flashcards or objects, note-taking (Kinaesthetic)


• activities involving graphs, pictures, video, written exercises, texts and explanations, use of the board or OHP, note-taking, highlighting with different colours (Visual)

Why is note-taking listed under kinaesthetic? I’m a copious note taker and have been all through my educational life. But I rarely if ever look at the notes again. It is the mere physical act of writing them, the feeling of the pen forming the words, which is important to fix the ideas in my brain (1). How often have you said to students “It’s not necessary to write it down – it’s all on the handout.” ? But for some people it is necessary.

Activities involving moving around will appeal to kinaesthetic learners.

Other insights from NLP which I have found useful are :

• Eye movements will reflect the representational systems which a person is using and how they are thinking, and can give important clues to the teacher on how best to react to a student. For example, for most people eye movement to the right will mean that the person is imagining or inventing something, and if the eyes are at mid-level this will be auditory – they may well be trying to formulate what they want to say. Noticing this, the teacher can pause and give them the time they need rather than pushing for an immediate answer.

• Mind and body are interconnected - posture can create, maintain or change state. There is a lovely Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown is standing with bowed head, hunched shoulders and a glum expression. He says to one of his friends : This is my depressed stance. When you’re depressed, it makes a lot of difference how you stand. (He straightens up) The worst thing you can do is straighten up and hold your head high because then you’ll start to feel better. (He slumps again.) If you’re going to get any joy out of being depressed you’ve got to stand like this. Try it – it works. If you’re feeling down, and stay in a depressed stance you go on feeling bad. Change your posture and you change your state. Try it on those days when you just really don’t feel like going into the classroom – walk in using the body language that you’d use if you were really looking forward to it and knew you’d enjoy it. Or when you take the six-thirty class and find the students slumped and tired after a hard day’s work, recharge their energies with some stretching activities or an activity where they’re on their feet and moving rapidly around.


• Language can also create state and affect outcomes – if you tell your students in advance that an activity is difficult you’ll see them tense up and prepare themselves to fail. Negative language is negative suggestion, while positive language is positive suggestion. If instead you tell them “You’ll enjoy the next activity – it will give you the chance to put together all that we’ve been doing in the last few lessons”, the implication is quite different.


• People are motivated by different “metaprograms”. For example, some are internal evaluators – they will decide for themselves if a technique is useful or if they are making progress. Others are external evaluators. They need to hear it from others, the teacher or the other students, before they will believe it. A statement like You’re really making a lot of progress this year will convince and motivate the second group, but the first will want to decide for themselves. They’ll respond well, on the other hand, to the chance to self-evaluate and give feedback on the course and their own progress. Other metaprograms include options vs procedures oriented – do students want to be told exactly what to do and the right way to do it, or do they want choices; motivation towards the outcome they want (This activity will help you assimilate the new vocabulary) or away from the outcome they don’t want (If you do this twice a week you’re much less likely to forget the new vocabulary); independent or co-operative – do they like working alone or as part of a group; and sameness vs difference – do they feel more secure if the lesson always has the same format, contains the same activity types etc, or do they prefer variety and like every lesson to be different and unexpected.
  Not every person will be at one end or other of the continuum for each metaprogram – some will be happy working in either mode. But recognising the existence of these (and other) metaprograms helps us to recognise when we ourselves tend to one extreme or the other and why our students may be reacting badly to our lessons. If we are difference oriented, we may think we’re running a great course by constantly varying the methods and activities we use. But our “sameness” students may be feeling insecure – which will inevitably have an effect on the success of their learning.


• Communication is non-conscious as well as conscious – I talked about one aspect of this, without mentioning NLP, in the article Warm Up Your Classroom! What message does the visual impact of your classroom convey? Does it suggest that learning will be an enjoyable, “warm” experience or does it convey a sense of coldness, neglect and lack of care and attention? What effect will the message that the students are receiving non-consciously have on their participation in the class and the success of their learning?

NLP, then, helps us “see things from the other point of view” and to realise that our own way of thinking, speaking, and acting, although it seems so natural and obvious, is not necessarily shared by the students in front of us. To maximise their learning, we may need to adapt the way we plan and conduct our lessons, to change the activity types we use, and to re-think the way we communicate.

Acknowledgements

1. I owe this insight to Jane Revells account of the same experience in In Your Hands.

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by Qian Jong.

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