Sunday 9 March 2014

Running Dictation and Other Animals

 
Following on from yesterday's blog I have had questions about running dictation. It is a task that has so many positive aspects, and I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't used it in their classrooms.

It can be used for vocab introduction, reading skills, information-seeking purposes. It develops team work and is easy to differentiate for.

The task mentioned in yesterday's blog was the topic of House and Home, and was a way of students being exposed to and discovering the new vocab. So stuck around the walls of the classroom were a number of different House-For-Sale adverts. Students were put into groups of 3 and were given question papers that they had to work together to answer (these sheets have to stay on the table). The students have 3 roles - Hunter, Scribe and Researcher. They rotate these roles each time someone returns back to the table.

The Hunter goes to read the adverts around the room, with a question in mind, to find the answer. When they have, they go back to their group and tells the scribe what to write.

The Researcher looks for key words linked to the questions to make the Hunter's role easier. This can be done using dictionaries, vocab sheets, resources.

The Scribe will write down the answers and key words on the answer sheet.

Two of the sheets for the students are below:


There are many versions, and you can tailor it to suit your students.

Something else I use for new vocab and topics is Human Dominoes, which I showed at #ililc2 with great joy.

It is quite simple - dominoes, but each domino is a sheet of A4. I originally produced enough dominoes for each student in the group, because they have to move around the room to find their place in the chain.

But this doesn't expose students to all the possible structures. So I now give each group of 4 students a whole pack of the dominoes, and they work together to create the chain.

Some examples of the dominoes are below:





The students can then refer to it through the lesson as though it is a vocab sheet.

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