Webinar ReflectionUsing Imagination in the

Class

The Presenter

Helping teenagers to overcome some of the difficulties that can affect their creative ability is one of the key challenges teachers face. 

Recorded on 11 July 2014, Fiona Mauchline shared her ideas for encourage students become more creative and develop critical thinking skills.

There were 33 participants of mainly from European countries. Of the participants, I noticed only 5 were activelly participating by answering questions and posting comments.

In this webinar, Fiona Mauchline shares some interesting ideas and techniques that may help student to tune in to their creative sides. I wanted to share with you some screen shots taken from the webinar, and there are some links to useful websites at the end.

I chose this webinar as I often try to stimulate my language learners to be more creative in their production and often encounter a brick wall of indifference and lack of enthusiasm.

Firstly, theoretical issues are mentioned breifly, that gives some grounding to the following techniques.

Secondly, some practical ideas based on how words, music, and imagary can be integrated into classroom practice to make learning more engaging.

Introduction

Theory Twilight zone: personal taboos, topics such as diet, house, family may be seen

as invasive Learner autonomy: letting students decide what they want to talk about. Scaffolding: When asked ‘’What did you do at the weekend?’’ typical answers are

nothing or sleeping. We must give support for students to access imagination Self perception: We all have creativity but self esteem is an issue with teenagers. Personalisation: Activities are great for displaying learning but these tasks often

lack personal expression of the self. Retention: How can we integrate songs with language learning Integrating skills / Recycling: Reading, speaking, writing and listening with

target structure or target vocabulary. Using the same language but in different ways.

Whole learning: Using all the five senses plus cognitive use. Emotional response: Students don’t remember stuff they aren’t engaged. Summary: Encouraging creativity by stimulating the imagination

emotional investment engaging senses whole body playing with language repetition recycling personalisation

Words

Asking students to write down words that describe not only how a person or thing looks, but also some more interesting traits that require some thought before answering thus making it more meaningful and engaging. It also develops critical thinking skills.

Visualisation techniques - intrapersonal intelligence

Students reflect on their feelings whilst answering probing questions and listening to music, then write down the vocabulary and make a story either individually or collaboratively.

Words

Music

Music can be used to stimulate thought and feelings during brainstorming activities.

Can be used to relax students in between activitie as a time out function. Can be used to reinforce target vocabulary or grammatical patterns. Give students a context and ask them what are the first things they see, hear,

smell and do. Reflect on their feelings and assumptions. The teacher can board vocabulary then play two different types of music and

see how it affects vocabulary ellicited from the students. Musical stories, where student create stories according to different tyoes of

music, using the vocabulary ellicited earlier. Stop music ask questions elicit responses when needed.

Music

Images

Images

Allow students to choose a pıcture of a dream house for them to

describe. (avoiding twilight issue)

Students make a collage of images with sentences using grammar

structure or vocabulary (previous slide)

Ask Students to take photos and share them with classmates talk

about them. I think Facebook is a good way to do this. My students

have shown great intrest doing this.

Students can tell stories using photos they have taken and may

combine pictures for group work.

Wordle cloud is a visual image that includes content related to the text

or vocabulary being used in class. I think students would also benefit

from contextual imagery to support a top down learning approach.

Conclusion

Although I had previously tried many of the activities mentioned in this

webinar I still found it a useful refresher for some interesting an innovative

ways to engage my unmotivated learners.

My favourite part was the collage with sentences activity that I look forward

to using in my class.

I think webinars are a vital tool for the professional development of

teachers. But there are of course time and technological constraints. Being

able to watch a recoded webinar via ACMC allows teacher to access them

in their free time. I have tried several time to access live webinars but due

to limits on numbers, I wasn’t able to participate. There are also issues

with regards to connection speed and computer processing power. In this

case it took me 2 hours to watch a 1 hour presentation which was a really

frustrating.

Links https://britishcouncil.adobeconnect.com/_a917587435/p4gm

qg981c1/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal