ESL – what will I teach today?

the pros of working in a school with no equipment or how I developed my interest in Dogme

In the school where I work now there aren't any projectors, there is one laptop for all the teachers, there are basically no textbooks, the rooms are rather small and often the teacher has to use blackboard and chalk because there are no markers to be used on the whiteboard (the whiteboard doubles as blackboard on the flip side); often, for at least half of the month, Internet doesn't work and many days the electricity comes and goes. There is no staff room either and teachers are expected to sit next to the only printer to do their printing, in a busy passage between the reception and the stairs (there are no copiers, only this one very inefficient multi functional printer which is mostly used as copier, and I'm only waiting for the time, very soon, when it will collapse under the work load).
In this context, I suddenly developed a keen interest for everything Dogme, since my lessons, whether I like it or not, have to follow most of its principles, namely:

Resources should be provided by the students or whatever you come across. If doing a lesson on books then go to the library.
All listening material should be student produced.
The teacher should always put himself at the level of the students.
All language used should be 'real' language and so have a communicative purpose.
Grammar work should arise naturally during the lesson and should not be the driving force behind it.
Students should not be placed into different level groups.

From teachingenglish.org.uk

To this, I should add that most of the hours I teach are focused on preparing teenagers for exams, something which, on one side, makes everything more difficult, since I am expected to input some exam material which needs to be printed and does not really have a relevant interest for the student, thus breaking one or two of the Dogme principles -- but on the other perfectly abides by its rules because it places the direct study of grammar out of the classroom.
All considered, I am quite intrigued by Dogme right now. Long ago I made mine the principle that the teacher does not blame a bad lesson on the equipment -- and I stick by it. I just make do, like all the other teachers here, locals who don't even expect things to be different (though they seem to strangely manage by enforcing a "traditional" school discipline i.e. students stand up when the teacher enters and teachers are addressed as "mister" and "miss", something that to their bafflement I refuse to comply with).
So everyday I face the tragic challenge of having to come up with an interesting lesson without using any textbooks, without diving into any of my faithful ActivInspire flipcharts, without preparing sets of images on Google, without playing videos or opening books at page x. At first I resented having to chunk my personal trove of accumulated, created and adapted material. I leave examples of one or two dogme-style classes to a following post.

the metric mermaid greenboard of the day

There is an activity I do with kids (8-11) on my first lesson, which ultimately focuses on them drawing on a piece of paper a self-portrait, with the things they like, and answering to simple questions such as "what's your name?" and "what's your favourite toy?"
However one of the questions on the piece of paper is: "how tall are you?", which of course kids for the most part cannot answer.
Hence what you see on the "greenboard of the day": one by one the kids come to the board and I measure their height. I use a short classroom ruler, of maybe 30 centimeters, and a lot of addictions and subtractions, which I ask the students to calculate in my place.
At the end, when we finally have moved to the presentation of the next activity, the students have practiced numbers, calculations, the metric system... while enjoying a bit of celebrity status in coming to the board and having their name written on it, proof of the complicity between them and the teacher.
Naturally there is also a secret purpose to this, which is allowing yours truly, the teacher, to learn at least some of the names of the students on the first day.
When two of them are the same height I put them back to back and we all decide whether they're really the same height... what's most amazing to me is that never in this activity I've witnessed the slightest hint at competition to "be the tallest".
As to the mermaid and the name of the the local teacher above it... they're leftovers of the following activity and of the copious drawing it involved.

excerpt from a letter to my friend P. who is a human being and therefore surprised I might want to take DELTA next year

...as for the DELTA, I see where you're coming from, but you are thinking of IH and their disgusting corporate structure (I don't think I will work for IH ever again), but around the world it does not necessarily equate being 'management', who says that?? At most DELTA for me would mean being a trainer somewhere, other than a teacher, and I don't see anything wrong with that. If I can pretend to be one, I can pretend to be the other as well.
Bottom line, you should see my mailbox, because as a native speaker you might not get the full experience of how hard it can be to get a job anywhere in this trade. You would find hundreds of applications I've sent all over the world in the past three years which never even received an answer. Many to my home country. To British Council alone there are more than 30, though to be fair I always get their rejection emails, which I know by heart by now. When I do receive an answer it is often because there is some disgusting little aspect to that job that makes it unpalatable to most of the native speakers.
Sure I'd be happy to do anything else in life (I've had a lot of jobs and no qualms in starting over) but to be honest this is the grind that gave me the most stability with the least necessity to suck up to anybody, so I might try to beat this dead horse a while longer.
J.

I invented a tongue twister. Me. whiteboard of the day

There is one word that, in my experience, every student in former Soviet Union countries and that part of central Asia will mispronounce. It doesn't matter whether they are advanced or beginner, great at speaking or utterly laconic.
Each and all of them will pronounce the word "clothes" as /ˈkloʊðɪz/, only slightly differently from the word "closes" (/ˈkloʊsɪz/), as in "she closes". *
It is one of those pronunciation errors which seems to be so confidently imparted from the teachers in school, it is very hard to eradicate, especially in adult classes.

To try and overcome the issue, I got into the habit of systematically correcting this error while the students are speaking, in the hope that the feeling of annoyance caused by the interruption would crawl down into the secret part of their brain where the mistake hid.
Seeing that this wouldn't work, I started to periodically act a little skit in front of the door:
"I close the door", I would say, "she closes the door. (opening and closing the door like an idiot) Say like the first, not like the second!"
One day not long ago during one of my YL teenager classes I came up with a tongue twister in order to help against this pronunciation obstacle. It's on the whiteboard of that day:
img_20160525_142349
As you can see the rest of the lesson traveled from fishing to Robinson Crusoe, from metal detectors to the present continuous. I don't entirely remember why. But I know that the "I scream you scream" pun I got from this:

* phonetic transcription provided by phonetizer.com (yes I cheated)

the Writing Robot short story of a failed romantic activity.

"Please don't do your best. Trying to do your best is trying to be better than you are."
~ Keith Johnstone

I first read the name of Keith Johnstone in the very useful, quite inspiring book "Lesson from nothing" by Bruce Marsland.
I got curious about Johnston and soon bought his "Impro: Improvisation and the theatre", even though in my life I've always stayed away from stages and theaters and performances in general...
If you don't know anything about him, you can start from his recent TED apparition:

Since reading Johnstone's book, I tried to appropriate some of the games and activities it describes, especially in the part of Impro where Johnstone discusses his experience as a school teacher, before getting into theater.
Some of these became a recurrent traveling game between me and my wife, such as telling short stories together one word at a time (there's always a pigeon in there, for some reason). What's strange is that I've almost never had the courage to try any these things in class. Or, if I have, the memory of it has been quickly erased from my mind with a shudder.
I tell myself that it's hard to find that atmosphere of openness and active imagination among adults who are paying your lessons very dearly, or among kids who have been parked there by their busy parents.
One activity I remember doing, with a beloved small class of teenagers I had for two or three semesters a couple of years ago and with whom the atmosphere was so good I probably felt I could try really new things, was "The Writing Robot". Johnstone did something like this with a typewriter he brought to class, giving his students art pictures as an inspiration.

One day I took my typewriter and my art books into the class, and said I'd type out anything they wanted to write about the pictures. As an afterthought, I said I'd also type out their dreams... I typed out everything exactly as they wrote it, including the spelling mistakes, until they caught me. Typing out spelling mistakes was a weird idea in the early fifties (and probably now)—but it worked.
Keith Johnstone, Impro

These are the first mistakes I made, because my robot wrote on the board in my ugly handwriting, and there were no pictures to take the first stories from. That's because I didn't remember that part of the book. But there's more mistakes.
Another one was that I over-prepared for something that should have been spontaneous. Here's the first slide I presented to the class:
2016-09-25-11_44_42-activinspire-studio
I probably thought they needed a "box". Spontaneity here is more crucial. Something like this, and the rules in particular, should have been something the students came up with. Later on. Not the teacher. There should be no official "writing robot" frame around this activity until the students call for it. This is supposed to be an illegitimate game and not a scheduled lesson stage.
Here's the first story we wrote. I stood up next to the board behaving like a robot (lame) and faithfully printed all they suggested, going one by one:

2016-09-25-11_52_49-activinspire-studio
It went on for a few pages, then we did the error correction you can see in green. The story wasn't anything special and that should have rung a bell. Instead, I thought it was smart to translate this into a classic "Delayed Error Correction" moment. Which was a mistake as well. Like Johnstone suggests, much better would have been waiting for the students to be outraged by the errors themselves, demanding corrections:

I typed out everything exactly as they wrote it, including the spelling mistakes, until they caught me. Typing out spelling mistakes was a weird idea in the early fifties (and probably now)—but it worked. The pressure to get things right was coming from the children, not the teacher. I was amazed at the intensity of feeling and outrage the children expressed, and their determination to be correct because no one would have dreamt that they cared. Even the illiterates were getting their friends to spell out every word for them.
Keith Johnstone, Impro

Until then, I should have left the activity where it was, perhaps printed and posted on a wall.
The students played the "Writing Robot" a couple of times, with all the enthusiasm and animation they were capable of. Then, incredibly, after a serious consultation among themselves, they sent forward an envoy to make it clear with me that they didn't want to play the "Writing Robot" anymore. Please.
I asked why, and they said "it wasn't that much fun", and I let it go. But immediately, instinctively, I knew what had finally spoiled this activity for them: I was too pleased with it, me and my "romantic" teaching I told all about to my colleagues as if I had discovered gold, and the students could read it.
The creative efforts of my students were going in the direction of making me feel better, and that takes only so much of our energies before we give up.
I think this, this self-pleasing teaching, this "trying for the best", in search for admiration and praise is a common problem many teachers have, because of the frustrations the job lays upon you day by day, because of the pressure we are under and the insecurities that come with it. I can only be thankful to those kids who made me see it.
So I gave up, and never thought of doing the "Writing Robot" anymore, until now... now I would do things differently, and who knows how it might go.

close your eyes to the picture and listen.

Since I was recently writing about it, I thought of sharing more on the topic of "describing pictures".
It's an activity* I sometimes use in the context of PET preparation. It might work for FCE as well, though in that exam photos are compared, rather than described. Something awkward about which quite rightfully Alex Case comments:

"Comparing two photos on your own for (exactly) one minute has to be the most unrealistic, pointless and random speaking task of all time. In the rare moments when we do talk about photos in real life, we certainly never compare them. Outside Cambridge exams, I doubt more than 0.1% of the world population have ever done such a thing in their whole lives."

~ Alex Case, usingenglish.com

The requirement for this practice activity is that you, the teacher, have presented those useful expressions to identify, describe and point out objects, scenery and people in a picture: "at the back" "to the left" and so forth, plus the grammar that goes with it (essentially the present simple and continuous). Something that on your board might eventually look like this:
2016-09-24-16_02_20-activinspire-studio
Now you probably want to give a chance to the students to practice all of it, plus as much vocabulary as the images carry with them.
As to the preparation for the lesson plan, all you need are very basic, yet essential, "Google image skills". A projector or IWB are also needed. (Actually, none of this is "needed", but you know what I mean.)
The class will be divided in pairs, or in groups of three. Just to introduce my simple instructions, I might show at first a picture like this one:
2016-09-24-14_48_16-activinspire-studio
(The above wise collage is certainly not necessary...! I had Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth in a previous version - if you go for something like this naturally you will want to keep it updated to something which, while being current, will also attract your students' attention and raise at least an amused smirk.)
Alternatively to the closed eyes, the students who listen to the description could simply have their backs turned to the board. This might actually give your class more ease in focusing on the description and its content.
In any case, once you verify that there is only one student left in each group who can see the projected screen (and only then), turn to the next picture, which will be something you might have downloaded from Google. In this case the result of the Google search "child walking the dog on the beach":
2016-09-24-15_52_03-activinspire-studio
While in each group one student is describing it, the other ones try to visualize the picture in their mind. The above example is deliberately scarce in details, which makes it easier provided your students have the vocabulary they need. In this case: directions, clothes, the sand, the beach... They most certainly will not have the word 'leash', but will manage to paraphrase it nonetheless.
Generally speaking the choice of the picture is left to whatever you think is appropriate to raise interest or to challenge, shock or bother the students. Anything, essentially, they have words and enough motivation to describe.
The description can go on for five-six minutes... Once you feel the students have exhausted the things to say, it is possible to stop them and turn to the next slide. Then (and only then) you give instructions to the other students to open their eyes, or turn around facing the screen, to look at this:

As you can see this is a set of pictures (including the one that has been described) which are quite similar to each other (how similar is your choice - more similar means more difficult).
The students who were not allowed to see the initial picture are at this point prompted to identify the picture that has just been described within the set.
Most of them will not find this very challenging, at least at first. The interesting thing about it is that, should they fail, this is most certainly because of language misuse. Definitely a good opportunity for the teacher to clarify uncertainties and correct mistakes, either on the spot (if crucial to the continuation of the activity) or during a delayed error correction.
As to the source of such similar images, it's all done quite easily in Google. Here's how:

On the Google images result page, drag your picture of choice up into the search form at the top of the page, and drop it there (this is called Google Image reverse search; it is a life saver and it is amazing how many people still ignore its existence);
Click on the "visually similar images" link that will show up.

The results might look something like this:

With a bit of scroll up and down you are bound to find images very similar to each other -- and ideally suited for this teaching activity.
The practice goes on with more sets of pictures (giving a chance to everyone to be a describer or a listener) of increasing difficulty.
The last slide might require the students to identify one picture out of a set like this (also quite easily created from Google images, with a very quick search for "Piazza San Marco"):

Here the "describers" need to be very detailed in their description; they need more vocabulary, and to have more imagination in the way they describe things. It is also much more challenging for the listeners, who have to visualize and remember a lot more.
This is about it, for this activity. As a follow up/cool down, you might want to ask the students to write down all the vocabulary they can recall from the various descriptions, and ask each other to add more to the list, and/or check the spelling.
I hope you will find this useful. If you are an "ActivInspire" user, you can download from here the demo of this lesson, which includes the slides shown above:
guess-the-picture.flipchart
As a bonus, here's a couple of variants for this activity:

You show the full set of pictures directly to the describers, leaving to them the choice of which picture they want to describe. This is better (more freedom is always better), unless one or two of your pictures are really easy to identify.
The listener will not sit there with their eyes closed. Instead, they will draw whatever is being described. You can prepare folded-up pieces of paper printed on the hidden side with the picture that is being described. At the end of the description the students can unfold the paper and have fun directly comparing the original image to the illustration of it they've just finished describing and drawing, pointing out differences and similarities.
I tried this several times using among other pictures "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" by Seurat. This was the fold-up page I would print:

The students would draw in the blank space (sadly I haven't digitized any of the samples from my lessons, all quite funny and some really artistic in their own way) and unfold it afterwards, revealing the actual painting by Seurat.
In my experience a task like this never fails to entertain students, while bringing them to use a lot of pertinent language. In fact it stands on its own as a "describe-draw-chat" activity, without the further challenge of identifying the picture in a set.

* Needless to say, I haven't "invented" this activity! In fact I first heard about something like this during a Professional Development Day session at IH, from someone who had heard it in a course where a tutor had heard it from... well whoever thought of this before them is lost in the teaching sands of time, way back when Google didn't exist yet.