Learning by teaching
Foreing language teaching and history (example).
1. Sharing the new contents
If you be done with the contents of a lesson, say the Middle Ages, and you have to deal with the next one, the Renaissance, you divide the new contents in little sections and allocate them to teams of students, two or maximal three. So you have for instance 5 sections and 15 students.
2. The students tasks
This students have to introduce the new vocabulary, the new grammar and of course the new history contents. So they share the tasks within the group.
- One student writes a slide with the new words and thinks about a strategy to explain and teach this words and to make exercises
- One student writes a slide with the new grammar contents and thinks about a strategy to explain the new grammar and make exercises
- One student thinks about a strategy to present the history-contents
3. When do the students prepare their units?
In order to ease the organisation, you have to let the students prepare their units simultaneous: some colleagues asks how it is possible for the last team to prepare its section if it doesn’t know the contents (vocabulary, grammar) from the other four groups. The question is legitimate, but the experience shows that this is not a problem if the last group doesn’t know the foregoing contents, because the contents they have to present usually are more independent from the precedents as we think. They just have to inform themselves about one or two phenomena.
4. The teachers task
The teacher has to provide the students with interesting contents and materials. In my French classes I proposed to deal with european history, literature and politics. I had to provide articles from newspapers, books and a lot of additive materials. Of course the students used internet. Here you can see sites by students (clozes).
5. Frequent asked questions
- How does the students know how they have to present the contents? Do you give instructions to the students by planing their lessons?
- Are you giving marks during the presentations?
- How are you giving marks?
- We all are doing the same things like you in our lessons. What’s new about the method “Learning by teaching”?
- Are all the students able to satisfayingly present the contents?
- What about shy students?
- What about faults? If a student presents contents (or pronounciation) wrong, the other students will memorize the false structures?
6. Text analysis
Brackley and the Bed (by Samuel Selvon)
- Team 1 (2 students): Humor
- Team 2 (2 students): Caribbean language
- Team 3 (2 students): Psychological evolution
Neighbours (by Tim Winton)
- Team 4 (2 students): Psychological evolution
- Team 5 (2 students): Style
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