SCHOOL

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Station

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Y ou can also draw vehicles very easily and even indicate movement:

Picture compositions on the blackboard

Picture composition can be made a lot more interesting by drawing the pictures on the blackboard rather than having them on specially prepared flashcards. More suspense can be created among students as the pictures go up on the blackboard as they are watching. Look at the following lesson notes:

Time: 1 hour No. of pupils in class: 16

Aids: blackboard, flashcards

Aim: First presentation and practice of the infinitive of purpose. Students will practise saying sentences such as: ‘He went to the bank to take out some money’.

Stage one

1. Blackboard picture of John (very well off man)

T: Questions – Is he rich? Etc.

2. Blackboard picture of John’s car (very big and expensive)

3. Blackboard picture of Fred (very poor)

T: Questions – Is Fred rich? Has he got a car? Does he want a car? Etc.

Stage two

T sets situation: Fred was very jealous of John, so one night he went to John’s house and he took a bottle. (Blackboard picture)

He took a bottle to break the window. (Blackboard picture)

He broke the window to get into John’s house. (Blackboard picture)

He got into the house to steal some money. (Blackboard picture)

He stole the money to buy a car like John’s.

Stage three

Composing sentences from substitution table on the blackboard

Stage four

Cardboard cut-out of John without his clothes on.

T: Question – Is money the only thing Fred took?

C ardboard cut-out of row of shops and John’s head on a stick:

BANK

SHOES

TROUSERS SHIRTS

JACKETS

POLICE

John’s head first appears through the window of the bank.

He went to the bank to get some money. (Cardboard cut-out of money put into John’s hand)

John’s head now moves to other windows in the line and the procedure is repeated.

Stage five

Balloon substitution table with four different balloons written on the blackboard.

Homework: Writing activity.

18.3. Dealing with mixed ability classes

18.3.1. Flexible grouping arrangements

All teachers will surely admit that very weak classes and very large classes pose serious problems and make language learning and teaching arduous and frustrating. Thinking of the mixed-ability classes the situation is not this obvious. On the one hand, you feel that the mixed-ability class is the norm and, therefore, a ‘normal’ methodology can be applied to teaching. On the other hand, this kind of class requires certain special techniques and there is a list of problems requiring our expertise. We must then define what we mean by mixed ability here, and to do so we shall return to Gefen’s classification of learners. For our present purposes, a mixed-ability class is one that contains within it students from at least three of his categories of very able, able, less able and unable. Although the very able will undoubtedly make excellent progress come what may, and the unable group, with equal certainty, make little or no headway, the fate of the larger middle groups will depend a great deal on the teacher’s ability as an organiser.

Whatever our emotional reaction towards Gefen’s four categories, we shall retain the classification, but with a degree of caution. With this very wide ability-range the traditional class lesson is a non-starter; all the basic ingredients for group work are present in the situation. Indeed, the groups themselves would appear to have been already formed. It would be very tempting to set up four groups to coincide with the four levels. The very able students would form the elite ‘express’ group and would forge ahead. The unable group would do some useful copying and colouring. And the middle groups could get on with some solid work and have a great deal of teacher attention. Tempting it would be, but the question is if it is not just a little too tidy.

In reality, there is not such smooth running in a class of, say, 26 students of very mixed ability. They are all aged from 13 to 14 and there is a certain amount of information about them.

A	Girl	Excellent all round, not very popular	N	Girl	Rather weak and very shy
B	Girl	Very able, great extrovert and well liked	O	Girl	Less able and shows little interest
C	Boy	Very able, shy and stammers a little	P	Girl	Less able, her constant companion is ‘O’
D	Boy	Very able	Q	Girl	Less able, absent a great deal
E	Girl	Very able but rather quiet	R	Boy	Less able, a bully and a very disruptive influence
F	Boy	Able, very popular and a fine athlete	S	Boy	Less able, claims that English is of no use to him
G	Girl	Able but with rather poor spelling	T	Boy	Very weak but appears to be interested, very keen on fishing
H	Girl	Able	U	Boy	Very weak, not interested
I	Boy	Good when motivated, otherwise tends to be lazy	V	Girl	Very weak but interested, had a long absence from school following a serious accident
J	Boy	Quite good but very disruptive at times	W	Boy	Unable, very much under the influence of ‘R’
K	Girl	Fair	X	Girl	Unable, should be in a special school
L	Boy	Fair, badly behaved and a bad influence on ‘J’	Y	Boy	Unable, causes many problems because of bad behaviour
M	Boy	Fair, keen but makes many mistakes, a bad listener	Z	Boy	Unable, very low intellect, a reading age of about 7 in his L1

When we examine the advantages and disadvantages of one kind of grouping over another we are really concerned with streaming as opposed to non-streaming. Where there is streaming within the class, groups can work with material that is appropriate to their level and can do so by means of useful decision. Where there is no streaming, where, for instance ‘B’ is sitting next to ‘C’, the former can certainly be of enormous assistance to the latter, but what kind of dialogue is ‘B’ going to have at her own level? We must not isolate a good student from a stimulating conversation of her peers. It may be useful to think of mixed-ability grouping in terms of pairs rather than individuals. Consider the following group: B E

O I

T J

Such a group has certain advantages. ‘B’ is still in a position to help motivate ‘O’ and can talk across the table to ‘T’. She can also work at her own level with ‘E’ and possibly be a good influence on ‘J’. Of course, it is unlikely that the other three groups will work out quite as nicely as this one.

Thus, we have seen that the teacher’s first task is to organise groups that are either representative of different ability levels, or mixed so that each is a small cross-section of the class as a whole. Whichever approach is adopted, individual students will require material and presentation that is at their level. It was suggested in the section on weak classes that the less able learners have rather more trouble with the production of language than with its reception. If this is true, then the initial presentation of new material, or the general introduction to the lesson, can be done with the whole class. If, for instance, a picture to be used, the whole class can join together in its first reaction to the picture. It is fairy easy to grade questions at this stage – ‘What is the little boy doing?’ contrasting with ‘Why do you think the shop assistant looks worried?’. Later activities related to the same picture will need to be graded in a much less ‘off the cuff’ style, and it is at this stage that group work becomes something of a problem for the busy teacher. Teacher-produced material is very demanding on time and energy and it will not be possible to cater in this way for each lesson. It is necessary to have a wide choice of books and visuals, especially graded readers, and it is very necessary for the teacher in this situation to be given adequate time for preparation and good facilities for duplicating.

We shall devote the remainder of this section to an overview of some graded material and techniques for using it. We shall also implement our ‘escape clause’ and consider just three ability levels, freely admitting that those learners designated ‘unable’ cannot possibly be given normal foreign-language activities, if any at all. You may, of course, disagree and such disagreement may very understandably stem from your prior rejection of the label itself.