"Project Based Learning Resources"

Thinking in terms of constructivism’s principles when practicing speaking English classes of making, accepting and declining invitations.

I am currently teaching English in a course center and one of the many lessons I had to teach was ‘how to make, accept and decline invitations in formal and informal contexts’. Recalling the organization of that class I remember that students felt very enthusiastic and left the class with a positive feedback. A few classes later, I’ve prepared some situations where students were asked to practice what they’ve learned. The results weren’t as satisfactory as I expected. I kept on thinking what went wrong that students couldn’t succeed as I was hoping them to. I’ve consulted the other English teacher, my colleague there, as human resources are best immediate consulters and she answered that sometimes students show great enthusiasm about a topic but might not work further on it as they feel they already have absorbed that new information. This was a good reason for clarifying me why students didn’t succeed as I expected but it didn’t give me any idea how to fix this,in order to have better results.

When I encountered constructivism and its principles I was very eager to implement it to the other class with the same topic of invitations. This is how I operated after reflecting upon its principles:

At the beginning of the class I provided my students with some ‘problems’ that would be situations where students were promoted to use some expressions of making invitations, accepting and declining invitations.

Situation one:  You are having your son’s baptism on Sunday’s Mases and you want to invite your colleagues at the celebration. Some of them accept your invitation(John, George, Hannah, Alan) but a few of them won’t come as they’ve planned a trip that day(Sarah and Angel).

Situation two : You will celebrate your first anniversary of marriage on Saturday evening and you want your boss join this important celebration. You ask your boss to come ,he accepts your invitation but it may happen him to come an hour later.

Situation three: You invite your best friend to your birthday party but also want her to help you with the decorations and choices of snacks and drinks. She will feel happy about it and firmly accepts your invitation.

Students are separated in three groups (group one covers their version of situation one and has the largest number of students .In the same way are supposed to proceed the other two groups. Students are asked to do some collaborative work in their papers and predesign a dialogue actualizing the situation they are assigned with. During their work I assist with any expression when being asked or when I notice they need a little push. After design their sample that would require some good five minutes, they are asked to role play it . That is an actualization of what they prepared but also serves as an evaluator of their previous knowledge. I have to say that till this stage I haven’t explained a thing except to assisting them with any language pattern or vocabulary words. Students were experimenting and did a few mistakes which I didn’t point them out but used them as opportunities to introduce a new discussion among other students. The other two groups were the ones who would suggest any melioration or add anything to their friends’ role play .Here I introduce what have been left unpresented by the students and make sure that students  make fair and reflective ‘critics’. In the same way was operated with other two groups.

Students are assessed in a formative way. Their social and interactive skills to work in group are being assessed and I didn’t prepare a test for that in the sense of the tests we are used to come across to measure learning, but I was there and could test these skills through observation when they took that five minute of predesigning the sample dialogue when they choose their roles when they listened their friends and were able to maintain the dialogue flowing. The information they add or suggestions they give to their friends’ work,  questions they addressed to their peers and me are also indicators of their process of learning which are taken in consideration in their assessment. Also to be taken into consideration when assessing is the application of the instructions or key points that I presented at the end of the class. This was asked to be demonstrated in a written task as homework.

                                        

Hope you enjoy it as I really did!

Arjola Prenga.