Celebrations!

Teenagers are fickle things, and the simple difference between class participation and a wall of glaring silence can be as simple as a chocolate.

Don’t underestimate the power of rewards. This is probably the single most important thing I learnt this week as I developed my own teaching strategies. For a couple of weeks, I have been trying to assess the different levels of English in my classes, and tried to encourage a lot of oral work. However, more often than not, this would result in blank expressions, and me talking for a lot of the hour.

In an effort to break this mould, I planned a lesson on films, which would both teach the most important phrases and vocabulary required to discuss movies with friends, and also have a guessing game that would require the children to talk.

Chocolate as a teaching tool.

Starting the lesson was, again, daunting at 8am. Having explained that we would be talking about films, I had expected a little flurry of excitement, but the children stared back quite vacantly. As I launched into my first riddle, without elaborating that this was a game, the children seemed a little lost, until about a minute later someone half mumbled, half yawned “Harry Potter”.

“Pardon?”

“Harry Potter”

“Perfect. Do you want a chocolate?”

On cue, the whole class seemingly sprung to life as I removed a packet of Celebrations from my bag and threw a sweet across the room. Suddenly, the whole class is actively participating, asking questions about the genre of film, who stars, who directs and so on.

We spent half an hour after the warm up reviewing different key vocabulary to talk about film, and to finish, the students made up their own riddles, which they had to first write down and then present for their peers to guess, meeting and surpassing the criteria given to me by the school teachers.

Surprisingly, the only encouragement these children needed to speak their English with a degree of control was a little reward at the end. It brought each one of them, even the most shy and reluctant learner, out of their shell, hoping to have an early morning sugar boost.

I am not advocating placating all moody teenagers with chocolate in every lesson, but as an effective learning tool, it allowed me to hear voices in the class for the first time, and meant I was able to wrap up by congratulating them on their English, further boosting their confidence for future lessons and trials that come their way.

Anything for a little celebration.