One of the best parts of my job as an EAL/D teacher is that I get to sit in on some very interesting English lessons. Recently I was supporting one of my year three students who is in the ‘Developing English’ phase in the classroom and we participated in the following lesson.
The students had been on an excursion to a wildlife park and instead of doing a typical recount of the event the teacher had decided to get the students to write a discussion text. To facilitate this she introduced them to an ‘Interactive Journal’.
Students were broken into groups of four and assigned a number from 1-4. Then the teacher went through each of the roles of each number.
“ I really enjoyed the excursion to the wildlife park. There were many great activities but the best activity was the ……I really liked it because ……. It was the best activity because…….”
Then the second person is given the paper and they read the first person’s opinion. They then write a statement that says whether they agreed or disagreed with the first person and then they give evidence to back up their opinion. After that they need to write their own opinion about the excursion.
“I don’t think that……..was the best activity. It was fun but I feel that the……..was a better activity because……. I also enjoyed the…… because…..”
The third person reads what the second person wrote. They then write a sentence to say whether they agreed or disagreed with the first person and they give evidence to back up their opinion. Then they write their own comment about the excursion and give evidence to prove their point.
“I don’t think that the …… was the best activity because…….(or “I also think …… was the best activity because….”). I think the …….. was a lot of fun because…….”
The final person reads what person three wrote and they just write if they agree or disagree and why.
“All of the activities at the wildlife park were great, however I disagree that ….. was the best activity because….. (or “I also really enjoyed …… because…..).
This activity could be done with a variety of topics – for example “What makes the best pet?” or “Should kids do more homework?”. I really liked this activity as it broke the paragraphs of a discussion up into easy to work with parts. The students worked together to form the discussion and they only had to think of one part themselves. However, by the end they had a completed discussion. They could see that a discussion had a variety of viewpoints and they could see how the evidence they gave supported their point of view and made it stronger. Some students were also able to see that some arguments were stronger than others.