The aim of our Thursday afternoon lesson is simply to build vocabulary related to a topic, story, science theme etc.
Each Thursday we do something different to stimulate the language. One week we did a role play, another week we watched a short video on Youtube, another week we looked at photos from a science lesson the students had participated in, another week we had a variety of books displayed for the children to look at.
Once we have completed the first part of the lesson, the students then have to think of one word that stood out (from either the role play, video, pictures, previous lesson, books etc). The teacher writes the one word onto a strip of paper and the students stand up and hold up their words. As each word is held up they say the word out aloud to the rest of the class. Each student must choose a word that hasn't already been said.
The end result of this part of the lesson is a group of words related to the stimulus.
These words are then used in different ways.
They can be used simply to discuss the word as a group, as a basis for a writing task, to create a Wordle, or to create phrases that go with the stimulus. These can then lead to writing a science report, a narrative, a recount etc.
An example of how well this works came from only just last week.
During the previous week's lesson the class were split into two.
I took half the class outside and we performed a Readers Theatre play of a bible story.
The rest of the class stayed in the room and watched the same bible story on the SMART board.
When we had finished the teacher took her group outside to do the Readers Theatre and I took my group inside to watch the video. This way the students were exposed to the story twice.
The students all came back together as a class and the teacher and I went around the room asking students for one word that stood out. Each student had their word written onto a strip of paper, which they then stood up and read aloud to the class. Once the word had been used it couldn't be used again.
That is all I saw....
The following Thursday (last Thursday) I came back into the room and the teacher demonstrated with the students what had happened next in the lesson sequence. Using the single words from the initial lesson the students then came up with a phrase from the story. As each person thought of a phrase it was written onto another strip of paper. Each child held up their paper and read it aloud.
Then the phrases were sequenced in order and read aloud again.
The following day the students then wrote a recount of the bible story.
I was amazed at the amount of detail and understanding the students displayed in their writing. Even those students who would usually struggle to think of something had written pages. All of the students had at least two pages of detailed writing. A variety of ability of students (including my EAL/D student) read aloud their finished recounts and they were so proud as they read. You could see they felt a great sense of achivement. I was very impressed.
It just goes to show that if you spend the time building the language prior to writing that it will pay off and the level of effort the students put in will improve. I hope to learn more from this inspirational teacher and share it with you all!