Show Notes
How do you start a new school year? What exactly do you do in the first week or so of classes? How do you set up your class and do the boring admin tasks but keep it motivating? How do you build motivation among new students? These are some of the most commonly asked questions from patrons and listeners of the Motivated Classroom podcast so in this episode I attempt to answer some of them. I take you through, step by step, what exactly happens in my language acquisition classes during those critical first few days of lessons both with new and returning students... talking about seating plans, admin tasks, first CI activities, homework and more. Please let me know what you think! Keep in touch and share widely! Full programme notes are available on www.liamprinter.com/podcast. Follow The Motivated Classroom on Instagram @themotivatedclassroom, Twitter @motclasspodcast and Facebook @themotivatedclassroom. I'd love to know what you think, please get in touch! Join the conversation with the hashtag #MotivatedClassroom. Enjoying the podcast? Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Facebook. Become a Patron of The Motivated Classroom podcast on patreon.com.
More from The Motivated Classroom
After five years, 150 episodes and conversations with over 50 experts, the book is finally here. The Motivated Language Classroom: Practical Insights for the Languages Teacher brings together everything we have learned on the podcast. It covers what motivates our students, how languages are acquired, and what it looks like when we put all of it into practice in our classrooms. Over the next six episodes, I take you inside the book, one part at a time. It’s a kind of abridged audiobook, with excerpts, snippets and my commentary along the way. This week we start at the beginning. I read from the introduction and share the forewords written by two people whose work has shaped my teaching more than anyone else’s: Dr. Bill VanPatten and Dr. Richard Ryan. Listen now to find out why this book exists and who it is for! Full programme notes are available on www.liamprinter.com/podcast.
Students are doing some independent writing, or a short turn and talk and you are circulating, listening in, observing and making mental notes that you will feedback to the whole class... but, we inevitably end up forgetting a lot of what we have observed. We provide 'whole class feedback' but it may only be based on 1-2 students and what you can hold in your mind from what you observed as you walked around. Sound familiar? This is where active observation comes in. This episode builds on what we discussed last week about reducing the transience effect, except this time we focus on us as teachers and ensuring we have reliable data for our feedback to the class. Listen to this episode to find out more now! Full programme notes are available on www.liamprinter.com/podcast.
Research into the transience effect suggests that learners can struggle when spoken information disappears before they have had time to process and connect it. A student shares an interesting idea, uses a brilliant phrase or makes an important connection - but seconds later the conversation or story has moved on and that contribution has been forgotten. In this episode, we explore how we can use the teacher's whiteboard as the classroom’s shared memory: capturing key words beside drawings during Story-Listening, spotlighting effective learner language and preserving students’ ideas so that others can see, revisit and build upon them. We also examine how making learner contributions visible can support autonomy, competence and relatedness by showing students that their voices genuinely influence the lesson. And.. how does this all relate to the fact that students need an abundance of compelling, comprehensible input in order to acquire language naturally and implicitly? Listen to this episode to find out now! Full programme notes are available on www.liamprinter.com/podcast.
Q&A episode featuring questions sent in directly by listeners: In this on we explore the use of AI and AI made resources in the language classroom, when and how do we start teaching spelling to children, and finally, how can we combat the inevitable forgetting that happens when we acquire language in classrooms. Leave a comment below and let me know what you think: Let me know what you think! I'd love to hear from you. Full programme notes are available on www.liamprinter.com/podcast.
In this special, extended episode, I am joined by Janet Schneider and Michelle Scott to talk about how they transformed dwindling numbers in their language courses to now, where they have waiting lists and not enough classrooms due to all the student demand for languages. A truly inspirational episode to show us what can be achieved when we are brave enough to change something that often demotivates and destroys competence: the test. Janet and Michelle take us through a step-by-step process about how their large school in Australia changed assessment practices, particularly around speaking, and how this led to a huge increase in student interest, success and motivation for language learning. When the exam changes, everything changes. You don't want to miss this one! Let me know what you think! I'd love to hear from you. Full programme notes are available on www.liamprinter.com/podcast.