Nile TESOL Conference

Games inside the Classroom

  • 1) Hot Seat Game

It is an outstanding activity for revising advanced vocabulary inside the classroom. First, the teacher splits the class into four or five groups and chooses one student from each team to sit on a chair. Then, the student who sits on the “Hot Seat” faces his or her colleagues and gives his or her back to the board. After that, the teacher writes one word only on the board. The student who sits on the hot seat, listens carefully to his or her colleagues to guess the intended word required. Fortunately, the first hot seat student to say the required word, wins a point for his or her team.

  • 2) Charades Game

It is a challenging game that enhances the students’ critical thinking. One student gives an attempt to act out each syllable of a word in order, while the rest of the students guess what he or she wants to deliver exactly. The current game is an act out activity without speaking at all. The teacher chooses the student who is able to guess more than three words. Finally, the winner has the opportunity to choose any of his or her colleagues.

  • 3) Collocation Race Game

It is a competitive game that helps most of the students inside the classroom to share in one activity. The teacher divides the students into two teams and the board into two halves as well. After that, the teacher chooses a representative from each and every group. Then, the teacher writes one half of a collocation to each area on the board. Each team helps his or her representative to compose as much collocations as they know. At the end, the teacher, checks the mistakes and announces the winning group.

  • 4) Fire Ball Game

It is an interesting game to revise collocations inside the classroom. First, the teacher chooses two of the students to stand in the center of the class. Then, the teacher distributes some scrambled paper to create non-harmful balls. Each student acts out one of the intended verbs. After that, the teacher shouts out a noun and the students are required to throw the ball on the correct verb, person. For example, Maria is (go) and Sam is (make) then the teacher shouts (homework) students are expected to throw the ball on Maria.

Done by : Ayten Adel – Dalia Ashraf -Radwa Emad- Yara Mohamed

Effective mobile learning : What teachers and students should do

By : Waleed Mandour Room : p020 at 11 a.m
It is so essential for teachers to cope with the 21st century technology and one important method of this new technology is
“ Mobile Learning” .It’s a 24/7 personalized learning process. However, achieving an effective delivery through adopting such method requires both the educator and the learner to know how the process should be carried out. This session aims at the following:

  • A brief overview about the ethics and standards of mobile learning.
  • Introducing mobile learning management systems.
  • Providing a list of the most useful apps to use.

One of the most useful apps is “Padlet” it’s used to enhance Students’ reading and writing skills.
“Padlet” is an online application that can be used to engage and enhance the learners’ skills , for example it’s used to teach students how to write effective thesis statement in academic essays. The teacher also can keep a log of students’ responses on tasks so that the instructor can provide feedback accordingly.

Creating an interactive classroom for young Language learners

The Agenda included:

What makes a successful interactive classroom?

How can you use student- centered learning strategies to develop (Oral language skills -Literacy skills)?

    • • Throughout discussing the importance of interaction and the importance of playing during the lecture to deliver the information.
    • • These skills help students to overcome obstacles in academic subjects.
    • • The importance of inquiry by using “Bloom’s Taxonomy” or “Show and Don’t tell” to bring more play and interaction into the classroom in a purposeful way.
    • • Setting interactive strategies for developing oral language skills and literacy skills

What kind of support for students and for teachers?

  • • Students need language supports, a safe environment for risk taking, teach problem solving strategies and behavior management.
  • • Teachers need “start small” with pairs, then small groups, then the whole class or start with one activity then multiple.

Final thoughts:
Interest – Motivation – Learning

  • Use students’ natural curiosity about their world.
  • What is important to them?
  • What do they wonder about?

Living Up Listening
Nick Bilbrough
Time: 11:00 (45 minutes)
Location: Mary Cross Hall (American University in Cairo)

Nick Bilbrough, the teacher of drama and story-telling in second language learning, showed the importance of listening which cannot be overestimated , but it can be hard to keep learners motivated with comprehension based approach. He explored a range of motivating activities which use live listening material as the source of input instead. He emphasized the fact of we need listening in our classes where we can affect the students emotionally, not just listen and answer the questions. Students need to feel engaged to feel the real motivation in English. One of his most famous activities that he mostly used in his session was reciting stories for adults and children to boost the confidence massively. He showed that improving the listening skill needs the person to hear the language being used globally as a story. In addition to that, we need to notice and zoom in the language; by creating physical stories and acting it out, as he showed in his session. This means that he agrees with the fact of playing recorded materials, yet using our voices is another effective way. During the input session, Bilbrough recited around four different stories with their controlled practice exercises and group work activities, and while reciting one of them he used Arabic Language. He emphasized the fact of the interactivity; which is using the mother tongue when needed, during listening classes to simplify complex vocabulary items. The American psychologist Erik Sigma said that listening to oral information without too much visual stimulus is incredibly important for young people in the cognitive development; because what they are doing in their minds they are creating images and creating images in a person’s mind is central to learning and central to development. Like children who watch television all day long without hearing people talking are impoverished in a way. Near the end of the session, Bilbrough, mentioned that different intonations addressing the listeners deliver different messages; as the robotic with zero emotion and expressions, the more natural real like person speaking and the grabbing attention with sincere one. Finally, he mentioned some advantages of teacher talk as listening material; as lighting on materials and preparation where we do not need many materials we just need our voices to act it out. Other advantages mentioned were the adaptability, physicalisation, visual stimulus and interactivity.

Presented by: Dr. Youssra ElDeeb
Title: Going Interactive: What, Why and How
The workshop presents an explanation of “Interactive Teaching/Learning”, its different types, and essentiality in the 21st century classroom. It also provides an opportunity for educators to take part in a variety of interactive practices and experience their benefits for both teacher and learner. For further explanation, pair and group work are suitable for learners of all age groups. Classroom size doesn’t matter in setting pair and group work activities. Pair and group work contribute to language development and fluency more than reading aloud as there might be shy students who are afraid or get embarrassed to participate in front of the whole class. In addition, taking turns to answer questions individually doesn’t guarantee everyone’s involvement more than pair and group work. Also, over-domination from some learners could be considered as a disadvantage of pair and group work, but some of the students could help the teachers to explain and share their knowledge with the other students.

Attended by: Ahmed Abdel-Sabour
Romaisaa Hussein
Mai Adel

-Language assessments:
-A lecture by “pooja Sancheti”- Room CP39
The lecturer discussed the importance, principles, benchmarking and limitations of language assessments. Firstly, she highlighted that language assessment is the reflection on teachers ” to test what teachers teach”. The second point she discussed was the main language assessments principles (practicality-reliability-validity -effectivity), and how they should be. Practices in language assessments, teachers should combine between different types of assessments while students should provide a feedback. Benchmarking is also one of the main points that must be considered in assessments, comparing the tests and following an international framework are the main steps of benchmarking. The last point she discussed was the limitations, what makes you skip any of the previous mentioned points and advices. Firstly, when it isn’t fitting your course specifications. Secondly, when it eliminates creativity and at last when there is no scope for constructive feedback. At the end of the session she said that teachers should always aske themselves 5 questions (when-why-what-how-who) before making any assessments.