When English Book in Georgia’s (EBG) Chief Executive Officer, Maia Gurgenidze, was asked about EBG’s extensive work with teachers, schools and other educational institutions in Georgia, here is what she said. “We at EBG believe that education always has a positive impact on people’s lives and we are committed to making a difference ourselves by promoting English language teaching in our country. Our main goal is to create the best educational environment for students throughout Georgia.

We’re passionate about our work, because it helps people understand, achieve and discover more. Inspired by our proud history, we look for 100% commitment to the quality and integrity of what we do. It’s the passion we have for our work that gives us purpose. It helps us to think independently and stand up for what we believe.

The teacher training and conferences we offer are central to the successful development of Georgian English language teachers. New methodology is developed every day world-wide and it is very important to spread these innovations to all of our teachers.

We look forward to revolutionizing English teaching in Georgia with you…”

So with that in mind, we would like to introduce you to a new teaching strategy developed in the United States by teachers at Mesquite Elementary School in Arizona state.

The system is called Reteach and Enrich (R&E), and it happens every day, school-wide, from 12:30 p.m. to 1 p.m. During this period, teachers give students who are struggling with a concept extra time and attention, and students who have mastered the basics receive instruction that takes their learning to the next level. The system is based on a shared curriculum map, with objectives defined for every week of the school year. At the end of each week, teachers assess students on those objectives. Depending on the results, they assign students to either a reteach or an enrich session the following week. There is no stigma attached to going to reteach; almost every student has been assigned to it at some point. Students see it simply as an opportunity to learn something better than they did the first time.

Mesquite Elementary school uses these techniques for Mathematics but this technique can easily be altered for any school subject.

Throwing or bouncing balls to drill language

The simplest use of a ball is for students to throw and catch it while drilling something like months of the year or pairs of infinitive and irregular past forms of verbs. This can be done with all three of the ways mentioned in the introduction above – one student on their own, two or more students cooperating, or a more competitive version with more challenging throws or things said to catch the other people out. You could also have one or two people throwing and catching while everyone else chants, perhaps as teams. Other sequences which students can drill include Days of the week, Numbers, Times and Dates, Adjectives and adverbs, I me my mine, you you your yours, etc.

Going beyond drilling with throwing and bouncing balls

Another obvious activity that could be considered one step above drilling is brainstorming as a ball goes back and forth, e.g. “banana”, “apple”, “grape” etc if the topic is fruit. The same thing can be done for grammar by brainstorming things like past participles (“been”, “seen”, “watched” etc) and uncountable nouns. You can also do the same thing for pronunciation, brainstorming words with “iz” ending (“passes”, “churches” etc), words with long vowel sounds (“arch” etc), single syllable words (“fan”, “bar” etc), words stressed on the first syllable (“power”, “waterfall”, etc), and so on.

Target practice games for practicing English

Target practice in the classroom can be played with students aiming balls at the places that the teacher or a student says or writes up on the whiteboard. If you don’t have enough balls for one per student or don’t want lots of things flying around the classroom at the same time, students can use paper (screwed up into balls or made into paper aeroplanes) or one person from each team can throw, with their teammates helping them work out where to do so. To add extra language, you can let students try again if they can describe where their ball actually ended up (“It’s in front of the box” “That’s right. Try to throw it behind the box again then.”). You can also play the opposite game of one person throwing and the other students competing to be first to correctly shout out where the ball has ended up.

Ball actions

As well as listening for where the ball has gone, students can listen for what someone is doing with the ball, e.g. “You are bouncing it on the door” and “You are kicking it”. Students can also race to do the action that is shouted out or written up (“Balance the ball on your shoulder”, “Hold the ball between your knees”, etc), challenge each other to do tricky things (“Can you head it four times?” etc), or think of and do actions that no one else has (“We are holding it with our little fingers”). One person or group can also do a whole sequence of actions that the other people must try to remember, as practice of Past Simple and/ or sequencing language (“after that” etc).

TEFL dodge ball

This is kind of the opposite of the throw and catch games at the start of this article. People try to avoid the thrown ball, and if it hits them they have to answer the question, come up with the next word, guess the next missing letter, etc. If they are wrong, they lose a point or are out of the game. If they are right, they can throw the ball next, perhaps also setting the next challenge. If you and the students can stand the chaos, this works best with everyone running around freely, rather than gathered at opposite walls as in the normal rules of dodge ball.

Article written by Alex Case for UsingEnglish.com
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