“The teachers Kaleidoscope” - Manual for Teacher Training Courses

This is an ideas book for teachers to help them quickly make lesson plans at whatever level that they are teaching. You open it anywhere and it works; it provokes creativity

The pages are coloured according to  33 categories

 
1. Using stories.  12. Visual aids.  23. Quizzes. 
2. Listening – aural and written aspects. 13. Work cards.  24. Gap fill variants. 
3. Reading - aural and written aspects. 14. Role plays.  25. Drills. 
4. Interviews. Questioning.  15. Translation, interpreting.  26. Testing procedures. 
5. Playlets and dialogues.  16. Vocabulary.  27. Lessons with movement. 
6. Songs. Home-made poems.  17. Aural work.  28. Revision methods.
7. Grammar ideas. 18. Pronunciation and spelling.  29. Board games. 
8. Tapes, dramatisations etc. 19. Written: diaries, scrapbooks.  30. Card games.
9. Video uses.  20. Dictation variants.  31. Singing games.
10. Short talks.  21. English spoken by the teacher.  32. Use of literature.
11. Communicative activities.  22. Memory methods.  33. Essay writing improvement.

 

All the book’s pages are cut into 5 strips so that 5 mini pages face 5 others. In an ordinary book only 2 pages can ever face each other. With this system of brief idea presentation I have the possibility of millions of possible page combinations, and these chance combinations of ideas on the different mini pages leads to the generation of still further ideas. In fact in the usual teacher books on such categories as “speaking” “translation” “dictation’ “use of the video” etc one sees the same ideas occurring again and again slightly modified etc. With our system of chance combinations we present the teacher quickly with a lot of useful ideas but then it is for the teacher to arrange the ideas in a lesson sequence and to combine them with the material of their text book or with whatever other material and so make an interesting lesson plan.

The teaching course will use a combination of pagelets that result from one participant opening the book at random. It is surprising how the mere opening of the book at random can be turned to the specific content of a lesson or the style of a teacher: being “creative” is easy when there’s a wealth of ideas. My analogy is with the stories that Shakespeare used: had he had to invent the plots as well as make the plays, he might not have had the wings!  The course aims to give teachers the means to be “creative”. Because I believed in the idea I printed 1000 copies at my own expense, so teachers who buy a copy can take home more than meagre scribbled notes. Owning the book means that teachers take the training course home; they have time to enter into the creative spirit of it. The manual remains with them as a lesson-plan  generator!!

We decide on the composition of the class: class size, difficult pupils, age etc and then pairs of teachers  prepare a lesson plan. After 20 minutes we then compare our plans and offer each other improvements and criticism.  “Theoretical” differences  will naturally arise but we will  keep our feet on the ground since these issues will always be connected to a specific and concrete context: Having the manual and all its ideas immediately available frees the teacher to just concentrate on lesson planning activities and discussions of the practicalities of theory!

  • To break the ice I will first give a quick demonstration of such a preparation from the ideas that are found on a randomly opened set of pages
  • Suggested time: 3 hours plus refreshments and free discussion

  • I will also give a brief demonstration of how to organise and present material from newspapers so as to interest  adolescents, using my scheme for a future CD ROM
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