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The organisation and aim of intensive courses in schools. |
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The usual school day has the defect of having too many different subjects taught. One imagines that all the changing from one to the other weakens the force of the teaching. One thing just drives out another. The great advantage of the Course we did at a Brescia Scoula media was that with 5 hours each morning, the students were emersed in the English. This obviously brings us to a not minor problem: if students are to have 5 hours of one subject, interrupted by just one half hour break, the lessons must be very well organised with plenty of in-buillt variety. At Brescia there were 80 children and I brought 4 other teachers with me. As the period was at the beginning of September I was able to bring the whole teaching staff of our Middlesmoor summer courses. The children were already divided by class, though during the 5 days we often wished we could have radically rearranged the groups according to natural talent. With the number of teachers at our disposal, we were able to make groups of 15. Another problem with 5 hours - and full hours too! was that young bodies need a "sfogo"! We therefore assigned certain rooms to teachers and let the children rush from one classroom to another. We also arranged so that each class saw each of the 5 teachers at least once. This made our teaching load lighter and only slight chnages were necessary between groups. We also experimented with quick change lessons of less than 40 minutes. In the end we decided tonot have too much running about but to keep change and variety within the 40 minutes period. The last 30 minutes wer given to a Beatles song, so that at the end of the 5 days all 5 "classes" had learnt the 5 songs. We spent the evenings preparing for the next days lessons. Although we had worked out the program in Middlesmoor according to the indications given us by the Headmistress, we found after day 1 that we had to completely rethink the lessons for days 2-5. This entailed considerable extra work as it meant almost completely refashioning th lessons. The main reason for this was that we had taken the written descriptions of the children's accademic level too literally. One of the things I should have taken into account (with all the experience that I have had of Italian children) is that the children's knowledge is so fragile and unstable. I have always noticed at Middlesmoor that the children's knowledge is very thin; they have no confident or clear knowledge. Such a state of things is then very demotivating for them. What they need is to be taught more intensively. The cuuriculum should be slowed down. Nothing new should be taught unrtil the previous material is well absorbed. That is where a 5 day course can give them what is missing at school: intensive repetitious learning. Obviously when I say repetitious I mean in the sense of the same limited material, though its presentation must be entertaining and varied. A curriculum that hurries on too fast means that teachers can never depend on any solid knowledge which at later stages the students should be expected to have fully taken in. Given this general circumstance, regardless of this or that school, an intensive course organised by us will try and tidy up the basic things. As we put a lot of emphasis on spoken work (since that is truely more difficult in big school classes) and on quickness of response, there is always advantage to be had from the lessons, whatever the relative bravura of amy individual student. The lessons are all planned using our "Kaleidoscope" . The point of the book is precisely to be able to kaleidoscope the same material so that it seems to be new. Finally, we were all impressed at Brescia by the children's enthusiam (they were "sacrificing" the last week of holidays). We also noticed that students may "know" certain material within the protected circle of what I could call "text book" learning, but this is not available to them in any independent or speaking situation where language is used to form personal expression. So much for the famous "communicative approach" which is supposed to inform most text books! see problems in teaching No, of one thing I am sure, we all need to invent a different way of doing things. At Middlesmoor I go on looking for the Eldorado of a streamline didactics that is really effective! Do write if you are interested in this, any of the other teacher pages, or the Middlesmoor courses. (As we are independent of agents we are always grateful to teachers who pass on the word to others about the summer courses) Anthony Bamber |