Teaching English

The English classroom

IDEA The 'learning environment'has been something of a buzz
phrase for a number of years. It is, however, more than
that. When students walk into your room, they should
feel that they have entered:

o a classroom, a place of and for learning;
o an English classroom specifically;
o your classroom in particular.

Establish a clutter-free and organized room. Ensure
that desks, tables and shelving are used, mainly, for one
purpose. Exercise books, textbooks, novels, paper, pens,
dictionaries and worksheets should have a specific place,
preferably labelled.

Class displays should be current and well presented.
After all, the prime reason for displaying work is to
encourage a sense of pride in your pupils. This is difficult
to establish with tatty and torn work from pupils who
have long since left the school. There is a place for
keeping some work as models, but this needs to be made
obvious. Display work in headed sections. If possible and
appropriate, a considerable proportion should be marked
rather than simply showing only pieces of work with little
relevance other than as a display piece. This seems like a
lot of extra work, but ask for help - some pupils actively
enjoy creating displays.

Certain key terms or tips can be displayed
prominently in the class. Those that you feel are most
important should be displayed on the same wall as the
board, as it is in this direction that pupils will be facing
most often. Make sure that they are in a clear, large font
and that there is some variety in the way in which they
are presented. Some may have accompanying visual
images or be in the form of a mnemonic, for example.
Try to display as many as is practical. Pupils spend a lot
of time gazing at walls - lost in thought, or simply lost.
You may wish to include key literary terms, vocabulary
alternatives for critical essays, simplified level descriptors
and common spelling errors. This really is a surprisingly
simple and effective way of helping information stick. It
also has the added effect of clearly identifying the room

English class room.

Pupils' writing is much improved if they can move away
from simple one-clause sentences and use a variety of
sentence types. Recognizing this variety also sharpens
their understanding of text. The following tasks are, in
the first instance, concerned with helping pupils to
identify different types of sentence (namely simple,
compound and complex), and then move into using this
recognition to write their own. Some tasks may not be
suitable for all levels of ability, so select the level you feel
most appropriate

From 100 Ideas for Teaching English