Lesson sample

Let’s look at a sample high-beginner class.

The teacher starts the class by asking the designated team (selected in the previous class) to mention the topics that they covered. In this case, it was colors and clothing.

[classroom routine=Behavioral Momentum; team=Community Collaboration].

The teacher shows 2-3 pictures of people and describes each: This is Salim. His shirt is green. This is Marta. Her dress is black. This is Toshio. He has blue trousers. The students sit in groups of four. They have 5 pictures and descriptions of each picture, cut into words or phrases. The teams have 10 minutes to create a correct sentence for each picture.

Teams get points [points] for:

• having different people on each team make sentences [community collaboration, virality]

• when they finish (earlier gets more points) [countdown], and

• how many sentences they complete correctly [achievement].

An option is to deduct points for incorrect sentences. [loss aversion, challenge] This is only useful if you find that some teams are valuing speed over accuracy. It's generally best not to deduct points.

As a follow-up, students are asked to go into the community and either take pictures of people or of signs with people on them, or find pictures in a magazine. They have to find images that they can describe. They then need to create descriptions.

[challenge, ownership, and discovery]

The next class will review by sharing pictures with other teams and writing sentences.

The teacher posts a wall chart showing levels of skill with descriptions: recognition (matching words and pictures), reconstruction from samples (task with words and phrases), creation of new sentences (their own pictures and sentences). This shows the progress that each group has made [progression].

Kodiak Atwood has created some very interesting lesson plans to gamify standardized test preparation. His key target are intermediate learners in Japan, but the activities - and gamification techniques - could be used by just about anyone. He's using the framework from Kelly (2012) listed on the first page of the PDF below - Examples for Teachers from Kodiak Atwood. His suggestions are included with his permission.