Resources and links

Our research is designed to be useful. On this page you will find resources and links to ideas for you to use:

Activity 1 – Forest Eyes

Carol Fuller’s research found that time  outside together need not be spent doing expensive or complicated activities. She found that focused activities build confidence, perseverance as well as being a nice way to spend time together. They can also have big benefits in the classroom

A nice and inexpensive activity to do outside, using sticks and wool to create a colourful ‘web’ is below:

Location: Anywhere – a wooded area, with seating may be suitable for larger groups

Organisation:

2 x small straight-ish sticks and coloured wool

Forage for two similar sticks (approx. 10cms). Check that they are not rotten.

Take a length of wool (one arm or two arms length) and tie to another piece of different coloured wool. Take one end of the wool and lash the two sticks together to form a cross. Three or four lashes in both diagonals should fix it together.

Using the 4 directions of a compass (for a right-handed person). Hold the ‘south’ stick with left-hand, using the right hand loop the wool 360 degrees over the ‘east’ stick. Then turn the sticks clockwise and shift hands to new position i.e left hand to ‘south’ and loop around ‘east’. Repeat. Attach new length of wool when necessary.

After a while a ‘web’ will form around the sticks. Tie off when finished

Activity  2– Lotticks and Izzids

Suzanne Graham’s research is interested in why students learning a foreign language often find listening a difficult skill to master. Her research suggests that there are things teachers can do to help them get better with coping with unknown words in whatever they are listening to.

See below for an activity to raise learners’ awareness of how they listen in English and some strategies they could use when listening in the foreign language

Location:  Classroom

Organisation:

The Lotticks and Izzids text; display the underlined words on the board or on a worksheet

Read the text out to learners and ask them to work out:

  1. What the passage is about in general (did the speaker have a positive or negative experience? How do they know?);
  2. What the ‘strange words’ mean.
  3. To make some notes about how they worked out the meaning of the strange words, to discuss in class.

‘I ‘ve just come back from  a holiday that cost me a fortune.  I went to Florida and had booked a supposedly furbustuous hotel there.  It’s the first time I’ve had to deal with lotticks and izzids when on holiday!

We’d paid a lot of money to the travel company .Their brochure promised a furbustuous hotel, free happaps from the airport, free use of the hotel’s gabonmang and  lovely beaches.  But when we landed, there was no one to meet us so we had to pay for a taxi to the hotel, the hotel room was infested with lotticks and izzids, and the gabonmang was completely flooded, from the ninth hole onwards.

We wrote to the tour company when we got back, and finally got some compensation from them, but not much.  They said they’d been organizing holidays to Florida for 20 years and it was the first time they’d received any uptips. I’m not sure I believe them!’

Follow up with discussion of the strategies learners used and which ones they could apply when listening to a foreign language.  See https://pdcinmfl.com/listening/   for the full activity, information on listening strategies and downloadable listening resources.