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Review: “Taking Control of your Workload instead of Letting it Control You” – A Webinar with Claire Hart

Published on in ELTABB/Professional Development

In this webinar we looked into the reasons why we let our workload get out of control, the stories we keep telling ourselves to impose even more work, our decision motivators, and finally, what we can do to change this.

Eltabbers are used to attending fantastic CPD workshops that provide new ideas and activities we can bring to the classroom. In the hunt for a perfect activity, lesson plan, new approaches and methodologies, always keeping in mind our LEARNERS and their needs, we tend to forget about ourselves – the teachers.

Fortunately, this webinar focused on teacher well-being. Perfect timing, Claire!

Even though we were sitting at home in front of our screens Claire managed to create a very safe and trusting atmosphere. By opening her own heart she invited us to share our own experience and emotions. “Go vulnerable or go home!” was our motto. Every part of the webinar was followed by a reflection in which one or more participants shared their thoughts or stories.

Claire started the webinar by reflecting on what her workload looked like in 2012. Most of us could relate as we do multiple jobs: university teaching, corporate training, presenting at conferences, writing, volunteering for BESIG or local organisations… Choose out of the list or/and add your own. How do we end up with this amount of work?

We might use excessive work as displacement to avoid parts of life we are dissatisfied with, or we might think that the more we work, the ‘better’ our professional selves are.

Storytime…

Next stop – storytelling. We keep telling ourselves false stories. The typical ones include:

  • “This happens because I’m a freelancer. That always happens to freelancers.”
  • “This happens because I can’t say “no” etc. 

Because our ‘chimp brain’ (see references) that is activated to protect us from danger and emotional distress always tells us, “Don’t do that! You’ll fail!”

But instead of making excuses or imagining what others might think, we could switch from storytelling mode to reality mode. During Reflection 1 we discussed that teachers often struggle with imposter syndrome and ‘analysis paralysis’. Also, we are ‘shoulding’ ourselves instead of focusing on COULD. We all agreed that we need to give ourselves permission to be NOT PERFECT.

Decision motivators

Then we sorted decision motivators into 3 categories: positive (red), negative (blue) and neutral (yellow). The latter can be positive or negative, depending on the context.

Image: Claire Hart

While positive motivators comprise enjoyment, connections and goals, negative ones include aspects like fear, avoidance and comparison. In contrast to that, the neutral category contains motivators like ambition, sense of duty, settling a debt and money.

What would nana say?

Afterwards Claire introduced us to the Wheel of Life and asked us to imagine what our 80-year-old selves would regret doing, regret not doing and what advice they would give us. I volunteered to share during the reflection. Something I believe my 80-year-old self would definitely regret is procrastinating. I often have a lot on my plate and when it gets overwhelming, I simply stop doing things. I am still on my way to solving this, but I have already taken some steps.

That was followed by a list of NOT-to-do things, such as checking your online banking obsessively, or looking at other people’s social media profiles, or staying up late binge watching, or worrying that you’re not good enough…

The importance of ‘No’

Then we discussed the fear of saying ‘NO’. Why do we keep saying yes? Is it to avoid confrontation? Is it FOMO (fear of missing out)? Are we afraid to lose our job, or not to be offered jobs any more? It is the lack of control over our workload that leads us to this fear.

But what would have happened if one had said ‘No’ to the last job offer? There’s a very high chance that there would have been no confrontation, no job would have been lost and new job opportunities would have appeared.

Asking yourself some helpful questions

Finally Claire suggested a plan to manage your workload by asking these questions:

How are you going to counteract the damaging stories you tell yourself about your work?

What are you going to base future work-related decisions on? What will you not base them on?

What ares of your life do you want to devote more energy to or be more satisified in? How can you achieve that?

How will you create more time for yourself and what will you do with this time?

We all switched off the monitors with food for thought and Wheels of Life printed out, plans already forming in our heads,  inspired to start changing.

Want to read more from Galina? She shares a funny anecdote about her CELTA training here.

References

Steve Peters. The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness.

The Wheel of Life: https://www.thecoachingtoolscompany.com/products/wheel-of-life-coaching-tool

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Go Digital Like the Teaching Pro that You Are! 5 Amazing Online Tools for English Teachers

Published on in Professional Development

English trainer Slobodan Kelecevic shares five great online tools that make a teacher’s life a lot easier. And what’s best: all of them are free! Find out how to make the most of the current options out there and compile your own digital Swiss Army knife.

1. Edmodo

Edmodo is an educational platform with many features of social networks. I discovered it two years ago and thought it was fantastic. Now, I think it’s become even better – productive and ideal for both teachers and students.

You can create Edmodo groups for groups of learners or simply provide your one-on-one student with a great experience. As soon as you log in, it feels like a generic social media platform. It’s quite easy to navigate and all customizable. You can have fun creating polls/quizzes and setting tasks with a due date for entire groups or individuals or just send private messages to some of your students.


If you decide to take some of your teaching to Edmodo, you will find an abundance of ideas, how-to videos, tutorials and plenty of all-round support from the staff. Moreover, it comes with a great global community of teachers who are already using it.

To sum up, with all the changes schools worldwide went through in 2020, Edmodo is close to what we may call “the new standard”. It can most certainly support and enrich your teaching in many ways; and it is a stepping stone to transforming a group of students into a community of learners.

2. Evernote

I typically use Evernote for offline lessons – it’s an app for taking notes, obviously. Evernote is really great because you can use it on your phone, tablet, laptop, desktop… The sharing is super easy, just one click away.

What’s more, you can integrate all kinds of files and attachments into the notes. For instance, if we talk about some vocabulary, I can effortlessly insert an image of a mind map explaining or supporting that vocabulary topic.

But the best thing about Evernote is that both I and the student have a permanent record of what was done in a particular lesson.


I can reuse and recycle the materials which makes it even more convenient. Simply consider this: who did you have a lesson with on Wednesday after Easter last year?

Who would remember that, right?

Evernote knows what was discussed when and with whom, and all this is readily available to be reused, modified and shared.

3. Doodle

Doodle is an app that makes scheduling easy for you, especially when there are more than two people involved.

For instance, let’s imagine I need to set up one-on-one sessions with five students for next week. Instead of sending everyone a list of my available time slots (with double-booking and lots of email traffic bound to occur), I select the dates and time slots on the Doodle calendar and just send the link to everyone. Then, they select whichever time slot works for them. No hassle, no headaches!



The best thing: once someone has picked a slot, it is immediately taken off the table for other people, so no double-booking is possible. Also, both them and I get notified and there is a clear record of the lesson time. That way, misunderstandings concerning timing are no longer an issue.

This way of scheduling is very clean-cut and it saves time and energy for everyone involved.

4. Trello

This is a productivity tool commonly used by teams for collaboration. Personally, I use it to organize my weekly and daily schedule as well as to keep the Mrs up to date on my lessons schedule. I use it every day and it’s amazing.

It also works as a to-do-list manager. I usually make three columns with file cards: ‘to do’, ‘doing’ and ‘done’. The satisfaction of dragging and dropping the cards into the ‘done’ column is fantastic.


We can share a Trello board and all of its cards with anyone we collaborate with. For example, we could share it with two colleagues we are working with on a common school project. Thus, all three of us would see and have control over the cards; we could edit them and change how they are organized.

By using different colors for any changes we make, we know who made which card and who will/has completed each task on the board (i.e. in the project). Once a task on a card is completed, we can either mark it in green or simply archive it and clear the whole board that way.

The application itself is very flexible. You can use it on your browser on literally any device you can imagine.

5. Blogger

This has huge language practicing potential, supporting students much beyond its original function. Blogger is actually a Google service for blogging, so if you have a Gmail account, you’re in luck. You can start using it immediately without any further registration, verifications, etc.

You can start as many blogs as you want on a single Google account, just be sure to name them differently. Also, you can customize the design theme of the blog so your students can be very comfortable there from day one.


After that, students always ask the big question, “Can everyone see and read my writing online ?” This is when you tell them they shouldn’t worry and that the blog is entirely private.

There are two privacy options: a) the blog is listed in Google’s services and b) the blog can be found by search engines. If you check “No” for both of those, the blog will genuinely be private. Other students in the group will be able to read (and hopefully review) all their work though.

The next step is to invite people to become authors on the blog and check the other preferences in the settings menu. The settings are very intuitive and can be dealt with in a matter of minutes. Also, there is a convenient app for your phone so you can quickly check what’s new on the blog on the go.

You or your students can set up writing tasks by simply adding new pages to the blog and then everyone in the group can comment and reply to the task. Who knows, maybe some of them will be willing to make the blog public one day. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?

For more online-related content, check out this article with 12 tips for better remote lessons.

If you are looking for tools that help you create fun content for your learners, such as newspaper clippings, crossword puzzles and posters, take a look at the TEFL Zone.

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Teach the Rainbow: Insights from LGBTeachers about Queer Visibility in ELT (Part 2)

Published on in Berlin/Professional Development

For Pride Month and CSD, we’re here and we’re queer! In case you missed the first part, ELTABB has collected interviews from queer teachers in Berlin telling us their thoughts and experiences on LGBTQIA+ visibility and representation in ELT.

Interviews

Name: Shaunessy

Pronouns: he/him

How do you identify? I try to avoid identifications of any kind, but I fall into the “gay” category.

What do you teach? I am an editor at a German educational publisher in the Foreign Languages for Vocational Education department. I also taught, mostly adults and often in-company, from 2000 to 2007.

Are you publicly out at work?
Yes.

Do you teach LGBTQ+ lessons in the classroom? If yes, what have you taught? How did your students respond?

As a teacher I rarely, if ever, made a lesson around LGBTQ+ issues. I was out, though, and would occasionally mention my relationships or my participation in a gay event, going to a gay club, etc. I never had a bad reaction from any clients in Berlin or Brandenburg.

It is fairly easy to portray same-sex parents, couples, etc. without making a big deal out of it.

As an author and publisher, I have been responsible for bringing the first LGBTQ+ themes/portrayals into our programme. Unfortunately, not many Bildungspläne (educational plans) allow space for dealing with the issues in depth. But it is fairly easy to portray same-sex parents, couples, etc. without making a big deal out of it.

Have you experienced homophobia/biphobia/transphobia in the classroom? How did you handle it?

I don’t remember any. I think my students perceived me as a self-confident gay man and so wouldn’t have dared say anything anti-homosexual, so “handling” the problem begins with your own self-worth. If anyone had said anything anti-LGBTQ+, I would have stopped the lesson to teach about this.

I’ve also not had any incidents at my current employer. My boss has never objected to the LGBT content I’ve introduced.

However, just because there are no ‘incidents’ does not mean that I get the same respect I would get if I were straight. Anti-homosexual conditioning goes very deep, and it’s clear to me that when I speak, my “gay” voice doesn’t command as much respect or status as a straight voice would. Together with my foreign accent, it’s a double-whammy against me. And I don’t have a wife and kids elevating my status.

What steps can teachers take to ensure safe queer visibility and representation in the classroom?

They need to be ready to deal with anti-LGBTQ+ statements when they occur. So, they need to have thought in advance about what it means to be L, G, B, T, Q, gender non-conforming, etc., and WHY it is ok to be so, why people ridicule us, why we deserve respect, and why we deserve protection. And they need to be able to articulate this.

What problems should be addressed in regard to queer visibility and representation in the classroom?

One problem appears to be a lack of materials. Recently the Tagesspiegel reported on a study in which schoolteachers of all subjects said they were in need of material for dealing with the anti-homosexual bullying that they witness on a regular basis.

My assumption is that they feel they need, number one, instructions on how to deal with incidents when they occur, and number two, subject-specific material they can base lessons on. But the study also found that many teachers were woefully ignorant of the presence of LGBTQ+ students at their school, assuming it to be a problem of adulthood, so Aufklärungsarbeit (educational work) is also needed.

Name: Kevin

Pronouns: he/him, they/them

How do you identify? Queer

What do you teach?

Adults, mostly Business English (in-company), EAP (English for Academic Purposes), and ENSP (English for No-specific Purpose)

Are you publicly out at work?
Yes.

Do you teach LGBTQ+ lessons in the classroom? If yes, what have you taught? How did your students respond?

It’s no secret to my students that I have a husband, so if a student asks, “What did you do at the weekend?”, they will get a queered response. So I would, in general, casually include queer topics in the classroom. For me, queer in the context of teaching is best understood as a verb, and it’s something that we do in our lessons not what we are in our lessons.

Queering is a way of challenging (hetero)normative standards, and there is lots of research showing that those standards are harmful to learners. I’ve used images showing women in different clothes and asked students to imagine the lives of the people shown and discuss what those ideas are based on. It’s more about asking questions than leading someone somewhere.

Have you experienced homophobia/biphobia/transphobia in the classroom? How did you handle it?

I didn’t as a teacher but as a student when I was learning German. A classmate brought up the issue that queers don’t exist–I mean literally that–but the teacher (who identifies as queer) didn’t intervene. His reasoning was that he didn’t want to alienate the other student, and my argument was that he shouldn’t alienate me. His reaction was a choice. These are always choices. And how and why we as teachers make choices has an effect.

What steps can teachers take to ensure safe queer visibility and representation in the classroom?

The first thing is to be sensible about safety. You have to use your common sense about the potential danger of the environment, and what sort of material can be used. For this reason, the questioning process that lies at the heart of queer methodology as espoused by the likes of Cynthia Nelson is so useful. It’s an approach that works with any material, really.

Check the support you are going to get from heterosexual colleagues.

Also, check the support you are going to get from heterosexual colleagues. If you know the agenda you’re putting out is OK with your employers, then that agenda may be OK in your class. For example, if you want to share a queer text in the classroom, discuss it with employers and colleagues and ask if they have ever done something similar.

What problems should be addressed in regard to queer visibility and representation in the classroom?

I suppose for years academics like Heiko Motschenbacher or Ashley Moore have tried to raise the lack of queer visibility or lifestyle in textbooks, so the onus has been on individual teachers to create their own material. Again, lots of research shows that how people are represented in course materials is key to learners’ understanding of how they are perceived and valued in that culture; it shouldn’t be too hard to imagine what not being represented feels like.

Therefore, I would say that at least in some way the question of dealing with the material gap has to be looked at. Should, for example, English language teaching associations offer a resource centre for people who wish to use queer materials in the classroom? Also, of course, that queer teachers offer each other.

Name: Allia

Pronouns: she/her

How do you identify? Queer

What do you teach? Everything and everyone

Are you publicly out at work?

I don’t know. It’s not something I’ve ever shied away from. I talk about LGBTQ+ issues all the time, I always have some element with regard to gender stereotypes, and I do workshops with GLAAD. I’d like to think it’s obvious, but maybe people don’t know.

Do you teach LGBTQ+ lessons in the classroom? If yes, what have you taught? How did your students respond?

Yes, most of the time they are put under the umbrella of larger topics such as gender issues, rape culture, or hate crimes. What I’ve noticed is when I put it under the umbrella topic the students respond positively meaning they are more willing to engage in the topic.

When put under the umbrella of larger topics, students are more willing to engage in the topic.

One example is from my college-level argumentative writing class when we were talking about the power of visuals. I had put up a series of pictures of those who have been murdered for being LGBTQ, such as Matthew Shepard or Amber Rose. I had students identify the people in the pictures to see if they could remember who these people were, but then it turned into a conversation about LGBTQ treatment in the justice system, the media and a discussion of hate crimes.

Have you experienced homophobia/biphobia/transphobia in the classroom? How did you handle it?

I was teaching at a charter high school in Compton, and we were doing a lesson about gender stereotypes. A student was sharing her experiences when another student insulted her mumbling “d***” under his breath. The student who was sharing got upset and started yelling.

To deescalate the situation, I told her that her anger was not unjustified and asked her to leave the room as I would deal with the situation. While she was gone, I addressed the other student in front of everyone, and, instead of reprimanding him, I just asked him a set of questions like, “What does the word mean?” and “Where did you learn it from?” He started answering the questions and eventually explained that he heard it from his father who would also frequently use the term “f*****”.

In the conversation, the student realized that he didn’t really feel this way, and that it was his father’s influence. This then carried on into a conversation among the rest of the students reflecting on their own upbringing, experiences, and things that had been passed down from their parents. Later, I pulled the student aside and said that it was his choice to either apologize to the individual or apologize in front of the class. The student ended up doing both.

What steps can teachers take to ensure safe queer visibility and representation in the classroom?

To ensure safe queer visibility, a teacher has to create a conducive environment for learning and discussion. That could look like creating a mission statement together as a class (or class rules). It can be teaching students how to respond to an individual coming out as LGBTQ+.

And it can also be including information in your syllabus, for example, on LGBTQ centers in addition to mental health and homelessness resources. Also, students will mirror the teacher’s behavior.

What problems should be addressed in regard to queer visibility and representation in the classroom?

Everything! But if I had to pick two, I would say the lack of visibility and an unwillingness to fully dive into the topic.

We hope that you have found these interviews thought-provoking yet inspiring because, let’s be perfectly queer, this is only one step in guaranteeing positive LGBTQIA+ visibility and representation in the ELT world and beyond. If you want to know more, here are some useful links for you to peruse. And Happy Pride!

https://raiseupforelt.com/our-books/

https://www.genderbread.org/

https://www.glaad.org/

https://www.hrc.org/resources/glossary-of-terms

https://www.hrc.org/resources/bisexual-visibility-in-the-workplace

https://itgetsbetter.org/blog/lesson/glossary/

https://itgetsbetter.org/blog/lesson/how-to-make-your-digital-classroom-more-lgbtq-friendly/

 

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Spice up Your Online Teaching: 12 Savvy Tips for Better Remote Lessons

Published on in Professional Development/Teaching

While most of us are experienced remote teachers by now, there is always room for improvement and fine-tuning. Here are twelve tips to help you step up your game when teaching English online.

1. Look at the camera

It’s tempting to look at the screen while teaching online because that’s where we see our students. Don’t give in to the urge. If you look directly at the camera, your client will feel that you are looking into their eyes and be more involved. You can move the inset video to just under the camera because then you’re actually looking at the student (or nearer to them). You can also use books to prop up your laptop and bring the camera to eye level.

2. Get a standing desk or a leg rest 

Teaching online changes your routine in some ways.

Sitting is the new smoking!

Mainly, it means that you may be glued to a chair for extended periods of time. That’s a problem in itself, because, as we know, sitting is the new smoking! It’s therefore advisable to get yourself a standing desk and just teach standing up. You can also just place a stool on your desk for an improvised standing desk. Alternatively, a leg rest will allow you to stretch your knees discreetly every now and then. Your muscles will thank you!

3. Choose a neutral background

There’s hardly anything worse than a distracting background when you teach (well, apart from a persistent hiccup maybe). You can work around this by using a plain piece of cloth as your background. Alternatively, you can buy a professional green screen and place it behind you. A third alternative is using a virtual background in Zoom. Just click the little arrow next to the video icon and pick the “virtual background” option. You can upload your own photos for the purpose. Just be aware that the background may shift and flicker when you move, so you might have to do some trial-and-error regarding the images you use.

4. Adjust your way of speaking

When teaching online, you might experience technical issues or sound problems, such as acoustic delay or breathing sounds. To facilitate listening, it’s best to speak more slowly than usual and with more pauses. Also, mute your participants while you speak and generally interrupt less than you normally would.

5. Get a good headset/mic

This is a no-brainer, but it still gets a mention here because it can fix a lot of your problems. If your headset reminds you of the tin can telephone you had when you were little, now’s the time to get a new one.

On the other hand, some integrated microphone are surprisingly good, so you might try ditching your headset for better audio quality first.

6. Manage your online classroom

In any classroom, online or not, there are some students who enjoy being in the focus and others who don’t. As an online tutor, try to target the ones that seem a bit lost without putting them on the spot. When you single out a person to engage them in your lesson, you can mute the rest of the group.

Also, be aware that some people may switch off their cameras because they feel more comfortable that way. You can use the group chat to encourage shy students to share questions and comments.

Online tools like Answergarden or Padlet are great for sparking your students’ interest. You can find out more about engaging tools for teaching English online here.

7. Provide visual input

Online learning is a very visual experience, and variety is key if you want to engage your students. You can share your screen to show slides or have your students write on the virtual whiteboard (in Zoom, enable the “annotate” function for this).

If you have a Pro account, you can also create live polls to liven things up and fuel discussion. For a quick recap of some of its helpful functions, check out this Zoom tutorial.

8. Use breakout rooms

You probably do this already: another way to add variety to your lessons is to have group work sessions, just as you would in a regular classroom. To split larger groups into smaller ones, Zoom offers breakout rooms. This tutorial will show you how it works.

9. Share handouts and files

The days of physical handouts are gone, so cloud storage services are the way to go.

Google Drive makes it easy to share files via links – the only catch is that you will need a Google account for this if you don’t have one already (and then there’s the data protection thingy…). However, it’s still one of the most efficient and popular ways to share documents, also because you can actually work on Google Docs simultaneously with the students.

Apart from that, the group chat may be helpful here for sharing links and smaller bits of information.

10. Be prepared

This is another no-brainer, but one that’s easy to forget. Before you start teaching online, make sure you have a pen, paper and water handy – you don’t want to have to fiddle around for any of these while answering questions. It’s also a good way to prepare and sort yourself out before a lesson.

11. Have a break (or two)

Allow for enough breaks from screen time. Sitting in front of a computer for hours on end is demanding, especially for young learners. Slip in a bathroom or tea break every now and then before everyone gets antsy.

12. Practise with other teachers

If you feel you need guinea-pigs to hone your online teaching skills, why not offer your colleagues a sample lesson? They may have some valuable feedback for you and learn from the way you teach as well. Plus, you can take turns, so everyone gets to be the teacher and student.

If you don’t know who to ask, no worries! Just join some social media groups for teachers and post a friendly request. You should be able to find like-minded people in no time.

Bonus tip: try this alternative to Zoom

Zoom is great, but the free version comes with a 40-minute-cap for group events (one-on-ones are not affected). After this, your conference call will be cut short and you will have to set up a new session.

BigBlueButton is a completely free, open-source alternative that offers all the features Zoom does, without limitations. Many universities and schools already use it. It may be a tad more complicated to set up, but it should be absolutely worth it.

Happy remote teaching!

For more tips for teaching English online, check out this article on the digital classroom.

Go to ELTABB Journal Homepage

Teaching English through Riddles: “Strange Attractors and the Gordian Knot” – Workshop with Nick Munby

Published on in ELTABB/Professional Development

Riddles are intriguing and fun for learners of all ages. Kit Flemons recaps Nick Munby’s webinar on teaching English with logic puzzles and shares what he learnt about mental gymnastics and the art of asking the right questions.

I’m sure many of you readers will recall university days of waking up late, dashing to class, coffee in hand, sneaking into the back of a lecture while keeping your groggy head down and hoping to absorb whatever information is coming your way (I, naturally, have no such experience, model student that I am).

In the days of the Corona Lockdown and semi-private Zoom conferences, it may be tempting to do so again. But today’s workshop would allow no such shirking and idleness.

The brain loves to be engaged

We were introduced briefly to the idea that the brain is a machine for learning. It is drawn to seeking shapes and patterns and solving problems. What’s more, puzzles encourage speaking for a purpose – crucial for teaching English – as they offer a practical and fun application for learned language.

The brain is a machine for learning.

We then jumped straight into our breakout rooms, to stretch our Saturday-morning brains with the first logic puzzle (here is a link so that you can test your wits, with a full list of the puzzles we did at the end of the article).

Analyse your approach

Nick encouraged us not simply to solve the puzzle, but think about how we tried to do it. Did we:

  • start by whipping out our calculators and examining the numbers?
  • reach for our knowledge of ancient history (Nick’s version was set in the city of Alexandria)?
  • look for significance in the phrasing of the question itself?

After five minutes in the breakout rooms, we reconvened to compare answers and discuss the processes behind our thinking. A key concept was that we all felt we didn’t have enough information to answer the question – but we did…

Asking the right questions

The trick lay in ‘thinking around the question’ – sidestepping the obvious pathways (‘strange attractors’) our brain tries to follow and looking for more scenic routes to the conclusion.

Help came when Nick asked ‘guiding questions’ – questions that didn’t provide clues to the answer, but clues to the approach; questions that led us to ask our own, more pertinent questions, until the answer suddenly snapped into perfect focus.

Once somebody had arrived at this answer, Nick encouraged them to explain their working to the class.

It can be easier for somebody who has only just learned something to explain it to others than it is for an ‘expert’; the learner has just found their way to the solution, and the pitfalls and clues are fresher in their mind.

Backflips and brain twisters

Our second logic puzzle required us to think about how we disprove rules, rather than prove them; the brain is keen to draw patterns, making it difficult not to leap at what seems like an alluring proof when it is presented.

Explaining how one arrived at the solution to this puzzle was… more than a little tricky even in our native tongues. To do so as a learner of a foreign language would require considerable mental and linguistic gymnastics – exactly what we, as teachers are keen to encourage!

The journey is its own reward

If you can get your students communicating in this way – asking lots of questions and challenging their own preconceptions – they will be using a range of English for a purpose, and hopefully enjoying themselves too.

That’s a sure route to success in an English lesson!

The next two puzzles seemed to feature a terrifying amount of maths… But, like with most logic puzzles, you don’t need particular skills to work out the answer and cut the proverbial ‘Gordian knot’. You don’t need to be a mathematician (indeed, then you may make it worse by struggling through the calculations, rather than approaching the problem with fresh naivete).

You just need to think carefully from lots of different angles – a process facilitated by groups of people talking among each other, discussing, using their language and twisting their brains in interesting ways.

Is this actually about teaching?

It was after one more logic puzzle that my brain twisted itself in such a way and I had my own ‘Eureka!’ moment. Up to this, there was a certain sense that ‘This isn’t about English teaching! This is just having fun doing puzzles, like I do [note – “used to do”] in the pub with friends!’

It became apparent, however, that this workshop was actually helping us much more broadly than simply ‘telling us how to teach’.

The best way to encourage learning is to encourage students to work out the answer themselves.

We were being guided, as with the puzzles themselves, into arriving at our own solutions. Nick showed us that the best way to encourage learning isn’t to point out an answer, but encourage students to work out the answer themselves by offering guided questions and hints.

Final thoughts

Logic puzzles are a useful means to encourage the practical, fun use of English. The way one should present them is also very similar to how one should teach any subject. This lesson was much broader than simply ‘logic puzzles in the classroom’. It was a way to shape our entire approach to teaching.

Nick left us with one more logic puzzle to riddle out ourselves. It was testament to how enjoyable the workshop was that quite a number of us stayed until well after the end discussing possible solutions, other logic puzzles, and how the human brain works in approaching solutions.

Sometimes, the best learning doesn’t feel like learning, and that’s exactly what happened today.

***
List of logic puzzles mentioned:

  1. Introductory riddle
  2. Logic puzzle for disproving rules
  3. First math puzzle
  4. Second math puzzle
  5. Brain twister with eureka effect
  6. Final puzzle

If you enjoyed this article, you may also like Kit’s workshop review about creative teaching techniques.

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