Fun Activity for Learning Tag Questions

People use tag questions all the time to confirm information and check their understanding. In a job interview, you might say something like: “You said that the position will start during the second week of September, right?” or if you’re in a situation where someone is giving you complicated directions, you might repeat those directions and add “right?” on the end to signal that you want them to confirm you really understood. It’s particularly helpful for ESL students and people with learning disabilities to understand how to use this kind of question. For ESL students, using tag questions effectively is a major step toward fluency and a more refined use of language.

A tag question is not really a true question; it’s what we do when we want to confirm that what we think is true is actually true. If I meet someone at a party and later, I think that I remember that his name was Phil, but I’m not sure, I might go up to him and say “Your name is Phil, right?” instead of asking him “What’s your name?” all over again. The tag question is made from a statement ( Your name is Phil) and a tag ending (right?). The statement you think is true is unchanged, you just add a little tag on the end to make it a question. Just about any statement can be made into a question by adding “right?” on the end, but there are other tags too.

• For statements that use a form of the verb “to be,” make the end ending by taking the verb, making it negative (if the verb in the statement is positive or vice versa), and adding it to the end with the subject. For example: “You are from Thailand, aren’t you?” or “He isn’t coming to class, is he?” or “The book is very old, isn’t it?”

• For statements that have a single verb that is not a form of “to be,” make the ending by using “do” or “does” for the present tense and “did” for the past tense. For example: “Jennie went to the store yesterday, didn’t she?” or “You like cake, don’t you?” or “You don’t like cake, do you?” or “He works on Thursdays, doesn’t he?”

• For statements with two verbs (a main verb and a helping verb like “can”, “may”, “have”, “will”), make the tag ending with the first verb. For example, “You can speak English, can’t you?” or “She can’t come to the movie, can she?” or “You will mail me that letter, won’t you?” or “You have been to the library, haven’t you?”

I found a fun activity for introducing and practicing this concept in this book (which happens be to part of the Literacy Source resource library!): “Grammar Games: Cognitive, Affective, and Drama Activities for EFL Students” by Mario Rinvolucri. Using the book’s instructions, I adapted the activity for my class’s needs. Here’s my version:

SNAP Game

Students get into pairs first. Each pair creates a playing board by drawing a line down the middle of a blank sheet of paper and writing “statement” at the top on the left side of the line and “tag” on the right side. Then each pair receives an envelope with 32 cards. Each card contains either a statement or a tag ending, so that there are 16 pairs in all forming 16 complete tag questions. (For example, one card might say: “They are from China,” and another card will have to say “aren’t they?”). The student divide up the cards so that each has 16 cards (a mixture of both statements and tags), holding them face down. They play by turns each flipping one of their cards face up and placing it on the appropriate side of the paper. Once there is a card on both sides, the students decide if they match. If they don’t match, the person whose turn is next flips over one of the cards in his/her pile and replaces the appropriate card that’s already on the board, putting the old card on the bottom of his/her stack (if the next card is a statement that student puts it on the statement side of the paper and picks up the statement that was already there). There should only be two cards on the board at the same time. With the new piece the students decide if a correct question has been formed. When they identify a match, they yell “SNAP!” and set the matching pieces aside. The object is to be the first pair to complete all the sentence (or the most sentences that time allows).

The SNAP game helps students to work on recognizing correct tag questions. Once they get comfortable with that then they can move on to actually producing tag questions. Here’s how:

Extra Activity

One student gets all 16 tag ending cards; his/her partner get all the statements. The student with the statements holds one of them up so his/her partner can see it. Then the partner has to choose which of the tag endings will make a complete, correct question. Play like this for three rounds and then the students switch roles for three rounds.

Making It Stick: Creating Lessons that Engage Students and Encourage Retention

We all can probably point to times when we’ve wondered if the material we’re presenting if really being retained by the student. Sometimes finding ways to present the material in a way that’s memorable is difficult. It takes a lot of creativity and flexibility to come up with interesting ideas that are also practical. So here are some tips from a recent Volunteer Lesson Planning workshop to help jump start the creative process as we volunteers are diving into the summer quarter of classes and tutoring. First of all though, I should say hats off to all of you for stepping up to this amazing challenge and for committing so much energy and effort into your sessions with your students!

Some Useful Strategies

o Repetition: This doesn’t have to be boring anymore. It’s all about finding as many different ways as possible to present and engage the material. Options include short dialogs, games, class mixer activities, and

o The 85% mastery rule: Strive to make your student 80 to 90% successful. If your student consistently achieves 100%, the work is too easy, adjust by going faster, changing books, adding harder questions, skipping easy sections, or raising your standards. If your student is achieving 70%, the work is too difficult. Adjust by slowing down, changing books, asking easy questions, skipping sections, supplying more help, or ignoring minor errors.

o It’s all in the timing: Break the lesson up into 20 minute chunks and then switch gears. Attention spans are likely to run out if the same information is presented the same way for the whole lesson.

o Language Experience Approach: Use the learner’s own words as a place to start to get a feel for the learner’s background knowledge and to assess where they’re at with being able to communicate on a certain topic.

o Abandon Perfection: Even if you meet your student for two hours a week for a year, you have only 100 hours (50×2), the equivalent of two and a half work weeks (40+40+20). That’s not much time. Which is more important: understanding apostrophes or understanding a sign that says “high voltage?” Skip the frills. Ignore minor errors.

o Learning Styles: Use your knowledge of the student’s preferred styles of learning and your observations of past behavior to adapt lessons. Also, think about the whole spectrum of styles when trying to come up with different ways to present the material (visually, kinesthetically, etc.)

o Build Those Bridges!: Try to tie the new information to old information that the student is already familiar with. Giving them a little “jumping off” place can really help them to find a place to put the new information and make the feel successful from the start.

Also, here are some powerful computer resources to help implement some of these strategies in your lessons. I have found the first one especially helpful with a beginning ESL student that I tutored. And I never realized how clear the words are in Coldplay songs until I looked up Talk on the eslvideo.com site.

1. www.starfall.com

Starfall.com was developed to provide free online materials for students just beginning to read. The lessons and activities on the website focus on phonetic awareness and are great for working with preliterate learners. Since this website was developed for children, I recommend looking over all materials and activities before using them with your student.

2. www.do2learn.com

If you are looking for printouts for beginning learner, look no further. Do 2 Learn features many different printouts intended to help develop basic literacy skills.

3. www.eslvideo.com

This is a great website that uses videos available for free on Youtube as an engaging learning tool for English language learners. You can watch videos and answer language comprehension quizzes, or make your own quiz and share it with the ESL community.

Time Management

Here are some of the highlights from the Tools For Successful Learning workshop last week…

“The bad news is time flies; the good news is you’re the pilot.” ~ Michael Altshuler

I love this quote because it gets to the heart of the matter in time management. You are in charge, and without effort on your part this just will not be go well. The plane cannot fly itself- you have to take control. But that’s also the good news, you have the opportunity to chart a course for how your time will be spent.

Using some form of time management is important for many reasons. Here are just a few of the most common:

• It helps you be more dependable
• You feel less stressed/ overwhelmed by your tasks
• You are less likely to miss something important

Time Log

A good first step to re-thinking how you use your time is to keep a time log for 3-7 days. A time log is simply a chart that lets you fill in your activities in half-hour (or sometimes quarter-hour) increments. The key to doing a time log is to be consistent; carry it around with you and record what you actually do. Also, you might want to leave a place to indicate if the things you did were scheduled, interrupted, and/or urgent tasks.

Look back over your time log and ask: which activities do you spend the most time on? how many of the things you did were planned activities? how many activities were interrupted, and what interrupted them? were there things you wanted to get done on a certain day, but didn’t? and what happened that prevented you from doing those things?

Once you know how you are currently spending your time and what things are causing interruptions to your day or are wasting your time, you can brainstorm some ways to cut out the wasteful activities and stay on track with the things that are important to get done.

Helpful aids

• To-Do lists: Use one that has a place to mark which tasks are the most urgent or write the list with the most important tasks first and the least important at the bottom. If a To-Do list is too compact, make a bulletin board for posting tasks separately. There are tons of different formats. Experiment and stick with the one that works best for you.
• Calendars: Make sure there’s a calendar posted in your home. You can even print out a Three-Months-At-A-Glance calendar so you can be aware of projects and events as they creep closer. Small planner calendars with room to write appointments and that you can carry with you are great for keeping you from setting conflicting appointments or forgetting an appointment you made while you were on the go.
• Set aside a designated study space in your home, and if possible set aside a designated study time each day. This can help you establish a rhythm to your day that incorporates your learning.
• Weekly clean-ups of your work space can help keep you on track by reducing clutter and the distraction that can often come with it.

With any method of time management, flexibility and prioritizing are major keys to succeeding. Things will come up and disrupt your plans. Sometimes you will have more things to do than you can possibly get done in a single day. But if you focus on the most important tasks first and remain open to inevitable changes in your plan, you will be well on your way to taking control of your time and using it well.

Notes from Volunteer Support Workshop, 1/08

On 1/24/08, we began a series of volunteer support workshops.   The first one was a lot of fun!  The topic of the workshop was “Incorporating scaffolding into a lesson plan.”

What is scaffolding?

Imagine that you are constructing a new building.  When  you are in the process of construction, you must put up a support structure, such as scaffolding, to help get the building ready before it can stand on its own.  This is the same idea behind using scaffolding in lesson plans.  You are supporting the student and getting ready to understand or perform a task independently.

Key points

• As learner’s abilities increase, scaffolding is gradually removed
• Scaffolding is temporary
• Scaffolding links old information /familiar situations with new knowledge.

Four-Step Model

The most simple way to understand scaffolding is to look at the Four-Step Model.  It is a blueprint for how to introduce and teach a new concept  in a way that moves toward the student independence.  Making sure that you are moving toward the student performing the task independently is the key to using scaffolding in your lesson plans.

1.  Teacher does it

2.  Teacher does it, student helps

3.  Student does it, teacher helps

4.  Students do it

As you can see, the roles change a bit as the student comes closer to understanding a concept.  Spend as much time necessary on the first two steps, in order to give the student confidence, and practice.  If you have gone to the next step and realize it is too soon, go back to the previous step.

Computer Resource: BBC Skillswise

What is BBC Skillswise?

BBC Skillswise is an online resource developed specifically for tutors teaching Adult Basic Education (ABE).

How can I use BBC Skillswise?

1.  Skillswise offers a “Tutors’ Page” offering lesson plans, online forms, teaching “inspirations,” and links to different resources.

2.  Skillswise also offers many printable worksheets and online learning activities.

The materials are divided into two different categories: Words and Numbers.

Words: Spelling, Reading, Writing, Listening, and Vocabulary

Numbers:  Whole numbers, Measures, Shape and Space, Fractions, Decimals and Percentages, and Handling Data

3.  You can access the BBC Skillswise page through the Computer Tutorials folder on the LS Student Desktop.  Also, there are several direct links to my favorite Skillswise activities saved in the Skillswise Folder.

If you would like to access BBC Skillswise at home, go to:

www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise

Thank you to Natalie for showing  us this great new resource.

Using Tactile Objects (Lesson Plan)

Our lovely Library volunteer Chloe has written a great lesson plan on using tactile objects to make your lesson plan more engaging. This is especially helpful for low level learners and/or students who are working with learning disabilities. Please pick up a copy in the main staff area of the center!