Even in the age of blended learning and smartphone-based classroom management apps we’re still rocking the photocopies. There’s something immediate about working on paper and I guess it remains a kind of ‘media franca’ for the language learning space. So like it or not: we’re all handing out sheets.
Here’s the downside: the time spent handing out sheets kills energy and opens up an irresistible vacuum for learners to jump on their social media. If you’ve just spent time foregrounding a task and building a sense of anticipation, then it’s annoying to feel that dissipate as you squeeze round the room, repeatedly dead-legging yourself on desks as you try to prise one sheet off a stack of 25.
The solution seems obvious: get those sheets out early before the class starts or by discretely distributing them during a previous activity. Problem solved!
Yes … but now we have another problem: You can’t ‘foreground a task and build a sense of anticipation’ if the group have already looked at the sheet and decided (before you could engage in any anticipation building) that it doesn’t look very interesting. Not so much dead-legging as shooting yourself in the foot – now your foregrounding feels to them more like a desperate attempt to make your mundane task seem interesting. In an effort to plan ahead, you’ve ended up putting yourself on the defensive from the start.
So here it is: distribute the sheets early, but always FACE DOWN. The first few times learners will automatically turn them over, but with a little shocked play-acting you can indicate that they are not supposed to do this. The pattern is established very quickly and by the third time no-one will touch those sheets.
It is surprising how intriguing a face-down sheet of A4 can be – for learners it is redolent of exams or similar high-stakes scenarios – and by starting your task build with the phrase, ‘You all have a downturned sheet of A4 in front of you. Do not turn it over’, you have imbued the upcoming task with a palpable sense of intrigue. OK maybe that’s going too far, but at least the learners are not actively shutting down on you having reached their own conclusions with insufficient information. You remain in the driving seat.
And once the teacher talk is over and it’s time to begin, then the instruction: ‘OK, turn over the sheets’ has a nice snappiness to it, and you get the added energy boost of all learners engaging in a synchronised action which lends an important kick of impetus to the activity.
No upper-thigh bruising, no paper cuts: just a crisp and focused intro into the learning.
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