Graham’s Fun Times
Comments(4) I really enjoyed the games we played with Graham for a lot of reasons; the first one being that I love playing games, especially after being in Drama/Theatre in highschool for 5 years and being a camp and orientations leader. I love playing ice breakers, low to high risk games, and improv games; it’s a way to get familiar with a group of people (read: class). Certain games also show different dynamics with the group of players. When we played the stomping game, you could see which group of people synched well; you could see the mischievous people intentionally altering the rhythm; and you could get a feel that we became more comfortable with each other as our rhythm became more consistent around the ring.
An important literacy for teachers to have is energy and body literacy. A teacher should be able to read the room and see where the student’s levels of energy are and hopefully adjust their lecture accordingly. It’s pretty bad to see a very enthusiastic teacher tying to push her super -duper activity on a very low energy crowd, or seeing the same class fall asleep because the lesson was super dry.
Another thing that is interesting about these sorts of games is that they do not require English literacy. There was one student who came late to the stomping game yet he knew how to play almost immediately after observing. These sorts of games are very intuitive and could be used with all sorts of ELLs and proficient English speakers together.
-Linh
I also loved the short discussion periods that took place between the games. It allows us to communicate in small groups of 2 or 3 and come up with awesome ideas to share amongst the group–especially the discussion on whether lecturing is better or activity based is better–>When I looked at where the class stood on a rough average I was a bit relieved and satisfied when the class stood roughly in the middle with a slight emphasis on lecturing–because it’s true! lecturing is important sometimes, teachers just need to know how much of it theyre doing being cautious not to overdo it.
I thought it was really important that you brought up the idea of body literacy. It was something I hadn’t thought of explicitly until I saw your post and had an “Oh, yeah!” moment. While I agree that it can be painful to watch someone with a very high energy level try and push a low energy class in the same direction, I think it can also be an effective tool, especially if you establish yourself as this kind of teacher from the beginning and the students know to expect it. The phrase “a body at rest tends to stay at rest” keeps running through my mind. I’m sure many of us have had those early morning classes where we’d be happy to sit in a desk and zone out because we’re exhausted. However, I imagine levels of student awareness and engagement would be higher after being made to get up and move around in some of Graham’s activities. If you can somehow tie these into your lesson plan for the day, all the better. Having body literacy and being able to read your class in this regard, knowing when they need to be woken up to class in the morning, for example, seems to be a very important tool to take into teaching. The fact that some of these activities were non-language based, and therefore inclusive to ELL’s, is just another positive aspect!
I totally agree. I hate being bogged down and strapped to a chair and being lectured to by a teacher about material I can barely remember because my mind is already whizzing away on what I’m gonna eat after class and God knows what else. A good teacher definitely needs to have a feel for the room and adjust to what the class is feeling overall – if they aren’t digging the activity then do something else, and if they are totally enjoying it how can we amp it up and make it more challenging, I would push this a little bit further maybe later on down the road and use a bit of competitiveness as a strength to enhance the activity by adding new words to the mix or build teams so that the students eventually will help one another out.
I really like the idea of body literacy. Before reading your post, I had known how important it is for a teacher to be able to read their class and understand how a lesson is being received but I had not thought of it as a form of literacy. After thinking about it for a while, I think you have phrased it in the perfect way. We, as teachers, need to be able to read our students’ body language (the reading aspect) but I also think that it is important to be cognizant of how our own body language may influence our students (the writing aspect).
You also mentioned that these activities are great for getting familiar with a new group of people. I think that these games could work really well to make students more comfortable around each other and help build a classroom atmosphere that is conducive to learning. In a classroom like this, ELL students may feel safer to take chances. This could also be beneficial to non-ELL students who are scared to fail or are intimidated of large group settings.