Classroom Diversity and Interactive English

This young man to the left is one of my students. As you can see, he's very diverse. He's both a lion and a bison! (Yes, that mask is supposed to be a bison... Actually it's a butchered stuffed animal and a paper plate, but my point remains.)

Actually, this particular student is very diverse without involving animals. He's a remedial reader and one of the hardest working students I have. He was also nice enough to sit inside a volcano and pop up and down like a jack in the box for homecoming.

The young ladies to the right are some of my other students. The one with her back to the camera is one of my best writers, but she struggles with reading comprehension. She has to read silently to understand something. She can also draw bubble letters well but has trouble tearing duct tape at times. The young lady to her right is a very bubbly person who understands things better when they're read aloud. And the young lady beside her is an excellent dancer and a very opinionated writer. She also has excellent reading comprehension most of the time.

I mention this because each of these students has a distinctive strength and weakness in the classroom. All of them, however, benefit from hands-on activities.

Let me tell you what I did last Friday...

I was trying very hard to think of a way to English interactive and fun. I remembered that last year, I had taught a lesson on onomatopoeia (words that imitate sounds) by having the students draw comics, but I also remembered that while some of the students loved the activity, others were concerned because they weren't very good artists.

At about 2:30 in the morning, it hit me. Foley artists in movies use everyday items to generate sound effects! So I gathered up a large amount of everyday items (construction paper, cloth scraps, paper cups, leftover craft ribbon, cheap party balloons, plastic beads, latex gloves, etc.), did some research on creating sound effects, and came up with the following activity:

I divided the class into groups of three or four and gave them a box with the everyday items in them. I had one person designated as the recorder and the rest were foley artists. Then I explained what onomatopoeia was and what foley artists did, took the students outside, and had them come up with as many different sound effects as possible using what they had in the box. The recorder would have to record what materials were used (paper cup, poster board, etc.), what sound effect it made (rain, thunder, horse hooves, heartbeat, etc.), and what it sounded like (boom, rumble, thump, etc.).

As lessons go, it's the biggest hit I've had (it even beat out the legos!). And one team managed to come up with 38 different sound effects in 30 minutes! I couldn't be happier with the result. :)