[etni] ideas for lessons..

1.  CONVERSATION WHEEL:  
In preparation for the oral bagrut we had a great conversation lesson which 
could be implemented in non-bagrut junior high classes too.  I copied the 
technique from my teacher training days and it works beautifully, keeping 
students motivated and animated for the whole lesson.  

Rearrange the classroom or larger "olam" and move chairs and tables to make an 
inner circle of chairs for half the number of students which face OUTWARDS.  
Then place another chair opposite each outward facing chair.  Students then sit 
facing each other in pairs.  Prepare two sets of the same interesting open 
conversation (bagrut interview/project) questions, with enough questions for 
half the class.  Cut the questions into strips and randomly hand out questions 
of one set to the inner circle and one of the other set to the outer circle.  
Each pair of students has to ask their partner their question and then answer 
his partners.  Give the students enough time to complete the task (between 2-4 
minutes depending on the level of students and questions) and then either ring 
a bell or gong, give some sign that the time is up and then the outer circle 
all have to get up and move one chair to the right.  (You could do the same 
activity without the chairs but I find it works better with them and students 
tend to talk more!) Repeat until the the students get back to their original 
seats.

We used questions like "How did your parents meet?" "How did your parents 
choose your name?" "Tell me one thing about youreslf that nobody in school 
knows" "If you won a million shekels in a lottory what would you do?" "What is 
your favorite TV program and why do you like it?" etc etc....

2. SONG CONTEST:   
I don't know how successful it will be but we are organizing a "song contest" 
in our junior-high school.  It will be a kind of mini-English day.  You could 
do it with just one year grade to keep it simple.  Each of our junior high 
English "hakbatzot" have chosen (with their teachers' help) a contemporary but 
suitable song in English.  For the contest they will have to perform the song.  
For lack of musical geniuses and to keep things simple (especially for the 
lower, smaller and weaker classes) they are allowed to sing over the original 
song as background.  Each class will prepare some sort of dance and possibly 
accessories to go with the song.  If we have time we will also have a 
design-a-poster competition for the contest in different classes and the best 
ones will be hung in the school.

Hope these ideas help someone....  I would be happy to hear of others.

Judi G.

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