Pedagogical Strategies that Work

A COMEXUS and UT ESL Collaboration

Set a firm, friendly, warm tone!

Set a warm and safe environment in which the students feel comfortable taking chances
and taking an active role in class, and in which the expectations are clear and they know
you value the material and their performance. Your mood is a model for what you expect
from your students, and many times your students will react with a similar mood to yours.
Calm, happy students learn more!

Get to know your students!

Use surveys, questionnaires, pre-tests, and/or audio journals (in which students record
themselves and send by e-mail or whatsapp) to learn about what your students know
already and what your students are interested in. In addition to their English knowledge,
you can find out about their music, movies, professional aspirations, learning styles, or
whatever you think could be useful to make your activities more relevant to them! If your
curriculum allows it, you can even ask them about their opinions about what kinds of
activities and projects they want to do. Even if your curriculum is more rigid, knowing
about them will help your relationship with them, and that has a lot of benefits for learning!

Plan carefully, time yourself, but allow for surprises!

Having a clear lesson plan with clear objectives, a preview, a mini-lesson, and practice are
very essential! Use a timer to keep the activities on a schedule. Sometimes a student will
share something amazing or a different activity will emerge that doesnt fit with the plan.
Let that happen too, on occasion! Those are often the moments students will remember.

Repeat, review, recycle!

On average, we need to see or hear a word seven times before we remember it. Find ways
to recycle previously learned content into each lesson. Use it in a slightly different context
to help students assimilate it into their vocabularies.

Encourage problem students to be your helpers!

Talk with students who are not cooperating; try to understand where they are coming
from. Give mischievous students an opportunity to become your helper, secretary, or
assistant. They can change their own behavior and become a model for other students!

Find positive role models!

To motivate students, find positive role models and success stories from graduates of your
school and professionals in jobs your students like!
Connect academics with the professional world.
Do a project about job requirements and/or job interviews to help students see the utility
of getting an education. Look at job listings for the skills and credentials that are asked for.
Learning about students goals and aspirations and helping them formulate a clear idea of
their goals is essential to helping them achieve their dreams!

Use the technology available!

Use videos such as commercials and concerts to motivate students or inspire them in
terms of feelings or ideas. This can be a source for class expectations, vocabulary, stories,
descriptions, dialogues, listening comprehension practice, and much more! Students can
summarize the content of the video, or act it out while a classmate describes what the
others are doing. Leaders or narrators can alternate.

Blogs and e-mail exchanges can be great writing practice and can give you a chance to
share notes or other materials with students more cheaply than printing books.

Encourage students to use their cell phones as language practice. Assign them (short!)
audio journal assignments for pronunciation, grammar, creative expression. Assign them
group video projects about their school, their city, or whatever topic you are studying. Use
whatever web resources work for you some options include whatsapp, youtube, or gmail
to submit and receive videos and audio clips.

Audio recordings can require a lot of time to check, but you can limit the number of
students that submit on a given week or you could spot check only some submissions for
each assignment, and grade different groups each week. You could also have students send
videos or audio clips to each other to get feedback or a response from a partner.

Corpora like corpus.byu.edu and linguee.com are amazing for seeing how words and
phrases are collocated and used in context. Students and you can investigate collocations,
prepositions, and word usage.

Assign projects that integrate skills and practice!

Give students projects that require them to use their English skills and their creativity and
critical thinking towards a concrete goal. These could be individual projects like essays,
posters, speeches, or PowerPoints. They can also be group projects like videos, dialogues,
theatrical plays, a market day, a city guide, a website, or a book. Giving a clear timeline and
benchmarks to help them pace themselves can really help them complete it without feeling
overwhelmed.

Encourage pair and group discussions!

Whether its a two-minute practice with a partner, or a dialogue that students memorize
and imitate from a movie, or moderated discussions in which one student asks open-ended
questions to his/her classmates, students can practice a lot more and gain confidence if
they practice with each other.

Assigning tasks to each member of the group can help each one stay on task. Some ideas of
group roles: Writer, Timer, Idea contributor, Presenter,

Make Reading and Writing Theatrical!

Acting while you read or write can help solidify the memories of the vocabulary and the
story. This can be TPRS, in which you create the story with the help of the students, or it
can be a text from the textbook or any story. Also, different students can read parts as
actors, making a Readers Theater.
Doing improvisational role play gives context to the vocabulary.

Get outside the classroom!

This is not always possible, but finding opportunities to do English scavenger hunts or
videos can be very fun and productive!

Use art!
This may be sharing a painting or photograph that links to descriptive adjectives or verbs.
It may be encouraging students to paint on a T-shirt to identify themselves with positive
adjectives in English. It may be having students draw pictures or maps and label them.

Integrate all the senses!

Give them a taste or a smell that links with a story they are reading or adjectives they are
studying. Coffee, chocolate, fruit, or mint might be good options. Bitter, baking chocolate is
always a surprise! Also give them rough or smooth material to help teach texture
vocabulary.

Use competition in a positive, motivational way!

Contests at the board, running dictations, English singing contests (at the school or class
level), Jeopardy, and debates are all examples of competitions that can be very motivating.
Finding ways to celebrate success while not making anyone feel like a loser is a challenge,
but the motivation of competition can inspire students to do amazing things!
Some Games:
Writing on the Board: Students sit or stand in rows to write a word on the white board.
This can be for verb conjugation, spelling, plurals, or any grammar challenge.

Hot Seat: Write vocabulary that you have been teaching on the board. Discuss and make
sure students are familiar with it. Seat two or more students with their backs to the board.
One other student circles a word. Teams give clues to the students in the hot seats, and
they try to guess the circled vocabulary word. Rotate.

Taboo, Pictionary, or Charades: Anything that allows students to make connections and
give hints as others think through the vocabulary they have studied.

Telephone and Telephone Pictionary: Telephone has students whisper messages to

each other and see how they change at the end. Telephone Pictionary alternates between
students writing a sentence and drawing a picture of that sentence. They continue for
several passes, and often the sentences and pictures change completely, but it exercises
their vocabulary and creativity.

Running Dictation: Students read a word at one side of the classroom, and have to run to
the other side to dictate it to a student who has to write down what he or she hears. This
can be done with multiple rows and multiple students simultaneously, and turn-taking can
be done different ways.

Memory Games: Use flashcards with words and pictures or different forms of words.
Students try to match cards with pictures or different forms of the words. They can say the
words out loud as they turn them over.

Guess Who? Students have different pictures of people and have to ask questions to each
other and use descriptive vocabulary to guess which picture the person has chosen.
Use music!
These may be songs in English or songs that they listen to. You may have it playing while
they do other activities, or you may print the lyrics with blanks for the verbs, prepositions,
or some other vocabulary to have them fill in missing words. Everyone can sing along or
you can do a singing competition. You can invent your own English lyrics for popular
songs, or have students do it as a project! The songs can link to specific grammar points,
vocabulary, concepts, etc.

Some recommended songs

Cold Plays Paradise for simple past

U2s I Still Havent Found What Ive Been Looking For for present perfect
Beatles Hello Goodbye for simple present and When Im Sixty-Four for future (students
can draw a picture of themselves when they are sixty-four and write about it).
The Hotel California for simple past and vocabulary
Lemon Tree
Y fue as by Julin Alvarez to creatively put English words to the popular songs rhythm.
(will vary with your students taste and preferences!)
Yesterday by the beatles
Brother Louie
Seasons in the Sun
My Heart Will Go On
Winds of Change
It Mustve Been Love
More Resources
www.chompchomp.com advanced grammar resource and activities

www.engvid.com/ -- tons of videos explaining an array of grammar and pronunciation

topics

www.linguee.com/ -- an amazing corpus with translations for a variety of usages of any

word you can think of.

http://corpus.byu.edu/ -- the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) is an

amazing resource for all the different ways that words are used.

sladesimprov.blogspot.com Wills blog, where he occasionally posts awesome materials

that he finds, including podcasts, comics, games, and more.

www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/ -- Comics can be a great resource for vocabulary,

entertaining stories, humor, and creativity. Calvin and Hobbes is a classic!

www.aaronshep.com/rt/RTE.html -- Great Readers Theater scripts

dramaresource.com/ -- A great place to find games, improvisation ideas, and more

www.newsinlevels.com/ -- non-fiction reading material on current events at beginning,

medium, and advanced levels
Many thanks to all the contributors for making this resource possible!

Eduardo Acevedo Salinas Jose Noberto Pineda Cruz

Andrea Alejo Cavazos Martha Elva Ramirez Rodriguez
Jose Luis Angelez manjarrez Hugo Armando Ruiz Alegria
Maria Cristina Balderas Razo Adriana Sanchez Irigoyen
Laura Janeth Barrera Gonzalez Susana Suarez Araiza
Veronica Maria Buenfil Cano Jonathan Sebastian Vazquez Morales
Anayanci Camacho Higuera Rafael Alberto Velasco Argente
Elsa Alejandra Cardenas Benavides Marina Isela Velazquez Cruz
Guty Cardenas Soberanis Grisel Patio Yaez
Patricia Guadalupe Castillo William Slade
MartinezLiliana Jazmin Castro Nucamendi
Rogelio Emmanuel Constantino Briones
Maricela De La Torre Ramirez
Sonia Angelica Delgado Rios
Cecilia Olimpia Encarnacion Lara
Nancy Gabriela Estrada Rangel
Miguel Angel Flores Reyes
Dalia Dinorah Garcia Reyna
Martha Cristina Gomez Paredes
Mariana Guerrero Barron
Hermila Hernandez Martinez
Mariana Hernandez Tamez
Guillermo Huerta Gutierrez
Ignacio Jerez Chapa
Misheli Jimenez Meza
Raquel Macias Nieto
Veronica Marmolejo Najera
Julio Cesar Mastache Ocampo
Ricardo Mendez Aguilar
Mynor Allan Morales Ballesteros
Facundo Carlos Morales Perez
Liliana Karina Muro Garcia
Noe Najera Mendez
Ma Dolores Oliver Conde
Gloria Laura Olvera Larios
Ana Catelina Orozco Lozano
Julieta Nuez Oveido
Bricia Maria de Jesus Orozco Pea
Eloy Raul Perez Aguirre
Zhenia Perez Larios