There is something very beautiful that's been going on between Brazil and Palestine.It all started last summer when I was sponsored by Cambridge University Press to go to Brazil to do a series of talks all over the country. I was talking about the use of images in language learning and, since images are such an integral part in the way we work, I mentioned the Hands Up Project a lot. The talks went down well but the Hands Up Project went down even better!
Read MoreWe are very pleased to announce the results of the Hands Up Project Playwriting and play performing competition for Palestinian children.Though I have had the enormous pleasure of watching and reading all 88 plays that were submitted, I was not involved in the process of picking the winners at all.
Read More‘The difference between theatre and classroom drama is that in theatre everything is contrived so that the audience gets the kicks. In the classroom, the participants get the kicks.’ So wrote the acclaimed drama in education specialist, Dorothy Heathcote in Drama as a learning medium; Wagner (1999). But we shouldn't just take Dorothy's word for this.
Read MoreThis week we have a guest post from an old friend of mine who I used to work with in Birmingham about 20 years ago. Jon Turner now lives in UAE and has been volunteering once a week with children in Palestine. I really like his take on the traditional 2 truths and a lie activity and have since tried it out myself very successfully with my own groups in Gaza and Zaatari. Over to you Jon!
Read MoreI've written many posts on this blog about the value of drama in second language development and particularly about how helping learners to create their own plays can be a rich learning experience. Here I'd like to look at a specific example of how a play was developed over a number of weeks out of one simple writing exercise with a group of Syrian children in Zaatari refugee camp, Jordan.
Read MoreI've just been on another visit to Gaza, this time to Beit Hanoun and Rafah areas, where I ran a series of drama workshops with children. I've come back invigorated and brimming with ideas, and this is down, in no small part to the incredible energy, the creativity, and the life giving force that so many people have there.
Read MoreStephen Krashen's big idea in 'The power of reading' (1993) was that reading for pleasure, or free voluntary reading (FVR) as he referred to it , was in many cases more conducive to language development than direct teaching alone. He cites lots of research to back up his view. I read the book in the late nineties when I was teaching English to very diverse multilingual groups of adults at the Brasshouse Centre in Birmingham, and it had a huge influence on the way that I conducted by classes.
Read MoreThis week we have a guest post by Armenian English teacher and teacher trainer, Ani Aloyan. I met Ani in Armenia about 2 months ago when I was running a storytelling course for teachers, organised by British Council Armenia. In this post Ani discusses some great techniques for demonstrating and checking meaning when storytelling. She's just about to deliver her own storytelling course for teachers in a different region of Armenia now. Thanks for the post Ani and thanks too for sharing the Palestinian story of Jbene with teachers and children in Armenia.
Read MoreBrowsing through a friends bookshelves the other day, I came across a book which until then, I'd somehow pretty much forgotten about. 'Lessons from the Learner' by Sheelagh Dellar (Longman 1990) is a real classic, and had a huge influence on what I did and, more importantly, what the learners did in my classes when I first starting teaching.
Read MoreThis week a post from Julietta Schoenmann who has recently started volunteering with us with a group of Syrian children in Za'atari refugee camp, Jordan. Jules is the joint coordinator of the IATEFL Global issues Special interest group and has just returned from a week training teachers of refugees in Greece. Over to you Jules...Ding!
Read MoreThis week we have another guest post from ELT author, teacher trainer and long- term Hands Up Project volunteer, Paul Dummet. Over to you Paul....
Read MoreI was disappointed not to be able to go to the Palestine Expo which took place at the Queen Elizabeth centre in the heart of London, this weekend. This was a huge event, expected to be attended by up to 10.000 people, celebrating Palestinian culture including music, cookery, storytelling and other spoken word events. I'd planned to go but at the last minute something came up and I couldn't make it. I hope it was a huge success.
Read MoreIn previous posts on this blog, I've written about the importance of activities which combine controlled and freer language use; the kind of thing where learners get repeated, controlled practice of areas of language, but also where they have opportunities to use language to share their opinions and personalities with the people around them - what we might call genuine communication.
Read MoreA few weeks ago, I announced that the Hands Up Project will be running a play writing competition for young learners in Palestine.
Read MoreThis week we have a guest post by one of the latest teachers to join our ever expanding pool of volunteers around the world, Emi Slater. What Emi writes fits in very well with the current trend in the work of the Hands Up Project to focus more on children creating stories, rather than merely consuming them. Over to you Emi...
Read MoreAfter working online with so many different groups of children and their teachers in Gaza over the past two years, it was such a joy to meet some of them face to face last week when I finally managed to get there in person. The British Council and UNRWA organised a wonderful conference where Scott Thornbury and I both gave plenary workshops for the 250 Gazan teachers of English who attended.
Read MoreHere's a post by Sahar Salha in Gaza and Alex Guzik in Russia, which shows the wonderful way that teachers are working together to produce very effective classes for children through the Hands Up Project.
Read MoreThe other day I found myself suddenly having to cover an online session in Gaza because I'd forgotten that one of our volunteers wasn't able to make it. I didn't have any specific plans so I began by asking the boys what they would like to do in the session
Read MoreAnyone who came to my talk about drama at IATEFL, Glasgow on Tuesday will have seen two groups of children performing two traditional Palestinian stories (Jbene and The farmer who followed his dream) live and remotely from the UNRWA field office in Gaza city.
Read MoreI've always liked Total Physical Response (TPR) as as an approach to language learning. It's a safe and relatively unchallenging activity for learners, but at the same time it provides them with lots of meaningful and highly memorable language exposure
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