One of the greatest challenges of virtual teaching for me has been introducing new vocabulary. Although I have taken a more comprehensible input approach in the past few years, where will we read articles, watch videos, or listen to songs to learn new vocab, it is still a challenge to make sure that not only am I presenting it correctly, but that my students have been able to retain and later use what I want them to.
Most of this challenge comes from the difficulty of doing comprehension checks or checks for understanding in real time, where students show an understanding of what language they are interacting with that demonstrates to me they are ready to produce their own vocabulary at the end of the lesson. To overcome this challenge, I have taken a hard look lately at how I can better utilize my presentations for my students. By making presentations interactive, collaborative, and manipulable, I am able to make sure my students are ready for more challenging or advanced activities, even if I cannot see their notes.
These activities will be kept fairly generic, so that you may create them in whatever platform you prefer, such as ClassFlow or PowerPoint.
#1: Make it Shareable!
One of the best ways to ensure that students are understanding what you want to say is to offer space on your teacher presentations for them to put down their own ideas. While students should still receive notes, flashcards, or whatever you find best for them to take down their new information, making the main presentation a collaboration space ends up benefiting everyone. Whether the intention is that students can directly contribute, or you provide hyperlinks for student practice and have students share results, the teacher is able to get real time feedback and comprehension checks, students are able to express their opinions and thoughts in a safe space, and students who do not understand the material are able to see more examples and student-led learning that will help them retain the content.
#2: Host a Q+A
On your presentation, one quick and simple collaboration space is a teacher-led Q+A session. This can be done on the presentation itself if you are using ClassFlow or PearDeck, or can be done in other apps such as Google Meet. For example, if you are teaching sports, after your input activity, post a question such as “What is your favorite team sport?” and give students an opportunity to answer. Students are practicing their new vocabulary, and you are creating a simple comprehension check that helps you ensure students understand the vocabulary, ranging from how to say the names of sports in the target language to making sure they understand which sports are group or individual.
#3 Utilize Polls
Polls and ranked choice activities are a great introductory activity for new vocabulary, and allow students to interact with the language without having to produce original content they are not ready for. Polls can range from a question similar to a Q+A, where the teacher asks for the most interesting vacation destination, or where students rank their top 5 choices and share their results. Students are not only interacting with the language personally, but are seeing others interact with it too, creating more opportunities for exposure. PollEverywhere and Google Meet both have great and simple poll functions.
Polls and ranked choice activities are a great introductory activity for new vocabulary, and allow students to interact with the language without having to produce original content they are not ready for. Polls can range from a question similar to a Q+A, where the teacher asks for the most interesting vacation destination, or where students rank their top 5 choices and share their results. Students are not only interacting with the language personally, but are seeing others interact with it too, creating more opportunities for exposure. PollEverywhere and Google Meet both have great and simple poll functions.
Although we have had to rethink the way we teach in the past year, the nimble application of technology to virtual learning can contribute to a return to the kind of collaboration and interaction we as language teacher teachers long for.. As long as you keep your teaching goals the same as you would in a normal classroom, knowing what your tools can do will help you reach these goals; even if they look a little different, you are still striving for the same outcomes!