Telling the Story of Thanksgiving Using a Story Map

This is an example of a story map for Thanksgiving. Finding out what vocabulary the students know and introducing new vocabulary should be done before drawing the story map. Also, draw the map as you tell the story. This helps with comprehensible input. Drawing the entire map ahead of time may contribute to visual overwhelm and reduce comprehension of target vocabulary and ideas.

Today we learned about the first Thanksgiving and why the Pilgrims came to the New World. Before we began, I asked everyone what words came to mind when they heard the word, “Thanksgiving.” The words “turkey,” “family,” and “dinner” were called out by our students. I wrote these on the board.

As I told the story of the history of Thanksgiving, I drew pictures on the dry erase board to help illustrate key points I wanted our students to know and remember. In this case, I started with England on the right side of the dry erase board and moved westward, to the New World. New vocabulary was introduced and explained as we progressed through the story. We also paused for a three-minute video about Thanksgiving that included captions.

After sitting for a while, I asked everyone to stand up in a small group. Speaking doesn’t just happen when sitting in a classroom setting, after all. The students took turns sharing a sentence or two about the picture to tell the story in chronological order. I then challenged each student to tell the entire story independently.

Later, the students were given time to write their stories in their notebooks and have their teacher check them. Interestingly, the students repeated common errors when reading their stories aloud despite reading their own (corrected) writing; however, progress was still made. At first, when I asked what came to mind when they heard the word, “Thanksgiving,” only three words came to mind. Now they are able to talk about the history of Thanksgiving. One of the students commented that the story map was helpful for being able to talk about and write about this topic. Overall, I would consider this lesson to be a success!

Using Improvisation in the Classroom

I recommend taking an improv class for so many reasons, one of which is that some of the exercises can become great springboards for ideas to get students to speak in a group language class. Knowing how to read and write in a language is quite different from speaking it. This is especially true with some Japanese women I have taught. Although their spouses may have opportunities to use English in the workplace, many Japanese women I’ve met tend to befriend other Japanese whose husbands have been assigned to work in the United States. Making American or other English-speaking friends can be tough.

From what I have learned, the Japanese can read and write with a fair amount of clarity; however, forming spoken sentences doesn’t happen without a lot of thought first. Sometimes a series of imperfect sentences can communicate much more than a few perfectly constructed sentences. My goal is to create an environment in which students feel free to try to speak in front of their classmates and me with the understanding that they will be corrected afterwards so that they can ultimately improve and communicate more fluently. This has to be done carefully so the students are not discouraged from speaking at all.

One recent activity that I did with a group of four women was to role play buying a used car. First, I introduced some vocabulary. Next, we listened to a dialogue while reading the script silently, and then the students were paired off. Each person took turns with the role of salesperson and car buyer while reading the script aloud. Afterwards, I modeled how to act out the skit without the script and emphasized that the skit did not have to exactly match the original dialogue. (I chose the most advanced student who was the least shy to help model how to do this.) After we completed the demonstration, I asked the women to work their partner and take turns playing each role without a script. After some practice, it was showtime.

The grand finale was when I had the students speed up the performances from about five minutes to a time limit of three minutes. The result was that the students spoke more naturally, sounded more fluent, and were talking to an actual person while speaking. It wasn’t just reading from a script anymore. It was about interacting.

Improvisation is a part of daily life. We may have patterns that we use in different situations, but ultimately, we think of what we’re going to say depending on whom we are speaking with and what the situation is. Rehearsing is a good idea when stakes are high, but reading from cue cards is not nearly as effective as communicating with the person in front of you.

Follow-up to Learning Phrasal Verbs with Student-created Illustrations

A week has passed. Everyone remembered the meaning of each phrasal verb that they drew pictures for the previous week. In the follow-up lesson, students were grouped into pairs. Each student had to create a sentence using the phrasal verb together. Their partner had to rephrase the sentence that their partner had spoken and they had to separate the phrasal verbs with the object.

The class moved on to other topics, but I think that the lesson with phrasal verbs was a successful one and will be repeated as homework for future groups of phrasal verbs by having students first illustrate the meaning and then creating sentences two different ways, assuming that they are studying separable phrasal verbs. I would recommend introducing no more than about eight phrasal verbs per week, but it may depend on the level of your students.

Learning Phrasal Verbs

Phrasal verbs are useful expressions in English. They are made by combining a verb plus an adverb or preposition. Sometimes, the combination of the words does not retain the same meaning as the individual parts. "Take off" can mean "to remove," as in, "Please take off your shoes when you enter the house." In this case, the words "take" and "off" make it easier to understand the phrasal verb "take off" because each word retains its original meaning. "Take off" can also mean to launch, accelerate, or move away quickly. This meaning may not be as obvious to students.

Learning phrasal verbs can be a challenge, but it is important for students to learn them in order to become more fluent speakers. It also greatly helps in understanding native speakers of English. Today, some of our students were introduced to separable phrasal verbs used in everyday situations. These are phrasal verbs that have an object, and are also known as "transitive phrasal verbs." While it is less important for students to learn what these are called, it is more important to know how to use them.

Some phrasal verbs can take a direct object, such as "hand in." We can hand in a report, our homework, etc. If the phrasal verb takes a direct object, then the direct object can be inserted between the parts of the phrasal verb.

We can say, "I handed in my homework" or "I handed my homework in."

We can also substitute a pronoun for the direct object.

"I handed it in" is correct,.

"I handed in it" is incorrect.

Pronouns that replace the direct object cannot go to the end of a sentence.

People have various learning styles, but one of the most common types of learners is the visual learner. With that in mind, students tried drawing pictures that represented some phrasal verbs that were learned today. This was done with a small group of adult women who study English for everyday situations. The students were encouraged to draw something that would help them remember the phrasal verbs later. Later in the day, a business English student was asked to do the same thing. Here are the resulting illustrations.

This activity can be adjusted according to ability. For some, there was plenty of time to create an illustration and a corresponding sentence.

The first step was to learn the meanings of the phrasal verbs. The next step will be to use these in a way that practices how to insert the direct object between the parts of the phrasal verbs. By having students write sentences with the illustrations, the instructor can see what grammar points will need to be reviewed later. For now, the objective is to learn the new vocabulary.

For other students, more time was spent on the illustration to help remember the phrasal verbs. (I think there is an artist in the class.)

Other students needed more time to understand each phrasal verb and create a matching picture.

This could be something that students do again as homework. It will be interesting to see how many of these phrasal verbs will have been retained when the class meets again the following week.

While these are not all separable phrasal verbs, these are examples of drawings that one of the students of business English created to help him remember the meanings of some commonly used phrasal verbs. He will review the meanings of each one and be asked to create spoken sentences using these in his next lesson.