Monday, 17 February 2025

using the white/black/interactive board in the esl/esol/tefl class

Have you used a white board (or black board!) or some sort of digital board (online or interactive) recently - and what have you used it for?

It can be a very useful tool indeed - and can be planned quite carefully.

For example:

And more ideas to plan for:

  • brainstorming using a mindmap/spidergram
  • prediction and input before another activity
  • feedback after an activity

When it comes to more spontaneous use of the board, we need to think about:

  • colour-coding for different aspects of language
    • word class
    • grammatical features
    • collocation
  • where to write on the board
  • how long to leave it
  • what the students should be recording themselves
  • features of pronunciation 
    • phonemic script
    • word stress and sentence stress
    • connected speech
    • intonation patterns
  • more than just words: context, dialogue, sentences
And all of this can be used for recycling and practice at the end of the lesson:
  • definitions, explanations, translations
  • more sentences/collocations/examples
  • topic around the word
  • synonyms/antonyms
  • drilling/pronunciation
The board can also be used for language improvement - or delayed error correction:

Some basics:

  • how clear and large is your writing or typing?
  • how about dividing the board into sections?!
  • don't worry if your spelling is wrong! get the students to look it up!
  • ask your students for feedback about using the board
And we can all reflect afterwards about how we've used the board.

Finally, some links/further reading:

With thanks to JW for putting on an excellent seminar.

.

.

.

No comments: