Jay Doubleyou

Thursday, 6 March 2025

today is world book day in the uk and ireland!

There are are in fact several 'world book days':

In this part of the world it's Thursday 6th March:

World Book Day - World Book Day | World Book Day is a registered charity. Our mission is to give every child and young person a book of their own.

A lot of it is about getting kids to show how much they can enjoy reading:

Prepare yourself to see some utterly awesome World Book Day costumes! You've been uploading your character creations from authors like Roald Dahl and Dav Pilkey. Your outfits range from bears to queens to intergalactic Jedi knights...

World Book Day 2025: Your incredible costumes - BBC Newsround

But not everyone can afford a costume to show off at school:

World Book Day: Why schools are asking pupils not to wear costumes of favourite characters | The Standard

Let’s end the performative hell of compulsory World Book Day costumes | The Independent

The point really is to show young people in particular the joys of reading for pleasure:

World Book Day provides a fantastic opportunity to focus on reading for pleasure, supporting children's autonomy in book choice, and embedding a habit of reading that brings a wide range of benefits.

World Book Day 2025 – Ideas and Activities | National Literacy Trust | National Literacy Trust

As one young person says, it's been really inspiring:

Amaya, our youngest writer, describes how her love of books has shaped her mission to protect nature and her ambition to be a marine biologist...

...
File:Common Seal - Horsey Beach, Norfolk (44451475895).jpg - Wikimedia Commons

My mummy and daddy have always read books to me since I was a baby, and I now love to read them myself. I have two favourite books, which are Disney’s Frozen and Dolphin Tale.

Today is one of my favourite days of the year: it is World Book Day

It's all happening on the BBC today:

World Book Day 2025 - Live Lesson - BBC

Wednesday, 5 March 2025

teaching 'unplugged' twenty-five years on

Over the years, these pages have looked at 'teaching unplugged', the last time some six years ago:

Jay Doubleyou: the 'dogme' approach or 'teaching unplugged':

In fact, the idea started some twenty-five years ago:

Scott Thornbury came up with this approach in 2000, following on from an article he wrote questioning the reliance on coursebooks and other classroom staples.

What is the Dogme ELT approach or Teaching Unplugged? - English Lessons Brighton

Teaching Unplugged is the term used for a teaching method and philosophy which has three primary aims: teaching through conversation, taking out external input such as course book and technology and letting the lesson content be driven by the students rather than being pre-planned by the teacher. Based on the ‘Dogme ELT’ approach to teaching, its origins lie in an article written in 2001 by Scott Thornbury and Luke Meddings called ‘The roaring in the chimney’. They later wrote ‘Teaching Unplugged’, a comprehensive guide to this type of teaching and winner of the British Council ELTons award for Innovation in 2010.The ‘Teaching Unplugged’ or ‘Dogme ELT’ movement has a very strong following amongst teachers. In fact, Dogme ELT discussion list, which was originally set up in March 2000 by Scott Thornbury to help bring this style of teaching to the fore, has now been disbanded, not due to lack of interest but because he felt the support had become so strong the method was ready to stand alone.

The main reason it’s become so popular is that the main focus is one hundred per cent on the students’ actual language needs. Take for example the elementary student who comes into class and says excitedly ‘See..friend..no see….fifteen years!’ Instead of saying ‘Oh, that’s nice! Now open your book at page twenty seven, we’re looking at the past simple’, the teacher constructs the sentence on the board: ‘I’ve just seen a friend I haven’t seen for fifteen years!’ The beauty is that, even if this use of the present perfect doesn’t come up in your course until pre-intermediate, you’re confident that the student knows exactly what this means as it is her own sentence and you’re absolutely sure you’ve just taught her something new as she definitely couldn’t say it before. The teacher then encourages other questions if students take an interest. ‘How.. you…know?’ ‘Where…you..meet?’ ‘What..he ..do..fifteen years?’ ‘ He change?’ The teacher now has a board full of great questions and a topic which can then be used as the basis for the class.

Teaching Unplugged | TeachingEnglish | British Council

Here's the original piece:

USING THE RAW MATERIALS THORNBURY MEDDINGS 2001 - Google Search

With a different aspect on the whole approach given in 2012:

A dogme based approach from the learners’ perspective.

Tuesday, 4 March 2025

students making their own 'comprehension questions' in the esl/esol/tefl classroom

If we want students to learn to read and listen better, we can look at the ideas of Stephen Krashen:

Jay Doubleyou: to acquire a language you need lots of comprehensible input

Jay Doubleyou: "focus more so on input & absorbing the language"

Jay Doubleyou: krashen and the comprehensible input theory

Much of it is about getting the students to learn to read and listen by and for themselves:

Jay Doubleyou: creating learner independence outside of the classroom

Especially as learners need to work without a teacher:

Jay Doubleyou: how teaching interferes with learning

A teacher can be useful if they are getting the students to learn by themselves:

Studies have shown that passive engagement in a class or activity does not lead to better learning. In some cases it may have the opposite effect. Ask any teacher with a few years of experience and they will tell you that students who take part more in class are more likely to become more effective learners.

Asking questions to better examine an idea is perhaps the most essential tool to not only involve learners but also activate intellectual processes. Memory, recall, comprehension and reflection all take place during a debate or active discussion. Having These activities in the classroom allows for higher order thinking to take place.

Using Socratic Questions in the ESL/TEFL Classroom – ESL Debates

But what about getting the students to make up the questions themselves?

Here we have some 'fun' type of questions the students could put together to ask their colleagues:

12 Fun ESL Reading Comprehension Activities for All Levels!

For something more 'serious', we can go to the type of questions found in the Cambridge First Certificate exam:

B2 First preparation | Cambridge English

FCE Practice Tests for Reading and Use of English (Cambridge English: First)

And once we have the type of 'difficult' question in mind, we can then try and make up similar questions with almost any material - from film reviews and clips to news reports and sports commentary.

Monday, 3 March 2025

non-linear lesson planning in the esl/esol/tefl classroom

How do we go about planning a lesson?

We can throw out questions and see how they progress:

Jay Doubleyou: socratic method pt 2

We can focus on 'getting something done':

Jay Doubleyou: task-based learning

We can find lots of ready-made lesson plans to guide us through 'what to do':

Jay Doubleyou: free english lessons with esolcourses.com

But we need something flexible enough to manage different levels/expectations/personalities:

Jay Doubleyou: mixed levels in the esl/esol/tefl classroom

Perhaps a non-linear approach would help:

When it comes to learning new skills... every type of student is different. Some people prefer linear learning, others non-linear learning. Some excel by listening to a teacher in the classroom and absorbing the information from A to Z, others thrive by a learning process that doesn’t necessarily follow a fixed, pre-programmed path but is dynamic, interactive, and intuitive. As we are propelled into the future of work, the need for agile and efficient learning strategies is rising. So when we look at linear vs non-linear learning, what is the most effective approach.

Linear vs Non-linear Learning and the Future of Work

Duncan Foord writing in the E T Professional looks at 'lesson planning right from the heart':

Lesson Planning From The Heart PDF | PDF

As a colleague points out:

Back in August as I was preparing to teach my first ever teacher training course, I stumbled upon an article called Lesson planning right from the heart by Duncan Foord (English Teaching Professional, 93, July 2014 – the article is available here if you’re a subscriber), and the idea suggested there struck a deep cord with me; we discussed the article with the trainees on the very first day of the course, and I think it sent a very important message and made a lot of difference to the outcome of the whole course.

In his article, Foord suggests planning the lesson in a way that reflects the approach outlined above, by stepping away from a ‘linear’ lesson plan (in which the task comes at the end and might easily get sacrificed for time reasons) and instead thinking of the plan as a heart (the task, which is the lesson aim) – supported by activities, all of which are valuable, and yet ‘droppable’:

...

2014 take-aways – and a few resolutions | Olya Sergeeva's ELT blog

Here are some more ideas:

Using Linear and Non-linear Teaching Strategies to Meet the Multiple Learning Needs of Students - Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning

Is non-linear approach to teaching more effective than traditional coursebook approach? | TEFL Tips - YouTube

Non‐linearity and the observed lesson

Friday, 28 February 2025

teaching sport in the esl/esol/tefl class

There are many different approaches teachers can take when 'doing sport' in the English classroom.

Here are some ideas and lesson plans.

...

the decline in reading in the uk - and ways to reverse it

Reading is good for you.

It improves your own language, especially when young:

Jay Doubleyou: "children who read for pleasure are better at english"

It improves your learning of another language:

Jay Doubleyou: 'first language literacy skills enhance second language learning'

Jay Doubleyou: reading really is the best way to improve (your own and a second) language

And there are lots of ways to do it:

Jay Doubleyou: how to get back to reading

Jay Doubleyou: do you enjoy reading?

Jay Doubleyou: reading skills

The problem, at least in the UK, is that we're reading less:

More than a third of UK adults have given up reading for pleasure, study finds | Books | The Guardian

Report finds ‘shocking and dispiriting’ fall in children reading for pleasure | Books | The Guardian

It's not just in the UK that it's happening:

Recent studies have highlighted a disturbing trend: over 50 percent of American adults haven't read a book in the past year. Worse still, fewer younger people are reading, and they read less than half the amount of older generations.

This is a unfortunate, since reading has so many scientifically-backed benefits: it increases intelligence, improves memory (especially in later life), makes it easier to relate to others, reduces stress, helps us to sleep better, and more.

So why aren't people reading as much as they once did? And what can be done to reverse this trend? In this post, I take a stab at answering both those questions. Here are 5 reasons why people aren't reading, and 5 good solutions to this problem...

5 Reasons People Don't Read Anymore, And 5 Good Solutions

There are indeed ways to reverse this:

From a silent reading club in Plymouth to "book fairies" who hide interesting reads around Cornwall, book lovers aim to open a new chapter on the story of people's relationship with reading.

Most imagine reading to be a solitary pastime but a group in Plymouth has found fellowship through enjoying books together. Members of the Silent Book Club, which meet in venues around Plymouth, bring their favourite books to read quietly for an hour before chatting and sharing recommendations. The club has its roots in the USA where it was formed by Guinevere de la Mare, with her friend Laura Gluhanich, in 2012. From its beginnings in San Francisco it has grown to have more than 1,500 chapters in 54 countries, including Plymouth in Devon.

Research by The Reading Agency, external, a charity encouraging leisure reading, including audiobooks and e-books, found those who considered themselves readers reported higher levels of social connection, sleep, better concentration and higher empathy. Carina Spaulding, the agency's head of research and evaluation, said data in a 2024 report showed reading as an activity in itself helped people feel more connected to others.

In Cornwall, a group of "fairies" are helping give people greater access to books. Unlike the fairies found in story books, they do not have wings or leave money in exchange for teeth, but instead hide books in public places for people to find. Carys Wiggans, who began the Cornish branch of The Book Fairies, said: "It's about getting people to read books that maybe they wouldn't normally read or have access to books that they don't have access to. There's no cost, there's nothing that is required from them except that excitement."

Can book fans turn the page on decline in reading? - BBC News

With more here:

Silent Book Club - About

Plymouth, Devon, UK – Silent Book Club

Official Cornish Book Fairy | Facebook