TeachingEnglish
In the Teacher’s Shoes
Submitted by TE Editor on 26 January, 2012 - 07:18
This is great for the first class with a new group or when you come back to class after a holiday or even after a weekend.
- Put students into 2 teams. Ask the teams to write five questions they’d like to ask you.
- Then ask for a volunteer from each team to sit at the front of the class. They are going to imagine they are you, and spend a few minutes ‘in the teacher’s shoes’!
- The teams ask their questions and the students at the front who are in your shoes must try to answer the questions as they think you would answer them.
- You decide whose response is closest to your own answer to the question and award points accordingly.
(Thanks to Andy Gemmel for this idea.)
By Jo Budden
First published 2009
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Very interesting idea! Many students like imitating teachers, so it will be lots of fun when students replying questions will even try to mime the teacher. Good way to develop drama skills as well.
Thanks for sharing, I will definitely use it
Irina
Great activity worth trying! I have a very difficult student. Although she is smart and hard-working, she tends to be hysterical and panicky. Most of my lessons have the form of discussion with students participating willingly. So I don't call on them to go. It happens, however, that a student chooses to say nothing about this or that question. The "difficult student" deliberately withdraws from any discussion. So I have to draw her out. Whenever I do draw her out she refuses to say anything. If I don't, she disrupts the class because I don't call on her. So "In the Teacher's Shoes" activity does not only give a great chance for students to act and communicate, but it will serve her right.
TE Team
Hi!
Great to see that you both were planning on using this activity in your classes. Let us know how it went!
Best wishes, Jo.
Well, I haven't tried it out yet. As soon as I do I'll let you know(probably in a couple of weeks)
I had a lesson the topic of which was "Studying". It was solely a communicative lesson:group and team work, whole class discussions, competitions which involved students' movement around the cllassroom. I reserved "In the Teacher's Shoes" till the very end of the lesson and used this activity to round the lesson off. It went fine with lots of excitement on the students' part. However if you use the activity in its own right, your students need to be used to ( and in a way trained to do) activities involving drama elements.
Dear Jo Budden,
I have read your lesson Shakespeare for school assistants and wrote my comments too. the lesson was fantastic and creative.Now i happen to see the lesson 'in the teacher's shoes' which is really a marvellous idea.I am an english teacher at secondary level and teacher trainer. I am fond of creative activities.On the reopening day after the holidays i ask my students to talk about their experiences which they narrate very enthusiastically.But i have never asked them to imagine what i have done during the vacation.I would like to use this activity after i come back from Bangalore where i am going on text book preparation as a key resource person.Thanks a lot for a marvellous idea.
With kind regards,
Yours sincerely,
Jvl narasimharao
Really like this idea, though i can imagine younger students getting perhaps a little over-excited but will give it a go, thanks!
Dear Ms Jo Budden,
Recently I have been to Bangalore as part of my textbook preparation. My students knew that I had been to some where on doing something.
I asked my students to act in pairs;one acts like me and the other like him/her. Each PAIR started asking 3 questions and GIVING 3 answers each. Their grammar was not correct and their guesses were all wrong. The beauty of this actvity is its creativity. Our students have ideas but they dont have sufficient vocabulary or grammar to do the activities very well. In the end i told them what had really happened and why I had gone and what places I had seen etc.
The activity created not only ideas but also language among the students,my students and I really enjoyed ourselves. Thank you very much for your creative idea. I hope you will respond soon even this time.
Yours sincerely,
JVL NARASIMHA RAO
I am not quite sure to apply it specially this month because some of them are thinking about my birthday and It is this month but I don't feel comfortable to celebrate it during class, and I am certain they are going to ask the exact date, Have you got any advice for me???
Nice idea! Thanks!:)