Humanistic Education and Total Physical Response Seminar

1. Humanistic Education and Total Physical Response Seminar by Armen Kassabian August 6th, 2014 Ingles Sem Fronteiras

2. How to Relate to Students effectively? How to get students talking, which they are naturally good at doing, but in English? How to harness student’s excitement, energy and hyperactivity? 1 Offer whole group, small group, pair and later-on individual tasks to complete that involve talking, group work, listening to each other (not just the teacher) and movement as a means of showing comprehension. 2 Be honestly interested in your students’ lives, try to see the world through their eyes, and continual ask yourself what’s relevant to their lives and see how to relate the lessons to their world view and reality. 3 Give sufficient language preparation before asking students to use this language to interact. 4 See how they socialize with each other, and have them socialize in similar ways but in English! 5 Give opportunities for students at different language levels to feel involved and successful, so that a student at the basic level as well as the intermediate both feel successful and confident after after leaving your classroom. 6 Focus not only on how students learn the language individually, but also how they learn together, and how they relate to each other during the lesson. Learning is a community, and not only a an individual action.

3. What is a Humanistic Education? Humanistic Education (also called person-centered education) is an approach to education based on the work of humanistic psychologists, most notably Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers. They teach that empathy, caring about students, and genuineness are traits of the most effective teachers. Teachers see the "whole person, the intellect, feelings, life, social capacities, artistic and practical skills of students.” Objectives include to develop learner self-esteem, their ability to set and achieve appropriate goals, and for students move towards developing full autonomy. Building self-esteem is essential in language learning, since feeling good about oneself involve an understanding of one’s strengths and weaknesses, and a belief in one's ability to improve also. What encourages people to want to learn English? Extrinsic rewards such as rewards from the outside world, e.g. praise, money, gold stars, etc or Intrinsic rewards such are rewards from within oneself, rather like a satisfaction of a need. The humanistic education aims at creating a need within the child to become a self-motivated learner.

4. Methods to Develop a Humanistic classroom Participatory and discovery methods would be favoured instead of traditional teacher knowing all information. A humanistic teacher is concerned with the student’s affective (or emotional) needs. Feeling and thinking are very much interlinked, since feeling positive about oneself facilitates learning. Curriculum focuses on what the children are concerned about. Focus on life skills - thinking skills combined with social skills (e.g. sharing and communicating) to achieve cooperative learning. Self-evaluation and self-monitoring Humanistic approaches use group processes, rather than just individual processes. Because learning a language is a group process, not just an individual one

5. Humanistic Activities List Humanism Theory (10 minutes) Beach Ball Questions game (1 or 2 groups, 10 minutes) Interview and Introduce an imaginary friend to the group Blind fold directions activity (groups of 5, 10 minutes) Arrange the Lyrics Game to Pharrell William’s Happy (whole group, 10 minutes) Improvisation activities (15 minutes) Telephone chain (whole group, 7 minutes) Four scenarios (pairs, 2 minutes switch)

6. If you could live in any other country, where would you live? If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what food would it be? If you could be any animal, what animal would you be? If you could do any job, what would you do? If you could speak any language in the world, what would you speak? Question to get to know someone What’s you name? How old are you? Where are you from? Where do you live? What's your favorite type of music? What´s your favorite TV series? What car do you drive? What’s your job?

7. Telephone Chain Student A calls any student (Student B) about anything. When conversation finished, Student B calls any student (Student C) about anything. Keep the chain going, it must be fast and is a Good warm-up. The answering student must make the next call fast (to maintain the activity dynamic).

8. Improvisation Scenarios in Pairs The Clairvoyant. Student A consults Student B who is a clairvoyant and asks questions about their love life, future career, family problems, money and health. The Tourist. Student A goes to another country (or planet) and calls home to tell Student B all about it.

9. Team Charades Guessing Game Groups of 5–6 students sit in a circle. One Student is it. A single object is placed in front of each group. One member of the group must transform the object into something else and demonstrate its use. The other members of the group guess what this new object is. When someone in the group guesses correctly, the next member of the group transforms the object into something different.

10. Total Physical Response Total Physical Response (TPR) is a method that was developed by James Asher in the late 1960s, with the goal of helping students acquire a second languages. In this method, students are more likely to be and feel successful when the tutor provides constant support and modeling and eliminates the pressure on students to speak the new words. TPR is most useful with beginning students who understand little or no English. Since you will be modeling the action as you speak, it will be especially important to use gestures and facial expressions.

11. Methodology for teaching TPR First model the action as you give the first command. Second, do the action with students several times, and give the command each time you do the action. Review all the commands in random order to be sure students can differentiate and repeat to show comprehension through movement, students don’t need to talk or repeat until they feel ready! the initial focus is comprehension. Third, Give the command without doing the action yourself, test comprehension Remodel the command and action again if the students have difficulty carrying out the command.

12. TPR Examples 1) First teach commands that call for simple body movements with no props:stand up, sit down, walk, and turn around. Starting with such basic commands to give students a welcome feeling of accomplishment; 2) Second, in more advanced TPR activities, students interact with props and people in the learning environment. Examples of commands to use at this stage are touch the, point to, pick up, put down, and give me. These are especially useful for teaching both the names of objects in pictures and of objectsthat are in the immediate environment, some of which may be out of reach. Before introducing each new commands, always review the commands you have already taught. Do not try to teach too many commands at one time, since you will also be reviewing previously taught vocabulary, introduce no more than four to six new commands per class.

13. Going Home Group Activity 1. Go home. 2. Walk upstairs. 3. Take out your key. 4. Put it in the keyhole. 5. Unlock the door. 6. Put the key away. 7. Turn the doorknob. 8. Open the door. 9. Go in. 10. Close the door. 11. Lock it. 12. Turn on the light. 13. Sit down and rest.

14. A Stroll around the Classroom Pair Activity You open your bag. You look inside. You take out your phone You turn it off. You turn it on. You put it in the bag. You look at your book. You open it. You close it. You touch your ear.

15. Humanistic and Total Physical Response Partner Assignment Create 8-10 original activities for our next seminar on August 27th, to present and play at least two activities with the class. They should be humanistic themed, fun and dynamic involvement group learning and teamwork. Activities will be evaluated for potential publication in a book that I’m working on with other ETAs in Sao Paolo, Maceio, Belem, Bragança, Bogata and Montevideo. You can potentially be part of this project if we accept your best lesson plan.