Amsterdam Reading
I believe that the English teachers in any state school can consider themselves lucky. Before you laugh at my statement or disagree because a very difficult day at work comes to mind, let me explain.
I think we are lucky in the sense that we can train our students to approach the language in a way they feel comfortable with, in a way they consider interesting. We can take them away from the coursebook, away from the routine and in doing so they can also learn. In that way they can anticipate a new English lesson each week and we can be certain we are doing the best we can.
Surely, it takes a lot of preparation. The following session I prepared for my A class students, is based on a text from the coursebook we have been using, but instead of reading from the book, we did some differentiated activities according to each student's level of competency and finished with some productive work on their part. It was designed for two teaching hours. They loved the role play activity and we ended up talking about places we would like to visit. Quite a few smiling faces there!