Teaching idioms (Part 3)

The loudest group!- evadne, qiao wen, joyce and jin lye

 Can you guess the idioms?

 

Wee Nee, Shiau Chean, Jia Hui and Bao Yee hard at work!

It's raining cats and dogs

The two politicians do not see eye to eye (notice the eyes hehe)

Another lesson on idioms as part of my action research am working on now. These are some posters produced by the groups to illustrate the idioms assigned to them. All students had to guess the idioms by looking at the drawings.  Although this lesson was a bit of a rush we managed to complete the activity. Some feedback from my students:

• 
  
  This lesson uses an interesting way to teach the student idioms. I like the lesson very much as student can put on the thinking cap and think what to draw on a piece of paper. The lesson is fun ^ ^
• It is interesting and involving group work. However, I think this way of learning idioms are not really effective. We actually learn a few idioms only during the lesson compared to lesson 1 and 2.
• This lesson help me to understand and remember the idioms better through the drawings. It was an unforgettable lesson because those drawings are very interesting and we ourselves drew it.
• Picture or image is always the best for our brain to understand and remember something. Idioms Poster makes me learn the idioms more easily and leisurely. I like drawing as well.
• I haven't learnt idioms through this before. It is an interesting activity. I like this activity most as it helps me to remember the idioms through pictures.
• By using our creativity to draw the poster and guess what the idioms are, we can remember and understand the idioms better and longer.

My reflections:

I personally found the lesson very stimulating! It gave me insights on what a visual context (and a richer one at that) can do to teach idioms. I always like to challenge myself and see how far I can go with methods I've never tried. Although my students were too excited (to the point that my voice was drowned in all that noise...the teacher next door must be thinking what on earth was I doing in the class and I would have failed  badly if the inspectorates were to observe me in this lesson ...phew!!) I think they didn't miss the point. Two students however commented that they were not too comfortable learning this way-they are probably so used to textbook lessons in their previous forms. Well, the research continues...