BSL mini course - Week starting 03/02/14

Monday - 3pm - 4pm

Tuesday - 2pm - 3pm

Wednesday - 3pm - 4pm

It's 5 weeks into the course and I have been encouraged to see the progress made by many students. Even those individuals that aren't quite as capable are still prepared to have a full and active share in class. I kept reminding them that they have only had 4 hours of learning, so if some of the vocabulary hasn't quite stuck in the memory, it's not a problem. What matters most is clinging to the key principles behind how to sign, vocabulary can be picked up any time from books and the internet.

I endeavoured to make this week as much about being student led as I could. So all three main activities were engineered to that end.

1. Affirmation and Negation - all based around a list compiled by the students. I found it a great tool to see the direction the student's minds were taking, often dictated by the vocabulary they wanted to learn. It saves me the job of being a mind reader, although I reserved the right to insert the odd useful sign from time to time.
2. Conversation - Again the only criteria I placed on this session, was that the conversation should have questions built into it. I found that this student led approach kept the collective class focus in focus... This was their conversation that they either used to try something amusing, revisit some old vocabulary or stretch forward and try out something new - each class was different and inadvertently built differentiation into my lesson plans themselves. 
3. Finally I used a very simple approach to teach some more vocabulary. Each student wore a badge that identified the Multichannel sign they had learnt. They all went around the group at a pace comfortable to them and repeated the circuit as often as they liked, learning from each other, even correcting each other if necessary. Eventually we all got together and had a quick fire memory test... 

Areas for improvement :

While I would like to believe my classes have been quite interactive, this week took it up a notch in my humble opinion. I would like to carry this forward and keep up the levels of student led learning.

The only draw back is that It's difficult for me to produce vocabulary worksheets if I'm not fully aware of the content of some exercises. Perhaps, I can still add some key signs to each lesson that can form the handouts I produce. Any student generated vocabulary can always be recorded in their own notes.