Image: MorBCN
For the sake of hypothesis, I'd like to ask you a question. And present you with an interesting choice.
You're teaching English to children who are aged about 10-11. They've been at this English caper for about four or five years already, and have a pretty good level. Let's say they're a bit beyond Cambridge YLE Flyers level, and somewhere in the vicinity of mid-PET (or getting reasonably close to pre-Intermediate).
You're on the hunt for some new ideas and materials to use with these kids, and you roll around to good ol' English Raven's site and you see two versions of an extended teaching/learning endeavour. We'll assume for now that both versions basically match the existing language level and learning needs of your students (in terms of the linguistic demands).
Version A is a fully scripted out adventure story, complete with excellent pictures, audio files to accompany each passage of text, review questions with answer keys, and quizzes to help you with overall assessment. Oh, and a bunch of supplementary activity ideas.
Version B is the same adventure story, but almost none of the content has been provided--just the pictures. The general idea is that the learners, with assistance from the teacher, make the story up as they go, either as a class or in groups or--for those who prefer it--individually. There are prompts to help things along, as well as extensive teacher notes explaining ways to facilitate the story and to help the learners make it their own.
Please forgive me here, but I don't want any fence-sitting. It's not a crime to prefer one of these versions over the other (and yes, I know, they both have their positives and negatives).
In essence, which of them appeals to you and excites you in terms of what it could achieve in your classroom with these pre-Intermediate learners of English aged 10-11? Version A or Version B?
In some ways, I might dare to label Version A as the preference of the teacher who is coming (to the learners with planned and controlled input, first and foremost), while Version B is the tool of choice for the teacher who is going (with the learners away into new and mostly unplanned territory, working more or less from output).
So, remembering again that this is not about judging either kind of teacher, which teacher are you: the one who is coming or the one who is going? What is your instinct telling you?
Would absolutely love to read your responses to this!
:-)
