In this way , you have retained the actual occupation of copying but you have added to it the mental engagement of think of thinking. (There are some slightly more fun versions of this activity on page 97.)
Any teacher reading this is probably beginning to think, ‘This is all very well, but when am I supposed to find the time and energy to work this all out in my lesson planning? This brings us back to the second area where constructive realism is needed. Primary language teaching seems to make very considerable and often unreasonable demands on a teacher’s preparation time. It does, of course, help to get the children to make some of the actual materials for you. They can cut things up or colour things in, for examble. We can also take comfort in the fact that some of the most effective ideas in the classroom are very simple and easy to set up, like the ‘ guess which one I’ve chosen’ activity mentioned earlier.
There are also three other main ways we can help ourselves. We need to remember to :
- Keep the lesson simple ;
- Reuse materials;
- Reuse ideas.
3.4 Keeping the lesson simple
We are often told that we should make our lessons varied. This is good advice but it is also open to misunderstanding. Variation can be interpreted in two different ways with very different effects.