Best Practice: Modeling and Demonstrating Activities and Worksheets

Activities:

1. Today’s lesson plan for the beginning level instructs you to use BLACKBOARD BINGO to review food vocabulary covered during the past week. Here are the directions to you, the tutor:
   • Write 10-15 words on the board to review. Tell students to choose any five words and write them in their notebooks. Then, call off random words and have students cross out words in their notebooks if one of theirs is called. The first one to cross off all the words yells ‘Bingo’ and wins.
   • How will you explain the directions to the students? Show them! Use as few words as possible. Use the board or the overhead projector and play the role of both the teacher and the student. Do the activity once and check for comprehension. Repeat the demonstration if students still aren’t sure.
2. Today’s intermediate level class includes an activity on practicing sentence structure. You’ve been instructed to pick out abbreviated headlines from news stories, like “Eight rescued after Haiti quake.” (Something simpler is okay, too.) Have students use the information in the headline to create a complete sentence.
   • How will you explain this activity to the students? Before handing out a worksheet, use the overhead or document projector and show students what to do. Look at the worksheet together. Read the example first. Talk about your process for arriving at an answer. Do the next one yourself and then do one as a group.  Now hand out the worksheets!
   • Tip: When asking students to complete a worksheet, be sure the vocabulary you use in giving directions is clear. Ask the students to tell you what you are asking them to do. If they can’t repeat instructions or show you, spend more time modeling the activity.