Teacher's Time Out -- Bobby's version

This is Bobby writing. Long time no see! I am going to tell you about a simple technique that is called “Teacher’s Time Out”. This idea was originally written by Valerie Benson in New Ways in Teaching Reading (this is one of the New Ways in TESOL series).

How do you “teach” vocabulary? Isn’t it frustrating when some students know the meaning of the words in the text and others don’t. Until last year, I often told my students to draw lines under the difficult words with pencils. Then I walked around my classroom with a pen and a notebook to write down the words. After that, I came back to the blackboard and explained the meaning of them.

Benson’s idea was eureka! to me this year. I noticed that I could automate the process by asking students to go to the blackboard to write the words. Before letting them go to the blackboard, I took time for them to ask the meaning to the other members of their group. By doing this, students benefitted by teaching each other, and at the same time I was able to specify the words they didn’t know.

Oh well, the result is so far so good. When I explained the meaning, I could choose Japanese equivalent of the unknown words or its English definition.