How do you say...SUCCESS?

"Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing." - Helen Keller

La Basilica de Baños

My first real adventure of the weekend was Friday, in my third class of the week. 

Each class is an adventure because, as an ESL-teacher-in-training, you never know how your class is going to react to your lesson or even how your lesson is going to unfold (perhaps unravel) in real time. Going into Friday, I had had one huge learning experience of a lesson (in other words, a flop -- or so it seemed in my initial reaction) on Monday, a half-flop, half-success on Wednesday, and another challenging lesson plan readied for my students. Because despite all of this, I still thought they could take it.

The topic of our lesson was DEBATE. Now, don't look at me like that - no me mires asi - I'm not a mean teacher, they had asked for it. Literally! Not in a bad, punishment sort of way. However, of the three students that had specifically requested a chance to debate in English, exactly zero of them showed up on Friday.

But I told you that I had learning experiences in my previous two lessons of the week, and I meant it. I learned. And the latest and greatest lesson plan I had formed was carefully thought out with two action plans in mind: 

One, get the students talking from the start, and don't stop!

Two, model every instruction first (so as to avoid the previous mistake of confusing, drawn-out instructions that needed individual explanations afterwards).

First, we brainstormed disagreements on the board. WHO do you disagree with, and WHAT might you disagree about.

Then, they we ready for their next "encounter": YES vs. NO arguments. The spacial arrangement of my classroom was utterly unique this time. The desks, single-seaters with one-sided writing surfaces, were positioned in pairs, long-arm to long-arm. On one desk in each pair was the printed label YES. On the other, NO. If a student was seated at a YES desk, they could say only the word yes, and likewise for NO.

The debates began! 

Maria Belen y Victoria en YES vs NO

Intonation is especially hard to fit into a lesson for English-learners, and this exercise seemed to do it well. With only one word to say but 30-40 second debates to conduct, the students had to change their intonation of the word around to keep things interesting. Plus, I remembered to model the debates first with a student!

Then we moved on to the internalization, and I introduced my students to the phrases I wanted them to use. All I was giving them for the lesson were six debate lead-ins, such as, "That's a good point, but I think that..." or "I have to disagree because..." The content of the debates was completely up to them. I was just giving them the framework to lend flow and slight formality or respectfulness to their speech.

They nailed it.

"I agree, but I also think that..."

"In my personal opinion..."

"I think that this is the best English class I've ever had." - Marco

After the introduction and a couple of brief dialogue exercises, we moved to "debate rotations." Each pair of desks received a different topic to debate - topics that I had brainstormed with the help of my host sister and her boyfriend the day before, because I wanted them to be relevant, compelling, and socially acceptable to Ecuadorian students from high school age to mature professional. I had prepared a few extra debate strings just in case some of them flopped, and with the smaller number of students (six) in class on Friday, we were able to switch out the topics three times.

None of them flopped. :)

In debate rotations (an original idea by yours truly), each desk in a pair is labeled FOR or AGAINST. The student at the FOR desk begins by reading the debate topic and continues by arguing for it, the student seated AGAINST must argue en contra. 

Every minute/minute and a half, students switch one chair to the left in a classroom rotation. This way, not only do debate partners and debate topics change, but each student argues both for and against every topic, so there's no bias given.

Our topics included:

It's better to listen to Ecuadorian music than other music in English.

You should eat a little bit of chocolate every day. :)

The safest way to fly is by plane. (One of my students is a professional pilot.)

Marijuana should be legal.

Gay marriage should be legal.

You should travel all around your own country before traveling to other countries.

There should be a female president.

Daniel, paying rapt attention, of course.

Here. Argue about this. :)

Victoria and Maya: If a partner cheats on you, you should never take them back. "What's cheats?"

Andres is pretty quiet, but he had some clever arguments!

I especially like when he defended the need to eat chocolate every day.

Marcos, with his game face on.

And there's my supervisor/trainer/mentor/grader in the back left...

I don't care if you agree with it. Argue against it!  This little miss is just too sweet.

Thinking of some more ideas...

Watching Maya hold her own against Marcos.

Two generations arguing over marijuana.

Telling them to shake it all off when it's over!

I was amazed. I clarified with each group first and had each share their topic with the rest of the class, but every topic flew with my students. They loved arguing for what they thought, they had fun making up lies (for them) in order to argue the opposite point of view. And me? I wasn't doing any of the talking. :)

Lastly, I moved the class into groups of three (half the class against the other half). They had five minutes to brainstorm THREE arguments IN FAVOR and THREE arguments AGAINST their final topic:

It is better to buy and use things made in Ecuador than imports. (this topic was inspired by the conversation with my sister and her boyfriend - apparently in recent years, the Ecuadorian government has put a big push towards supporting the local economy in such a way, and it's an intriguing topic for all ages)

With the students' help, I wrote up some of the main headers that they could include:

Clothing...food...electronics.

Their final fluency was three and a half minutes of debate. To ensure full inclusion, I had each team member's name written on the board and they got a tally for every talking point framed in one of our lead-ins. 

Everyone had a tally al fin, some had two.

S-U-C-C-E-S-S!

Introducing the final topic

The boys were making the girl do all the writing, so this group moved a little slower...

This group was on fire!

Announcing start time...

This topic...

...these phrases.

On your marks, get set, go!

What a marvelous lead-in to an amazing, adventurous weekend in Baños...

...which will be shared with y'all shortly, as soon as the photos of me jumping down a 40 meter (~150 ft) waterfall are downloaded on my computer :)

Goodnight, mis queridos!