Webinar 3- How props and Arts & Crafts make students talk

 How props and Arts & Crafts make students talk

On 11.03, we had a webinar about "How props and Arts & Crafts make students talk". It was engaging and practical. The webinar focused on making students talk by using props and arts & crafts which can be used for other purposes as well. The presenter posed many questions to make us think and reflect, which activated the audience a lot and made the webinar more lively even it happened online. 

I learnt a lot from it. I also believe that any object can be a prop if it's connected to the lesson, which was mentioned by one of my colleagues, such as pictures, realia, handcrafts, mascots and puppets. They are good attention grabbers as well. Also, during the process of making students talk, it is likely that their other abilities will grow because some of them may require students to act out while speaking out. 

I am also impressed by another thing that the presenter masters well, which is the use of her voice and intonation, which made her speaking attractive. Her pronunciation was very clear and spoke in an intelligible way. Her intonation was vivid. Students can be attracted in this way and this kind of pronouncing can also combine with drama. Hence, I think we can also add drama in our activities to make our students talk. 

The presentation was overwhelming with loads of information, however, I believe it was great for us to make us think about it. We can draw on those prime examples and we will have our own ways and styles of using objects to make students talk. If fact, we have had this or that experience in using these techniques already. For example, in our public speaking course, I  also came up with the idea of using a tissue to practice pronunciation. It struck my chord immediately the moment she mentioned the trick.

Here are some materials that were introduced to make Ss talk.

a puppet

a sack

mirror mirror on the wall (pronunciation)

a tissue (pronunciation)

a blindfold 

real or almost real objects

gluestick (microphone)

shaving cream

a feather

kilt.edu.pl

joanna.pokora@kilt.edu.p