Be inspired offline: life-skills projects to stay physically distanced but socially together

Welcome to the first Language Issues blog post for a little while. We hope to bring you a selection of thoughts over the coming weeks/months linked to ESOL and community languages teaching, learning and wellbeing in the current situation. This post is by Joanna Davidson-Hajto and takes a welcome look at ideas for offline activities to share at the moment.Never before have we experienced such an unprecedented time when we had to move the teaching delivery online so suddenly. How much have you heard about teaching online within the last two months? How many new websites, tools or virtual games have you learned about? Despite their versatility and effectiveness, a pattern may emerge that the majority of them require our students to sit in front of a PC or with a mobile device to be able to zone out and engage with the alternative reality.However innovative and fancy the online tools are, we shouldn’t overlook the social and emotional needs each human being has, especially now, when physical distance must be kept. To address this, I will focus on some offline projects suitable for synchronous and asynchronous delivery modes targeting various levels of comprehension. All of the tasks are adaptable and can be easily tweaked to suit you students’ needs.First things first. Recognise the shift. What matters most?As educators we have to follow our organisational guidance. Some of us will still have to follow the curriculum, document and track students’ progress. Nonetheless, we need to remember that the situation we are in now is completely different to what we all had experienced before the Covid-19 outbreak, that the priorities flipped and that we are using media we, not to mention our students, may not feel comfortable with as of yet. So let’s flip some tasks and approaches too! Let’s play to students’ wellbeing, life skills and emotions first, that will allow balancing expectations towards our students as well as ourselves.Whilst planning our lessons, the best starting point is to consider a few important elements:

• if we are focusing on building relations,
• what strengths we can build upon,
• what is available in students’ immediate learning environment,
• if we are embracing naturally emerging opportunities to cultivate possible social relations,
• if we generate any additional interactional space there,
• if students’ current experiences are recognised,
• whether we can blend some parts of the curriculum with the elements of real life, what can be put in a life-context naturally to support students’ personal, social and emotional development,
• how we implement any necessary assessment methods.

There are plenty of benefits of setting offline projects:

• Completing these tasks encourages creativity.
• Students spend less time looking at screens and don’t use mobile devices they don’t necessary have.
• Autonomous learning is being supported. Students are fully responsible for their decisions, which has a positive effect on their internal motivation,
• New tasks, which couldn’t be completed in a classroom can be introduced.
• Students can invite family members to join and work together – so there is more time to develop relations (if the work is not to be assessed).
• Students utilise their immediate learning environment so feel more comfortable, consequently, there is a high chance they will develop some positive habits and continue with them.
• Some projects will let students be close to nature which is crucial to wellbeing, as a result, stress levels are reduced.
• Students will be encouraged to communicate more and express their views and opinions, taking parts in discussions.
• Some students will choose to use their native language (that’s fine and natural, they are at home, with their families), but at the end of the day they will write or speak about everything they’ve done using a language they study.
• Many opportunities are available to teachers to track progress. To assess and document students’ progress, photos and written work may be collected, or notes may be taken by a teacher to document of what has been heard or observed when the projects’ outcomes were discussed.
• Finally, many possible points to inform further lesson planning emerge, whether to be delivered synchronously (for example, a video conversation) or asynchronously (for example, on discussion forums).

So what if we sneaked into the offline world for a bit?Since we do not see all students face-to-face, we will still have to rely on technology to begin with, to introduce tasks and give instructions. We also need to use technology to collect the projects’ outcomes or discuss the findings. However, once those parts are addressed, the following offline projects can set off:

1. My acts of kindness. Students may start recording (in any way) all their day-to-day acts of kindness, for example, when they helped someone, taught someone something, or simply gave compliments.
2. Explore pathways to teamwork. Students create some ground rules together with their household members and try to stick to them. This could be supported by creating a schedule, all to make students aware that they need to balance their work and rest time as well as to find a solution when access to mobile devices is restricted within a household. It is important to ensure they include sit & talk as well as go & play time as well.
3. Tell a feel-good story is an excellent example to follow-up the “sit & talk” idea. The story can be real or made-up, personal or about a community. Focusing on positives will definitely increase the dopamine levels.
4. My budget. This may need some initial teacher’s explanation, but why not giving this task a go? At the end of the day it is a very important life skill applied on a daily basis.
5. “No social media for a day” Discuss some rules and explain why we should limit our time spent online. It may be helpful to prepare some questions to be given beforehand for students to answer, eg. What did you want to do? How did you feel when you didn’t do it? What did you do instead?, etc.
6. What’s in your fridge? What’s in your kitchen cupboard? Students check what they have available and one, two, three - they write a recipe! Another possibility is to write 5 words from food packaging they don’t understand (see point 9) or check all use-by-dates when tiding-up.
7. Close your eyes and listen to something for 3-5 minutes. You may want to suggest various approaches to this task. Students may listen to the sounds when in a park or simply listen to the radio at home.
8. Create a game. The sky is the limit here, students may want to change some rules of games they already know or they may invent an entirely new game. It can be created in cooperation with family members or classmates, or done for them.
9. I have a question. Students start a list and every time they have a question (there are no silly questions, right?) which they cannot answer, they write it down. This may be an idea to be incorporated into lesson warmers or discussion forums when a few questions are presented and a group discusses the answers. To add a fun element here, I would encourage abstract questions, such as Why do zebras have stripes?
10. Did you know … ? Everything that is new or interesting students come across when they learn or just when they do everyday routines, lands on another list. How can you use these facts?
11. Write a diary/a log. A picture, a word or one sentence is great to start with. You may want to ask your students to focus on one particular task, topic or daily routine, for example doing exercise, learning, reading, drinking water or relaxing. Change the instructions weekly or daily.
12. Be green. Students would have an opportunity to demonstrate that they are not only consumers. Have they upcycled anything recently? Are they planning a clearout and want to give some toys, books or clothes to a charity? Why is saving water important? Do students plan their meals or share excess food? Do they recycle their waste? Do they know how to sort the rubbish? Do they check the instructions on food packaging? They may draw three bins in a notebook and write some examples of items they disposed of in each of them.
13. Walk in the park. Endless ideas come your way here. Ask students to observe what is happening around them. They may focus on a specific action, object or animal. They can be asked to spot some positives behaviours. Then, these may be followed by drawing what was seen, taking photos, or describing whatever was observed.
14. Make a poster/a scrapbook. Whether you just discussed a new grammar point, revised or introduced some new lexis – all can be added to a poster or a collage. Encourage creativity and using household objects such as food packaging or old magazines. How can your students present their works of art?
15. Watch this, read that. Recommend some films or programmes available to watch on TV, preferably with family or household members.
16. Last but not least - grow a bean plant. What would you add to the image below? Time for you to take over :-)

Consider the following possibilities for differentiation:

• students practise using life-skills so it is OK if they communicate in their native language, if needed,
• encourage growth mindset and getting support, calling a friend or asking a family member for help is perfectly fine,
• make students feel comfortable and encourage expressing ideas or presenting the outcomes in any chosen way, for instance, speaking about what was done or recording it, taking some progress photos, drawing the answers or writing them down,
• for each task we may want to consider adding some helpful questions which will direct and support students in completing the tasks autonomously,
• some tasks may benefit from being introduced with a simple handout that may be easily copied from the screen,
• since the process is more important than the outcome, consider any additional and relevant sub-processes of your projects.

Rest assured! Distance learning doesn’t only happen in front of a PC or a mobile device. Let’s think outside the online world from time to time to get the best out of both worlds.

Please share your ideas on #ESOLchat and let us know what worked and what you have adapted.Thank you,Joanna Davidson-Hajto