51 ¦ Using classroom jobs to provide more input & build relationships

I'm named Richard and this is the Motivated Classroom. Hello, welcome Bonjour Falker to this episode 51 of the Motivated Classroom Podcast. It feels like a while since I've been in this studio because a lot of the eight previous episodes I edited quite a long time ago, so it's kind of nice to be back in here again and talking to all you listeners and I want to start by saying an enormous Guramaag of thank you to all you wonderful brilliant listeners all over the world for spreading the words so much because last week was the record number of downloads of the podcast. Over 2,700 individual downloads of the podcast in one week alone. And a lot of that I think comes on the back of the amazing episode 50 with Dr. Karin Lickman and Dr. Bill Van Patten speaking for an hour and an extended episode all about second language acquisition. So if you haven't listened to that yet go and have a good listen to it, I certainly learned so much from them, but also loads of people going back and listening to some of the episodes at the beginning of the series at the beginning of the whole podcast this time last year because it was about setting up your classroom, the first class of the year, the first stories, first invisible characters, how to set up the classroom jobs, routines, all of those things and that's why we are where we are today we're getting straight into it and talking about classroom jobs. Now you're listening, they're going, well, Liam, why are you talking about classroom jobs? Again, you've mentioned these plenty of times in other episodes and you're right I have, but I've never done a full episode on it and I've had a lot of emails and requests asking me how do I introduce them, when do I introduce them, in what way? Which ones do I do, how often, are they the same every year? So I just decided so many people asking about this, let's do a full episode on classroom jobs. So that is what we're going to be talking about today. Now of course we need to start first and foremost with our Irish word and today it's kind of interesting because I'm actually going to give you an English word, but that is used in my opinion anyway, only in this way in Ireland and the word is savage. Now when you hear the word savage in English, it usually means like it makes me think of like the Normans and the Vikings coming to take over countries and there were savages and they were so awful and they killed loads of people and did awful things, they were savage. But actually in Ireland we use the word savage to say when something is really good, when something is brilliant. My friends and I often joke about it, if we ever owned a pub in Ireland we'd call it savage because it was just a word you'd use to say if someone all, I had a brilliant night out last night or went to this game, I watched this match, it was unbelievable, it was class and the response would be savage as in amazing and it's turned into a thing in Ireland where people now use the Irish word which is savaste and they'll say savaste instead of saying savage. I'm actually not 100% sure if that is the direct translation or if it's just a made-up Irish word. I need to look into that. But you will hear people say savage and others say savaste. So there you go. If you meet an Irish person and you want to say something was really excellent, you can just respond like savage or class, we use class as well a lot but savage is very much an Irish word. So classroom jobs, how do we introduce them, when, how many, how do we go about this? So classroom jobs for me are an absolutely fundamental part of my classroom across all levels, all ages and just today in my first class of the year with my year-ninens who are age about 14, today we immediately started getting into some of these jobs. Now we talked very briefly about it because they had jobs last year and they were already asking me, oh, we'll be doing the same jobs or can we have a new one this year? Now that came from the students. I usually don't bring the jobs in in the first class, why I do the constitution in the first class. So if you're not sure what I'm talking about, the constitution, it's essentially our set of expectations or if you'd like to say the word rules but I don't like that, expectations in our classroom but it's written by the students. So if you're not sure what I'm talking about, go back and listen to episode two of the podcast all the way back last July, which is the first class of the year. Once you have your constitution made, the students know they are no longer just students in your class. They are linguists in a spanyoland, your country, your made up country that you have and it needs a constitution, it needs a government. My year 12s, who are my A level students, my USA in the United States, your AP students or your high school diploma students, the oldest students basically in the school who are gearing up to their final exam tenter university or going to the workforce. The oldest students, they are my government ministers. They run a spanyoland, they make the bigger decisions but everyone else in every other class is a citizen of my made up country, a spanyoland. And actually I spoke to a colleague who teaches humanities and she was saying she's going to do this in her humanities class as well and come up with a name for her class. So I thought that was really cool that it can transfer across. So we did this today, the constitution with my year 9s and they really got into it, even though we did it a year ago, they didn't seem to remember that and they got fully into it again. It was a great class and really they get a lot of empowerment from the fact that they wrote these rules. So how did the jobs play into this and when do we start? So as I said, we start first and foremost of the constitution because there's no point for me bringing the jobs in unless they know they're a part of something bigger. I think if I didn't have the constitution and tell them there were citizens and they have a role in it, given them jobs might just feel like me, given them jobs. And I suppose that is what I'm doing but I do it in a way that makes them feel like they need to do things to be part of our community, they need to serve the community, they need to be part of our whole classroom environment of our country and therefore you can't be a passive member, you have to actively be an engaged member of a community so you need a job. So that's how I kind of sell it on to them has been part of it. Another thing to state about the classroom jobs is they come in gradually bit by bit once we've established some of our main routines. Now, routines are for classroom management and behavior and we establish these very clearly like how do we enter the class, what do we do with our books, what things do we bring in, how do we leave the class, how do we give silence to the teacher when he needs it, how do we talk to each other, they're all routines. But the jobs kind of come in as part of the routines and they're actually a really good way to suddenly get the whole interest of the class all at once. So here are the first few jobs that I will always give out. Now remember we've done our constitution, they know that they're citizens of a Spaniolan, my mate of country. You could have Frank Holland or Deutsche Land or you could have Manderino Land or whatever you want to call it up to you and you can call it something totally different. So what I do is I get all the students to write their names on a little popsicle stick. Now many of you will do this. It's a very easy way to pick a random student and they always know they could be called upon at any time to contribute. Now of course we try and manage this situation carefully. If you have a student in your class who you know really would struggle with that being called upon on a cold call of course you can pull out the stick and just say someone else's name. They're not going to know that it was actually that person who came out and then you just pop it back in. So you know you can be careful with this but in most circumstances I do pull out a random name and especially when I know the students that would be the first student who gets the first job. So what are the first jobs that usually get given out? Well typically these are the really straightforward jobs like the door, the window and the date. Maybe the first three. And I play around with it especially with the beginners but even with my more advanced students to be honest I'll say you know okay they'll walk up to the class or their name is pulled out. Let's just say it was Maria. So Maria comes up to the top of the class and I say class everybody give Maria a round of applause and she'll come up and she won't know what's going on or why she's up there. She stands in front of the board and then I will say Maria you are so lucky you are the first member of the working community of a spanieland and she'll be like okay what does that mean and everyone will kind of laugh and I'll say you have a job and of course if this is my total beginners I will say all this in Spanish but then I will repeat the word trabajo in Spanish meaning job or work and I will say that and say oh you know it was a trabajo. You're going to work and I'll explain what the word job or work means and then someone will kind of joke around and say oh this isn't a democracy and then we may have to stop and say yes it is because we all contribute and it's part of it. So the door is the first one and the door is very simply open the door. Close the door. So in our school we keep our doors open most of the time but sometimes it's really noisy in the corridor and I need it to close. So what I'll then say is I'll shake their hand of course depending on your situation with if you're allowed to do that in COVID regulations but hopefully you're allowed to shake their hands or you do an elbow bump and you'll say welcome to the community and you are mister or missus door and then everyone will clap and then they'll be like I'll say you know what you need to do and they'll kind of go well I think so. So I'll say door I'll just simply say put that door and they'll walk over and close the door and then everyone claps again and we're having a bit of a laugh with this and then they go and they sit down and then I'll look at the class and I'll go oh gosh it's really hot in here isn't a class yeah okay sorry and door and then poor mario will stand up and run over to the door and open the door and then she'll you know start to make a way back to her seat and just as she's sitting down I'll be like oh class it's really cold isn't it now I still do this in Spanish I'll be making the you know the bodily gestures for cold and hot so I'll be like rubbing my arms got hot so cold isn't a class that's really cold and they'll all be a bit confused looking at me and I think we really need to close that door and then I'll say Maria and door please and then she'll run over and do the door again and then everyone laugh and just as she's about to sit down I'll be like oh class and then they'll start to catch on they go oh it's so hot it's so hot and of course they're getting the inputs for it's so hot. It's really hot in here. It's so warm. They'll say it, they'll repeat it. She runs over. It might do that five times. You can judge what your student, how much of a laugh you have, but you may clearly make it that it's a joke and you're having fun with it. And eventually you leave poor Maria B. Mrs. Doors. That's her job. Now, of course, the second job is you need someone to write down the jobs because you will forget them and all of a sudden one day you'll call out, okay, whiteboards please and no one will say it's their job. So you always need Mr. Job or Mrs. Jobs, who writes down all of the jobs your classroom have. So that can be anyone you pick out a name and you say, you bring them up, same thing, you clap hands or you shake hands, you elbow bump and you say, okay, you've got a really important job and you turn to the class and say, what really important job has he got? And they'll say things like window or table or the board, you've like no, no, much more important, more important. And then eventually they won't get it. And you say it's Mr. Jobs, you have to write down the list of jobs. Now, you need to keep a really good list and it has to be somewhere. You can find it. You do all of this in the target language, of course, with loads of repetitions, loads of hand gestures, writing. You can translate words on the board. So you're giving them all the inputs. Of course, more advanced students won't need all the repetitions, but you may repeat things in a more advanced way. Like what did job did you have last year? What would your favorite job be? What would you write? Would you take a job like this if it was paid in real life? You can give all these unprepared inputs that make interesting, compelling conversation. And so now you have Mr. or Mr. Doer and you have Mr. or Mrs. Jobs. And they'll write them all down with the person's name. And then I'll test them. I'll say, okay, Mr. Jobs, who is Mrs. Doer? Did I look at the list? Oh, it's Maria. And then I'll turn to the class and go, class is Mr. Job correct? They'll say, yes. And then we'll say, well done, Mr. Jobs and also well done, Mr. Jobs. So you're gathering this momentum with the class. They're part of something they realize. They could be called upon. They're poorly responding. They're saying the words. We might even spell out one of the names so that they're getting a little bit of the sounds of the letters. Or sometimes I'll joke and say, you know, I'll put two or three zeds on the end of a word just so they can sound out a zed because we normally don't spell words with the zed. And you know, so you might say, it's Mr. Doer, you know, almost there where does and then I'll joke and they'll have to put a z on it. Things like that, you make fun with it. So so far we've got Mr. Doer or Mrs. Doer and Mr. Mrs. Jobs. And then we do a third one, which is usually the window. So it's exactly the same as the last one. They come up to give the window. Then you'll say, it's cold, it's hot. You might do it later. You might do the next day, but you go through the same process. And sometimes you'll mix it up so you'll say, oh, class, it's, it's so warm. We really need to open there and they'll go window because you've done this three times ago. No, door. And they'll be like, oh, yeah, they'll start laughing. And then poor old Mrs. Doer has to run over and open the door. So you're having fun with it and they're getting all these repetitions of door, window, open, closed, open, closed, for example. So I hope you're seeing how we introduce the jobs. Now I certainly do not introduce every single job on the first day or second day, spread them out because this will get boring pretty quickly. And we know from lots of the research around engagement and motivation, we need to mix things up in the class. So while this is fun for 10 or 15 minutes of repetitions, now we do something else and maybe it's the next day that the next few jobs come in. So typically there are my first three, door, Mr. Mrs. Jobs and window, really simple. The next one that comes in is usually the date and the weather. So at this stage, you might leave it a couple of classes. Someone who you think is kind of studio is quite organized, who asks maybe a couple of questions they might become Mr. Date and they write the date every day and they have to write it in numbers and in words. So it's someone who you need to go and look up the date before they arrive in class. They'll often forget. But after a while, they'll remember to do it. And actually now that I say that it needs to be someone who's studios, that's really not true. And it can be anybody actually. And in the past is just being anyone and they've really enjoyed that role. And the course they're learning the numbers and the dates and so are the class. And the other person who is doing the weather is the same thing. They'll come in and often they'll start the class by just walking straight up to the whiteboard and riding the weather in Spanish on the board. And they might turn to me and say, Mr. Brinter, how do I say it's cloudy or how do I say it's cold or how do I say it's a bit foggy. And I'll give it to them and then we'll repeat that with the class. And I might start the class by saying, class, let's say a big thank you to Mr. Weather, written the weather perfectly for us. And do we agree? He's written on the board here that it is cloudy and a little bit rainy. Do we agree with that? We'll look at the window and they might say, no, it's kind of sunny. It's not that cold. It's warm. Are you right? Yeah, it is a little bit warm. What is warm for you guys? Is that like above 15 degrees Celsius or above 20? And yeah, that is warm for me. There's the repetitions. They're getting all that comprehensible input from that person's classroom job. And all of a sudden, you know, you might just out of nowhere say, Mr. Jobs, and then he'll stand up or sit down or whatever it may be in your class at that time, usually will stand. And I'll say, my memory is terrible. I have all for the memory. I'm so old class. Please help me. What are the jobs we have so far? And they will read them out for you. So they're typically the first five that I will give out. I might have taken three, four days for that. And gradually, you just give out more jobs as you need them. So in my personal situation, I share a classroom. So I use whiteboards and I use markers and I use cloths for them to do lots of retrieval practice every day. But it does get a bit out of hand when I leave the whiteboards and the markers on the desks. Sometimes the students will pick them up and play with them or another student. Another class is sharing with them. I'll come back and throw all over the place. So over time, I've realized I need someone to put these on the tables at the beginning and take them at the end. Now, there's a lot of whiteboards because of big classes. So I might need two people to do that job. There might be two people whose job is Mr. Whiteboard, Mrs. Whiteboards. And they'll do it together. Same with paper distribution of paper. So the very first time that I need to give out some paper, maybe they're drawing something we're doing a listen and draw. So I'm talking about something from last class as a retrieval practice and they're listening and drawing what they're hearing. Suddenly, I realize I've got to give out paper and pencils. So there's two more jobs. Mr. Paper, Mrs. Pencils, whatever it may be. So and it's the same time, every single time they come up to the middle of the class, we clap, we shake hands. I tell them it's really important. They're going to help me out a lot. We get those repetitions. It's going to be really helpful. Your part of the community, I need you to be really efficient with this. Do it nice and fast. And we give them the job. And Mr. Jobs writes it down in the list. Now, other ones I've introduced over the years that I've found have become very useful. One is I call in English the ender or just the end of class or Mr. Tidy or Mrs. Tidy or Mr. Cleanup. And that person too often I was finishing class and realizing, do you know what? I'm always left to clean up the whiteboards or I'm always left to clean up the markers because Mr. Whiteboards wasn't there. He forgot or the bell just waned and they had to go. Which often happens, of course, in reality. We want to finish the class with a strong finishing summary activity to go over what we've done that day. But we often just don't get around to that, right? Something that's one of my goals for this year is to make sure I try and do less and actually have an ending activity. But I was always left to kind of clean up the class but the chairs back in. So now I have a job. There's one person who will check to make sure that the tables and chairs are clean and that they will hold people responsible. So it's their job at the end of class to kind of stand and say, hey, Anna, you forgot to put away the markers. Can you do that? Hey, John, put in your chair before you leave. So their job is to do that and you will need to remind that person a lot. It usually just before the bell goes, I will say something like Mr. Ender or Mrs. End of class. Don't forget your job. And then that also reminds everyone else to do their thing properly and sometimes they'll forget. Other jobs that I've brought in are the police or the control. And that person will control the amount of Spanish being spoken if someone is speaking English when they shouldn't be or if there is a side conversation going on while I'm speaking which is absolutely not allowed zero tolerance. If I'm speaking, they must be silent and that is about respect and being polite and being kind and it's the same for them. If one of them is trying to say something to me, but they're weekend or something interesting, they're having a side conversation. The class stops and we say, hold on now, we wrote a constitution together and respect was at its core. Do you think he feels respected when you're having a side conversation while he's trying to talk to me? No. And then they'll do that. So that can be a job as well. The police see him. I just quickly say, espanyol. You have to speak in Spanish. We have someone who controls the password as you walk into class. So again, these are all on those classroom management routines. They have a password. We have someone who is profanumer or those teacher number two. And they have to give out the password to everybody. Someone who controls it, the security guard. And literally it can be anything if in your class putting the chairs in is an issue that people always either chairs that, well, then you have Mr. and Mrs. Chairs. And you might just say that. Mr. Chairs, and then they'll start to go chairs everyone and they have to put them back in or tables. But if you move your tables around like I do quite a lot, I have Mr. Tables. He organises where the tables go and make sure he says, okay, you two on this table, you two here. And people know then they must listen to Mr. Tables. Then, of course, you have the really fun ones, the kind of silly ones that especially for the beginners, these work really well. So I have one, and you can use some French or Spanish or German or whatever language your students are learning. But I have a student who, no, this one won't get given out until at least three, four weeks in when we're doing our first stories. Well, actually much before when we're doing our invisible character, we probably give this one out. And this one is called Kien, Mr. Kien. Now in Spanish, Kien means who. And what we do is whenever anybody says the word Kien, which means who. And it can be the same in your language if it was in French, it'd be key. But essentially when anyone, particularly the teacher says that, and you'll say it a lot, that student has to stand up. and say in a kind of owl voice, and it's really funny. They love it. They think it's hilarious and it's always a good laugh. If you find that that student who happened to get that job just really doesn't like that and you can see that they're not into it. You can say at the end of class or chat to them after a few weeks and say, "Do you want to switch with someone?" We did that last year. Somebody wanted to do the door and didn't want to do who who anymore and that was fine. We switched it. But you want someone a bit more extrovert for that one, ideally. So you might want to give that one instead of picking a stick. Then we also have somebody for word. So I like this one just because I use the word for word so many times. So I use the word Palabra, which in Spanish means word, all the time. As in, what's the word for this? What word is this? Where does this word go? And I want them to understand that. So whenever at the beginning I use the word Palabra, meaning word, someone has to stand up and go, "Word," as in like really cool. And they think that's a layer as well. Now I'll typically only keep that job going for the first couple of months. They don't need to do the whole year. So that's one as well. Then we have other jobs like the helper simply. Like if someone hasn't got a job yet, they're the helper. They just help someone else's job. The translator, someone who's really good at translating, all these different jobs. No matter how big your class is, you want to try and find one for everybody as the year goes on. And it may be that you're three months in and five students haven't got one yet. Well then you have to think about what are you spending time on in class as the teacher and give that to the student as a job. A great example is last year for me. We have a little remote control to turn on our projector and I am always losing it. As in, I'll pick it up and I'll leave it somewhere else in the class. Not that I lose it. Like it's in the classroom. I don't want to get a lunch or anything. But it's in the classroom. But I never know where I've put it. So someone's job suddenly became Senor Mando, which is Mr. Remote Control. Find me, they were remote control. And then I'll always joke when he comes up. I'm like, why did you put it at the back of the class in the corner? That's so mean. You stole it from my desk. You put it in the corner like in a really like joky way. And they're like, oh yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Like at the beginning, they don't realize that you're joking. I'm like, I'm joking. I know I did that. But after a while, they see you're joking. So that's a pretty fun one. And then you know, a kind of quite responsible student. They might be the welcomeer. So whenever you have an observer, they will come, they will welcome the observer and say, welcome to Spanula land. We are all citizens here of a Spanula land. And we respond in this way. We always speak Spanish. And I'm going to sit beside you and make sure you know what's going on during the class because it'll be all done in Spanish. And they feel super important. And it's great. It can be any student. But the only thing with that job is, of course, it doesn't happen too frequently. Like we don't have observers in every day. We might have won in every couple of weeks or something. And these are usually other teachers who are just stopping by for a few minutes. But it's great because you don't have to do anything. And they feel like really important. And they know that that's their job. So that might work in your context. But literally, whatever you spend your time doing that's not teaching, then you need to get jobs for that. Because essentially, you need to be there giving comprehensible inputs and controlling that aspect. Of course, if you're using technology, you can have Mr. Mrs. Technology who helps you with computers, all sorts of stuff. So that's how I introduce them. And that's how we keep them going. And we do it for the whole year. People have the same jobs, all levels. Now, obviously with my advanced students, they don't have some of the simpler things like who and word. But I will still have Mr. Door and Mr. Window because I need that. And it takes me too much time to do that. So I will have someone who does that or might be just their job, might be temperature at the temperature. You have to open the door, open the window or give out the books. My advanced classes still have all of those things because it saves me time, gets them out of their seats, keeps them accountable, they're listening, all of those things. And of course, with beginners, they're learning all of the classroom vocabulary so fast because you're repeating it in a context, they can see it, what's going on. So that's how I introduce the jobs. I hope that was useful for you. And next week, what I'm going to do is I'm going to do an episode all about how I set up for the year. So how do I set up my Google classroom, my Google drive, do a lingo, other computer programs we use, their notes, their notebooks, their folders, their pens, all of that stuff. It takes time at the beginning, but it's part of routines and it's so important to get right. And then I promise I will come back to the implicit and explicit discussion about grammar and how we teach grammar and should we go along with that or do we just learn through implicitly or do we need some explicit instruction. I certainly need to do some more reading on that and I will get to that. So huge thank you to all of you patrons of the podcast. There's now 4D, 3 of you patrons. Thank you so, so much for continuing to provide me with your one coffee or one bag of crisps a month. And if you want to join them, that would be great. Go along to patreon.com, look for the motivated classroom. If you think you bumped into me and you said, you know what, I buy you a drink once a month to say thanks, well, please become a patron. And if not, if you're not in a position to do that, no problem at all. Just keep listening and sharing for free. Remember, our Irish word for today was Savage or Savoshta. And I do have to check if that's actually real Irish because I'm not sure. So I'm glad you enjoy the motivated classroom. Keep sharing. The motivated classroom podcast is an original production by Liam Printer. I'm at Liam Printer on Twitter and my YouTube channel is Liam Printer at the motivated classroom. Full podcast notes with links to resources are available on my website, LiamPrinter.com. For more, find and follow the motivated classroom podcast on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Graphics and music are provided by Paul Mahan. Intro clips are thanks to the wonderful multilingual staff at the International School of Lozan.