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Dear Reader,

describing the last couple of weeks as "tumultuous" would probably be an understatement: between ongoing conflicts, please-don't-let-it-be-another-pandemic outbreaks and peacocks terrorising Italian towns, it is no wonder we sometimes feel like we. cannot. catch. a. break.

If it hadn't been for David Attenborough's 100th birthday, I'd probably like to forget the last couple of weeks.

On this side of the pond, some big political news reminded me in a very weird way of... school students at this time of the year. But let's go in order.

Last week, local elections took place around the UK. As the Guardian very delicately put it, it was the worst local election result for Labour in recorded history:

Seats were lost up and down the country, to Nigel Farage's Reform UK on the right and the Greens on the left.

The result? "Piling on Keir Starmer" appears to have replaced football as the nation's favourite sport. And if you think I'm using a hyperbole, you're welcome to listen to the aptly name podcast episode "Why does everyone hate Keir Starmer?"​

There is certainly an interesting historical and political side of this story: Keir Starmer has been in charge for less than 2 years after 14 uninterrupted years of Conservative leadership¹. Now, calls for him to quit have been progressively mounting: at the time of writing, he's not resigned yet, but many political pundits seem to think this won't last for long (so forgive me if he's resigned in the meanwhile, dear reader from the future).

But besides the historical and political interest of this story, hearing Starmer essentially beg voters and his parlamentarians to give him another chance has - in a weird way, I'll admit - reminded me of all those students who, at this grand ol' time of the year, suddenly remember that hey, English exists!, and they're not likely to pass it with their current grades.

Does this sound at all familiar? [She asked, to the sounds of sneering in her mind]

Scores of students (and, if you're unlucky, parents) tormenting you with requests for all sorts of make-up tests to make sure they get the grades to pass English. Which means that, between these make-up tests and the regular end-of-year frantic battle to complete assessments, you're left with quite a lot of delightful testing.

But what about those students who... aren't being tested? What should they do while the others are sitting their oral or written tests? If you've been at a loss for what to have them do, let me be your knight² in shining armour, for today, I will tell you about 5 activities students can do while their classmates are taking end-of-year tests.

Ready for this practical yet hopefully delightful newsletter? Let's get started 🚀

What should students do while others take tests? Some criteria

Did you know the saying "idle hands are the devil playthings"? While some students take final tests, sometimes other students just end up... not doing much at all. Between meetings, marking and all sorts of other things, you may simply not have had the time or bandwidth to plan extra activities for the students not doing the tests. And that's okay.

But if idle hands are to be avoided, we need some activities that:

1. students can do without too much guidance from you (either because you're busy running oral tests or because silence is needed for a written test)
2. offer some flexibility, because students of different levels will have to do them
3. have some kind of outcome you can check, so there is some accountability (i.e. they're not just passing the time)

With these caveats in mind, here are 5 activities you could explore for your students who are not taking final tests:

1. Extensive reading (with a worksheet)

An apparently old-fashioned but, I reckon, incredibly necessary activity in our era: reading for pleasure. You can encourage your readers to find something by themselves based on their interests or give them a choice of authentic sources or graded readers, as long as they're reading something they like for a reasonably long stretch of time. Unlike intensive reading, which normally has carefully structured comprehension activities, extensive reading is more reading for reading's sake. However, since you don't want a bunch of students faking reading while actually looking at their phones, you might like to give them some simple questions about, for example, their favourite character, something they didn't really understand or how they felt while reading (and why).

2. Same reading, different tasks

You can always prepare a good old reading comprehension, right? Right. But what do you do when you have students who need a test and then students with vastly different levels? If you give them a reading to do by themselves, will they be able to do it? Well, with a little twist, you can make sure to pitch it at the right level by giving more and less complex tasks to different students based on their levels. So with the same text, you might ask students questions aimed at lower level cognitive skills such as understanding, or questions developing higher level skills such as analysing or creating.

After they read, students who have done different tasks can join in pairs or small groups and pool their understanding - a prime example of peer tutoring.

3. Three things I need to revise

Everyone (including us teachers!) has gaps in their knowledge. What are the gaps in the students' knowledge? This time of the year can be a particularly good time of reckoning. Ask students to think of 3 things that they don't feel 100% sure about and they need to revise. They can use the book or any other classroom materials to refresh their memories. Then, they create a simple table where they list 3 things, explain what exactly they feel unsure about and then what they are going to do to fill the gaps in their knowledge.

4. A letter to my future self

Much like I'm doing now, writing this on a Wednesday to my readers of the future (i.e. Sunday), students can write a letter to their own future selves. I would suggest that this is actually the perfect time of the year for this activity: write a letter to your end-of-summer self. What are your goals for this summer? What things will you do to make sure you don't completely forget all your English? Setting goals is a crucial part of learning, but an often neglected one; thinking through these goals and committing them to paper helps students visualise them concretely, which can in turn help them take the actions needed to achieve their goals. You can also grade this activity for lower levels by having them draw a picture of their imagined summer and a short postcard to their end-of-summer selves.

5. School year review

How much grammar do I know? What are my favourite new words? What did I do in my lessons? What can I do to improve my English? Students can answer these really important questions, which develop their metacognition, with some really visually cute worksheets, which never hurts - courtesy of Teflgeek.

And that, my dear reader from the future, brings me to the end of today's newsletter. I hope you've found something practical in there and let me know if I can help you with anything else!

In the meanwhile, I hope you have a lovely and sunny Sunday.

Take care, dear teacher ✨

¹ Remember Liz Truss and the head of lettuce? I still can't believe in the less than 2 months she stayed in office, she oversaw the funerals of Queen Elizabeth II and managed to blow up absolutely unfathomable amounts of money in her mini-budget. Talk about an overachiever!

² Even in my deluded state of mind, I realise I'm a woman; however, googling "what's the female of knight" only yielded very unsatisfactory results. I'm not a dame, I'm not a lady; I could perhaps settle for warrior princess, but I'd welcome any ideas on this, please.

P.S.: My weekly suggestion for things to listen to/watch/read to improve your English while relaxing: this week, an article by fiction writing lecturer Micah Nathan went fairly viral (at least in my virtual social circles). In it, she discusses the contradiction in terms of teaching at MIT, one of the first institutions in the world to start research on Artificial Intelligence, and her students using AI to generate their stories in a fiction writing class. The more I mark written work, the more I have personally been feeling a bit of dispair at the state of things lately and can identify with the experiences in this article. Can you? I'd love to hear your take, especially if there are silver linings that I'm failing to see!

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