Page 24 - ELG2104 Apr Issue 475

FEATURE .

Many hands,
Many hands,

light work
light work

A look at team teaching within the Hands Up
Project’s online sessions

he Hands Up Project is a UK- we need to be as good at listening as we are at
registered educational charity, speaking. We also need to be able to listen in
providing online learning for young two ways. First, to hear what learners are saying
Tpeople, mostly in Palestine, through and, second, we need to listen to how they are
conversation, storytelling and drama. Team saying it, to know if they are improving and
teaching – with at least one teacher from the find ways to support their spoken language.
community of the learners and at least one
other connecting from another country – has A pre-Covid 19 example
been an important feature of what it does. The picture (right) shows a typical team-taught
Experienced teachers know that if we want Hands Up Project session before the corona
to help learners develop their speaking skills, pandemic. Atiyyeh is an English teacher

A classroom
teacher and a remote
volunteer working in

unison can be very rich
in language-learning
opportunities

in a village close to Ramallah in Occupied
Palestine. He’s running an after-school English
class for a group of 14- to 15-year-old boys.
Michael is an actor and professional
storyteller, and he’s connecting through Zoom
to Atiyyeh’s class from his home in Bristol
in the UK. Michael is talking to the boys,
listening to what they’re saying and chatting
with them. The boys are generally taking it in
turns to come up to the laptop and interact
directly with Michael while the others listen.
Occasionally Atiyyeh will ask Michael to
pause, so that he can focus on some of the
language that Michael’s used or set up a drill
or practice activity. He might ask Michael to
repeat words that he’s used or provide other
examples. As the teacher, Atiyyeh is in charge
of the pacing of the discourse, and making
it accessible and useful to the learners.
Michael’s responsibility is to keep the
conversation going. Both roles are important,
and together they provide a pedagogical and
social aspect to the conversation.
These types of conversations, where you
have a classroom teacher and a remote
volunteer working in unison, can be very rich
in language-learning opportunities. Below is
a transcript of such a conversation. Ahmed is
a 15-year-old boy in Palestine and he’s been
asked to talk with the remote volunteer about
Facebook Live with Zoom means a local teacher and one based in another country his home. Notice how the support provided
allows team teaching to continue even in lockdown by the remote volunteer and the classroom
24 April 2021