Hi everyone!

My name is Evi and I'm an English teacher in Cyprus! I've recently came across power teaching and I really loved it! My younger students have shown great improvement and engagement with power teaching! My teen students though are hard to engage, because of their "absolute boredom" attitude! Due to the fact that students have to come to English lessons after school in the afternoon they are extremely bored and have no interest in doing anything even if it's fun! I get all these feelings that I shouldn't get and I get very angry with them. I'm trying not to show it to them but I cannot stand another year of this kind of "talking to the wall" teaching it is soooo unfulfilling.

I would apreciate it if you could give me any ideas that you have tried in your teen classrooms to kick boredom away from them and bring in students engagement!

Thank you very much!!
Evi

Engagement is the word.
Have you tried the 50/50 rule where the teacher can not talk more than 50% of the time and the students must talk, on topic, or write or otherwise actively engage in the learning process for the other 50% of the time?
Stay away from only one person responding at a time because that lets the others off the hook, even if it is just for a short period of time.
Try "Okay, Write."
or
"Okay, draw."
"Okay, act."
"Okay, demonstrate."

Use pencil and paper, white boards or even drawing in the air or on the floor.

Keep it to only 30 seconds or so at a time.

Randomly have students report out to the group if you need confirmation that they were on task.
I'm sure you can think of other ideas.

What do your kiddos like?

If you can find an appropriate topic and get them hooked they may not mind staying after so much.

Example:
Hip songs - find prose, meter, rhyming words, mispelled words etc. in lyrics
Dance moves - make a different more for infinitive verb, past tense verb, gerund (-ing) verbs - see if they can keep up with you calling out these verbs from student-made cards (check them first!).
Surfing - use "Wipe Out" or another surfing song for correct answers (ex. matching pronouns and nouns; nouns and the correct plural etc.) Use "hang ten" as a motivator - draw a toe for each correct answer then everyone jumps up at #10 and pantomimes surfing, shouts, "Hang Ten" and sits back down.

Have fun!
Kim

Hello!! Thank you so much for your replies!

I have actually tried to find their interests and I arranged my lessons according to them. Unfortunately when I tried to do something like songs or dance half of them were interested and excited and the rest were bored because they didn't like that specific song or bored or not in the mood or thought these are for babies etc.

I have tried the rules(I admit - I quit easily) but they made fun of them and they had the "We are not babies attitude"! They didn't even like the "Teach - Ok". Another problem I faced and again only with the teenagers' groups is that they don't want to sit with their classmates,:unsure:Which I found very weird! When I tried to make kids who were sitting alone to sit with another student, I had the "Oh!No Not with him/her".
I believe that made the other students uncomfortable, but they would say it for everybody!

The 50/50 rule sounds brilliant but i don't really have students willing to talk:S
However I believe it is a nice idea to give them small tasks all the time so I don't talk so much (I think I do talk more than I should). And I will stick to the rules and not quit easily.

Thanks for your help !! If you have more ideas please feel free to reply I will be doing research during the summer in order to start the next school year with the Right foot!!

Hi Evitaki:
I might be wrong, because I'm not an expert in WBT yet (as the other people who replied to your post).

I think one of the important things of WBT is that you have to become the leader of the group. One way of doing it is finding out who are the leaders in it and try to get them in your side.

Another important thing is that you have to show two things:
1. You know what you want and what you are doing. It is important and you are convinced about it, so no discussions allowed about it.
2. Be systematic. Once you start with something (say the scoreboard, class-yes or any other practice) don't quit easily. If you start with the rules, follow them ALWAYS, if you do not do it this way, students won't know what you expect from them and will think they are not THAT important.

I hope I helped,

Edward