The Guided Speaking Approach

I SAW THAT TRADITIONAL LANGUAGE LEARNING METHODS JUST AREN'T WORKING.

I KNEW THERE HAD TO BE A BETTER WAY!

Working so many years alongside teachers and having taught English in every age classroom (pre-K through high school), I understand the needs of both the students and the teachers, at every level. I know that having an effective, simple to execute, approach makes a huge difference, but teachers need more than that. They need high-quality materials that they can immediately put to use to engage their students. So, I developed hundreds of speaking-based activities for every age and level student. It's a whole system: the approach, age/level appropriate activities and ALL the materials to carry them out. Every step of the way, I asked myself WHAT DO STUDENTS AND TEACHERS REALLY NEED TO BE SUCCESSFUL?

ACTIVE, ENGAGED, HAPPY STUDENTS WHO ARE REALLY SPEAKING, LAUGHING & ...LEARNING TOO!

Basically, for every topic, teachers can choose from numerous activities and easily print all the materials they need. One of my main tenets is AMSAP (As Many Speakers As Possible). After a brief explanation, students are given the speaking guides for the activity/game and they break up into small groups or pairs. In this way, they start immediately interacting and engaging in the target language and with one another. Maximum AMSAP is reached, which means ALL the students are simultaneously speaking, listening, playing, working together, all while having fun and not even realizing they are learning. It's called Enhanced Incidental Learning. With Guided Speaking, students are guided in such a way that they practically learn by accident. 

Because of the suprising results in almost every classroom, school, and school district that I've worked with, it was the teachers themselves that asked me to show them how to recreate what I was doing in their classrooms. For that reason, the last years have been dedicated to developing all the activities in a digital format that can be shared with teachers worldwide on my website and social media platforms. It's a new development for me and definitely a work in progress. 

YES, DEFINITELY!

While the original concepts remain: active, engaged, learning by doing, learning by speaking, the neuroscience behind foreign language acquisition and the need for nurturing, loving teaching and learning environments, the path outward from that core is forever expanding. Therefore, so too are my tools and materials. I have book projects for baby books, early readers, and tweens, board games, Hands-on CLIL materials and books. The list is embarrassingly long!

One pivital moment for me was near the beginning of the teacher training phase. I thought I could simply explain to teachers what they should do to be able to turn their lessons into fun, active learning classrooms, but I missed the point. They also need fun, active learning-by-doing classrooms.

So now, my teacher training courses are teacher training workshops, where we all try the activities, play, engage, discuss, share and work together to expand that core :)

I have lots of free activities, printables and a free activity bundle on my website LaughandLearnCo.com. There are some activities for all levels. I also have quite a few videos on YouTube (Kikka@LaughandLearnCo.) and other videos that explain concepts and activities on TikTok and Instagram (laughandlearn.co).

I'm also available for schools who are interested in carrying out workshops for their teachers. Anyone who is interested or wants to know more, can send me an email request (kikka@laughandlearnco.com) and I'll set up a meeting for a brief presentation and explanation of all the different possibilities. Part of what I love is working together with teachers to create projects that exactly fit the needs of individual schools, teachers and even down to individual students.