En elblogdetrinity.com recomendamos una variedad de ejercicios y buenas prácticas para la preparación de los exámenes de Trinity College London. En esta ocasión Richard Bradley (Teacher Trainer - Trinity College London Approved Service provider Spain and Portugal) compartirá una serie de post con recomendaciones y pautas muy interesantes para poner en práctica en clase.

TOPIC 2 - Gallery walk (A2-C2 level.  However, the example below relates specifically to A2-B1 level)

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What?  Gallery walk (A2-C2 level.  However, the example below relates specifically to A2-B1 level)

How?  Let`s imagine that students are preparing their topics for GESE grade 4.  On the grade 4 topic form they need to have four points to be discussed with the examiner.  If the topic were, let`s say, ``My favourite pastime – playing rugby``, the four topic points might be,  how often and where I play rugby, what I like and dislike about playing rugby, some differences between rugby and football, and my plans for the future.  So the students make a poster.  In a circle in the middle of the poster sheet they write the title of their topic and the poster sheet is then divided into four sections.  (If the preparation were for grade 5, or grade 6, the poster would have 5 or 6 sections.)  Each section relates to one of their topic points.  In each section the student could write just a few words, just the topic point phrase is enough, stick photos, draw pictures, diagrams, maps, attach small objects etc, basically making the poster as attractive as possible.

When the posters are finished they are stuck to the walls around the classroom, or, if you cannot attach them all to the walls, placed on desks, although this doesn`t resemble a gallery so much.

Then each student is given some post-it notes.  The students walk around the classroom, as if it were an art gallery, making comments to each other about the posters.  And on their post-it notes they can draw symbols, such as hearts or smiley faces, write comments, and, most importantly, write questions.  They stick each post-it note onto the appropriate part of the poster they are looking at.  For example a student might stick a post-it note saying ``Is it dangerous?`` to a section of the rugby poster.

Then the students would take turns to stand by their poster and respond to comments/answer the questions stuck onto their poster.

An extra step in the activity could be that the teacher creates a graphic organiser for the students to complete with information about all the posters as they walk round.  This would ensure that every student visited every poster.

Why?  This activity has a multitude of benefits.  For example, different aspects of the activity appeal to auditory, visual and kinaesthetic learners.  Turning the topic preparation into a mini-project makes it more meaningful and memorable.  Many students tend to prepare their topics by just writing and memorising a script.  This is neither sufficient preparation nor really the appropriate type of preparation.  Although it is obviously important to learn and remember key words and phrases, chunks of language, memorising a whole script can be an impediment in a communicative exam in which the examiner will be engaging the candidate in an authentic conversation and will interrupt the candidate if he/she starts to merely recite. 

In the GESE Elementary stage, grades 4, 5 and 6, it states in the specifications that candidates may bring pictures, photos, diagrams or other useful objects into the exam room to illustrate the topic and aid the discussion with the examiner.  Therefore they could bring the poster into the exam room, or show their poster on screen in an online exam.  It must be stressed that it is in no way obligatory and no assessment is made of the materials.  However, materials might well aid the discussion.  Preparing and discussing the posters is an extremely valuable classroom activity.  The teachers and students would then need to decide if the posters were to be used in the actual exam or not.