Although I’m not a great fan of walking round collecting errors to throw up on the board at the end of the lesson*, it must be said that anything that keeps teachers alert during lessons that is not connected to the bodies of their nineteen-year-old students is probably a good thing. I have therefore come up with another way of keeping teachers awake and aware in class, available in all good TEFL bookshops from next week: The I-Spy Book for TEFLers and Teacher Trainers. As with the original books for birdspotters, kids on long car journeys, etc, The I-Spy Book for TEFLers and Teacher Trainers will list things that they can tick off when they spot them during their classes or those of people they are observing, with points for each one and more points for more unusual things (like one point for a sparrow and 100 points for a griffin in the birdspotting version). They can then compare scores with their friends and get a badge when they complete the whole book.

Some examples of things teachers have to look out for to get points include:

– A pairwork stage for no particular reason (1 point)

– Learning due to comprehension questions (80 points)

– Students reading the written instructions and doing that instead of what their teacher just said (2 points)

– Answers to needs analysis that are obviously just to please the teacher (10 points)

– Students agreeing with each other just because that means less speaking (5 points)

– A student with a realistic idea of their level (70 points)

– A Delta-qualified teacher who still can’t teach (7 points)

– A teacher who can’t communicate outside the classroom but undergoes some kind of miraculous personality transformation every time they step into a classroom (11 points)

– A teacher pissing off a student for life by contradicting something their favourite teacher said (15 points)

– GTKY activities designed specifically so the teacher can boast about something (3 points)

– GTKY activities designed specifically to allow the teacher to go on about their hometown or hobby (12 points)

– A smile from a student who has never cracked one before (20 points)

– Students performing completely unnaturally because their teacher has told them to be good during his/ her Delta observation (1 point)

– Students bringing down the level of their English to communicate with their partner (4 points)

– A student who complains about their new teacher and then nine weeks later complains about losing that exact same teacher (9 points)

– Timings on a lesson plan that improve the lesson (93 points)

– Elementary students who are satisfied after successfully doing the skimming and scanning questions but without really feeling they understood the text (99 points)

– Someone who is management because they hated teaching (1 point)

Did I get the points for these ones right? Any other ideas for usual and unusual things to spot?

* You could easily have thought of more important things to correct in ten minutes while planning the lesson, and where is the evidence specifically showing that whole class correction on the board leads to improved accuracy without affecting fluency and confidence?