Chapter 8: Being Materialistic! Using Course Books and Other Materials 123
✓ Separate visuals from exercises so that you can use the same visual
image in many different ways.
✓ Keep your worksheets and re-use them but make little changes each
time so that the examples are more personalised.
✓ Make sure that you present and lay out your material well. Even if
your ideas are great, students are put off by anything dull, cluttered or
unclear.
✓ Use famous names and brands in your examples as students are likely to
use them in real life anyway.
✓ Make sure that your worksheet instructions unfold step by step. So,
don’t give out all the instructions at once. Give the students what they
need to complete one stage at a time.
✓ If you design materials for a school you work in, you should agree
beforehand on the future use of this work even after you leave the
company.
Using What’s at Hand
In training sessions with aspiring teachers, I very often reject published mate-
rials in order to demonstrate that you can grab students’ attention with just
the basic classroom equipment.Even an atrocious artist can manage the occasional stick figure – witness the
one in Figure 8-1. Poor drawings are actually rather good for raising a smile
among your students. You may occasionally create confusion when your stick
figure horse looks more like a giraffe but your students still have fun guessing
what it’s supposed to be. It makes a change for them to be laughing at your
failings for a change.Figure 8-1:
A stick fig-
ure can be a
helpful and
amusing
visual.