Extraordinary school for boys

Hello friends,

How are you? Hope, you’re all fine and ready for another lesson.

To begin with, answer as many questions as you can in one minute.

1. How many wives did King Henry VIII have?

six

2. What is the capital of Brazil?

Brasilia

3. Who wrote The Lord of the Rings?

J. R. R. Tolkien

4. How many megabytes are there in a gigabyte?

1,024

5. Who developed the theory of relativity?

Albert Einstein

6. What is 5*18 / 4?

22.5

7. How many legs does an insect have?

six

8. What is water made of?

hydrogen and oxygen

How many did you get right?

Now match the questions with the school subjects.

History

Geography

Literature

Information Technology

Physics

Maths

Biology

Chemistry

Now look at the photos. What can you see?

You’re going to listen to a radio programme about the experiment in one of the British schools.

Gareth Malone first made his name on TV as a choirmaster in BBC2 The Choir, a series in which he brought together all kinds of people who had never sung before and turned them into accomplished singers.

Then Gareth took even a bigger challenge. He became a primary school teacher for a term. His mission was to teach a group of 11-year-old boys from a mixed primary school in Essex in the south of England.

Many of the boys weren’t doing well at school and, like many other boys in Britain, they were a long way behind the girls in reading and writing. The result is Gareth Malone’s Extraordinary School for Boys – a three-part series for BBC2.

In your country, are boys usually behind girls in reading and writing?

Listen to Part 1 of a programm about the experiment and answer the questions:

1. How long did Gareth have to teach the boys?

2. What was his aim?

3. What 3 things did he believe were important?

Gareth had only 8 weeks for the experimen, during which time he would be teaching 3 days a week. His aim was to try to improve the boys reading age by 6 months. On the other 2 days the boys would have normal lessons with the girls.

His plan was based on his own experience of being a learner, and from talking to educational experts. He had 3 main principles:

First, that it was essential to make the work feel like play. “If I can do that, the boys will learn,” said Gareth.

The second principle was competition. Gareth says, “Boys absolutely love competition! It has gone out of fashion in British schools, but I think it’s really important. Boys have to learn to lose and to fail and to come back from that. If you’ve never done that until you fail your A levels, or until you go for your first job interview and don’t get the job, then you’ve got a problem.”

The third thing Gareth thought was important was to allow boys to take risks – all kinds of risk. Not just physical risks like climbing trees, but doing things like acting in front of other people. Doing things which are a bit scary, but which are very motivating if you manage to do them.

Are you ready to answer the questions?

1. How long did Gareth have to teach the boys?

2. What was his aim?

3. What 3 things did he believ were important?

While listening to the other part of the programme, complete the following chart, please.

Pay attention to what changes Gareth made and what he organised to improve their language skills.

When Gareth started, he made some changes to the way the children were learning. The boys spent a lot of time outside, and tey did PE every day before normal lessons began. They even made their own outdoor classrom.

Gareth also tried to involve the boys’ parents as much as possible in their education and he visited them at ther homes on several occasions.

Gareth set up 3 major activities for the boys to help improve their language skills. The first activity was a school debating competition against the girls. The topic that the children had to debate was “Computer games should be banned”.

When they started to prepare for the debates, the boys weren’t very enthusiastic, but soon they started to get more involved. In the end the girls won the debate, but the boys had learnt to argue and make points, to express themselves better. They were disappointed not to have won, but they wanted to do it again.

Next Gareth organized a Reading “World Cup”, where the boys had to read in teams. Some of the boys couldn’t read veru well, but they all got very excited about the World Cup, and became much more enthusiastic readers! There was a prize for the winner , and this really motivated the boys.

Finally, the boys (working with girls) had to write their own play and perform it at the local theatre. The play they wrote was about Romans and aliens. All the children, boys and girls, worked really hard and although some of them felt very nervous before they performed the play, it was a great success and the boys especially were thrilled. Gareth said afterwards, “It was a risk, and it was scary – but it was good scary.”

Now you are going to hear how well Gareth did in the experiment. Do you think the boys’ reading improved?

The boys had a great time with Gareth as their teacher. But at the end of the 8 week, had their reading really improved?

In the last week of the term, they had to do their national reading exams. The exams were independently marked, and when the results were announced the boys had made great progress – all of them had improved by 6 months and some of them had advanced the equivalentof two years in just 8 weeks!

Here are a few topics for you to think over or discuss. Decide if you agree or disagree and wite down 2-3 reasons.

1. Boys and girls both learn better in single-sex schools.

2. Schools should let children wear whatever they want to school.

3. Cooking and housework should be taought at school.

4. Schools don’t teach children the important thinhgs they need to know to be an adult.

5. School summer holidays sholud be shorter.

6. Children spend too much time on maths and IT, and not enough time on things like music, art, and drama.

7. Private schools are usually better than state schools.

Organize your ideas in the following way:

The topic I’ve chosen is …

I completely agree that…

partly agree that..

or completely disagree that…

First of all, I think that …

My second point is that …

Another important point is that …

Finally …