NET Scheme News 2025 Spring issue 47

16 NET Scheme News Issue 47 Speaking Hub As teachers working with English language learners,we often encounter reluctant speakers with grammatical knowledge but lacking the vocabulary to express ideas confidently. This was one of the issues discussed in detail in the Speaking Hub conducted by Luana Hasell and Craig Robertson, the Regional NET Coordinators (RNCs) of the NET Section. The RNCs offered to collaborate in my secondary school to infuse drama into my S3 speaking lessons. They shadowed my speaking lesson in the first session with 18 students. In the oral lesson, students were guided to give a 2-minute speech on ‘Technology and Innovation’. My starter activity was a quick quiz where they learnt new vocabulary like ‘technophile’, ‘technophobe’, and ‘tech-savvy’, followed by a ‘Think-Pair-Share’ activity on their favourite innovative product. Some students spoke about interesting items like e-bikes, earbuds and trending apps but some could only talk about their smartphones or laptops. For the next cycle, Luana and Craig devised a lesson extension using drama. The aimwas tomotivate students to give presentations using skills such as summarising, giving supporting evidence, and questioning while discussing the pros and cons of artificial intelligence (AI). As a pre-lesson task, students were shown a short movie clip about an accident with AI. As students walked into the classroom for the lesson, they were handed promotional leaflets about a new robot and different role cards. The students were seated in groups according to different roles — teacher, technophile, businessman and homemaker. The CEO of the robot company then gave a sales pitch before a Q&A session in which random students of each group were asked why and how the robot technology would benefit each individual. Next, the ‘See, Think, Wonder’ thinking routine was used to encourage students in each group to tell a story around an image card with the vocabulary provided. Scaffolding helped the groups develop their ideas for a situation where the robot malfunctions. Then, each group enacted a fun freeze frame activity to demonstrate the accident and its consequences. Other classmates posed questions with a focus on the incident and feelings.The final activity was a group meeting where the CEO heard and addressed complaints and grievances. Finally, students jotted their thoughts in ‘exit cards’, and the lesson was wrapped up with a recap of the vocabulary they had learnt, like ‘chaotic’,‘malfunction’, ‘out of control’, and ‘efficient’. Initially hesitant, the students not only enjoyed the drama lesson on a current topic but also learnt to question, support, and summarise their presentations. Although 40 minutes was not enough to cover all aspects of the lesson plan, it gave students agency and peer interaction. Later, I adapted some elements of the drama technique and images in my teaching, which lent a fresh and lively angle to my routine oral lessons. Gayatri Das, NET TWGHs Kap Yan Directors’ College Telling a Different Story