Anka Zapart

An experienced teacher, bored. A professional gloom manual

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The background

This post starts with a post that I found to be discussed with my adult B2+ students.

Well, first of all, that very sentence, just as it is. Yes, they exist, these adult students. After ten years I am back in the classroom with a group of adults who are not my trainees.

The other contributing factor is one of the articles that we used as the basis for one of the lessons. My students work in the area of IT and they are top notch experts, great at what they do. It was very interesting to listen to their comments and to compare their attitude to CPD with what we do in our EFL world. This is how this article came together.

All of the ideas presented there have been divided into the usual that are the staple of our EFL lives (at least in my opinion) and the less common but interesting solutions and, later on, I added some of the things that I have tested on myself.

Our bread and butter

The most interesting thing is that, compared with the other professions, teachers do LOADS to develop professionally on daily basis and, regardless of where we are, as regards our professional expertise and the number of years in the classroom, CPD aka continual professional development, is one of the buzz words. Throughout our careers. We talk about it, we think of ways of getting better at what we do, we push ourselves and, sometimes, too, we purposefully neglect it, too. But we are all aware of it. It was somewhat a shock to the system (albeit a mild one!) to find out that not everyone does and that for some professionals the idea of, say, an appraisal meeting with a supervisor, might be of the ‘absolutely out of the question’ kind.

Some of the techniques and recommendations are indeed our typical everyday. Reading, networking and becoming a part of the teaching community, participating in conferences or just having your best teaching friend (hugs, Vita!) and your best teacher training friend (hello, Vika!) is something that we do regularly. Not to mention reflection which is a part of the everyday teaching life, day after day, lesson after lesson. Sometimes it seems that in the classroom I am like this huge searchlight, keeping an eye out for anthything that does not go to plan and that needs to be adapted.

In the same vein, although this might be more typical of the institutional teaching and less of freelancing, goes for feedback and appraisal. Presumably, it is not the easiest thing to do to accept that being an expert and an adult, you are being put in the position of a student or a child, who is being looked at and assessed and, possibly, given a grade. This might not be the easiest and the most light-hearted experience especially that this grade or the feedback might not always be a positive one.

The road less travelled

  • Journalling. This is a great one. I have been working on those with my students for some time and I have experimented with journaling in teacher training, with my trainees and as a trainer. I have kept journals and self-reflection notebooks for all of my YL groups, too and this, probably, was the most enjoyable and the most rewarding one for me as I could track my students’ progress better from week to week in all the chosen areas. It was a wonderful exercise for my brain as I managed to train it to be better able to focus not only on the lesson itself but also on reflection and on noticing things that I could put in my notes later on.
  • Getting a mentor. I have decided to put it here, in the road less travelled section, because, as I have discovered in some of my research, it is not a given that a teacher always has a mentor. Nowadays, so many of us work independently, as freelancers and so many of us work in context where there is no chance of getting a mentor or a mentor that could actually lead us somewhere in our professional field. Personally, for the past few months I have been a homeless (aka independent) teacher but I have reached out to experts to talk about the areas that I would like to venture into. Irina Malinina was helping me with writing for a journal and Sandy Millin with self-publishing. Or Olga Connolly and Heather Belgorodtseva that have been my guardian angels for years.
  • Doing your job better. Isn’t something that we should all intend to do, almost naturally? Maybe not. I have decided to keep it on the list, regardless, and I would like to treat it as the call for improvement, for continual work on getting better. Even though it is not for an assessed lesson practice or for a course with a trainer watching closely over you. Or a boss reading through your observation reports.
  • Let your mentees observe you and give you feedback. Way too often the newly qualified teachers or the trainees only pop in and out, without giving the observed teacher any feedback, based probably on the assumption that their comments would not be valuable or welcome due to the fact that they have less classroom experience. However, they are the second pair of eyes and, as such, their feedback is precious. To those who want to listen. In my case, sometimes, it would take a form of a conversation and sometimes I would actually ask them to fill in a form that we use for all the lessons.

Things I have tried recently

  • Mentoring someone, No matter how busy you are, there are always people whom you can support on their professional way. It might be formal (if this is the policy of your school) or informal (either through the buddy system or through a community) but it is fun, because you are getting someone else’s perspective and getting involved in helping them out.
  • Start teaching a new level or a new area to teach. This is one of the easiest way of broadening your professional horizons. It is also one of the most flexible. It can start with taking on a student or a new group, permanent or temporary and getting involved in everything that can help you become a better teacher i.e. reading, research, getting to know the coursebooks, observing a more experienced colleague, joining a group on the social media etc. It is fascinating to observe and to reflect on how your teaching self uses and adapts the experience gained so far to a brand new context.
  • Revisit an old area. This is almost as exciting as you get a chance to set into the same river twice and to boost and refresh your skills and to see how you have changed and developed as a teacher.
  • Write an article – There is one big disclaimer here, of course. You must enjoy writing, first and foremost. If you do, there are lots and lots of opportunities.
  • Write for a blog – This has been my joy for the past two years. I do not write all the time. I do not have an agenda, although I try to post once a week. There are the lazy weeks, either the holiday weeks or just proper ‘doing nothing’ weeks. But, overall, this blog has been the source of so much fun and entertainemt and it has been truly rewarding.
  • Share ideas – If you are a member of a community, it will happen regardless. Perhaps you might not feel like your ideas matter (but they do!) or that people will not react (but in my experience there are more readers than actual reactions).
  • Experimenting with the format, going online, going offline or going hybrid. This switch will create opportunities for you to transfer all your teaching skills into a new framework and to find ways of making the most of what you know already in the new environment and to develop brand new skills making the most of what this new envirnment offers. There is some unpleasantness to deal with which is related to the fact that, quite frequently, such transitions are generated by factors that we have no control of such as the pandemic and they might feel like an imposition. As a result, more time will be necessary for you to see the blessing in disguise and to appreciate and to fully embrace it. If you want to read about my personal adventures while moving from the offline into the online classroom, here you can find a few posts: what I thought after a few months and after two years of that experience and another one based on the feedback from my preschoolers’ parents.
  • Becoming a freelancer as a way of freeing yourself. Admittedly, it might be too early for me to offer any advice or to even reflect on that since I have been a freelancer for only two months now but it might be a direction worth taking. In my case it was a combination of different factors such as the change of circumstances, the necessity to look for a new job, the expertise and the level of experience and what the potential employers required me to do and what they were able to offer me. That was ‘not much’ and so I became a freelancer. More on that later)

Is there anything else that should be on this list? Anything else, out of the ordinary, perhaps that you have tried and that has been very beneficial for your continual professional development? Please, pretty please, share with the rest of us!

Happy teaching! Happy developing!

Material design for beginners: The aim as the source of inspiration

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The Polish shade of ‘November orange’

This is how we arrive at the last stop of this series. If you haven’t done it yet, please make sure that you check out the other three: the introduction, the materials that were created because of a certain resource and the materials that were created with an activity as a starting point.

The Turkish shade of ‘November orange’

The aim (a most random definition)

First a brief explanation of the idea behind that heading and that concept and it is rooted in the most selfish question that teachers can ask themselves upon entering the classroom and that is: ‘What do you want, teacher?‘ and it can be further extended into: Why have you come to school today? Why are you entering the classroom?

The answer to this question will largely depend on the particular Pasha, Sasha, Ania, Javier, Rita and Julia sitting at the tables in your classroom (or in front of the computers in your online classroom) and it is with them in mind that we often start to change, to abandon, to supplement or to design activities and materials. Regardless of what the curriculum says, what the pacing schedule wants, what the authors of the coursebooks intended or, sometimes, what the DOS (or the parents) would want you to do.

For that reason, this post is dedicated to some of the coolest people that I have had a chance to meet, my students and some of the materials that were created because of them. Are you ready? Let’s go!

The Turkish shade of ‘November orange’

Storytelling project

‘Project’ was what I saw in the pacing schedule for my pre-teen online class last week. And I sighed. My kids are already a lovely A2 but they are quite young and, since many of them are new in the group and have been online for only eight weeks now, they are still a bit wobbly and cannot be ‘trusted’ with a task that is all about sending the students a set of questions and asking them to prepare a presentation, with photos and all. Online.

Instead, we did a storytelling project. Here are the main stages

  • telling a typical A2 KET story, using the materials for KET A2 Writing part 2, first time together, as a group, second time, with a different set of materials, in pairs
  • vocabulary revision part 1, with the special focus on the adjectives used to describe houses and rooms. Here we used a simple Wordwall game. Recently, we have been doing these twice, first with the whole group, then, individually as a competition, during the lesson time.
  • vocabulary revision part 2, one of our favourite games: Tell me about it. We play it in teams, with teams taking turns to open the boxes and to describe the rooms and houses in the pictures and winning the points which are also hidden in each box.
  • grammar revision, with the special focus on Past Simple and Past Continous and a quiz
  • grammar revision game which was also our favourite in this unit. We called it ‘When suddenly’ and we play it in pairs. Students use the props (aka the key words, nouns and verbs) on the cards. Student A starts a mini story, creating a sentence using the Past Continous and the key word (‘I was walking in the park’) and student B finishes the story in the Past Simple tense (‘when suddenly I saw a crocodile’)
  • story preparation: students work in pairs, they look at the set of the pictures (a house, a character and an object) and choose one of the set for themselves. They work together in the breakout rooms and prepare to tell their story. The set of visuals (taken from google) can be found here.
  • story presentation, for the group. As the feedback, each pair chooses the story they liked most, apart from their own.
The Turkish shade of ‘November orange’

Easy-peasy personalisation tricks

  • adding kids’ names to the homemade wordsearches, as a bonus prize, all of the names or some of the names (remembering that every child should be included at one point)
  • replacing the names in the grammar handouts with the kids’ names
  • using kids’ names in examples (when appropriate)
  • creating quizes and game to practise grammar based on the knowledge of the group, for instance Present Simple 3rd singular (‘Anka sometimes eats fish’. Yes or no?)
  • replacing the names in the grammar handouts and examples with the names of our class heroes such as Angelina, the Hen, the Flying Cow or Pasha, the invisible student.
The Turkish shade of ‘November orange’

Kids’ ideas for games creation and adaptation

  • Hangman (aka the Monster Game): one of the students suggested that since we lose points for not guessing the letter, we should be getting points for guessing the letters
  • Stickers Online aka Google Search Capacity Check which was fully shaped by students and the format of the lesson and which we are still using.
  • ‘Go Fish’ – deciding every time on the rules of the game ie the person with the biggest number of cards wins or the person with the smallest number of cards wins
  • Choosing half of the categories for the STOP game (aka ‘scategories), some (usually content-related) are chosen by the teacher is food, drink, verbs etc, the other half – by the students, usually we end up playing something random ie computer games or football clubs
The Turkish shade of ‘November orange’

Primary kids students and more advanced grammar

This was the phenomenon of the previous academic year when we were already at the A2 level with my kids and such serious topics as Past Continous, Present Perfect and Conditionals 0 and 1 and the kids were still only 8 and 9 (and 7, in one case, too). There is a post that I wrote about it, here and you will find there some generic games for grammar practice as well as the materials to our Science lesson that gave us an opportunity to practise and to use Zero Conditional in a very natural setting.

Messy choir is a more fun and a more creative version of a drilling task that we used while practising Present Perfect with already and yet.

Disaster TV was a lesson inspired by the materials from Superminds 5 coursebook by Cambridge University Press, only instead of ‘finding out about a disaster’ and ‘presenting it to your classmates’ (unit 1 page 20), I decided to go for a lighter take. The topic of Pompeii (although very interesting) was a bit too heavy for a group of young kids who had just gone out of a pandemic and a lockdown and I myself could not face reading about the destruction of New Orleans during the hurricane Katrina so we just didn’t. Instead we went for a project called ‘Disaster TV’ in which kids: chose their own disaster, real or made-up, discussed the details, wrote the questions and rehearsed them. Finally, we recorded a series of interviews with survivors of different disasters and we laughed a lot watching them later. It was absolutely necessary that we have some positive element in all the gloom surrounding the story of the Pompeii. If you are interested, you can find the handout for that project here. I wish I could share the videos, too because they are absolutely precious but we made them only for our personal use and this is what the parents agreed to.

If you still have some energy, please browse through this blog. This is what it is about: my kids and all I wanted to do in class.

Happy teaching!

Ed Emberly and Monsters. Teaching English through Art

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I suppose that, on some level, the idea of including the storybook illustrations and their creators into my English through Art curriculum has always been there and it was just waiting for its turn. The first lesson devoted to that happened somewhere in December 2020 with my juniors and you can read about it here. Including it in the series of lessons with my primary kids was just a matter of time. Ed Emberly (and his bestiary of monsters)* is the first one to have a lesson dedicated to. The first of many, I hope!

The artist

The idea to base the whole lesson on Ed Emberly and his art came from the Big Green Monster storybook which has been my go-to resource in all the body parts / monsters lessons for a very long time now. The kids absolutely love the fact that they can control the monster, make it appear or disappear and this way deal with the fear. I used to have students who would sneak into the storybook room before the lesson and ‘read’ the book on their own or run a reading sessions for their friends who also wandered in, both in English and in Russian.

But then, as I started to look through everything that Ed Emberly produced, it turned out that monsters really were his favourite thing and that he wrote a few books on how to create your own illustrations using finger paints and markers. ‘I want one of those!’ was the brain’s initial reaction.

First of all, we introduced Ed as our artist of the day (name, face, country and his favourite thing) and we talked a bit about the monsters which he drew, including the Big Green. The gallery walk was a very brief one this time but that is because Ed was present throughout the lesson, with the story and the craft. It was probably the most consistent and artist-focused lesson of all of those that I have ever taught on this course.

The language

This part was very simple and very straightforward – as much of the body parts practice as possible. It was the first lesson with this topic and we did a variety of exercises related

  • Introduction, repeating, a bit of drilling (I do less and less of that, as a teacher and I have begun to wonder why. The post will be coming soon).
  • Pointing and moving of the said body parts which could perhaps go under the TPR label
  • Introducing the song ‘My teddy bear’ by Super Simple Songs
  • And a selection of the wordwall games such as matching the human body parts and the animal body parts, pelmanism (only in zoom we write the numbers first on all the cards) and describing monsters using ‘my monster has got…’ and similar structures, also with the use of a set of wordwall cards. This last one is the most generative activity and I have high hopes for her in terms of the amount of the language produced in the long run. Usually it takes a few lessons for the kids to get used to it and to become comfortable and this time round was not an exception. With my current group, the Ed Emberly lesson was chronologically the first one and it was only in the Degas lesson, two weeks later that the kids were ready to produce lots of language.
  • Last but not least, we watched and participated in the storytelling and it was, of course, Ed Emberly’s ‘Go Away Big Green Monster’, this time in the video format, although, ideally, we would have used a storybook only I did not have it at home at the time.

The craft

Originally, Ed Emberly monsters (and other creatures) were done with a combination of two techniques – finger paint prints and drawing with markers. For anyone willing to use this approach, his books are full of ready made ideas. However, finger paints are a tricky resource to use in the classroom, especially if you want to finger print and draw, and I just did not want to bother with the logistics of it in the online world, especially that our group is now located in three different countries. Solutions had to be found.

It does help, I suppose, that I am a lazy teacher and I have noticed that with all the obstacles of the online Art class I am blossomig and I end up with the ideas that I like. This was the case here and that’s what we did:

  • The first step – produce own monsters in order to test and trial and to understand how much time is required and how many monsters can be created during the ten minutes that we hae assigned for the craft activity.
  • Write to the parents, to inform them what resources will be necessary: a sheet of A4 paper, a marker, glue, old newspaper and magazine pages OR coloured paper.
  • Show the kids the finished product and describe all the monsters (colour and body parts). I did it holding the picture in front of the camera but it was not as effective as I would have wanted it it to be. Next time, I will keep the paper on the desk and I will move the camera above it, in order to make sure that the kids see only one monster at a time and that it is clear and big enough.
  • The monsters are super easy to make and the one thing that is necessary is a piece of paper (the more recklessly torn off, the better). It is then glued onto the paper and the body parts are drawn. Then the kids describe their own monster, ideally using full sentences but, since it is the first lesson with the new vocabulary, I accepted simple ‘three eyes’, ‘one nose’, ‘two legs’. The number of the monsters produced in class will depend on the age and the skills of the kids.
  • My students are already quite ‘advanced’ when it comes to craft and after they figured out how to make the monsters, they were on producing more and more of them, focused more on the craft than on the speaking (ouch!). For that reason, when I teach this lesson again, I will want to scaffold even more carefully and introduce the following tricks a) ‘dictate’ the colour for the monster, b) promote production by guessing how many legs their monsters will have, hoping that even if I don’t guess, they will want to correct me and c) introduce a punctuation mark between the monsters ie a proper introduction (My name is Polly. I am a happy monster)
  • I personally adore the fact that the monsters are made from newspapers and that they have the most irregular shapes, the more reckless, the better. However, I noticed that some of my parents were reluctant to the idea of letting the kids work with old newspapers and magazings, preferring the regular and pretty craft paper. I have also noticed that some of my students did not quite like the idea of the torn paper and while I was happily tearing the resources for my monsters, they simply picked up their scissors and started to cut out square, circles and triangles. In the offline classroom, I simply wouldn’t have given out scissors, trying to encourage them to work with a new resource. In the online classroom I could not control it but the monsters turned out pretty anyway.

*) I cannot NOT share this amazing article with the funny and weird collective nouns. Enjoy!

Happy teaching!

Edgar Degas and Ballerinas. Teaching English through Art in Primary.

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Sonia’s ballerina

The artist of the day

Edgar Degas is a perfect example of a love – hate relationship with Art. I adore his ballerinas, the beauty caught in a frame, the purposeful randomness of different set-up that make it often look like the candid camera photos, caught in the act, almost random, immortalised forever. But, at the same time, Edgar is the artist that I would never want to meet in person or talk to because of his beliefs and views.

But, it so happened that we are still doing body parts with my kids and I have only girls in the group and I really wanted to make ballerinas and so, reluctantly though it was, I chose Degas to be the artist of the day.

As usual, we introduced him by name, by country and by his favourite thing (ballerinas!!!). We looked at the paintings and talking about the colours and the actions and then, we made our own ballerinas.

Our gallery with Degas

The language

  • We are still practising expressing opinion using ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’, we include it in every lesson and at this point we are (almost) at the point when the kids talk spontaneously about the different things we are looking at
  • We are still practising describing monsters using the sentences such as ‘my monster has got two eyes’ as well as ‘my monster is green and yellow’, ‘my monster is happy’ and ‘I like it / I don’t like it’. Apart from the regular revision and drilling, we used the monsters from one of the wordwall sets, such as this one here. I was simply over the moon to see that at this point (and it was our lesson #3 with this topic), the kids were just producing a sequence of two or three sentences. It needs to be mentioned that we still sing the song about the teddy bear and it helps us to produce, too as the key structure ‘my teddy bear has got one nose’ can be easily transformed into a sentence about the monsters or ballerinas and that definitely helped, too.
Teacher’s ballerina

The craft

  • The final version of the craft is a combination of two ballerinas that I have found online, one of them from Kidspot, the other from Creative Child. Since my students are still very young and our lessons are online, I needed something that we would all be able to do without my direct assitance
  • As usual, I sent the information to parents with the list of all the necessary items: two sheets of white paper, safety scissors, glue and markers or crayons.
  • In class, we checked that everyone had all the materials (‘Have you got the paper? Show me, please’ etc).
  • I showed the students what we are going to need: a rectangle (for the body), a circle (for the head) and a square (for the skirt).
  • We prepared our shapes together: I showed the students how to cut off the rectangle (the shorter side of an A4 piece of paper, approximately 4 cm wide) and I waited for them to cut off theirs. I cut out a circle for the head and I cut of a square, too. We put the scissors away.
  • I did not give the students (or the parents) any details regarding the dimensions of all the shapes because, in a way, it does not really matter and we could manage with the wider or thinner rectangles or the smaller squares or circles. Whatever was too big, got trimmed later on. However, I knew that my girls would be able to handle that. With some of my other students or with much younger children, I would consider asking parents to cut out the shapes for us, before the lesson.
  • We proceeded to making the ballerina and here are the exact instructions. As usual, I was making my own doll and demonstrating, waiting for all the girls to catch up on with us.
  • Step 1: take the rectangle, fold it into half, lengthways (‘It’s a book’, said one of my kids, and a book it was, although it had a slightly weird size) and we spread some glue inside of it, to glue both sides together, in order to make it thicker.
  • Step 2: draw the lines at the bottom and the top of of the rectangle, to make the cutting a bit easier and to ensure that the kids don’t cut it into halves.
  • Step 3: cut along the line at the bottom of the rectangle, say ‘My ballerina has got two legs’
  • Step 4: cut along the line at the top of the rectangle, fold them to the sides, say ‘My ballerina has got two arms’
  • Step 5: glue the circle on, draw the eyes, the nose, the hair, we were drawing and talking about it ‘My ballerina has got…’
  • Step 6: fold the square into a triangle and cut the patterns, in a way in which we make paper snowflakes. Decorate the skirt with markers.
  • Step 7: cut off the top of the square/triangle in order to be able to put the skirt on. Put it on the doll and glue it at the top (and at the back) in order to make sure that it does not fall off.
  • Step 8: add all the other details: draw the hands, shoes, top of the dress etc.
  • Initially, I had the idea of practising some Present Continous with our ballerinas but in this particular lesson we only managed to start using it and the kids were not ready. Instead, we introduced them and sang the goodbye song together.
Marta’s ballerina

Some final notes

  • As I have mentioned before, the ballerina does not require any careful or detailed actions and even a messy cutting or measuring do not get in the way of finishing the task, if the kids are old enough. The most challenging part was the skirt as it involves preparing the snowflake and cutting off the tip in order to put the skirt on but once the kids were shown the final product (a circle with a slit), they were able to find their own solutions. Some of the skirts were not circles, some of them were not the most regular squares, some of them had not the prettiest slits but they could all be put on and, when, decorated, they all just look beautiful.
  • With the younger students, I would ask the parents to prepare the shapes and to cut the slit for the skirt, too.
  • I have also seen ballerinas that are even easier to make as the snowflake skirt could just be replaced with tissue paper or strips of paper glued on, or, if you have them, cupcake paper liners folded in half. This would also make this craft easier to make.
  • I loved the fact that when I first introduced my ballerina, the kids were slightly taken aback (and, fair enough, it is not the most graceful thing in the world, my ballerina) but as we proceeded through the craft, they grew fonder and fonder of their creations. They came up with many ideas of personalising them and of adding more detail ie a separate piece of paper for the hair. Not to mention that their dolls are simply amazing.
  • Another beautiful that happend during this lesson was the fact that the girls remembered the acrobats that we did in a Chagal and Circus lesson in December 2021. An eternity ago and yet, they did remember!

Vicky’s ballerina

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #43 Tractors and trains. Riddles for VYL

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Ingredients

  • A Miro board or a powerpoint in the editing mode.
  • A beautiful train with carriages or a tractor with trailers, with one animal on each trailer.
  • A set of colourful cards, with a set of riddles following the same framework and the set of structures in each riddle.

Procedures

  • Students take turns to choose the colour of the card.
  • Teacher reads the description of the animal. Kids listen and guess the animal. Teacher uncovers the picture to check the answers.

Why we like it

  • First and foremost, this kind of an activity helps to develop listening skills in very young beginner students and focus as they need the information from all the sentences in order to guess the name of the animal.
  • At the same time, since all the riddles use the same framwork and the same structures, this game is an opportunity to practise all the key structures. The set of these will depend on what the students are familiar with and can be simplified or extended.
  • We use this kind of a game to prepare the students to produce the language, too and after playing the game for a few lessons in this very format, with the teacher reading and the kids guessing, we move on to the following stage with the students producing a set of sentences to describe an animal.
  • Last but not least, with time and with the development of the literacy skills, this kind of an activity can also help develop reading skills.
  • The game is pretty and colourful, made with colourful cards, beautiful visuals from google. The students are usually curious to find out which animals are hidding on the trailers. The format of the presentation can be adapted, too. In the past we played with huge present box (partially inspired by Rod Campbell’s Dear Zoo) and with houses in which the animals were hiding and the miraculously appearing thanks to the funcion of ‘bring to the front’ or ‘move to the back’ on Miro or any powerpoint.
  • It can be used with animals or with any other topic with the appropriate adaptation of the phrases ie toys (It is big. It is red, with the assumption that we refer to the visuals that the students are familiar with) or transport (It is big, it is fast, it is quiet) etc.
  • If you are interested in riddles, please have a look at this post, too, where I write more about riddles for the older and more advanced students.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #42 One-minute essays

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November raspberries

Ingredients

  • A set of topics. We have used a set of wordwall cards. You can find them here.
  • A timer, more or less formal and strict, depending on the group.
  • Students divided into pairs.
  • A list of the linking words typical for an essay, more or less extensive, depending on the group

Procedures

  • Teacher presents the framework of the one minute spoken essay and the four stages: introduction, arguments to support one side, arguments to support the other side, conclusion as well as the introductory phrases. The basic set of these included: Nowadays, On the one hand, On the other hand, All in all
  • Teacher models the activity: chosing the topic, expressing opinion following the framework and using the key structures. Students time the teacher and signal when 1 minute is up. Afterwords they react with their opinion.
  • Students go into the breakout rooms and continue in the same way.

Why we like it

  • I used this activity first with my teens, as part of the preparation for the essay writing, the first serious essay ever. I wanted them to practise expressing their opinion in a certain format and I wanted to encourage them to use a variety of appropriate cohesive devices which were introduced in the coursebook. It was a much more extensive list than the one provided here.
  • Later on, I used it also with my adult groups as a an opportunity and a tool to work on shaping the discourse, at this point – without the follow-up of the written essay.
  • The activity is generative as student A has a chance to produce a mini discourse and communicative as student B also has a chance to react and to provide additional arguments to support their partner’s ideas or disagree with them.
  • The main aim of the activity is the development of the speaking skills but the students are also required to listen, in order to be able to contribute their arguments in the follow-up stage. I am hoping that, in the long run, it will lead to students managing their spoken contributions much more effectively.
  • It is a very flexible activity. It can be used as a warmer or as an end-of-class activity. It can be also extended into a proper activity. The length of each discourse can be kept at one minute or it can be extended to two or three minutes. The topics can be varied, as in the set above, or they can be associated with one specific topic and it can be used as an opportunity to generate ideas for the essay that the students will be writing later on.

Here you can find one of similar discourse development tricks.

Happy teaching!

Yayoi Kusama and Pumpkins. Art and English in Primary

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Yes, the Halloween was approaching and my English+Art lesson was on the day. Yes, I was just googling random things hoping that if I find something interesting, I will have a Halloween-ish lesson and if I don’t find anything, well, we will go in a different direction. At this point we have done colours, we have done leaves and, ideally, I was hoping to find some cool artist, some pumpkins and some technique that we have not tried before yet. Last year, around that time, we went to Ilya Mashkov as we tried to recreate his still-life with the magnificent cucurbita pepo but it was last year (aka we have done it already) and it was offline (aka it was more manageable)…I needed something different.

Surprisingly, googling ‘pumpkin in art’ can get you when you want to be)

Yayoi Kusama – jak sztuka może być terapią przy chorobie psychicznej? (magazif.com)

The artist of the day.

Enter Yayoi Kusama. Until last Monday, I had never heard of her. Since last Monday, I have been a great fan. Her art is exploding with colour and with energy and she makes me feel like being a part of the Wonderland, Alice in the real world, easily available, at hand. And she loves dots and dots are circles aka the best shape ever that can be easily used in class (here is an earlier post about that).

We met Yayoi and found out about her favourite things and we looked at some of her paintings in our gallery as is now our habit. We also talked about the paintings we like and don’t like.

Yayoi Kusama and her favourite things
Our gallery in Miro

The language

In this particular lesson I wanted to focus on practising expressing opinion using ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’ and that is exactly what we did. We looked at Yayoi Kusama’s pumpkins and said what we think of them (P.S. We like them!), we looked at a range of creative pumpkins and said what we think of them and we enjoyed the variety in which pumpkins can appear (photos, art, real pumpkins (yes, these were present) and, finally, the Surprise Pumpkin that I have brought. See below)

The craft

The final product here was a compilation or an adaptation of two ideas from the amazing Art for Kids Hub and their pumpkin folding surprise and the most amazing mouse.

  • We looked at all the pumpkins, Kusama’s, the realia, the creative pumpkins
  • I presented the ready made product making sure that the Surprise Pumpkin is a proper surprise (‘Look, this is a pumpkin. But it is also a surprise. Are you ready? 3…2…1….’)
  • We went over the necessary materials with everyone (‘Have you got the paper? Have you got the pencils/markers/crayons?’)
  • I was making one more copy together with the kids. I am drawing on the regular paper, holding it in my hands, on a thick pad. Going step by step, slowly, pausing and waiting for the kids to complete every single step. This is absolutely crucial.
  • We folded the paper, stopping after every stage, showing the page to the camera. There are four essential stages: 1) show the A4 paper 2) fold the paper in half, widthwise 3) press at the crease / fold 4) fold the top flap outwards (show the kids how the edge of the paper touches the crease / fold in the middle 5) press at the crease / fold
  • Draw the pumpkin on the folded paper, that is at the 1/4 flap folded outwards and the 1/2 half at the bottom simultaneously, draw the stem and the leaf as well as three lines for the ribs. Don’t forget to pause at every stop, wait for the kids to complete every step and show you the result.
  • Open the paper and place it flat on the table. Draw the edge of the top half (‘Let’s draw a zigzac’)
  • Draw the edge of the bottom half (‘Let’s draw a zigzac here, too’)
  • Draw the mouse step by step: the oval for the body, two lines for the nose, the ears, the eyes, the whiskers, the tail and the hands.
  • Leave the colouring for after the lesson.
  • Play a bit with the surprise pumpkins that everyone prepared. My students simply recreated the ‘presentation’ that I gave at the beginning of the lesson, of their own accord, just like that.

Some final notes

  • Most of my students deal very well with the folding bit. Only one of us struggled a little bit and we needed mum’s help at the very beginning. It might be a good idea to let the parents know ahead of time and ask them to be at the ready, just in case.
  • As regards the materials, absolutely anything goes: coloured pencils are great, crayons are great, markers work, too. I am at my personal happiest drawing with markers and colouring with crayons or with crayons and markers, for the extra shine and glow.
  • Kids are amazing and they really can recreate the drawings or, rather, they can create their own versions of it. The only thing that is really necessary is the proper staging, going step by step, modelling and pausing, to give everyone time to complete the drawing.
  • It does not matter how big or how small the mouse is. It will all be hidden in the folds of the paper.
  • There are many variations of the craft. You can find some of them online. Below you can see what we have created ad hoc, just because we did everything that we needed and I could extend the lesson a bit. The pumpkin with a cat and the apple with a caterpillar were the result. These are only a few of the options!

Happy teaching!

Levitan and Leaves. Art in Primary

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The teacher’s version

I found the photograph first but then it turned out that it is a whole post with a video tutorial, too. Have a look at the Art Projects for Kids! Which, by the way, is a cool website that I will be visiting in the future!

The language

This is the second module of our course and I decided that I need to start introducing some of the natural world vocabulary, in order to be a little bit better prepared to talk about the artists to come. The first introductory set is rather modest and it includes: the sky, the grass, trees, mountains, houses, the river, flowers and leaves. We have also used this module as an opportunity to revise colours and numbers and to introduce the first two adjectives (big and small). Finally, we started to talk about what ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’.

The artist

Our artist of the day who introduced all of that to us was Isaac Illich Levitan, the love of my childhood and my first artist ever. The album of his works is one of the very few books that I remember from my early childhood (apart from the storybooks, of course). It was there, on the shelf and I did spend hours on the carpet, leafing through it, back and forth, making up stories taking place among the birch trees, by the river, in the forests and in some ‘Sokolniki park’ which I found out about long before I set my foot in it. This, by the way, was also one of my first encounters with the foreing languages as the book was in Russian, English, French and German and these were my first exercises in comparative linguistics. At the age of 5 and 6.

Leviatan’s was what you might call a cameo appearance because I did not want to overwhelm the kids. We looked at the four seasons, looked for the new words in the paintings (‘Can you see a house?) and talked about the colours. We also started to sing ‘What’s your favourite season?’. Not a lot, but Isaac is definitely coming back, with the arrival of the winter and then the spring and the summer. With him, there will be Vivaldi, which would have been a perfect companion but I simply forgot about his existence. I am already looking forward to our winter-themed lessons.

Levitan in our ‘gallery’

The craft

  • try to make the leaf at home to figure out how complex it might be and how much time we will require, think about the stages
  • use the leaves throughout the lesson ie while revising colours and numbers or practising ‘I like / I don’t like’
  • check that the kids have all the materials necessary: a piece of paper, crayons, watercolours and water
  • draw the outline of the leaf veins, and patterns with crayons. It is ok to use the same colour but the final product is more interesting if different colours are used. I was considering introducing different patterns to make it more structured but, in the end, decided not to. We will introduce them on some other occasion, with Kandinsky, for example. If possible, I would use special paper for watercolours but in the online world it is not quite possible. Regular photocopying paper works well, too.
  • colour the leaf with the watercolours. It might be a good idea to start with the brighter colours and, for the sake of staging, ‘dictate’ which colour to use, leaving the kids a decision which section of the leaf to colour. The lines drawn with crayons will not be covered by the paint and they will be still visible and it is not really necessary to be too careful with painting. Not staying within the lines or even letting the colours seep or even leak into each other create a much more interesting effect. I haven’t really encouraged my kids to create a very ‘messy-on-purpose’ picture (not yet, anyway) but I am very reckless with how I use my paints, to show the kids that it’s ok.
  • finish with showing the leaves, call out the colours, talk about whose leaves we like.
  • I have cut out my leaves to be able to use them more easily and I was planning on telling the parents that the kids can do it after the lesson, when the paints dry completely. If I still had my classroom, I would put them up on the window.

Happy teaching!

Professor Nikolov, kids’ motivation to learn English and classroom research

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Autum in Wallonia

When I look back at the two and a half years of the MA programme at the University of Leicester, I am thinking of a marathon (a prolonged period of strict routine, extensive emotional and physical expenditure and obligatory one-track-mindedness). Actually, five marathons in a row. But when I look back, it is also the time when one could revel in reading and research, having access to the treasures to the university libraries of the world.

Apart from going through piles of studies and articles to find out data for my assignments and thesis, I also started to make up a list of pieces to share with my teachers and my trainees. Jerome Bruner’s (et al) and the study of the role of tutoring aka scaffolding is already on the blog here and, I am happy to say, for a very long time, it was one of the most popular posts. It still stays somewhere in the top 15…

Today, part 2 of the same series. Enter: professor Marianne Nikolov.

A personal role model

There is something very touching about the career of professor Nikolov (PhD, Professor Emerita at the University of Pécs, Hungary), who after years and years of regular and everyday school teaching started to work as a researcher and, who, eventually, switched into the academia. This very research which is described in the article was her first long-term research, as she says herself, it is in many ways imperfect mainly due to the fact that it was carried out by someone who was, back then, an inexperienced researcher. So much more precious because of that and so much more inspiring for all of us, teachers and trainers, to get our own classroom projects started.

The presentation on the recent research into early years that professor Nikolov gave at the 1st Hellenic Conference on Early Language Learning in Greece, in 2013 is, in my humble opinion, a must for all the VYL teachers, as a crash course into the early years EFL.

‘Why do you learn English?’ ‘Because my teacher is short’

This gem, unique and unforgettable, is the title of the study that I would like to introduce you to and encourage you to read today. And, frankly, could there be a better title to an article devoted to early years and young EFL learners? I seriously doubt it.

It was published in 1999 and it is an account of a long-term study of a group of Hungarian children, aged 6 – 14 and analysing their motivation to learn English at school. Professor Nikolov gave out the questionnaire to her students, which the kids filled in (in their L1) and which was followed by a feedback session with the kids.

Without risking that I would deprive anyone of the pleasures of reading the article, I would like to share here my own main take-outs:

  • all the reasons to learn English have been divided into four groups: the classroom experience (aka the activities), the teacher (‘my teacher is short’), the external reasons (aka the parents and the grades) and the utilitarian reasons (aka the future) (p. 42)
  • all these were present in the answers given by different ages but it was possible to distinguish three sub-groups: grades 1 – 2, grades 3 – 5 and grades 6 – 8
  • the attitude to English (one of everyone’s favourite subjects) was compared with the attitude to the other subjects
  • a whole range of favourite classroom activities was revealed and a range of nobody’s favourite activities such as tests, acting out and (this one made me laugh) boring stories
  • in response to the final question (‘If you were a teacher, what would you do differently?), some kids suggested abandoning tests, some felt that the teacher should be stricter while dealing with different classroom management issues but many didn’t want to change anything at all.
  • the connection between the school grades and the motivation. On the one hand they are the extrinsic motives, on the other hand, as professor Nikolov says, ‘achievements represented by good grades, rewards and language knowledge all serve as motivating forces: children feel successful and this feeling generates the need for further success‘ (p. 46).

A source of inspiration, no metaphors

When I first found the article, I wanted to read it precisely because of the title. It made me smile because this quote is perfect and it reveals a lot of how the kids see the world. Plus it is a fantastic way of drawing the attention of the readers-researchers whose passion are YL. Then, I started to read, curious what I would find them. Finally, it struck me that I did not know what my students would say and that is because I had never asked them.

I was mortified that, in a way, I had taken my kids for granted. Yes, we had been studying together for years, their parents had been bringing them, year after year and there had been no issues, we had fun and we had made progress. But I had never actually asked them.

Naturally, I decided to change it and professor Nikolov’s research was my inspiration and my guidance.

My research took two directions:

a) I prepared a questionnaire for kids and I used exactly the same questions that professor Nikolov used with her students. I wrote them in English and in Russian and the kids were told that they were able to use whichever language they wanted. The funny and the most amazing thing is that some of my A1+ kids tried to express some of their thoughts in the target language.

b) I prepared a questionnaire for the parents, too, partially because some of my students were 4 y.o. and beginners and, partially, because I wanted to find out what kind of an impact the home environment has on the kids’ motivation. The parents were asked to answer the following questions: Do you do anything in English at home? Does anyone else speak English? Before starting to learn English, did you have a conversation with your child about it? What did you talk about? Do you know what your child likes and doesn’t like about our classes and about their English classes at school.

‘How come I never asked before?‘

…is something that I still keep asking myself. Apart from an opportunity to exercise my almost non-existant researcher skills, this questionnaire and this adventure gave me a fascinating opportunity to see the bigger picture and to become more aware of everything that might have an impact on how my students see the language learning process.

Here are are few insights:

  • most of my educational parents admitted to chatting to their kids about the reason to learn English, although sometimes the kids, due to their age, were not quite interested.
  • some of the preparation was done in a rather informal way as English as a means of communication entered their lives anyway since they had an opportunity to travel abroad, they were visited by parents’ friends from abroad. They could also see their relatives use English at work or at school.
  • some of my younger kids already expressed some of the utalitarian reasons (‘he wants to work for Lego or Hot Wheels’), this was a lot more common among the older students
  • the most interesting fact was that for many of my students English was not only a subject, something that belongs strictly in the school. Rather than that, it was a family thing, something you do with mum or dad or with the siblings, younger or older, although, none of the kids came from bilingual families.
  • as for the kids, their reasons could be divided into the four groups highlighted by professor Nikolov: the external (‘My mum told me to’), the utilitarian (‘I will travel to different countries and cities’), the teacher (‘Because of Anka’) (insert a million hearts here) and the classroom (‘Because I like it’)

The follow-up?

Raising the awareness and finding out is only the first step and it highlights the importance of a few processes. Naturally, the teacher has no influence on the background of the students or on the family social status and their ability to travel abroad for example. However, the teacher can make sure that the parents are involved in the classroom activities and classroom life, to the extent in which it is possible and, at least, those parents that wish to be involved. This can be done through helping to take English out of the classroom and extending the exposure by sharing songs, games, activities and keeping the parents informed.

There are also some opportunities to bring the world into the classroom, especially nowadays, in the post-covid, zoom world by using the real life materials, traditional stories, guests, virtual guests, pen pals etc. This way, even without travelling, kids will see the connection between the coursebooks on their desks and the world out there.

There is a lot that the teacher can do as regards including the age-appropriate activities, finding out what the favourite activities are and working on building the community even if only by learning the kids’ names, celebrating birthdays and creating the new, group-specific traditions and ‘traditions’.

The first step can be reading about professor Nikolov’s study and running your own research and finding out why your students like to learn English…

Happy teaching!

P.S.

Fun fact? This blog was created as my reward for completing the MA programme. I submitted the final version of my dissertation around midnight on the night of the 1st and 2nd of March 2020 and, on the 2nd of March, during the day, when I did catch my breath a bit, I got my funky socks and my dragons in line…

Bibliography

Marianne Nikolov, ‘Why do you learn English?’ ‘Because my teacher is short’. A study of Hungarian children’s foreign language learning motivation. Language Teaching Research, 1999:3:33, p. 33 – 56

Material design for beginners: The activity as the source of inspiration

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From the series: Try something new today!

Welcome back to this autumn’s series and, before you go on reading this post, I would like to invite to have a look at the introduction and to the first part, the materials that were designed and came to be only because I found a new resource that I really (really) wanted to use in class.

The episode here is going to focus on the well-known activities that were too good not to be smuggled into the EFL lessons, with kids but also with adults.

Noughts and crosses

This is one of my personal favourites. Admittedly, it is used more frequently in the offline or in my 1-1 or small groups with the online groups and that is due to the way it was adapted, with the option of the points each box, revealed only at the end of the round. We also use noughts and crosses to tell stories and there is a post, too.

MadLibs

MadLibs is a great party game and if you are lucky you can find some ready made ones, appropriate for young learners (or just kids) or related to one specific topic to match the theme of the lesson or the unit. However, pretty much any text can become a MadLib (or a MadLib in reverse) since what you need is a) a text and b) some missing words which we guess and then the world really is your oyster. We use the approach with my exam preparation classes, especially with the tasks such as FCE Listening part 3 in which the exam paper is a ready-made MadLib and which you play to predict the potential answers. We use it also with my Flyers kids as a preparation for the story reading in Reading and Writing part 5. The same idea can be used with any sample writing although here the teacher has to remove some words first and then think of a category for them.

Pelmanism

First and foremost, this is probably my favourite tool to develop the early literacy skills in my primary and pre-primary kids, both online and offline. The main idea: find the two pictures that constitute a pair. With the pre-primary kids, we play to find the two identical card and to call out the word or to produce a full sentence or, similarly, in the flashcard – word card pairs.

The range is much wider and the tool much easier to prepare for the literate students as the pairs may constitute, from the easiest to the most complex: a picture and a picture, a picture and the first letter of the word, a picture and a word, a word in a simple structure and a word in a simple structure, a word in an affirmative structure and a word in a negative structure, a set of questions with various structures and a set of answers and, finally, halves of sentences. See the sample here for ideas.

The activity can be used with the older and the more advanced students and it can be made a lot more generative by asking students, for example, to find the phrasal verb with the definition and the question in which it is used, which they later answer ie take up (start a hobby) and ‘Why do people take up different hobbies? Where do they find the inspiration to do that?’ or a phrasal verb and its definition with the question that they have to create themselves.

In the online classes, the cards on wordwall can be used (we add numbers using the zoom notes or we simply count the cards for the teacher to open) and recently this option has been added to the upgraded bamboozle. This game is also very easy to create on the Miro board or even in a simple powerpoint (in the design mode, without the presentation).

Go fish

This is the most ridiculous case because, up to this day, I really have no idea how to play it. I do remember reading about it, in one of the methodology books, but the instructions were a page long and I gave up after a few lines only. The only recollection that stayed was the following: you have a set of cards, you keep them secret and you have to ask for these cards. Today, we play it as ‘Can I have?’ or, with my younger kids as ‘The Sheep’.

Riddles

If we had a different set of categories, that would definitely be mine ‘something old’ that recently I have had a chance to rediscover with two amazing people and the most recent post on that topic is here.

And there are many, many more and I am going to include the links here, just in case if you are looking for ideas: General Kutuzov, a lazy role-play and our fruit salad.

Now, off to writing the final part of the series: things that started from the most important people in the process: the kids. Soon in cinemas near you!

Happy teaching!