Anka Zapart

Crumbs #23 OR 5 ways of using video in class

by

These are not all the activities that you can do with a video, these might not be the best activities for your groups. These are just some approaches that we like. Maybe you will find them useful.

Prediction

Procedure: The teacher introduces the topic of the video and gives the students a set of key words that appear in the video. The students discuss why these words might appear in the video and why they might be important. After a whole class feedback, the class watch the video to check whether they predictions were correct. As a follow-up, the students discuss the most (or the least) surprising / unusual / weird facts they have found out about.

Example: We used this video to accompany a reading on extreme adventures and survival in which making a snow cave helped the people survive. We watched a real tutorial on making a snow cave and the key words we started with were: a candle, the letter T, the stick, a saw, the flat ceiling.

Back to the board

Procedure: The teacher divides the group into pairs, one student in each pair sits facing the TV, the other one sits with their back to the screen. the teacher plays the video, students work in pairs and they retell each other what is happening on the screen. Depending on the video, the students can watch the video with the sound on or with the sound muted. After a while, the students change seats and continue watching. Finally, they talk together and answer some questions related to the video. Usually it is a mix of questions, some of which check comprehension and some which help the students see the big picture or express opinion.

Example: We did this kind of an activity while discussing sports and unusual sports. The students watched the muted video on extreme extreme ironing, in two halves, about 60 seconds each and afterwards answered the following questions: What do you think is the name of this sport? How do you think Phil Shaw came up with the idea? What can be easy and difficult about this sport? Would you like to try? Which was the strangest place in which this sport was done? In the end, we watched it together, with the sound on and we compared ideas.

Pause and talk

Procedure: This is a great activity for the videos that consist of short blocks or include a set of examples of a certain item. The teacher writes the key question on the board, usually only one, and plays the video. The students watch a short clip. The teacher pauses the video and students discuss what they have just seen by answering the question. The biggest advantage of this approach is that the teacher is in charge as regards the duration, the activity can be stopped after only three items or the video can be played until the very end. As a follow-up, the students choose their favourite / their least favourite item and justify their choices. As in all of the other activities, there is also an option of the students changing partners and sharing their ideas with someone else in the group.

Example: While discussing food, we watched the video about school lunches around the world, we watched it bit by bit (after each item) and the students had to answer the following question ‘Would you like to try it? Why?’. Actually, this particular lesson included the video because we followed up with a video on American kids trying Russian food and we paused right after the food was introduced and we try to predict if the kids are going to like it or not.

Read my lips

Procedure: It is used with the video with a very clear narrative that can be interpreted without the audio version as the students watch it muted. The teacher can start with the title of the film and ask the students to predict what they think it is about. Afterwards, the students watch the film and try to figure out what is happening, who the characters are, how they are feeling. The teacher can ask them to take notes while they are watching. Afterwards, students compare their notes in pairs or in groups of three. The teacher can also ask them about the main events or to try to connect the clip to the title of the film. Afterwards, the students watch the video again and as a group discuss their guesses. The teacher clarifies the main points, without going into too many details. The final activity is predicting what happens next.

Example: One of my top ten for this kind of an approach is a video like this excerpt from Big Fish, or actually a set of clips from the same film, for example this one here or this one here. In this one case, we did not really talk about the title of the film. After watching the film, the students were discussing what they saw but I also asked them to think about the following questions: Who was the big man? Why did he look scruffy? Why did the boy throw a stone at him? Why did the boy reach out a hand and closed the eyes? Why did they shake hands in the end?

After we finished watching and discussing, we also looked at the quote from the clip ‘You are a big man. You should be in a big city.’ and we talked about what it might mean and whether it is true.

Categorise

Procedure: The students are given a list of all the items that are shown in the video ie some extreme sports, some unusual holiday destinations, exotic animals etc. The students watch the video and they take notes about all the items, ie putting (+) and (-) next to those that they like or grading them from 1 – 5, depending on how interesting they are. After watching the video, they make their own list, organising all the items from the most to the least interesting one or dividing them into categories (like – don’t like, useful – not useful, interesting – boring) and so on. They work in pairs or small teams and compare and explain their decisions.

Example: This video was used in a lesson on technology as it presents the list of 10 Coolest Gadges. Some of the gadgets in the video have unusual names so we started with looking at these, trying to figure out what these might be. We actually divided the video into two and we discussed the first five gadgets and then, after the second half, the other five and then all ten, to round up. The students were choosing the most interesting gadgets that they might want to buy and those that they would not really even consider. In the end, we choose the most and the least popular gadget as a group.

None of the videos I use as examples were graded or created with the EFL /ESL learners so they can be considered authentic materials. I found all of them on youtube while looking for videos that would match the topic we were working on. I did not introduce any vocabulary, focusing rather on listening (or watching) for gist and general understanding, rather than on any specific details. Unless, of course, the students had any questions.

If you want to find out more about using authentic materials, have a look at some of the many resources online such as these post here: how to choose and adapt them, here from the Britsh Council, and here.

I have also found out a few posts on using video in class. If you are interested, you can find them here and here and this one here, although it has a wider scope and does not really focus on videos in the EFL/ESL classroom.

Happy teaching!

A multilingual brain. One user experience story

by

Salvatore. That was the name of one of the characters in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. The only character I still rememeber, after all these years since I first read this book (somewhere in high school). Salvatore was an estranged one, an eccentric one, suffering from some illness but that is not what made him unforgettable. Salvatore spoke multiple languages but he did it in the most unusual way because, for some reason, probably related to his illness, he spoke them all at once, mixing them in a discourse or switching even mid-sentence.

Back then, as a kid, I found it frightening that this poor man was excluded and that, really, he was never fully to be understood by his brethren. Unless someone spoke exactly the same combination of languages and could navigate around this mumble-jumble. Which, of course, very few did. Today, when I watch the film or when I simply find myself switching between languages, I am laughing. I am on my way to becoming a Salvatore.

Facts

My everyday (and my very un-glamorous) life takes place in four languages. If I had been a Netflix film, my list of audio and subtitles would be a list of (in the alphabetical order): English, Polish, Portuguese and Russian. This is how I communicate, how I read and write. These are my conversations, my notes, my books, films, TV programmes, TV series and music.

How to get there? By accident.

First and foremost, I was not brought up as a bilingual or a multinlingual child. I did not grow up in a minority community or in a migrant family. These four languages just happened and these four stayed. Just like that.

I am Polish and until I was about 12, I did not know any foreign languages. Polish is, by all accounts, my mother tongue, the language of my parents, my brother, my family and my Polish friends.

When I turned 12, like all my peers, I started to learn a foreign language at school and that for me was Russian. I loved it because it was like the door to another world, similar but different to my mother tongue and unusual with its own magical alphabet. It lasted four years and then it stopped, abruptly because my high school did not even have Russian on offer. I stopped and, naturally, I forgot.

Or, to be more precise, I paused and I hid it somewhere, in the Room of Requirement of my brain, for good twenty years, and when I arrived in Moscow to teach and to live, this is where I retrieved it from. Slowly. Today I do communicate, effectively, and, with time, I even managed to improve my writing and reading, which, at first, due to the lack of practice, were atrocious. I use Russian at work and not at work and I would love to be able to know what my real level is. Eventually, I will make myself sit some exam, just to find out or to prove that I rock it. At the moment, I suppose I can pat myself on the shoulder for reading fiction and non-fiction (albeit it takes me a while to go through a book) and to have successfully dealt with a variety of linguistic challenges of the higher level such as: filling in random forms and questionnaires (tick), listening to serious and specific lectures (tick), presenting a workshop (tick), producing a long piece of writing for a competition (tick), having a conversation with an angry nurse and making her smile (tick), writing a poem (tick)…

English entered the stage when I was relatively old already, but, if the theory of the Critical Period Hypothesis is true, I must have started learning it before the puberty hit because my pronunciation does not bear any Polish traces. Not that I ever made an effort to obtain the perfect RP (at the time, long long time ago that was not even an issue, that you had to or that you didn’t need to). When I first went to the UK at the age of 25, I could already speak it well enough (CAE in my pocket) but, still, the multitude of accents and the richness did knock me off my feet upon arrival. I recovered. Then I actually did live and work in London, got my exams and got my degrees. And, since I am a teacher and a trainer, English is work but it is a lot more than that, too.

And there is Portuguese, too, the Brazilian Portuguese, straight from Sao Paulo. I bumped into it in London first and, after a lot of exposure, I started to pick my way through it. Literally. As a result, my Portuguese is a wonderful example of a linguistic mess. There was a time when it was Upper-Intermediate or even Advanced, in some areas at least, because I used it a lot. I did not have a choice. Some of my friends or their parents or families did not speak English so we did communicate in Portuguese. I never had a proper coursebook because I quickly got out of the beginner range and I’ve never found a book for the more advanced students. Out of some kind of despair, I started to read and watch what I could get hold of, the regular TV programmes, stand-up, journals, newspapers, poetry, fiction…It was not easy but, again, I had no choice. I used to have three teachers, my friends, here in Moscow, who helped me iron out some creases, work on accuracy and make sure that I stay afloat, as regards communication. Today, I have an accent from Sao Paulo (apparently), I know some colloquial phrases from the higher shelves, I am relatively fluent but, at the same time, I can slip (and fall on my face) on some banana skin of the A2 level grammar.

L1 + L2 + L3 + L4

It is a real temptation to try to label all these languages, to order them and to rank them. Alas, that does not seem to be feasible. Because, for example, there is no doubt – I was brought up in Polish and these are my factory settings, but does it still deserve to be my number 1 if the communication that I carry out in Polish takes up about 10% of my daily interaction (on a good day). I have no idea how to go about that.

I know that I have a dream for each of the languages: to improve my Russian and to make it top-notch so that I don’t struggle with declination and with the register…to have more opportunities to speak Portuguese on daily basis…to get to read and write more in Polish because I sometimes wake up with a thought that I am losing it…And to make time to write everything that I would love to write in English. And to have more time to read in all of these languages.

One of my hobbies, probably somehow related to the fact that I am a teacher and a researcher (small-scale) is stepping out of the picture and looking at how the adult brain deals with this combination, the joys and the hiccups of the everyday. Here are some of them.

The adventures of a brain

  • I use all four languages every day.
  • Most of the time, it means dealing with two of them at a time. The office and the school is English and Russian. The home time is Russian and English or Polish and English. Or any other combination. It seems that the way we are connected to the world nowadays really does promote the multilingual life or, at least, makes it easier. Not only have I got the access to the media in all these languages but, also, since communicating via different messengers is a part of the everyday life, it is perfectly normal to be typing up in Portuguese in Telegram while watching a game in Russian on TV. Or going through the lesson plans in English while in the middle of the conversation in Polish with the family…Using one of the languages does not exclude the use of the other one, not completely.
  • Most of the time, the brain doesn’t mind and it does get better at managing it, it adjusts. In the past, it used to be more difficult to manage all four and to switch from one to the other. An intermission of a kind was necessary, a minute of silence after I stopped speaking one and before I started speaking the other. For the neurons to pause, to reorganise and to re-start. Luckily, practice makes perfect and it is much easier. Especially when I am jumping in-between English and Russian or between English and Polish or Polish and Russian because these shifts are more frequent.
  • The most interesting case of managing all four, all at once, was during a volleyball game between Poland and Brazil, held in Poland, watched on one of the Russian TV channels and with my English-speaking friends. There were times when I was hit by three different langauges at a time and the combination changed from minute to minute. It was a ride, but I did manage.
  • In the past, when I used to be really tired and not having slept enough, the languages would disappear. They would switch off, gradually, starting from the most ‘distant’ one, as if the brain wanted to shut down to save the energy and to focus on the most familiar one. For example, the listening skills in Portuguese would still be there but the brain would be too tired to produce, in Portuguese.
  • Today, in such situations, the brain is only sending signals asking for silence. There are days when I simply cannot bear listening to music with lyrics, in any language. It is too annoying and this is when Chopin or Stravinsky come to the rescue. Or Miles Davis.
  • I love the fact that whenever possible, I can go back and forth between the languages. I can do my small-scale Salvatore. Sometimes, I have to because I might not know a word in Russian and then I switch back to English to signal to my speaker that I need assistance. Sometimes, I resort to that simply because the word does not have its counterpart in the other langauge or that the original version is simply better…If my speakers know both languages, then I do not bother, simply.
  • I have sneakily used languages to guarantee the privacy of a conversation, going for the one that is least familiar to the other people.
  • I have used Portuguese in class, too, with my teens group. They don’t speak it but it works when I need to remind them that from 18:15 until 19:45 we are supposed to communicate in English, because that is the language that we share.
  • There are topics typical for a language. For a very long time I could talk about religion and volleyball only in Polish or in English. It took some time to get the brain used to do it in Russian, for example. I would choose Russian or English to talk about football. The methodology of ESL / EFL does not exist in any other language but English. The same goes for grammar and language awareness. The metalanguage in Russian and in Polish are beyond reach, at this point.
  • At the same time, my cooking vocabulary is top notch in all four languages. I follow different cookery channels and I cook food from different countries but I never bother to translate. My cookery notebook reflects my brain and each recipe always stays in the original version, whatever that might be.
  • I am greedy for the beautiful language. I sometimes echo some random phrases trying to remember them and, ideally, I would just pause the world to give myself a moment to write them down, at the cinema, at the doctor’s, in a shop, in a conversation with friends…I have had people look at me in a funny way, when, in the middle of a discourse, I chip in with my ‘oh, what a beautiful phrase!’
  • Before an important conversation, especially in Russian, I like to think about what I am going to say and how. I sometimes even rehearse it or write down the key verbs. Basically, I am worried that people will not take me seriously because of the mistakes I make or because I am not as fluent as a native speaker would be. That they might dismiss and disregard the message focusing more on how (or ‘how inexpertly’) I am trying to get it across. Not that it stops me from communicating altogether but I sometimes feel like I am going into a battle.
  • That is also the reason why I like to set the context and to activate the schemata in the real life situations, in the very same way I would do in my own classes. ‘I don’t speak very well but I need to change this reservation. Please bear with me.’ Or ‘I got really upset with this situation.’ Or ‘I am going to ask you a lot of questions.’
  • I do use swear words, in all four languages, instinctively now going for the one that the world around me is least likely to understand and to be offended by. At the same time, when I am really, really, really angry, to the core, I stick to my mother tongue.
  • My diaries are in English. So is this blog.
  • Over the years, I learnt other languages, too. German – because I had to, at university. I dealt with it as with any other subject: learnt, passed the exam, forgot. I had French at school for four years and then I returned to it on at least two occassions. It was fun, it was beautiful but it did not stick. I tried to teach myself Swedish because it was odd and random and funny. It did not last, there was no real exposure and no real need. Swedish, however, helped me realise that there is one more element that I personally need to get involved with a language and it is the emotional connection. It works on two levels. First of all, each of the languages I speak is the language that I actually use, be it for family, personal or professional reasons. I know that there are people living abroad and not speaking the language but I cannot put myself in such a situation. I like to be a part of the place, linguistically, too. Second of all, with all four languages that I do have there was a time when I really did fall in love with them, with their grammar, texture, melody, weirdness. In English it was the moment when I got hold of the Oscar Wilde play in the original version, I do remember the awe I was in. In Portuguese, it was the first song I did listen to consciously, the repeated verb ‘sorrir’ (smile) and how I learned the word for star (‘estrela’) from a four-year-old boy. In Russian, I remember the joy mixed with aprehension when I went (slowly, very slowly) through my first novel and my favourite novel, Master and Margarita. Perhaps that is exactly what happens with your mother tongue that you need to grow up to love it consciously. For me, it was the second reading of our national epic, Pan Tadeusz and, then, a short while later, falling into the stories written and drawn by Bruno Schultz.
  • Spanish is an interesting case. I lived in Navarra for less than a year, I did learn the language but when I did, it was already after I had done Portuguese. For that reason, I could never fall in love with it and, no matter how hard I tried, instead of ‘yo‘ I always produced ‘eu‘ (‘I‘ in Spanish and Portuguese respectively) and then I gave up and used only the verb form (which is almost always the same in both languages). Until recently, I thought that Spanish for me was the lost child (‘Are you sure it even happened?’), the one that I gave up on and almost blocked out. I thought. But, somehow, I discovered that now I am still fine watching Almodovar without subtitles, I love Javier Bardem for a reason (and Penelope and Antonio, who, by the way should only speak Spanish in films) and when the Spanish songs come up in my player (and there are surprisingly many of them there), I sing along.
  • I try to read books in the original version. I love having this privilege. Translated from the original, they get on my nerves, too, especially when the translation is really bad and I am reading in one langauge but I can hear the original. The good translations are an adventure. And I love reading my favourite books in all the langauges available.
  • I have had debates, discussions and fights in all four languages here. I have cried in all four languages on the list, happy tears, angry tears and sad, too. I have been heard and I have said ‘I love you‘, ‘eu te amo‘, ‘я тебя люблю‘ and ‘kocham cię‘.
  • I’d rather not dream at all but I have had dreams in English, in Polish and in, to quote my brother, from a long time ago, ‘the ones that I don’t understand’

Instead of a coda…

…I thought I could do a bit of a Salvatore here.

A lingua portuguesa e para mim são as pessoas, os amigos proprios e a gente da cidade grande com que eu mim apaixhonei mesmo ao primerio olhar e ao primeiro andar. Todos eles eram meus professores queridos e até este dia eu lembro historias como eu aprendi certaz palavras ou de quem ouvi certas musicas.

Num livro de Ray Bradbury tem a historia de um general. Ele é muito velho, so fica na cama, mas, quando pode, escondido, ele liga para um amigo no Mexico City, pede para ele abrir a janela e fica ai, num orelhão, ouvido de todos os sons da cidade amada, no outro lado de oceano. Sempre imaginei que este general sou eu, no futuro, so que a cidade minha é differente.

Eu fico com saudade mas tambem sei que ‘Ela vai voltar’.

Есть дни такие, когда я вообще супергерой и иду вперёд, и не могу остановиться, говорю и пишу, всемогущая. Но есть и тоже такие, когда ели-ели, когда не попадаю в суффиксы и когда люди переспрашивают, а то непонятно что говорю. Очень хочу говорить красиво, но тоже знаю хорошо, что никуда не спрячу ни этого произношения (после двух слов угадывают что я полячка. Обидно даже!) и этой странной структуры фразы, в которую иногда попадаю. Как говорится – я знаю, что я катастрофа, но я стараюсь. И какое это счастье что можно получать удовольствие просто говоря. Это для меня русский язык (и еще Москва, Мельников, Булгаков, футболь, и всё мое образовательные дети. И зяблики).

I jeszcze mój polski język, taki piękny, taki dziwny. Ale mój. Kiedyś pięknie pisałam też po polsku. Tęsknię za moimi książkami, tymi wszystkimi które są daleko i za klawiaturą, na której byłyby wszystkie polskie znaczki. Na pociechę mam tutaj polskie ksiażki audio i raz do roku wielkie święto, festiwal polskich filmów, kiedy mogę się podzielić Polską z bliskimi mi ludźmi.

Niech będzie wiersz, taki z ‘dawno, dawno temu’, kiedy mialam lat naście. Edward Stachura

Ruszaj się, Bruno, idziemy na piwo;
Niechybnie brakuje tam nas!
Od stania w miejscu niejeden już zginął,
Niejeden zginął już kwiat!

P.S. If there is anyone out there who would like to share their experience with multilingual lives, please use the comments box. I would love to hear from you!

Teaching teens. EFL metaphors #1

by
Vintage poster – Air France, São Paulo, Brasil – Galerie 1 2 3 (1976)

Metaphors in EFL? What? Why? How?

Using metaphors in teacher training is not a new concept. I found out about it thanks to Thomas S.C. Farrell while doing the research for my MA dissertation two years ago. In his ‘Novice Language Teachers: Insights And Perspectives For the First Year’ published in 2008, he included a great article by Steva Mann (all the details below) devoted to teachers ‘making sense’ of the experiences of their first year in the classroom specifically through metaphors.

I do recommend reading the whole article, of course, but just to give you a taste and to show you why it has been kind of a breakthrough for me, here are a few quotes.

Mann writes ‘Metaphors play an instrumental role in using a familiar image to explore more complex concepts and meanings’ (2008: 11) and they can be ‘consciously employed by individuals for reflective purposes’ (2008:12). A bit further on he also highlights the fact that ‘metaphorical exploration may be particularly useful for first year teachers in attempting to come to terms with the complex nature of teacher knowledge and its relationship with experience’ (2008:12). I found this quote especially interesting although I think it is true about any teacher that becomes a novice in a field (ie an experienced teacher taking the first steps in the area of exam preparation, EAP or early years) or, even more broadly, any teacher learning new things and trying to apply them in practice.

Anyway, I got inspired. First of all, I quickly added the metaphor question to my MA survey and I started to experiment with using the metaphor in my everyday teaching and teacher training, for example a few weeks ago, while running the session on the course/ Here is now we did it.

Teaching teenagers in metaphors

We started with a game of hangman in which the group had to guess one of my own metaphors for what teaching teenagers is like and that is: Growing Cactuses, mainly because it is not as straightforward, pretty and easy as growing violets, tulips or even roses, but it is equally rewarding and fun. If you know how to do it, of course. If you are interested about it or if you are just starting to teach teens, you can read more about it here.

If you are here, it must be either because you already work with teenagers and you already have your own view of the teenage classroom. Or you might be a novice teenagers teacher who is about to enter this classroom and you are preparing, mostly because you have heard ‘things’.

One way or another, you are ready for the exercise that I prepared for the activity that we did with my trainees later in the session. Since all of these metaphors and visuals are open to interpretation (just look at the two different images I have found for ‘writing a novel’) and prone to be influenced by the personal experiences (which is the best thing about the metaphors, admittedly), instead of me just analysing all the metaphors in detail and telling you what to think, first I would like you to read what my trainees have created and answer these questions:

  • Why do you think the teachers expressed their ideas in such a way? What kind of classroom experiences have led to that?
  • Were your experiences the same? Do you agree?

Here are the metaphors, in no particular order. I have decided to combine the words with the images and these come either from my trainees themselves or from the obliging clipart…

Teaching teenagers is…

…writing a novel

…per aspera ad astra aka ‘Through hardships to the stars’

…touching a melting ice-cream

…playing the lead role in every play

…riding a roller-coaster

…breaking stereotypes

…about mood swings

…keeping a heart on your sleeve

…a role-play

…about the strength of materials

…working with/through moods, feelings, hormones

Just a few words…

Just as the visuals do it, the metaphor invites the audience, students, trainees or readers, to personalise the reality and to share opinions and views and, by doing so, it offers a unique opportunity to look at an item in a multitude of ways. The horizon widens straight away.

Some of the interpretations might feel like that your own thoughts expressed by someone else, something that might have been on your mind, although they were never properly verbalised. Sometimes, some of them might be contradictory to all of your beliefs, they are still valuable because they might help you understand the basis for the beliefs we hold.

It is funny that even the same set of metaphors that we put together and mine interpretation of them change, from day to day. During the session, I got really drawn to ‘writing the novel’ and ‘touching the melting ice-cream’, because these two were the most unexpected ones although they did strike a chord with what I think about working with teens. Right now, while I am typing up these words, about three weeks later, I am most drawn to ‘breaking stereotypes’ and to ‘strength of material’, mostly because of the image that popped up, which reminded me that strength is at the same time about being fragile and that is what you find out while teaching teens, that what you see is not always what really and that is a good thing to be taking with you into the classroom. As is remembering that the most important thing is to remember that we teach not some imaginary age group but a very specific Sasha, Kasia, Pedro, Pablo, Idoia, Carolina, Rita and Luis, who might or might not match the list of dos, don’ts, ares and aren’ts, likes and don’t likes of ‘a typical teenage group’.

Instead of a coda

Big thanks to all my trainees: Anna, Nico, Hanif, Olga, Oxana, Padraig, Olga, Padraig, Polina as well as Daniel and Joe, for all the amazing ideas in this session and the permission to use them here.

If you want to read more about teaching ‘the almost adults’, here you can find some bits of theory and of the activities that worked well with my groups.

And if you liked this post and you would like to add your own metaphor to the list, please comment in the box below. We will all have some more food for thought!

The original ‘growing cactuses’ metaphor

This is how this post becomes the first one in a mini-series devoted to metaphors in the classroom. The next one, almost ready, will be devoted to teachers taking their first steps in the VYL world. Coming soon!

P.S. Vintage posters from around the world will be accompanying this series, too because that is my most recent love and a great metaphor for a metaphor…

Happy teaching!

Bibliography

T.S.C. Farrell (ed), 2008, Novice Language Teachers: Insights And Perpectives For the First Year, Equinox Publishing: London.

S. Mann (2008), Teacher’s use of metaphor in making sense of the first year of teaching, In: Farrell (2008), pp. 11 – 28.

Polish Air Lines LOT . Srokowski Jerzy . promotion advertising poster . year 2018 . Poster.pl Gallery (polishpostergallery.com)

Dear Mr Bruner aka Exercises in scaffolding

by

Dear Mr Bruner,

I am happy to inform you that, inspired by your article, I have decided to follow your example and to start experimenting in the area of scaffolding…

Oh, how I wish I could write a letter of that kind. Since I first read the article by Bruner, Woods and Ross on the original research and how the term ‘scaffolding’ started to mean what it does to us, teachers and educators, it has become a kind of a life mission to spread the word about it among my teachers and trainees, conference attendees and, of course, the readers of my blog. This is also the area that I choose to invesitage in my first classroom research project as part of my MA programme.

Of course, the most important things keep happening in the classroom, in the everyday when you observe and adapt your instructions, gestures, voice and actions to better suit the young or very young learners as regards demonstration, marking critical features, reduction in degrees of freedom, recruitment, direction maintenance and frustration control (the six orignal features outlined in the article).

This time, the starting point was the lazy teacher…

I started to plan the final lesson with my three pre-school groups that also happened to be our Christmas lesson. And it was out of this tiredness and the madness of the end of the year that made me wake up one day and decide: ‘I am going to repeat the lesson!’

Three lessons in a row, three different levels, three different age groups and the same lesson plan. Well, to a point, of course. We would all study the same vocabulary set and sing the same songs, but the activities would vary, depending on what the children are capable of.

Topic, vocabulary and structure

There were eight words in the set (Santa, a reindeer, a stocking, a Christmas tree, a present, a start, a snowflake, a snowman) and I wanted to combine them with the question that we all had been practising before: ‘What is it?’ ‘It’s a…’.

The level 1 kids (and the youngest group) have got as far recognising the words and pointing at the right flashcards and participating in the ‘What’s missing?’ game although most of the time they would guess the missing word in Russian and they actively produced only some of them in English, such as ‘a star’, ‘a snowman’ and Santa. We also watched the ‘Guess the word video‘ and it was a chance for us to drill the vocabulary in a different way. We also introduced ‘What do you want for Christmas‘ and it was a nice opportunity for us to revise toys which we covered in the previous unit. But only that. In the end of the lesson we also had time for storytelling and we used Rod Campbell ‘My presents’, again as a way of revising the key vocabulary.

With the level 2 kids, we did pretty much the same but the kids were able to remember and to reproduce all eight words really quickly. We played the same game (What’s missing) but they were all actively involved and producing. We watched the video and guessed the words, pretty much just the way the younger group did, although it was interesting that I did not need to encourage them to repeat the words and, as soon as the full picture and the correct answer was revealed, the kids said the word without any cues from me. It seems that due to their age and to the fact that they have been in class for longer, they are much better used to that kind of reaction to the content. We seem to have developed that habit already.

As for the song, we even managed to personalise the song and talk about whether each of the presents featuring in the song are a good idea (or not? ‘Not’, according to some students:-) and we sang a verse for each of the kids:

‘What do you want for Christmas, Christmas, Christmas? What do you want for Christmas? Santa is on his way…’

‘I want a…’

I did not use the storybook with the older children. I had planned it only for the little ones. For the older ones, we had a back-up of an episode of Christmas Peppa, but, in the end, there was no time for that.

The oldest group, level 3 kids, need only a quick revision of all the words and then we could play a variety of games. We did not even play ‘What’s missing?’ as they are too ‘adult’ and this particular game is not challeging for them anymore. Instead, we played a team game, ‘Tell me about it’, in which the players choose a box, open it and say something about the picture hidden in the box. And they collect the points.

We did use the video mentioned above but in this lesson it was not just a simple guessing game, we also managed to talk about whether each round is going to be easy or difficult and then to comment on what it really was. And, of course, the song was also personalised and followed-up by a proper chat. There was also another song, ‘Who took the cookie from the cookie jar?‘, in its life acquatic version (nothing to do with Christmas, but the kids were curious and this is the game we are playing right now). This group are already quite good at personalising songs (aka ‘The original version is good but let’s see what we can do with it and how can we make it better?’) so it was the kids to suggest that we start singing it when we pick up our surprise at the end of the lesson from the reception. If I rememeber correctly, the final version of it (as shaped up by the kids) went along the lines of: ‘Who took the surprise from the surprise jar?‘

I was teaching, having fun and keeping my eyes and ears open and trying to remember what was happening. It was already very interesting but I was really waiting for the most important part, the cherry on the cake.

The cherry on the cake

Surprisingly enough, this time round, it did take a long while to choose the craft activity but finally I settled on the snowman. I found something that I liked among the 25 Easy Snowman Crafts For Kids on countryliving.com. I planned the lesson, spent an hour cutting out the circles, the noses, the hats, the arms and the Christmas trees and orgnising the room. And then we took off.

It so does happen that although my children are divided into groups by the level and by the age, there are exceptions and special cases in all three groups.

The actitivity, the materials, the staging and the instructions were exactly the same in all three groups but the outcomes (visible in the photographs below) and the scaffolding necessary (not visible in the photographs:-) heavily depended on the age of the students.

The youngest students produced these beauties:

This was interesting, especially because this lesson came first and after a very short moment, I realised that, while preparing and planning, I gauged myself for a slightly older audience and I had to adapt on the go, especially for the almost 3 y.o. girl for whom it was the trial lesson and the first 45 minutes in our classroom.

It turned out pretty quickly that it is quite a challenge to glue the ribbon, to turn the circle over and to tie it and that the orange ‘carrot’ nose is actually very small. But we managed, with the pace really, really slow and the teacher keeping an eye and demonstrating everything twice. Plus, yes, the teacher had no other choice but to help with the ribbon.

The age of the students shows most obviously in the way that all the small parts were glued and how the eyes, the smile and the buttons were drawn, with a different level of accuracy and precision. Almost where they should be:-)

And it was because it took longer to produce the snowman that I decided to skip the little sticky arms. They were too thin, too fiddly and too risky. And the snowmen still look pretty without them.

The snowman created by the 5 y.o. hands looks like that

First of all, the five-year-old snowmen did not take as much time to produce and the little fingers were much more agile and ready. As a result, the teacher did not need to help with the ribbons, the noses were handles with much more efficiency and we did have time to add the arms.

It is interesting to see that at this age, the students did observe the teacher (the mentor / the expert) to do exactly what she was doing but they were observing to figure out what had to be done and to interpret it in their own way. Some snowmen were happy but not all. Some had the scarf tied on the neck aka above the arms and the others had it more where their snowman-y waist would be. Some had the buttons and some did not. Some snowman mouths were a string of dots, some were drawn with a line. Some of the Christmas trees were glued on the snowman’s chest (like in the teacher’s model) but then again, some were holding them in their hands (although this obviously involves even a higher level of precision).

The 6 y.o. snowmen look like that:

The older snowmen are even ‘neater’ (in inverted commas here because I adore all of these snowmen, even the ones that look as if they were created by Pablo Picasso) and the evidence of precision and accuracy as well as even a more detailed and a more personalised version, which were the students’ own additions as they were not modelled by the teacher such as the eyebrows, the hat decorations (not featured in the photos) or a bigger number of buttons.

And the oldest of them all, the almost 7 y.o.

This snowman was made by our oldest student, a girl who is actually in school but who is finishing the level with us. As regards the level of English, the development of the literacy skills, she is like the other students in the group, but her motor skills are more developed and for that reason she usually is the fast-finisher. That is not an issue and while she is waiting for the group to finish, she usually continues working on her craft or handout, adding details and decorations.

This time round, she decided that her snowman is going to be a snowgirl, with her and a bow, which was her own original idea.

Reflections of a small scale Jerome Bruner…

This was an absolutely fascinating experience and I would really recommend it to teachers who work with different levels within the same age group, especially within primary and pre-primary where scaffolding seems to be one of the most important factors deciding about the task completion and success.

  • It can be a great source of information, about the students’ skills and abilities…
  • …as well as an opportunity to trial something new, be it a song, a video, a game or a craft activity and to learn more about this type of a task.
  • It is a chance for the teacher to practise and to develp their scaffolding brain…
  • …and a great opportunity for a freer practice in the area of differentiated learning, not only within the group of learners (something that happens in every class) but on the level of different age groups and levels

Like in the original experiment, the design or the choice of the task and the material is crucial but the holiday lessons, not really closely connected to the coursebook curriculum, seem to be a perfect way out.

What else? Not much? Some curiosity on the part of the teacher, some willingness to experiment and some flexibility in order to be able to adapt on the go. Plus, the eyes wide open to notice all the little changes and proceedings.

These two, in the photo below, are my own interpretation of the original craft and a more complex version of it, here in the form of a card, made by an adult (myself). Perhaps this is what I am going to make with my oldest primary group in our Christmas lesson. If we do, I will let you know how it goes. That would be, indeed, a nice follow-up and an extension of our experiments. We’ll see. In the meantime:

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #22 The Big Story Competition

by
When you suddenly notice how the everyday is beautiful. The metro station Universitet

Ingredients

  • A group of teenagers or pre-teens
  • Paper and pen
  • The theme of the story. We are preparing for the Cambridge exams and so we used pictures and the exam format of the story writing in KET (three pictures) and the exam format of the story writing in PET (the opening or the final sentence).

Procedures

  • We start with some warming-up activities and they depend mostly on the coursebook and the curriculum but they all they have one thing in common – they help the kids get ready and get in the mode for the proper writing task.
  • Some of the potential exercises include: talking about the story, generating vocabulary to support the weaker students or less creative students, see the post here (especially Sstep 2: Two crazy words) or the following two
  • One-line stories
  • Make it better: students start with a set of simple sentences and work in pairs or individually, trying to develop it in a few rounds. The students can either work on the same handout using a set of colourful pens (a different colour for each round) or a few copies of the same handout. It can be followed up with a reading session and choosing the most interesting sentences of all but it is not quite necessary to include one more competitive element. The number of rounds can be limited or extended, depending on the age and level of the students.
  • We include ‘The Thinking Time‘ to give the students a chance to imagine their story and make the necessary decisions. These are the questions which they might be asked to consider:
  • Everyone can choose their own pen name, too.
  • I make it more formal by announing that we are going to choose the best story and that I am going to ask my colleagues to help me.
  • The students start writing, the teacher monitors and I help out with vocabulary when necessary.
  • There is not one time slot or the number of words required. We are practising in the exam format but without too many limitations at this point.
  • Afterwards, we type the stories up and share them with our BKC teachers who vote for the one they like best. I don’t correct any mistakes at this point.
  • I prepare diplomas of participation for all the students and one more for the winner and there is a reward (food as this is the one hobby that we all share, me and the students). We have a ceremony that involves a speech from the teacher, applause for everyone and for the winner and eating because they all share the reward. Our winner is the master of ceremonies of the day.
  • The final stage is the error correction. In the original handwritten copies I underline a few mistakes that the kids correct later on. So far, these have been mostly in the area of spelling, tenses or the general style.

Why we like

  • The students get really involved in the writing process and looking at how they write away, it is really difficult to believe that teenagers don’t like writing, that they are not motivated or that they are not creative at all.
  • If carefully scaffolded, it is an activity that all the students can complete and it is very mixed-ability-groups-friendly. Since there is not word limit, everyone writes as much as they can and want. The last time we did it, using the PET format with 100 words as the limit, I received entries of about 70 words but also entries of 400 words.
  • It is an amazing opportunity for the students to express themselves. They can choose the storyline, the genre and the style. This year they produced a horror story, a love story, a post-modernist short story and a diary entry, among others. We have been working together for at least two years (and for about six with some of them) and yet, I was still surprised that they can write like that. Because they can and they are amazing kids although this is not some kind of a writing-obsessed and literature-obsessed group (unlike their teacher) but a bunch of typical teenagers: always tired, always under-slept, who’d always choose ‘no homework’ over ‘homework, please’ and ‘no test’ over ‘test, please’ and so on. And yet.
  • This time round I have decided to include the most beautiful comment that each story got from the readers and, in a way, it started to resemble the categories that we have at different film festivals, although, to be fair, they can be quite random as they are generated by the readers, such as ‘your dreams will come true award’, ‘I can’t believe a child has written it’ or ‘A kind heart’. And my students really liked it and were touched by that.

P.S. I would love to share these stories here but some of my students keep them secret even from their parents. Their stories and their copyrights. So be it.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #21 ‘Write 5 words’ aka a vocabulary game for lazy teachers

by
Here is a pumpkin flower: simple and unexpectedly beautiful, just like this game.

Ingredients

  • A piece of paper and something to write with
  • For younger students – somewhere to keep the paper safe and secret i.e. inside a coursebook
  • Imagination
  • The whiteboard to put the target language on

Procedures

  • Kids work individually, keeping their cards secret from their friends but if the game is played for the first time, they can work in pairs, this will be their natural support and the source of creativity because two heads are better than one.
  • Teacher ask the students to write numbers from 1 to 5, in a column. When they are ready, teacher asks the kids to write 5 words, one at number 1, one at number 2, etc. Teacher monitors and prepares her/his own set to use in modelling. It might be also a good idea to write a few examples on the board although these are just for modelling and they will not be used in the real game. The target structures should also be displayed on the board.
  • Teacher demonstrates how to play the game – she / he describes the first word on her / his list for the whole class to guess. It might be necessary to play a few rounds with the whole class, with the teacher leading the game or with one of the strongest students leading the game.
  • The game can be played until all the words are described and guess OR for as long as there is time.
  • Important: It is absolutely necessary to carefully combine the vocabulary and the target structure to make sure that the set is used naturally and that it matches the context, too. Some of the examples of the activities we used below
  • Places in the city (ie bank, post office, school) + I can see…I can hear…I can smell…Where am I?
  • Professions + I am going to work, I am going to do…Who am I?
  • Animals + It is big / small, It can run / fly / swim, It has got…
  • Body parts + I need it / them when I write, swim, play
  • Objects + passive voice ie It is made of…, It is used for…
  • Personal characteristics + Present Simple, 3rd singular, This person always does something, This person never does something

Why we like it

  • The biggest advantage of the game is that it can be adapted to almost any set of vocabulary and any structure.
  • It can be used with the lower-level and the higher-level groups, with the younger and the older students.
  • The game requires no preparation for the teacher and it is SS-generated which means that it is personalised and motivating for the kids to play.
  • It is a perfect controlled practice activity as the kids are using the target langauge and the target vocabulary.
  • It is a guessing game and because of that it is both achievable and challenging.
  • With the younger kids we play the game of 5, with the older ones we usually prepare 10 words.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #20 Тетрадка Love*)

by

Or about my favourite resource in this academic year, hands down.

Ingredients

  • A notebook for each student and a box to keep all the class notebooks. These notebooks don’t travel home, they live in the classroom.
  • Some writing materials: pencils, markers, crayons.

Why we love it

  • For all of the students in all the groups where I introduced notebooks (and that’s everybody, pre-primary, primary, juniors and teens, apart from my pre-primary level 1 and 2, who are still only 3 and 4 years old, they are going to get theirs a bit later in the year), this has become a surprisingly wonderful way to express their personality and to become even more present in the classroom. When I gave these out, many of my students of all ages were inquiring what they should write on the front page or on the cover page. I suppose it is because there might be some specific regulations at their schools regarding what needs to be and what can be written there. When I just shrugged my arms and said ‘I have no idea. It is your notebook. Write what you want‘, many of them looked at me in disbelief and then started to write some elaborate names in Russian or some made-up names and nicknames or just their names, in a variety of fonts and styles.
  • Equally, the format of the note-taking is highly personalised, too. There are certain activities that we use these notes for (see below) and sometimes they involve a structure or a format which is the same to everyone but, at the same time, the kids are in charge as regards the choice of the writing materials, colours or the ratio between text and the drawings.
  • It is the students’ personal space in the classroom, too. We share what we have written but I hardly ever look into those notes, unless they ask me to or unless they need help with some vocabulary or structures. Since this is a new project and since I am just developing it and discovering its potential and its potholes, I have just realised that I will have to include some kind of delayed error correction in the process, for instance by reading the entries and contributions to fish out some of the spelling or grammar mistakes.
  • It give the students an opportunity to write and to read more.
  • It is an opportunity to keep all the notes and all the ideas in one place and to go back to them, to review, to remember, to reminisce or to recycle.
  • Notebooks for the high level students (C1) are our way of breaking into the least favourite skills ie writing. After we have finished a receptive skill task such as exam reading and exam listening, we follow it up with a 50-word (plus) summary in the notebooks, steering away from any specific genre or format, just simple note-taking that now compliment our regular ‘What do you think?’ speaking sessions. We go back to these notes in the following lessons, to check whether our views have changed in any way, whether they have developed but also, very importantly, to edit and to improve, when possible.
  • Notebooks for juniors (B1) have been used in a variety of ways related to the vocabulary we study. First of all, they are the opportunity for the students to reflect on the vocabulary they have learnt. At the end of the unit, we look at all the phrases, structures and words and categorise them. The categorise we use change all the time and have included the following: easy words and difficult words, useful words and not-so-useful words, interesting words and not-so-interesting words and I am hoping to add more to this list. In the future I would also like the kids to use their own categories in the future. This kind of an activity also involves a discussion and sharing the rationale for our choices (and that is my favourite part of the whole activity). We use the notebooks also to work on the additional vocabulary, not included in the coursebook but still worth knowing. Sometimes we create the lists ourselves (ie while describing the objects, we also revised a list of materials) or we work on the lists that I prepare (ie a few weather idioms that we discussed while going through the topic of ‘extreme weather’). Last but not least, this is also where we take note of the emergent language, in the section at the end of the notebook called ‘Our special words’. I keep track of these on the whiteboard (the left margin) but I encourage the students to take a note of these (or some of these) in their notebooks.
  • Notebooks for primary (A2) are probably the most multi-functional among all the age groups. First of all, we use them to complete our portfolio tasks that are included in our coursebooks, one task for every two units. For these, each student gets a pre-prepared template, a notebook-page size, which they glue in and then use for whichever task we have such as the personal file (used in an interview) or the list of the adjectives to describe animals (used later in Our Big Animal Quiz) and so on. We use it also to personalise the vocabulary that we learn, for example after we have learnt the jungle vocabulary, the kids were asked to arrange all the new words in the order of their own preference, number 1 being their favourite word, number 9 being their least favourite. As with the older students, we later talked about the reasons for our arrangements. Last but not least, we use the notebooks to prepare for any student-generated games that we play. They are especially useful in all the guessing games and are much better than any small cars because the notebooks are not transparent and, because of their format, they help the kids to keep their secret words really secret. You can find out more about this game here.
  • Notebooks for pre-primary (pre-A1) is a serious step towards developing reading and writing skills. Now, I am not sure whether it is going to fit all the pre-primary classes (because some children are not ready and some programme do not even include any literacy elements) but this is what works for us. My students are 5 and 6 at this point and we have been doing a lot of literacy activities for about a year now. We started relatively early simply because the kids showed interest in the written word and I realised they were ready. We went slowly but with great results and I can safely say that now it is their favourite part of the lesson. Last year we did a lot of writing on the laminated erasable pages, with whiteboard markers, this year we moved on to notebooks. We use the notebooks to copy the words that we learn, in two or three batches, with only four or five words per lesson, not to overwhelm the kids. Kids usually choose to add little drawings to these so our notebooks are slowly becoming picture dictionaries. Our notebooks are also used in pairwork, for example in a survey on the food we like and we don’t like in which the students used a pre-prepared chart (printed, cut out and glued in by the teacher) to interview their partners and to ‘take notes’ in the form of pluses and minues. I found out that the notebooks really help to set-up and to run a pair-work activity. The notebooks are also going to help us to maintain continuity with the longer-term projects such as the reading of a phonics story such as ‘A fat cat on the mat’ by Usborne and all the related activities. They will be completed over a series of lessons but thanks to the notebooks we will be able to get back to them and to revise in a more SS-centred way. Or so I am hoping.
  • There is no other way of putting it is: it is a proper Notebook Love (or Тетрадка Love) and it is almost ridiculous that such a tiny and irrelevant thing, at RUB 40 a piece (about 50 cents) could have such an impact on our lessons with its potential for creativity, reflection, personalisation…And, mind you, it’s been only two months. Something tells me, the best is yet to come.

Happy teaching!

P.S. Of course I have forgotten to take proper photos in the classroom, of all the cool things in our notebooks. I will try to make up for it, at one point. For now, just some cool notebooks that are kicking about the house.

I did not ask them to write my name here. I feel honoured they decided to include me here))

*) Тетрадка – a dimunitive of the word тетрадь (notebook)

A group = a community. Extra work or a worthwhile time investment?

by
‘Like a box of markers…’

If you don’t have a lot of time, I will give you the answer straight away: the latter.

If you are a teacher who thinks that on entering the classroom, you are going to focus only on teaching a foreign language, then I have to warn you – if you proceed, you might put yourself in danger of getting inspired or getting terribly annoyed because I will do my best to convince you that a teacher of English is also a community leader, and not only in case of the Young Learners groups.

The tiger

Where this post started: Story #1

My pre-school museum group, a lesson on Henri Rousseau and tigers coming out of the shadows, the main craft activity: an orange finger paint handprint and a black marker to help make this handprint look like a tiger. Plus the jungle, the way the kids see it.

When I demonstrate, the kids are curious and, at the same time, disbelieving that I would do just that: splash the orange blob, smear it on the page, dip my hand it in and then press it onto a pristine A4 piece of paper. With a smile.

As soon as they confirm that I want them to do exactly THAT, a little voice on my left says ‘I am not gonna do that‘ (‘Я не буду‘) but, simultaneously, there is a little hand, in front of me, reaching out, to get to be the first one to get dirty. We go one by one, ‘In the paint. Up. Press. Up. Clean’ and all the girls, cautiously get involved. The Я-не-буду is the last one to go but when it is finally her turn and when she has to make a decision (because participation is optional and I have already decided that if the finger paints are a no-go, there are crayons as the plan B), she is still thinking but she is also pulling up her sleve and reaching out.

Why? Because by now, she has seen it happen five times (one teacher and four friends, because at this point, they are already friends, although it is only the sixth lesson together) and this gave her the courage she needed and the courage she could not find in herself. ‘In the paint. Up. Press. Up. Clean!’

Kind of Halloween

Where this post started: Story #2

My primary kids, a week when we have a trial student in two lessons. The new student is a perfect example of a square peg in a round hole – younger, quieter, not confirmed level of English yet (sigh) and, of course, not familiar with the kids, the teacher or the routine. Or our silly jokes. He stands out, this boy. I support him, of course, and lead him through the lesson but I also am totally engrossed in observing the group. Because, oh my god, it is a show.

Or maybe it is not a show at all. Or the most boring kind of a show. Because nothing happens, the group just accepts him. If you watch closely enough, you can spot an eyebrow raised, here and there (he really does stand out), but other than that – nothing.

My group, they are just regular kids. I mean, they are amazing, every single one of them but not your typical ‘little angels’. These are creative, very loud, with their own opinions and ideas (which they absolutely MUST share) and, as it turns out, they are also very open-minded. Each of them individually and as a group.

Open-minded to decide, without any negotiations or prompts from the teacher, that this new student (even though he is as if from another story) is there for a reason (although they don’t know it) and since he is, he will be included and taken for ‘one of us’ as much as it is possible. I am proud of them.

Post-test feedback

Where this post started: Story #3

My teens and just a regular lesson but because the other two stories happened in the same week, I am observing these ones, too, with more attention to the group vibe. They are great, too! In a teen way.

Simultaneously, they support each other and they mock each other. They applaud when someone does something special or when someone does ‘something special’, genuine praise and gentle mockery. It is a lovely moment, every single time. They do not forget to roll their eyes every time I ask them to move around and to regroup and sit with someone who is not their bestie but they do it, and they do work together, in any random set-up. They pick up different phrases from each other so now everyone says ‘Вкусняшка‘ (‘Yummy’) in the most sarcastic of ways when I announce a test or a serious task for homework. And they, too, feel comfortable enough to share ideas and stories about a good day at school or about a bad day at school.

A new approach to the final activity: ‘Let’s create’

How to build a group? Or about the effective EFL group leadership.

  • Whether it is a brand new group or ‘an old group’ but with a few new members, make sure you create opportunities for them to mingle and work in different combinations, pairs, teams, mini-groups. This will not only create an opportunity for you to observe how they work with different partners (also good: you can find the optimal set-up) but they will be given a chance to work together and make friends or, at least, break the ice and find out that the other person is cool / normal and / or ‘someone like you’ in one way or another.
  • Think of the class rules. The older students can be involved in creating the class contract, the younger ones get their first set from the teacher since usually their level is too low (unless you want to do it in their L1, which can also be an option). In my classroom (or classrooms), we have had the same set of rules for a few years now, those introduced when the kids were still in the first year of pimary or even in pre-primary: ‘I listen to the teacher’, ‘I sit nicely’, ‘I raise my hand’, ‘Russian is beautiful but I speak English here’, all accompanied by visuals and gestures. Last year, when I primary grew up and became way too talkative, we had to add one more ‘When I speak, people listen. When people speak, I listen’. Again, it is a rule applicable in all the age groups. We only needed to specify that ‘people’ applies to the teacher and the kids (yes, it was all on the first poster, a list of the names of those who match the definition of ‘people’ here:-)
  • Play games. Again, these are great for many different linguistic reasons (language practice, introduction, revision etc) but it is also one of the elements that helps the group gel. First of all, on a large scale, because these games will be a part of our pool of games and they will contribute to creating the traditions of our community (see below). Second of all, because they will give the teams a common goal for a part of a lesson and the battle to win it will be another unifying element
  • Make sure you include something to balance the competitive element. A huge part of the games that we play in class promote competition. While this is good, because it motivates the students to participate and, it helps them learn to win and to lose, it is also good to remember that the kids will need an opportunity to be involved in activities that promote cooperation and collaboration. We don’t always need to split into winners and losers (especially not when pre-schoolers are involved). Some games can be played over a series of lessons, in the same teams, accumulating the points over the entire month. Plus, even if the game is competitive and we have a winner (or winners) and non-winners, the easiest thing to do is to encourage the kids to shake hands and congratulate each other. ‘Good game!’
  • Celebrate. Sure, we are going to have a Halloween Lesson or a Christmas Lesson because these are the part of the culture that we expose our students, too, but again, they will go towards the things we do together. We have the tradition of ‘the food for the brain’ aka something sweet on the test day, ‘the pizza day’ at the end of the academic year and random ‘eating together’ with my youngest students, on random days when fancy takes us, celebrating nothing special. So that takes us to the other point, closely connected with celebrations and that is Food. (Caution: there are a few ground rules here, though: parents pre-approved food, paper plates, tissues and hands washed).
  • Create and cherish the group’s traditions, the official ones like the tests and the follow-up reports, the serious ones like ‘the pizza day’ or the silly and the seemingly insignificant ones, like the first activity of the lesson and the last activity of the lesson, keeping the notebooks, a lesson with parents once in a while, a long-term craft project…It might be easier with the younger kids because we are more used to the idea of a routine framework that we follow from lesson to lesson but it is something that is worth keeping an eye on, developing and celebrating with primary and teenagers.
  • Be fair. It is quite likely that a teacher will have her/his favourite and her / his less favourite students. That’s life but it can never show. Everyone is treated in the same way, with the same level of kindness, with the same amount of individual attention and praise.
  • Be the model of behaviour, not only the model of English because the students pick up on that, without us realising that it is happening. I had my own moment of revelation when I started asking the kids to take turns in being the teacher in the homework check. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t do my homework’, said one of the students. ‘It’s ok. We can do it together now. Exercise 2, number 3? Can you try?’, said the student-teacher on the day. ‘Wow!’, I thought, ‘Where did they get that….Oh.’
  • Let them take over, in some areas at least, from time to time. That will be beneficial for the language production (We want more!:-) but it will also help them become responsible for the lesson as they participate in the decision making process and for the classroom, too. A few years ago I had a pleasure of taking part in a wonderful session by Katherine Bilsborough ‘More Democracy in the Classroom’ which highlighted ten areas in which students can be given the opportunity to have a say and since then I have been incorportating them in my lessons, with all age groups. One day, I will get down to writing a post on that, too.
  • Befriend the parents because they are a very important element of the YL group. ‘Befriend’ here translates as: keep them on the loop, inform, explain, give feedback, ask for feedback, share the aims…
  • Ask for the kids’ opinion, not only about the content of the lesson but also about the lesson, the coursebook, the activities, the test…This will be the valuable feedback that will help you improve the experience for everyone but you will also show the students that their views matter.
  • Breathe! Rome was not built in a day and creating a community will also take time. But it is definitely worth it!
After week 1 of the summer camp

Happy teaching!

Breathe! From the series: One-word advice from a trainer.

by

I am a trainer and an assistant director of studies. I spend a relatively large part of my professional life sitting in the back of classrooms, observing. I love it.

Not that anyone asked (hahaha, here is one clumsy blogger, at your service. After all, one should start with ‘Many of you have been asking me…’ or ‘I’ve received many questions about…’ I DID NOT) but if I were to give one piece of advice to all the YL and VYL teachers (or maybe not only to them), it would be this: BREATHE.

If I were given a chance to use more words, I would say:

‘Breathe! Pause! Calm down! We care about the efficient use of the lesson time but nobody is in a hurry, nobody is rushing to catch a train. There is time. You will be doing a great service to yourself and to your kids. I promise. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat!’

What do I mean? Here are five ideas.

Instructions

Going slow is absolutely crucial while giving instructions.

Not always but frequently enough our primary and pre-primary students will be doing something in class for the first time in their lives, without any metaphors whatsoever. It is quite likely that we, the teachers are the first ones to introduce a boardgame to them, a role-play, a game with a dice, a pair-work activity, a mingle, the game of pelmanism or a project. Our students might behave like they have never done it before because, very often, they really haven’t. Or they haven’t done it in a foreign language to practise vocabulary or grammar. It really IS their first time! Our classroom IS full of Gagarins, Columbuses or Cabrals (or whoever is your favourite First-Timer Metaphor).

That is why the instructions we give have to be not only graded and accompanied by gestures and (ideally) by modelling but also paced. With the teacher taking baby steps, pausing (and breathing) for all the students to catch up. Before anyone is allowed to take the next step forward.

Taking this one breath in-between the sentences will really make a huge difference. Let’s breathe then!

A listening task, as in: any listening task

Listening tasks for young learners are another example how pausing can make the world go round and in the right way, too. This tiny (and, really, the most insignificant) movement of the teacher’s finger pressing PAUSE on the CD player / the telephone / the computer can be the factor that decides about the activity becoming a success or a failure. Something that amazes me every single time I see it in action.

PAUSE and the kids have a chance to hear what they are supposed to hear, circle what they are supposed to circle and get ready for the next bit. PAUSE and the teacher has a real chance to monitor while in-task. PAUSE and if there have been any glitches, now is the time to fix things and to save the rest of the activity.

DON’T and they miss the first example because they are still not quite sure what they are doing. Then they miss the second example because the breaks between the pieces of the recording are too short and there are no numbers or beeps to help their focus. DON’T and, inevitably, they miss the third one, too, because they missed the previous two and everything becomes just a mesh of sounds. DON’T and you have no chance to monitor or to give feedback, Although, really, it is NOT a mini-test that the kids should pass. It is only an opportunity to develop their listening comprehension skills. It is ok to help, to support and to guide. Unless it is a real test.

So maybe it is a good idea, to pause and to breathe?

Questions and answers

Here is a question: Do you know how long is the average ‘wait time’ aka the time that elapses between the moment a teacher asks a question and the moment a student is expected to answer it?

Well, fasten your seatbelts because it is quite likely that what I am about to tell you will be a bit of a shock.

Apparently, we, teachers wait as long as long as 1.5 seconds at maximum and most of the time even less than that. One second and a half. Which means that we don’t really wait at all. Either student A knows that answer that we want to get and they provide it or they don’t (more likely) and we move on to student B or C until we find what we want or we just answer the question ourselves.

Extending that wait time can have a huge impact on students’ learning, engagement and, possibly, also on their confidence because they will be given a chance and time to rise and shine. And don’t worry. By extending here I mean ‘waiting three (3) seconds‘, not the whole eternity. 3 seconds aka one inhale – exhale set. Breathe!

Just look at the picture first

This particular issue is going to make an entry here for one and very specific reason: our coursebooks and all the materials for YL are full of great visual material which, sadly, is not given all the attention it deserves.

The first question that I often I ask my trainees during the post-observation feedback session while discussing visuals, photographs, cartoons and drawings is: Why not spend more time on talking about the picture? There are so many things that you can do with a picture! (If you are not sure what these are, have a look at the earlier posts, here and here).

Once we establish that these do indeed have a lot of potential that needs to be tapped into, the question arises of how to do it. And this is how we get back to breathing.

Whenever students are shown a new picture, one that they have never seen before, they need to be given time to take it in, with its narration and all the details. It is more important for the younger learners, since their cognitive skills are still developing but it can be beneficial for the learners of all age groups and levels. If you are in doubt, just have a look at how visuals are dealt with during the speaking part of different Cambridge exams, from Movers, through PET to CAE, although with the higher levels it is hidden under the lengthy instructions from the interlocutor during which the candidates are allowed to look at the photographs they are to describe.

Step 1: instructions, Step 2: one deep breath while the kids are getting ready. Thinking time is precious and it extends on all the activities, picture-related or not.

Classroom management

Last but not least, the main destroyer of the peaceful flow of a VYL and YL lesson makes an appearance, too – the unwanted behaviour, in all its shapes and sizes.

The option of ‘doing nothing’ is out of the question, it is the teacher’s job to react but perhaps it is worth considering whether the immediate reaction is the best solution. After all, there might be some situations in which everyone would benefit from the teacher taking a deep breath and using this second or two to calm down, to consider the options and to see the situation from the little people’s point of view? Maybe the situation was not that serious? Maybe it was just a silly joke? Maybe just an unfortunate mistake? Maybe the reaction does not need to involve the headmaster, the parents and the armoured infantry? At least in some cases. This tiny little pause might help establish that. The thinking time for the teacher. And then – back to action!

Happy teaching!

100 names aka The tutor sighs

by

The tutor sighs, the manager sighs, the teacher sighs. She wonders, too, whether two cases in the last two months already constitute a tendency. Or not yet. And whether she should be so bothered by all that. Or not. The tutor (aka the manager aka the teacher) does not know. She knows that it has been a good few weeks since the most recent incident and so she is writing all these words with a cool head. None of these silly on-the-spot, emotional reactions. At the same time, somehow, it has been impossible to stop thinking about it since.

And so the tutor / the manager / the teacher is here, typing up.

The statement

‘A teacher working with very young learners must have her/his own children.’ (actually, extends to: all the teachers working with children…)

The teacher sighs

I do. Because first and foremost, I am and I have been a teacher. Whenever faced with a comment like the one above, I look very much like this amazing creature in the photo, spotted in the Louisiana swamps: I freeze, waiting to see what happens next. I freeze, trying to remain a professional, an adult and a kind human being. Whilst hoping that all these thoughts forming in my brain never get verbalised.

If I had been a bit braver (or a bit more carefree), I would have asked: ‘Excuse me, have you just told me that I do not have the right to do my job? Don’t. Mostly because it is too late. I already do it. And I do it well, too. Thank you.’

The tutor sighs, too

I do, deeply and gloomily. As a tutor, I would like to ask the world to be a little kinder. To all those newly qualified very young learners teachers and young learners teachers and to all these teachers who are novice in the world of the pre-school and primary EFL. Or to all of these teachers who are only thinking of taking their first steps in the area. It seems that they have a lot on their plate anyway, dealing with the methodology, the materials, the resources, the real children in the classroom and their parents outside the classroom as well as the school admin. They really do not need any more of that ‘entertainment‘ and of wondering they are good enough or not to do the job. Especially before they have had a chance to try and to check.

Some of them might decide that the early years EFL or ESL is not for them and it might be because they do not have children or it maybe because they discover that their vocation lies in one of the other areas. Some of them, however, might grow up to be the next VYL Superhero, the next Sandie Mourao. Or the next Leo Vygotsky. And while they are getting there, they might appreciate a tiny little bit of support. Especially from their more experienced peers. Dear world, please be nice!

The manager sighs, too. But then she gets down to business…

…and she starts digging through the files in her head and on her computer. This particular exercise starts when I am still a bit emotional and so, with a pinch of certain vindictiveness, I take out a piece of paper and I start writing the names down.

Changing anyone’s beliefs is not an easy task and it involves a serious time investment and a lot of effort. What’s more, the satisfactory outcomes cannot always be guaranteed. Some people are simply happier in the box. Their choice, I suppose.

But, if anyone is interested, I am going to share my experience as a manager, someone who for the past nine years has supervised, mentored, trained up, lesson-planned, observed and given feedback, praised and supported teachers of early years, primary and pre-primary. Nine years of that. And counting.

Since this ‘incident’ I have been bombarded by the names of all these amazing professionals, that I have had a chance work with. Some of them were young, some of them were not. Some of them were experienced, some of them were not. Some of them were women, some of them were men. Some of them were mums and dads, many were not.

What they all had in common was the willingness to sit down on the carpet and look at the world from the point of view of a five-year-old (no metaphors here!). What they all had in common was kindness and patience and dedication to their job.

Did I really sit down to write the names of all these mentees and colleagues who taught children and who were great at that despite the fact that at the time they were not parents in their private life?

Yes, I did.

Scribbling on a piece of paper and going back in time, to 2020, 2019, 2018…I stopped at the beginnig of 2016 because I got to the magic number of 100.

And then I smiled.

One hundred fantastic people. One hundred great VYL and YL teachers. One hundred case studies that, perhaps (just perhaps) will turn ‘the statement‘ above into a question, even if a very cautious one. One hundred names that immediately put me in a good mood because they came back and they all brought beautiful memories. For that I am beyond grateful. The end.

Happy teaching!

P.S. Lots and lots and lots of virtual hugs and happy thoughts to all the teachers that I have had a chance to work with over those nine years.

P.P.S. I have also had a chance to work with many teachers who were both: great parents and great teachers of early years. Lots of virtual hugs and happy thoughts to them.

P.P.P.S. I have also had a chance to work with many teachers who were great parents but who would never agree to teach pre-schoolers or primary. Just because they have other intrests in their professional life. Their virtual hugs and happy thoughts are HERE.