Anka Zapart

December Mayhem in the classroom. Classroom management, routines and survival techniques. Year 2

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Starting the lesson, rewards chart, reflection and feedback and classroom management.

These are the stages of the lesson that did not really change in December. We kept all of the existing elements and we simply kept using them without any major alterations. It is also interesting to look back and realise just that. I suppose that means that our routines are in place and they bring the outcomes as intended.

I continue to take notes about their behaviour and performance in the notebooks and I noticed that they all care. Now and again, I have a student ask ‘Are you going to write in our notebooks this week?’ or ‘Have we got the new notes in the workbooks?’ and whenever we use the notebook for the first time in the week, I have to remember to mentally add a minute or two for them to check the notes and ask questions and so on before we actually get down to what we have scheduled for that lesson. It is also a great opportunity for me to reflect on each child and to follow their progress.

Story and songs

Our main focus of the month, regarding the song was, of course, ‘Santa Claus Is Coming To Town‘ and it was a fun one, from the methodology point of view. My students are already not so little anymore and not so illiterate anymore. For that reason, we could do a song, just with lyrics, going over the song, looking for the new words and using a page with text during rehearsals…That felt great. I also decided not to create any special dance routine at all. I just told the kids, ‘You are good at improvising. Go on, improvise!’ and they did!

Again, there was no time to do any real story and I am not happy. Again. What I think it calls for is a real plan, with a reading list for us to cover, at least one piece of real literature a month.

Socialising

We had three main events planned for December and all of them involved us working as a team, within the class, within the year and within the school.

  • Open lessons for parents were an opportunity to show what we can do to our parents and, although it was stressful as an event, it was very rewarding and necessary. And, overall, it went well and even if it did not, I was happy for the parents to see all of us in our natural habitat. As usual, it was an interesting case study because some kids behaved well because the parents were present and some, naturally, were acting up specifically because the parents were watching. There were some, too, who were acting up just because their parents could not attend.
  • Christmas Fair was a whole school event that we all were getting ready for and, of course, on the day, it did affect our everyday life because the children were excited to see, to share ideas, to share opinions and then talk about everything that happened. But it also went very well and it was a success. I was not personally responsible, I was just a little piece of the machinery. But, nonetheless, I could see how much it did for the team spirint and bonding within classes 2A and 2B.
  • Christmas Concert for which we were preparing a song and a little dance (‘Santa Claus is coming to town”) and it also helped us bond and work together. And, during the concert, we really (really) rocked it!
  • We also did a few other things during that month:
  • creating long garland for our classroom
  • preparing the Andy Warhol Christmas trees for the classroom and for the school
  • our communication lessons (there will be a separate post, eventually)
  • lots of pairwork

Creativity

We haven’t really created a lot as regards the visual arts. Thinking about it right now, I think our most recent take was in November, with the Turkeys and the Craft Day. However, our life was so eventful that we (and by we I mean, me, the teacher) struggled with making time for the regular, curriculum-bound activities. And we did lots and lots of craft in our extracurricular classes.

But we developed a new hobby, that of coming up with nicknames for us and we spent hours and hours of classtime in character. That was fun.

We also had a lot of fun with the langauge, in all the role-plays, talking about unusual food and decorating our letters for the pen pal project.

Teacher

The teacher in December was trying hard not to go crazy. Trying and mostly succeeding. Because of all the events and kids being tired and waiting for Christmas and the break, we were all tense and a bit on the edge. But, overall, we had a good month.

I was really proud of us taking part in the concert and doing such a great job (and having fun!), working hard and taking part in all the activities.

Things to come…A teacher’s to-do list

  • a revision of the rules, I am considering a real January Rules Challenge
  • a revision of the language because the first two weeks will be messy
  • another soft skills lesson to give us a chance to develop
  • some tests already scheduled for January
  • a new Art theme for the month
  • a new song, a real one
  • a January book (apart from the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that we have in the coursebook)

Actually, l am looking forward to it all.

Happy teaching!

Christmas in style! (Or a lesson about symbols and style). Teaching English Through Art

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Welcome to the post about the final Art lesson of the year and, at the same time, the Art lesson that can be (and will be) adapted to different seasons, symbols and styles. I am very happy with it and I am very happy to be sharing it here.

The language

This was our final lesson of the calendar year, done just before we left for the winter break and for that reason our language and content input was heavily focused on Christmas and December. We revised all the Christmas vocabulary using wordwall and riddles and we talked about our favourite symbol of Christmas.

Afterwards, we looked at the presentation (you can find it here) and we talked about the many symbols of the December celebrations and symbols that my students are not really familiar with. I really wanted to broaden their horizons a little bit and to show them that there are different symbols of Christmas in different countries (i.e. mistletoe in the US), different traditions (i.e. Santa bringing presents and leaving them in the Christmas boots in Finalnd), different associations with Christmas (i.e. a barbecue on the beach in New Zealand) or even different holidays that are more visible and associated with December such as Hanukkah and menorah.

As it happened, we also had a chance to extend the topic into our regular English lessons and we had lots of fun with the quiz (‘Santa, where are you from?’) and the bamboozle game about the letters to Santa written by different characters from stories and films.

It’s a reindeer. In case you are wondering)

The artist

We looked together at different artists and how they might have painted a Christmas tree and a menorah. I have chosen Warhol, Kusama, Pollock, Picasso, Mondrian and Dali. Some of these were the artists we have covered since September and some were chosen because they have a style that is easy for children to follow. I have used the images I found online (Christmas tree and menorah).

The real inspiration for the lesson was the set below that I cannot reference. I got it from a friend but there was no real source. Dear author: thank you and I am sorry that I cannot reference you!

The most beautiful picture of them all that actually gave me the idea for the whole lesson

We talked about them a little bit: the most significant details such as colours or shapes and whether we like them or not.

The art

Before the lesson I prepared the materials, pencils and markers and a piece of paper, cardboard divided into 4 sections. I also prepared my own examples of the art: one chosen symbol in four different styles, the regular one and the other ones representing three different artists. For our lessons this time I have decided to include Kusama, Mondrian and Picasso because they are signigifant enough and easy enough for beginners: dots for Kusama, shapes and the colours for Mondrian and asymmetry and colours for Picasso. Each picture was first drawn in pencil and then coloured in as appropriate.

I was really happy with the lesson. The kids were really interested in finding out about all of the traditions and symbols. Now, after we have covered the whole Christmas month, I think that there is enough material to cover all the lessons of the month. There are a lot more ideas for quizes and games. Hopefully, next year we will be able to do all that.

What’s more important, the kids really took to the creative part of the lesson. Most of my students chose to draw exactly the same symbols which they named as their favourite Christmas symbols in the beginning of the lesson although there were some who, on taking everything in stock, went for symbols who were easier to draw. Which is just as well since, this way, they could really focus on conveying the elements of each style.

We were going step by step, with me modelling and highlighting the bits and pieces of each symbol. Kids were working at their own pace, some of them needed more time, some of them were speeding up and taking ahead of the group but they all worked beautifully and they all did their absolute best to incorporate the main features of each style.

I am happy with all the pictures, of course, but it was especially lovely to see the works of my least advanced students. One of them because, although his reindeer is not a perfect rendition, he really did made an effort to represent different styles and he ended up with creating his own style, on a separate piece of paper. The other one, because although she did not attend many of our classes, she took the reins soon after we started painting and right after creating the first picture in the style of the Designated Artist (Kusama), she went on creating in all the other styles, the Smileys Candy Cane, the Harry Potter Candy Cane and, of course, the most touching of all: Miss Anka in four different styles.

The most exciting thing about this lesson is the fact that I will be able to repeat it with an entirely different focus but a similar approach to give the kids an opportunity to experiment with a variety of creative styles. I am considering hearts for St.Valentines, rabbits and flowers for Easter and spring and the summer symbols for the end of the year, as a way of celebrating the whole year of Art.

Here are some more pictures from our lessons

Happy teaching!

‘Competitive games in the YL classroom’

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This article, just as the earlier post here, has come to be as a result of the many (many!) conversations with my trainees and what I observed in my own classroom. It is fair to say that it has become my latest professional passion / obsession / interest. The post that I have written here (‘A balancing act. Non-competitive EFL games for kids‘) is one of my proudest moments on the blog but was just the beginning of the whole story. And one of the top 10 articles on the blog!

The article that I wrote for the Modern English Teacher (Issue 33.6 Nov-Dec) is a continuation of this research anad the search for solutions. It is, unfortunately, only available to the MET subscribed members but I am really proud of it and I can definitely say that the solutions that I came up with and the ideas that I suggest really do work. After a year and a half pretty much all of my YL are now ready to play competitive games. I do recommend!

Happy teaching!

Christmas in the classroom! Festive craft with YL

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I decided to put all of these together in one post and share them here in case someone is looking for some try and tested activities. Some of them were done as part of our Art Explorers afternoon club, some were done in class, some were even completed during the long break and we made them just because some students (mine and not mine) wandered into the classroom with ‘Miss Anka, can you give us something to do? You have many interesting things here.’

Meaning? They can be turned into a real, productive lesson, with additional vocabulary and activities and song or they can be the add-on to some regular classes that simply take place in December. It is up to you, dear teacher.

Little angels

My, oh my, this craft activity is about ten years old. I have not invented it myself, I saw it somewhere online or in a book ages ago and I loved it so much that I decided to make my own template. Imperfect as it is, it works and the final result is still pretty. You can find the template here and some basic instructions are included there, too.

You can use some cardboard (if it is thin enough for your printer) but the majority of the angels we made were printed on the regular photocopying paper and they are all pretty and amazing. There are four main elements to be drawn and coloured: the face, the clothes, the wings and the thing that the angel is holding (and these can be also the four main elements that the kids are talking about in the end: I am happy, I am wearing, I’ve got, My wings are..) before the angels are cut up. Cutting is actually the one tricky element and for my youngest students I draw the coloured lines where they should cut. For the youngest of them or those who need help, I was helping with cutting the tricky bits.

In the end, the angels can also be decorated with the glitter glue markers or with the cotton which can be glued on the wings. The finished angels can be hung on the tree or they can stand on the shelf.

Christmas cards

I really wanted us to make the cards that can be given out to teachers, friends or parents and that is how this craft made an appearance. It had to!

There are many many templates for a card and many of them for the specific simple triangle Christmas tree silhouette, like this one here, but I got really inspired by my own friend, Jill, who made those with her son. However, instead of using scotch to form the triangle (I know my scotch likes to stick and destroy the surface), I cut out simple silhouettes in cardboard cards (destined to be destroyed or recycled).

I showed the kids the finished cards, we prepared the working space (the silouettes over the cards) and started to work on our trees. We used a variety of materials: regular markers, acrylic markers and crayons and pencils. Then we took off the silouettes and finished the cards with the glitter glue markers.

The finished cards that you can see were created by a mixed ability group, some were 5 years old and some were almost 9, some were made by everyone in-between!

Christmas garland

It has been a few years now, since I use the garland making as the whole class team building activity. What you need is a lot of glue sticks and lots and lots of strips of paper but because of the task and the volume, here, literally: ANYTHING WILL DO: coloured paper, photocopying paper, ready to be recycled photocopying paper, old newspapers and glossy magazines, all of it, as long as it is cut up into strips.

Modelling is easy, just showing the kids how to make hoops and how to connect them. Then the kids should be divided into groups, if they want to, or allowed to work on their own. This is good, because everyone can work in their own way and at their own pace and what matters is that, in the end, all of the pieces will be connected together to decorate the classroom.

It is a lovely bonding task with the aim (to decorate the classroom) that unites the whole group. I normally do it within a group but in the past I also did it as a cool end-of-the-lesson activity during an open lesson, with the parents helping out and one year, we also did it as a whole school competition, with a time limit for each class. Later, of course, we had meters and meters of garlands to decorate the whole school. Highly recommended!

Christmas tree

It was last year that I found out about the love that Andy Warhol had for Christmas and it was last year that I fell in love with the Christmas tree that he created. We followed suit and made our own last year and you can read about it here.

This year, I decided we would do it again but this time as a team effort. The task is not a small one and it takes time to decide on the theme, the colour and then look for and cut out and assemble the pieces (especially if you really want to stay within your theme), even if your tree is not very big. For that reason and to help build social skills in the group, we went for pairs. Truth be told, I also wanted to have a few trees to decorate the room…

Here are our beautiful trees, the one in red and the other one in blue. We will be making more with the younger group on Monday.

Christmas Marker Printing

This is to prove that marker printing can be adapted to any season and holiday! This year it happened only because the kids asked to do it during the break. We did.

You will need: permanent markers, regular markers, tinfoil, scotch, paper and sprinkler to do it and the more detailed instructions can be found here, in the November post on printing.
Here only a few photos (that I will add on Monday).

Christmas in style

Here is another lesson we had in December, devoted to style and Christmas symbols, easy and fun! I do recommend.

To be continued next year!

Happy teaching!

Autumn gloom and classroom management. Setting up the routines in year 2

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Well, miss Anka, you did not do a good job. The classroom management that was supposed to be updated monthly got abandoned. The end of October happened but everything else happened, too so the post didn’t. Here is a two-month reflection then.

Starting the lesson

The start of a lesson has become more SS-centred as I am barely involved. There is now a very interesting role to play, namely the one of the Hello Master. This is the student who takes over the teacher, sits in the centre of the room, starts with ‘5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Hello everyone!’ and asking everyone how they are. In November and December this person is also responsible for changing the numbers on our CountDown to New Year’s Day poster. Apart from that we have two Helpers and two more additional roles, the Game Leader (who helps with choosing the game, divide the class into teams etc) and the Decision Maker (aka the one who helps out with solving any doubts, if we have any). The kids love that and they sometimes ask me to assign a special role to them or they remind me that ‘Miss Anka, I haven’t been the Hello Master for a long time!‘

We still write the lesson plan on the board and the What time is it? and we still sing the Month Song, about how we feel, about the weather and everything related. I started to put up on the board some pieces of language because there is so much language emerging. It is absolutely necessary to keep it in memory, a bit.

It has also become a tradition for us to add a few more names to our list of students on the board. Sometimes our birds feature there (we have a well-frequented bird feeder), sometimes the toys that the kids bring, sometimes even the weird presences i.e. Poor Toe (aka a personalised version of the toe that one of my student hurt). But that means that they kids feel more involved in the lesson and they speak more.

Classroom management and rules

Our rules haven’t changed at all. They are still hanging above the board, we revise them in the beginning of the lesson and we refer to them when necessary but no new rules have been added.

Rewards chart

Our rewards chart is not quite a rewards chart but an activity chart which we use to mark attendance, activity, language production, cases of unwanted behaviour (like before, a simple description) and special rewards for great ideas, fair play, being a good friend and so on. I now simply take a photo of the board at the end of the lesson to use it later on, for assessment or to share with the parents.

We have also started using a greater variety of symbols, stars, suns, flowers, hearts. Yesterday, we managed to get to about a half of the solar system on the board, for different tasks. Basically, one more way to motivate the kids.

Reflection and feedback

These photos and notes are very useful because I have to add marks and note participation in our electronic journal for the parents but I also use them to give feedback to kids.

At the end of every week (which for us is Thursday), I take notes in every student’s notebook, giving them a mark for the week for English, for Maths and for behaviour. This is also my opportunity to thank them and to praise them for something special they did during the week. It is now our tradition to look at these notes in the beginning of the lesson on Monday. I also noticed that I started to comment on these notes during the week, on random lessons for example to praise some students for the behaviour that improved or the behaviour that needs improvement.

I realised that the notes from our tests are too rare and the notes from the electronic journal may not get through to the children as the parents are the main recipients and I needed a direct channel between me and the students. Hence the feedback.

We have been doing it for three weeks now and I know that these notes matter to kids. I keep them secret, written on a page that has been folded etc, but they announce everything to everyone anyway. They do anyway when they have something to be proud about.

Story and songs

To be perfectly honest and depressing as it is, we haven’t had lots of songs recently. We sing the Multiplication Songs from Jack Hartman in every lesson but we haven’t learnt any new songs.

In the same way, we have done lots of reading (fiction and non-fiction) but none of them were real stories. Oh, no! How did it come to that? I have no excuse and I am just deeply unhappy that I let it happen. Sigh.

Socialising

We have been interacting a lot in the classroom:

  • every English lesson starts with the sight words reading practice which we do in pairs. One student is the teacher, the other is the student and I sometimes ask them to give each other grades.
  • we did project presentation in pairs and small groups (asking and answering questions about the perfect house)
  • pairwork games such as riddles
  • Hello Master is my absolute number 1 when it comes to the favourite parts of the lesson, the one that kids do all by themselves, with the teacher being merely an observer
  • we have even played some team games and I am really proud of my kids because now they are ready to do it, on most days.
  • we have also been changing the seating arrangements and pairs since we have had some changes and the group needs a chance to be formed again, from scratch almost.

Creativity

This is the area that I am happy with because we have done enough in that area.

  • we celebrated the Craft Day (which, apparently, falls on the 16th November, at least here) and that is why we made beautiful monster bookmarks
  • we celebrated the Thanksgiving Day and we made our Thankful Turkeys, with feathers made of everything that we are grateful for (The list, for my kids, includes: mum, dad, gran, grandpa, brothers, sisters, pets, Adidas and Roblox).
  • we described and drew our Ideal House and they turned out great, especially that we were getting ready for the project day, reading, looking at photos and talking about all the unusual buildings and rooms from around the world that I could find
  • we wrote out first article in English about a special place. There wasn’t much creation per se since we wrote about real places but we had so much fun researching that and the final product, our journal, looks amazing.
  • I have also noticed that more and more of my kids have been wondering into my classroom during the long break in order to do creative things, using all the resources I have in my magic cupboard.

Teacher

Over those last few weeks, I have been a very tired teacher and I did a lot to save the energy and to use it wisely. Listening to music, chocolate and careful choices while lesson planning helped me do that.

At the same time, I have also been a very happy teacher because I could see how much progress my students have made in English and in Maths. This has become especially clear in all the speaking lessons because the unusual houses and rooms really made the children curious and willing to express their views. That, together with all the cool adjectives that we learnt. During our speaking lessons, I would give them stars for participation and beautiful English and it was just beautiful to see how fast my board was filling up stars. They had ideas and they wanted to share them, in English. A truly joyful moment!

I have also been a very happy teacher noticing how my students are growing up and getting better at dealing with their emotions during our competitive games, learning to be in a group, getting over their own insecurities and being proud of their achievements. We are not a perfect group, the picture perfect class (Well, wait, do I even want us to be that?) and we are not even at the OK stage (not consistently, anyway) but we are getting there. I hope.

Happy teaching!

November printing. Teaching English through Art

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Language

The linguistic aim for November is the introduction and / or revision of ‘have got’ with the negative and affirmative and questions, with different objects around us: school objects, pets, basic body parts etc. We have been practising talking about the things we have got and things we haven’t got, including some pairwork and questions. We have used songs and wordwall, too. The kids are doing well.

Artists

This has been a funny month because it was a whole month without the Artist of the Day. I had to cut a few corners because of the method and the resources. Everything here, all three methods I describe below are very time-consuming, in every possible way:

  • they take time to set up before the lesson,
  • they require resources that might not always live in your art cupboard
  • they require a detailed presentation by the teacher, from A to Z, while the students are watching (and ideally a finished, dry, product)
  • since the technique is new for the students, they might also need more time to experiment and to play with the tool and the resources before they move on to create the actual masterpiece

That means less time for other things such as the language that I did not want to give up on. Another thing is that because we have not actually done any proper ‘adult’ printing, there are no ‘real’ artists for us to look at, only the photos from the Internet and the pieces created by the teacher.

It is not a big problem, of course, but I have to admit, I have realised that I miss the presence of Warlhol or Malevich in our lessons. We will be catching up on that, in January (December is devoted to Christmas and there will definitely be more craft in our classes).

Art

Bubble printing

This activity has already featured here on the blog and I decided to do it again, although it belongs in the category only loosely. However, my selling point here was that, indeed, the final result is a page printed with beautiful colours. So, yes, we did it again!

Marker printing

This is a brand new activity that I found online (Meagan Carlos aka helloartteacher) and it is officially called marker transfer.

The activity is fun, clearly divided into stages and there are a few variations. It can also be easily adapted to a chosen theme. We did ours in end of October / beginning of November and hence a lot of Halloween in the photos.

Step 1: drawing a picture on a piece of paper. It is important, however, to use a permanent marker (or any waterproof marker). The easier version, which might be more appropriate for the first round of the activity can be done with a copy of a colouring picture. We had a pile of Halloween-themed colouring pages and kids were chosing their own.

Step 2: each student has a piece of tinfoil, attached to the table (I like to attach it on four sides to keep the water from leaking out) and they colour it fully with regular markers. It is good to check beforehand, the markers used here cannot be waterproof. Actually, the more rubbish they are the better. I used thick markers, too, because it is easier to cover a large piece of tinfoil with colours.

Step 3: sprinkle the tinfoil with water. I use a regular sprinkling bottle I use for my plants.

Step 4: put your picture (from step 1) face down on the tinfoil and smooth it gently and let the water seep in. Pull away gently and leave out to dry.

The process is really gratyfing and a lot of fun. In our lessons, we managed to do a few pictures, colouring pages and our own creations. We cleaned the tinfoil, waited for it to be dry and reused the same page to create new pictures. We absolutely loved it. Just look at the photos!

Nature print

This was a variation of the lesson that we did in the summer but I decided to upgrade it this time and use the resources that are literally lying around, in order to minimise food waste and to encourage the kids to look after the environment. You can sometimes see different projects that involve using flowers, seeds and leaves picked up in the summer, just to be ‘destroyed’ for the art’s sake and, to be perfectly honest, I cannot find any justification for it. It seems that autumn is a much better season for that as there are plenty of leaves and flowers that mother nature abandoned already and these can be supplemented with anything that died anyway, the flowers that dried up in the vase, the fruit and veg that are past their use by date etc. I personally feel more comfortable that way and it is not a difficult thing to implement, basically a question of timing.

This time we used: dried leaves and grasses I picked up in our garden, flowers that I got in September that dried up and had been waiting for their turn and some other flowers I got in October that ended their life in our project, a wrinkled apple, a stone and a half of a broccoli that (sadly) didn’t get to be eaten in time.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #82 Word snakes aka Reading and having fun!

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Ingredients

  • a set of words that you want to practise, arranged into a snake, with a head and a tail (see the photos)
  • a piece of paper and a pen although we started with a snake on the board

Procedures

  • revise all the words that you are working on, with flashcards or electronic flashcards
  • give out the snakes
  • tell the students to call out the words they find i.e. ‘I’ve got ‘kitchen’!’
  • as the students go through the words and circle them on their copies, make a list on the board, as a point of reference for the class
  • if there is time, the words on the board can be used to tell a story, to ask questions, to describe a picture (depending on the topic)
  • as a follow-up, the students can create their own snakes for the teacher or for their peers. They can do it in class or at home.

Why we like it

  • The main reason why I love this activity is that my kids love it and they really dive into it and read, read, read. It helps them work with working on the single word level and to focus on the accurate spelling.
  • I tend to include some distractors and Easter eggs and they love finding them, all the ‘lalala’, ‘zzz’, ‘bye’, ‘toilet’, and the other favourite words.
  • The list on the board is a reference points. My stronger students are not interested in them but some use it for support and that is how the activity works for the mixed ability groups, too.
  • All students are always fully involved in the task. What’s more, whenever I forget and a few days go by without a wordsnake, there is always someone who kindly reminds me to prepare one.
  • The task can be made more challenging (by connecting the words together with the first / last letter, making it longer with more words) or less challenging (fewer words, easy ‘punctuation’ words (i.e. cat) or adding pictures for each word included).
  • This particular task, especially when set as homework (or a self-study task) is the one that is always completed by everyone and, again, with full dedication and creativity. And it is always amazing to look at what they have created. The words are there but there are also so many ways of writing them. Checking that is pure pleasure! Check out our gallery!

Happy teaching!

Working with sight words. A handful of crumbs for the primary students.

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This is a post dedicated to my trainees and course participants because, as it often happens, good ideas surface while talking to other teachers. Thank you! And I hope you find it useful)

About sight words

If in one line, sight words are those precious bits of the English language that, in a way, are exceptions are they do not follow the rules of phonics and which, at the same time appear in the English language with a high frequency (hence another term used to refer to them ‘high-frequency words’) which makes them very relevant to anyone learning to read and write. ‘Sight words are the glue that holds the sentences together’ (sightwords.com) which makes them a necessary part of literacy development, even if they had to be learnt by heart.

There are two lists of these words, the Dolch Sight Words List and the Fry Sight Words Lists and they are organised either by the year (Dolch’s) or the frequency with which they appear in English (Fry’s).

Available resources

There are lots of resources available for parents and for teachers of the English as L1. Naturally, just like in the case of phonics, we need to proceed with caution as they were created for children who already communicate in the language so the meaning of all of these does not need to presented, clarified and practise. Here are some of the

Sight words in primary EFL (a very objective take)

It is some kind of a paradox that sight words do not make even a cameo appearance in our mainstream coursebooks for primary. Or perhaps it is not, actually. After all, despite all the changes and developments that have taken place over the last two decades (my time in EFL), literacy development over all of the years of primary still falls under the category ‘Areas for improvement’.

Year 1 is usually well-taken care of (or at least it is the year 1 coursebooks that have shown the greatest progress in the area) but the same cannot be said about levels 2 – 4. It seems that once the kids are out of year 1 and once they have gone over the few phonics sets, they are all ready to read and write pretty much everything, as long as it has the appropriate lenght and more or less the vocabulary and grammar that follows the curriculum of the level.

It does not work like that and it is not only my opinion. Every time I run a course for primary teachers and meet teachers from a variety of backgrounds and contexts (bilingual, freelance teachers, state school teachers, private langauge school teachers), they all come with the same problem that could be summarised as: ‘How do we teach the kids to read? My students are in year 3 and they still cannot read. The book does not help. I don’t know what to do.’

Yes, as teachers, we are going to be supplementing, staging and facilitating the process and the kids will eventually learn to read and write but it would be wonderful if this area had more systemic support and attention.

Enough of this whining. Let me tell you how we approach sight words with my students:

  • Year 1 of instruction is fully devoted to phonics and sight words are put on hold. The reasons for that are simple. First of all, phonics have to have the priority and I don’t want to overload the students who are taking their first steps in English and in literacy. Second of all, I am taking my time to ensure that when we start working on sight words, kids are not complete beginners and may actually know some of the words they are to learn and to practise. This is also the time when we start moving from sentence reading / writing to text reading / writing and these words really do make an appearance. We start learning and practising sight words in year 2.
  • I divided the words in my own (very subjective) way, according to the categories such as grammar words, adjectives, verbs, etc, to facilitate recognition and memorisation and to enable to come up with meaningful practice activities, something more than just reading. So far I have been using Dolch’s list but I am going to upgrade it, as soon as we get through it. The lists have been colour-coded, printed and laminated and we take one list per week.
  • Read and put your hand up: the introductory exercise, the children are looking at the list and I read the words, one by one. The kids listen and raise their hands if they know the word. The aim of this activity is for me to understand where we are with the words regarding their meaning. Naturally, if we find something new, we explain them.
  • You’re the teacher, I am the teacher: kids work in pairs. They take turns to lead the activity. ‘The teacher’ points at the words in the table, ‘the student’ reads them out loud.
  • Line by line: we work as a team, kids take turns to read one line of the sight words. If the kids are quite strong, they can point at two or three words at the same time.
  • Knock, knock!: one more copy of the sight words is displayed on the door of the classroom. Kids read a number of words on entering the room (i.e. 3 or 5). The words can also be colourcoded, randomly or by the level of difficulty, i.e. 5 words per colour (depending on the list). Kids choose themselves which colour they want to read.
  • Bingo!: teacher prepares a set of cards with the words in question and hands them out among students (4 or 5 cards per student). The teacher reads the words in a random order. The child who has the card with a certain word puts it up to signal to the teacher (‘I’ve got it’) and they put the word away. Whoever runs out of their words first is the winner, like in a regular Bingo game.
  • Make a sentence: this activity requires a bit more than just a list but there is so much potential that I decided to invest time in preparing the resources for it. You will need two sets of cards, one with sentence starters made out of sight words (i.e. I have, I can, I like, I don’t, Do you, I will, I didn’t…etc) and the second set with adjectives (i.e. blue, green, long etc). Kids pick out one card of each and show to their peer for them to make a full sentence made out of these two bits and their own ideas.
  • Invisible sentence: kids work in pairs, like in ‘You’re the teacher! I’m the teacher!’ but instead of just reading the word, the student who is a student makes up a whole sentence or a question with that word. It takes a few rounds of practising together on the board for the children to get the idea, for example with teacher and one of the students taking turns in choosing the word but once they get it, it is a marvellous activity and, apart from practising reading, the kids also put them into context. If there are still some less familiar words or even the unknown words, this is a perfect opportunity to fish them out and to clarify them.

There are just a few of them but we have just started our adventure with sight words. There is more to come, for sure!

To be continued…

Happy teaching!

A story of one picture. Starry Night

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The lesson aka the context

This is a lesson that I put together for last year’s Shapes in October series. This year I decided to recycle it during our Autumn Camp and the Yellow Day. The basic version of it is super simple and it involves making a collage of the van Gogh Starry Night background and stickers or drawings. You can read about it here. However, my colleague, miss Victoria, decided to upgrade the lesson and instead of the ready-made background, she asked her preschoolers to paint the the background first and then decorate it with stickers and drawings.

I went to their classroom during the break to check how the pictures have turned out and to take photos and I was amazed. Especially with this one. It did stand out because it used mixed media but not the stickers and the sky was like none other.

A little bit later in the day, one of the younger students wandered into my classroom to chat. She saw the collage my group made and shouted: ‘We made those, too!’ I showed her the photos I took and we finally identified hers. I was surprised and I was not surprised at all!

The student aka the artist

Sasha is seven and she is in year 1 of primary. She attended my Art Explorers last year regularly and she comes every week this year, too. She is one of my really creative students. On some days, she is reluctant to get started, on some others she takes her time but then takes off and on some other days, she just dives in at the deep end and creates as crazy. She is also the student who, most frequently, snatches her work as soon as we say ‘Good-bye’ and I am lucky to take a photo. I love it.

Whenever she starts to create, however, it is always of the highest standard, with a fresh look and a new angle.

The work and the creative process

Because it was miss Victoria’s lesson (according to my lesson plan), I did not have a chance to see the artist in action but because it was the autumn camp, we had more time and me and Miss Artist had a very interesting conversation discussing her painting.

First of all, I was surprised with the technique that Sasha decided to use and the results that she arrived at because it was so absolutely different from what all the other children created. This is when Sasha explained that ‘I did what you taught us last year’, namely painting water on water (a technique that we experimented with last October and somehow she remember, mind blown!). This is how she got the beautiful background, the sky and the stars that blend into each other.

Sasha also explained that, looking at what her classmates were doing, she decided to add the drawings, the houses and the umbrellas, all that instead of using the stickers, showing that she has a lot of potential to become an independent artist capable of making her own creative decisions.

The teacher in awe

I guess every teacher is at the risk of getting emotional and touch whenever we can see that our work bears fruit and that our students learn and remember something that we are trying to teach them. I know I do.

That is why this day and this conversation were so important, because, in a way, this painting is the outcome of the time in the classroom. Sasha demonstrated that she remembered how to use a specific technique she learnt from me and she also showed that she picked up on the values that I am trying to promote in class such as keeping your eyes open, allowing yourself to be inspired by your teacher or peers, the curiosity and the open-mindedness that leads to experimentation and new outcomes…

I was a very happy teacher that day.

Happy teaching!

A story of one picture. The next Jackson Pollock, 8 y.o.

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The Hedgehog in the Fog’

I decided to run this mini-series, as a part of my Teaching English Through Art thread, in order to preserve the memories and the creative process in a child as observed in my classes. Just stories from the classroom.

The lesson aka the context

It was one of our colour lessons, a colour-themed days on the autumn camp, White on Black, in which we used a mixed media technique to create ‘what you want’ which means that they could draw whatever and however.

It was one of those lessons that start with my students going ‘Whaaat?!’ looking at me taking out the resources of my bag (black paper, white chalk markers, white pencils, white tissue and glue and toothpaste and cotton buds) to ‘Look, miss Anka, look!’ because they have just discovered something more about the potential of all of these resources.

The kids could use one of these or all of these, in practically any way.

The student aka the artist

My student, Sasha, is eight, very clever, very creative and struggling with staying focused in our regular classes. And yet, in this lesson, Sasha stayed completely involved and on the task for about three hours straight (the lesson time and then the long lunch break). I was sitting there, monitoring and keeping an eye, trying to keep a straight face and my jaw from dropping. This expression, ‘I could not believe my own eyes’, it was created for this very situation.

The work and the creative process

The story started with a blank piece of black paper, A5. I noticed before that this very resource, so different from what we usually use, and so potent in its presence, just lying on the table, basically lots of Malevich’s black squares (well, rectangles) strewn all over the classroom, this very resource is already a statement in itself. It sets the mood for the lesson and it sparks creativity and inspiration instantly. The kids get their sheets and they immediately start interacting with them, turning them over, looking at the texture and turning it over and over again. This one never requires any tricks to get the kids into the task, the piece of paper does it.

As soon as we started, Sasha, without much hesitation, reached out for the chalk marker. I presume, it was all due to the fact that this one particular resource used to be out of bounds, ‘teacher only’, in the old classroom where we used to have a traditional board. Since we moved into the new classroom, with the electronic board and whiteboards, I have no use for them and I decided to use them in that Art lesson. Actually, those chalk markers apart from being a great tool for the teacher, they are also fascinating as a drawing or writing tool. They produce a neat, even line, you don’t need to apply to much pressure and, as my students quickly discovered, if you shake it, you can also produce splashes and spatters. In one word: lots of potential.

Splashes is what Sasha started with. He would shake the marker, look at the smudges that appeared and then he started to move the sheet, turning it upside down, shaking it, turning it around to help the liquid paint move further. To be honest, at this point, I did not think that ‘anything real’ would come out of but he was so engrossed in the process and he was enjoying it so much that I decided to let it be, instead of insisting on creating ‘something’. But, it really did remind me of another aritst, so I decided to show him a few works of Jackson Pollock and a few photographs from his studio and he was impressed. We looked but we also talked about finding your own style. Sasha was asking how you find it and whether I can suggest something to help him with defining his own style and I suggested ‘just working’ because things are defined and discovered in progress and at work.

Perhaps it was in an attempt to find your own style or perhaps only the next step in experimenting with the marker, but, all of a sudden, Sasha became really interested in dots and started to fill in the whole picture with them, all of the missing spaces, methodically, bit by bit. He even said ‘This really calms me down, these dots’. I decided to use it as an opportunity to bring up another concept, namely horror vacui and, again, we looked at some examples in the ancient Egypt paintings. And Sasha kept working.

It was somewhere at this point that I asked him to consider thinking of a name for his painting and at first he declined (‘I don’t know!’) and then he did what my students often do and go for the obvious (‘Crazy mess’). But it was not the end of it.

The painting was already quite something. I really liked the dots and splashes but the artist himself was still not happy and he kept experimenting. He realised that the chalk marker behaves like a proper chalk and leaves smudges on your hands or clothes and he decided to use it in a conscious way and he wiped the whole picture with his hand, not destroying it or rubbing off the lines or dots but covering it with a thin and delicate layer of white, kind of a mist.

This must have been the thing that gave him the idea for the actual name of the painting, namely ‘The Hedgehog in the Fog’, after a famous cartoon (and a book) by Yuri Nornstein, one of the most beautiful things ever made and my personal favourite. It was so fitting that I simply started to laugh.

Sasha continued to tweak the whole picture and then he left for lunch and when he came back, he showed me the finished painting. He also explained that he decided to add ‘the hedgehog’, a red dot, in the centre of the painting, to add one more reference, to Bansky, since that is the aritst and the concept that we did a few days earlier.

The teacher in awe

That is what I was. It is one of the many amazing things that happened in class that day but I love this story and this piece in particular because it beautifully illustrates how one child embarked on a journey of creative discovery and how he arrived at his finished product which, I have no doubt, is a masterpiece. All the hard work, all the focus, all the references and the curiosity that he demonstrated…I am proud of him and what he created and I am beyond happy that I could be a part of it.

Two months later…

…Sasha comes to me during the long break (he is ill and not going out to play outdoors) and asks if I can give him ‘the pen’ and ‘the paper’ so that he could draw another one of those pictures, like ‘The Hedgehog in the Fog’…And he was so happy when we found the last sheet of the black paper! I left him to himself and he kept working.

In the end, he kept blagging to everyone that he bumped into about the painting that he created ‘and that I decided to call ‘The Bear in the Fog because the first one that I have at home is called ‘The Hedgehog in the Fog’ and now I had to choose a different name…’

When it was my time to listen, I praised him, again and asked if he made the little dot pink.

‘NO! I made it red. Just like you told us last time!’, he said.

And he went on with his things and I was left with wondering how magical it is that my amazing permanently distracted Sasha not only heard what I was telling him (and the class) a few months before, about Banksy and about Warhol, but he also remembered it and made it his. Forever?

The Bear in the Fog’

Happy teaching!