Anka Zapart

Crumbs # 32 Online stickers with a twist

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Ingredients

  • Miro board or a word document
  • Kids and their ideas

Procedures

  • We prepare the document, write the date
  • One of the students chooses the theme of the day i.e. The Chameloeon Day (not a real holiday, although it could be. There are plenty of ideas to find here.
  • The kids take turns to choose their favourite variation, as featured in the picture above: the cake chamelon, the black chameleon, the artistic chameleon, the Christmas chameleon, the cute chameleon, the police chameleon, the robot chameleon and the lamp chameleon.
  • The teacher opens the google search and keys in the requested phrase. The student who suggested the specific variation chooses their favourite picture (i.e. line one, number 2).
  • The teacher copies and pastes the chosen picture, then pdfs the whole collage as soon as it is ready. The collage is then sent out to parents via Whatsapp.
  • (!!!!!) For the purpose of protecting the kids from the inappropriate images that google might display, especially when the unusual combinations are made, I key in the requested phrase first and only then share the screen with the kids as some of the images might be too scary, explicit or simply not always appropriate for all ages.

Why we like it

  • It is fun.
  • The kids love it. They ask about the stickers (we don’t always use them in every lesson) and they remind me to send them to the parents in the end.
  • It is a great way of finishing a lesson.
  • It is a great way of building a community, especially if you keep your stickers throughout the year. With my group, we still have some of the stickers we found during the first stages of the pandemic in spring 2020 and we had a lot of fun finding them, looking through them and remembering whose they were and why.
  • It gives us a chance to practise some of the computer language in contex (go / scroll down, go / scroll up, stop, I’d like …)
  • It offers some opportunity to practise describing objects in a detailed way (it is the big one, the small, the one with the green nose etc), especially the adjectives.
  • We can create, express ourselves and express opinion on what other people choose.
  • My advertising people tell me that this is something that you do while researching and brainstorming new ideas, too, in order to ensure that yours is, indeed, a fresh solution that no one has ever thought of. So, in a way, my kids are also getting ready for the market research, too!
This is one of our pandemic 2020 stickers)

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #31: Circle IS the best shape aka Frogs Etc

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@ Magdalena

Ingredients

  • Two circles cut out of cardboard (regular photocopying paper is too thin and flimsy), with the two holes for fingers also cut out before the lesson.
  • Glue to glue these together
  • Crayons, pencils or markers to draw the appropriate body parts

Procedures

  • Show the kids the finished product, introduce the frog, chat with the kids
  • Show the kids the smaller circle, show how you decorated it.
  • Give out the pencils / markers.
  • Give out the small circles, decorate it with the kids.
  • Give out the bigger circle, decorate it, if appropriate.
  • Collect the pencils.
  • Show the kids how to glue one on top of the other. For the younger kids, it might be a good idea to draw a small cross on the top of the bigger circle, to signal where the kids should put the glue.
  • Give out the glue sticks. Kids glue their circles together.
  • Glue the additional body parts, when appropriate.
  • Collect the glue sticks.
  • Play
@ Magdalena

Why we like it

  • It is super easy! These frogs here, in the picture, were produced for a child (a huge Frog Fan), rather than with a child, and that is why I went a bit crazy with the eyes but there are the simpler versions of it)
  • These two circles can become many many things: a frog, a bear, a cat, a dog, a monkey, a rabbit or a snowman, with little adaptations.
  • The task does involve a lot of pre-cutting but the rest can be done by the kids during the lesson.
  • Once the toys are ready, they can be used to play, as any other puppets with all the structures that the kids are familiar with and with those that match the topic of the lesson, at the very least, ‘Hello’, ‘My name is’, ‘I like…and you?’ and it is always great when you can maximise production.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs # 30: Circle IS the best shape in the world aka About chicks

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@ Magdalena

It was a typical day in the life of a small scale Mary Poppins. I set out for a shift at the volunteering centre and, as an experienced one, I could not imagine to go unprepared, even if minimally. I thought that, at the very least, we can do some circle magic. I could not take everything but I had a big pocket and so it got filled in with three glue sticks, an envelope full of circles, a small packet of colourful feathers (that was a nice coincidence that I had it). A4 paper and a box of markers did not fit in one hoodie pocket.

When I arrived and started the shift, it became obvious very very quickly that the place is not ready for any craft activities because, apart from one small table and a few little stools and a box of coloured pencils, there was nothing. Or, rather, there was only me and my pocket.

There is some beauty in that, really, when you get to see how your brain starts to get involved in order to think of a solution. Sure, THAT was not about sending a man to the moon or putting together a new recipe, but, still. I was building a grid for our version of hop-scotch and sorting out toys, and the brain was trying to imagine what I can make out of the contents of my pocket. A little chick, that’s what.

Ingredients

  • lots of circles, cut out before the lesson out of colour paper, regular type, cardboard might be too thick. As for the size, this time it is officially: the Size of the Bottom of a Mug, colourful, for the kids to choose from, two pieces per child
  • glue
  • something to draw (markers, pencils, crayons)
  • colourful feathers (I got them in the stationery section of a regular supermarket, you can buy them in any craft activities), but they can be replaced by strips of colorful tissue paper (also those unevenly torn), three per child, if you use the feathers or as many as you want, if you use the strips of the tissue paper

Procedure

  • ideally, for the smaller children especially, it would be a good idea to put a cross on one side of each circle, so that it is absolutely clear on which side children should put the glue
  • each child chooses two circles
  • choose the circle that will be your front, draw the eyes (two small circles in the most basic version), and a beak (a small triangle)
  • take the other circle, cover the cross side with the glue
  • place one of the feathers on the top, for the little ‘fringe’, on top of the glue, so that a part of it is on the cirlce and a part of it stands out of it
  • repeat the same with the other feathers, by putting each of them on two sides, for the wings
  • take the front circle, put it face down, cover the cross side with a lot of glue
  • place it (more or less carefully), on the top of the back circle and the feathers, press
  • use the birdies to play, the kids can use them as puppets, say hello, introduce themselves, ask how they are, and use any other structures that they already know

Why we like it

  • is very, very easy, I have done it with two-year-olds (with a tiny bit of help) and with eight-year-olds
  • there is more potential for decoration (a more complex bird’s face, legs, tail etc)
  • the main focus of this lesson (or activity) can be playing with the chicks as making them will take only a few minutes
  • despite being very easy to produce, this craft has a lovely ‘wow’ moment and it lies in the fact that such simple elements put together can gives a lovely little bird.
  • below, you can also see the ‘proper Easter, made with mum and aunt’ version, with professional wings, made of felt. They look pretty and we made them only because I found this set in a shop. Here, it might be a good idea to let the chicks spend the night in the middle of the book, to make sure that they stick properly (felt is a bit thicker and it will need more encouragement, especially if you are using just the regular glue)

Here are some other circle-based craft ideas

Here are my own Frogs Etc, my snowman, and all the circle ideas.

Here is a lovely bear craft, here a ladybird craft, and here a caterpillar, too and here, a bunch of other activities, probably too complex for the EFL classroom but definitely worth looking at.

The Unsung Heroes of the YL classroom

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Masking tape aka Painter’s tape

The funny thing is that I cannot remember when I discovered that the painter’s tape existed. Maybe it was Vita, my friend and my colleague who first brought it to school…

What I know is that for the past four years I have always had a roll of two at home and a roll or two at school. Because, right now, there is no classroom without the painter’s tape.

Every single time we do anything in the hallway, any kind of a treasure hunt, any jigsaw puzzle, anything which involves things being put up on the walls, the painters’ tape enters the picture. I prefer it to blutack because I don’t mind just throwing it out (instead of peeling it off carefully from every single scrap of paper) and, even more importantly, my students don’t feel tempted to nick the tiny little bits of the precious resource.

My primary students who are learning to read and write know this resource very very well. We use the tape to write instructions for different activities, especially if they needed to be displayed around the school and all our lessons would start with a fun activity with the little chairs – some of them would have the bits of the tape with funny words on them, for example choosing the place to sit (‘I am sitting on the Happy Octopus’), making sentences with the key word written on the chair (‘dancing’ – ‘Today I am a dancing hippo’) or even writing and creating random combinations of words.

Apart from that, pieces of the tape can be left on each table, one per student. They can be used in any kind of surveys (‘Which game would you like to play?’, ‘What was the most difficult part of the lesson?’) but I also noticed that the students liked to write on them, just to express themselves, to scribble while they were listening or to just to somehow personalise the table where they were sitting.

The tape can also be used to help group and pair the students. There should be a piece of tape on every desk and on these the teacher write the names of different superheroes (a very broad term in my lessons, it can include both Batman and Cheburashka, Harry Potter and Aleksander Sergeevich Pushkin, Lionel Messi and Santa). On entering the classroom at the beginning of the lesson, the students pick out one of the cards with the same name from the teacher and this is how they find out where they are sitting on the day. The same cards can be used later on to mix the students, with the teacher (or one of the students) picking out two cards to decide that in the following activity Superman will be working with Harry Potter and Robinson Cruzoe with Superman etc.

AND, though there are no photos, the painter’s tape was THE LINE on the carpet that helped my little babies sit in a safe and appropriate distance from the big TV on the floor.

Last but not least, we have used it to create a city plan on the floor which we later filled in with flashcards and we used to move around. It is a rather limited use, but, oh what an amazing lesson.

The door

The door is the most underestimated and underloved part of the classroom. And how undeservedly so! Even if you have only the most standard door (not those double door straight from a castle), that is a good two square meters of a notice board, ready to use! It would be recommended to check the material, the surface and the ‘stickability’ and to test different adhesive materials that will not destroy the door itself but there is scotch, there is the painter’s scotch and there is blutack to name at least a few that could be used here.

In my classrooms we have used the door in the following way: putting up the huge posters to use instead of the numbers (The Caterpillar Classroom, The Baby Shark Classroom, The Cookie Monster Classroom), putting up the homework poster (‘Did you do your homework?), putting up the washing line with all the clothes to use during (‘Today I am wearing…’), putting up the classroom rules posters, the library reviews poster (for the kids to leave the reviews after they have read something), the test feedback poster (‘How difficult was the test? 10 – very difficult, 1 – not difficult at all) and any class surveys completed on the way out, the sight words reading practice on the way in, displaying the alphabet poster when we were just starting to read, displaying any of the work that the students produced (when the walls were already taken) and, last but not least, or quite the contrary: the first ever: The Door of Doom aka the poster we created with my FCE students by adding bits and pieces to the poster throughout the course. These bits and pieces were all the things we struggled with: the mean phrasal verbs, the less common suffixes, the collocations that we would always make a mistake with and so on.

Next time you are in the classroom, have a look at the door and at this whole unused space…And what you could do with it. Once you start, you will never stop.

Counting sticks

This entry is perhaps not such a great surprise. After all, all the little people (and their teachers and parents) are very familiar with these colourful plastic sticks. Everything else aside, this should be one reason to be including them in our EFL lessons.

We use them mostly to count, of course, the kids pick two or three or twenty and this helps to make such an abstact idea as numbers a little bit more visual (because three items lying on the table, three sticks, three fingers or three dots on the dice are a better representation of the secret that this symbol ‘3’ stands for) and kinesthetic when we let the kids manipulate the sticks. Luckily, the sticks are cheap and easy to get so having lots and lots of them, enough for everyone, is not a difficult aim to meet.

One of my favourite games to play (perhaps because it is a perfect solution for a lazy teacher) is using these together with the paper plates with numbers. The kids look at the number, count the sticks and add or take them away, in order to make sure that the number matches the number of sticks. Which is also the beginnig of adding and substracting.

By the way, flashcards will do here, too, but the plates have the advantage of having the rim and the sticks do not slide off and you can easily just pile them up on top of each other, put them aside and sort them out after the lesson.

With my ‘adult‘ pre-primary kids, we have used these same counting sticks to help children manage a pair-work activity, to add a visual and kinesthetic element to the verbal exchange. We were practising different varieties of ‘What’s your favourite…’. The kids were sitting in pairs, on the floor, around a set of flashcards that would symbolise the themes (an apple for ‘What’s your favourite fruit?’, a teddy for ‘What’s your favourite toy?’ and so on) and one student in each pair would get a set of five sticks. They were supposed to ask their partner five questions of their choice (we had ten categories) and while doing that, they were supposed to put the stick away, on the relevant card. We used a similiar tool when they were interviewing their partners about things they like (‘Do you like…’ + any words of the kids’ choice) and I guess it can be adopted to pretty much any structure.

Plastic cups

Or any other recycled cups (like those in the photo) which are easily available. They are my favourite resource to sort out materials (pencils, pens, bits and pieces for a craft activity, especially the leftovers, which I hide in the cupboard for later). They also help to organise materials which I give out to the kids, for example we have a set of boxes with crayons organised by the colour, for some, more teacher-centred activities, as here the teacher is the one in charge AND a set of cups organised in sets, one full set per student, which we use in all the SS-centred activities in which the students make decisions which colour to use.

With my older students, I use the plastic cups whenever we use dice in class (and that is OFTEN). The dice given to students (kids and teens) ‘just like that’ have the most amazing ability to fall off the tables about once per minute. Plus they make LOTS and LOTS of noise and if you have a group of then and five dice are rattling and rattling…Well, you can imagine. If you put each dice into a plastic cup, you can still shake it and get a number and everything is more manageable. I think I saw it first in Nataliya T’s class and here are my thankyous for this idea!

Paper plates

Oh the paper plates! They are of course used at parties and in craft lessons to make clocks, spinners, plates for all the ‘fruit salad’ craft activities, snowmen, frogs, chicks, rabbits and what not…But there is so much more!

For me it was this one day when I got an idea for a great lesson for which I really needed the number flashcards. These, however, were left behind in the office, so getting them for the lesson that was the first lesson of the day, early in the morning was out of the question. I rushed to the school cupboard in the house, to go over all the treasures there, with the idea of something that could help me replace the flashcards and there they were – a set of colourful cardboard plates from my local supermarket (which I must have bought for some class party earlier). Creating the flashcards took three minutes and a permanent market and it turned out that these particular plates (many of which I bought later on in the same supermarket) were perfect for it: big, durable, colourful but not too colourful since there was a thick colourful rim but the centre was just white and empty aka perfect for writing!

We normally use the number plates like any other flascards, first and foremost but the different shape adds to the variety and makes the topic of numbers a bit more fun. We also use them together with the counting sticks (see above) or with any other bits. We used the numbers 1 – 12 to create a huge clock on the floor and we played some movement games with it.

The plates became the canvas that helped me create my amazing emotions and adjectives cards (sorry about blowing my own trumpet here but there is a lot of love here) which we have been using for more than two years now.

Not to mention that the plates can be a very useful tool to organise all the bits and pieces while getting ready for a craft activity, hats for the snowman on one plate, scarves for the snowman on another, and they all can be stuck on top of each other. And, as you know, every little helps to make the teacher’s life a bit easier.

What are the unsung heroes of your classroom? Please share!

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #29 How do you feel today? The alternatives

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From the series: The Beautiful Life

Ingredients

  • None, almost. In some cases, it might be necessary to write some of the ideas on the board, to serve as an inspiration. See procedures

Procedures

  • Students work in pairs. They share their ideas. If there is time, the students can change partners and repeat the activity. To round up, students share some of the information they have found out about.
  • This stage is always present, in each lesson, and it takes about 10 minutes. We keep the same variant for about a month and then we choose a new one.

All the variants (so far)

  • Verbs: the teacher writes on the board all the basic verbs in the past tense: I went to, I saw, I ate, I drank, I talked to…about…, I watched, I played, I bought, I wrote, I didn’t…The kids choose 5 and they build simple sentences about their day, week or weekend. I like to start it with my students even before we officially cover the Past Tense (as soon as they are ready to differentiate between the present / the past form of the verbs) and it really does help the kids to practise and to remember the verb forms.
  • Did you go…: a variation of the activity described above. The teacher puts the question form and the short answers on the board. The kids work in pairs and ask each other questions. The student who provides answers uses ‘I did’ and ‘I didn’t’ but they are also requested to give a brief explanation (because…)
  • Tell me about your day: the teacher writes the name of the activity and a list of topics which can be also elicited from the students. The regular set might include: the weather, the school, the teachers, my best friend, lunch, getting around, marks, tests, pets, brothers and sisters, homework etc. The students work in pairs and they have to choose three topics to talk about. They take turns to share stories about their day and they follow-up each story with a question.
  • The B-words: this one is a slight variation of the above, only here the teacher writes a selection of words starting with a certain letter as the list for the students to choose from and to be inspired by. Some of the words might be completely random but they also encourage the kids to produce the language. Later on, the students can choose the letter of the day and then can also help make the list of the words, too.
  • This is how I felt today: in this variation the teacher puts up the words to describe emotions and feelings. The list can be a simple one (happy, sad, angry, sleepy, hungry, tired, bored) and then it can be extended to include more interesting ones, too (confused, excited, chatty, exhausted). Again, the students choose 3 or 5 of them to describe their day.
  • Superheroes: this time the list on the board is made of names of superheroes, famous people as well as characters from books and films, for example Superman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, Chebourashka, Winnie-the-Pooh, Santa etc. The students are supposed to think of their day from the point of view of these characters and describe it talking about how they felt. ‘I felt like Superman because I got three good marks today’*)
  • The superlatives: the teacher writes on the board a list of superlatives (the best, the worst, the funniest, the tasties, the most difficult, the easiest). The students choose 3 or 5 of them and use them to describe their day, for example: The best thing was that I had only three lessons etc.

Why we like it

  • A stage of that kind is absolutely necessary as the time for the students to settle in
  • This is also when they learn how to communicate without any preparation and outside of any set-up frameworks since each day might be different and each day may involve a different set of verbs and nouns
  • At the same time, it is an opportunity to practice the past tenses or the perfect tenses as for many of the students, many events repeat themselves (going to school, writing tests, having a good day or a bad day etc)
  • It is a fantasic opportunity for the group to bond, to share the great things that happened during the day or to vent about all the disasters that they had to deal with, the tests, the teachers, the piles of homework

To be continued. Soon. We are quite likely to get very bored with what we are doing at the moment…

Happy teaching!

*) My favourite so far! It is amazing how my students come up with their own metaphors and associations, both the teenage group and the kids. Here are a few quotes: ‘I felt like Chebourashka because I was a bit confused’, ‘I feel like Robinson Cruzoe because I am locked up at home now’, ‘I feel like Masha from Masha and Medved because I am a bit crazy today’, ‘I felt like Santa because it was my friend’s birthday and I had a present for him’, ‘I feel like Superman because I did all my homework really fast’…

Crumbs #28 Funky envelope

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Flashcards created with the illustrations from Bystry Maluszek @Zielona Sowa Publishing House

Ingredients

  • a set of flashcards
  • two pieces of cardboard stapled together on three sides
  • shapes cut out on the front page (cut out before stapling)

Procedures

  • hide the flashcards inside
  • show the students only a part of the card on the top, through the cut-outs, ask the kids ‘What is it?’
  • take out the card and proceed with the rest of them
  • hide the flashcards inside
  • show the students only a part of the card on the top, through the cut-outs, ask the kids ‘What is it?’
  • take out the card and proceed with the rest of them

Why we like it

  • this is a variation of the Through the Keyhole activity that I once saw in the I Spy coursebook. However, this original version included an A4 sheet of paper with a keyhole that the teacher needed to cut out and then move the card over the flashcard. I found this tool a very interesting one but, at the same time, a bit awkward to use as the teacher needed two hands to manipulate the cards, there was a chance that the children could still see bits of the card apart from the keyhole bit and the activity involved a lot of picking up and putting down the cards. All in all, too clumsy to handle.
  • to make a funky envelope you need only simple materials (A4 cardboard or simple photocopying A4 paper although it will not be as durable, white, colourful or recycled), a pair of scissors and a stapler or glue. As soon as one envelope gets destroyed, you can easily replace it with a new one.
  • you can have one simple cut-out shape or a selection of different shapes all over the envelope.
  • all the flashcards fit in nicely inside, the teacher can manipulate them more easily. I sometimes turn the envelope over, to change the cards inside and to add to the whole ritual.
  • I normally use when the kids are already familiar with the images on the flashcards not to make the task too challenging, in lesson two or three of the unit. However, there were also cases when I used the envelope to introduce a brand new topic and to raise the level of challenge.

Happy teaching!

Staging for VYL teachers. A crash course

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Disclaimers: I have chosen to use Discover with Dex by Macmillan in this exercise here due to a few reasons: I have had a chance to work with it, it is one of the recently published coursebooks and there are some sample pages available online on the CUP website and so I am not at risk of any copyright infrigements here. This is not in any way a criticism of the activities and instructions included in the original material. I just wanted to recreate what I would normally do in this lesson. For that reason, I have decided to do one more thing that I never do and that is plan the entire lesson without consulting the teachers’ book or checking what is there (I really struggle with reading all types of manuals). I left it until after I was done with the whole post. See the last paragraph. It was my conscious decision not to supplement the coursebook activities with any songs, stories or videos or even electronic games such as wordwall, although, of course, I do that in my lessons. I wanted to keep the most basic version of the lesson.

Details: Discover with Dex, Macmillan, level 1, unit 1, page 7.

The original activities can be found in the sample on page 8 as well as in the TB, on the same website, page 11.

Ready? Steady? Go!

Pre-book

  • Introduction and revision of the vocabulary: simple flashcard games, realia (ie putting post-it notes with numbers on the realia, T: calls out the numbers, Kids: name the item), or realia and flashcards (ie matching the relevant flashcard with the item in the classroom by putting the flashcard on the relevant object) Why? Because students need enough exposure to the target language and enough practice, controlled or freer, so that they are ready to complete the task in the coursebook.
  • Movement games: using gestures at least for some of the objects (chair – sitting down, table – putting arms on the table, sticker – peeling off and sticking, book – opening the book and reading, pencil – a gesture for writing something carefully, crayon – a gesture for colouring in), puzzle, Puzzle Run – copy the flashcards and cut them up into the jigsaw puzzles (ie two pieces, perhaps three if the kids are older), keep one piece of each in the classroom, leave the rest out and place them around the classroom or the hallway, depending on the location. Pick out one piece, say ‘What is it? It’s a….’ and elicit the rest from the kids (‘a pencil’), ask one of the kids to look around the classroom and look for the missing piece of the puzzle. When they bring it, put the pieces together, elicit the question and the answer, drill. The question and answer can be easily turned into a chant, by adding rhythmical clapping. The roles can be nicely divided, too, with the teacher asking the question and the children replying or the other way round. For instance, if that is the first lesson with this structure, the kids can only repeat the question, it will be the same line over and over again. Why? Becuase the kids have been sitting for quite some time and they will need a stirrer to get rid of the energy that has accumulated so far and to prepare them for a serious settler aka the focused task.

While-book

  • Funky envelope: this is one of my favourite tools ever and it seems perfect for this activity. It will keep the kids curious, it will create an opportunity to practise the target language and it will create a link between the flascard games and the activity in the coursebook. The teacher continues using the same structure, What is it? It’s a… Why? Because this kind of an activity will prepare the students for the format of the task they are going to be asked to complete as part of the focused task.
  • Open the book (teacher only): the teacher opens the coursebook (or displays it on the screen / the interactive whiteboard) and calls out the names of the objects in the top row, using the key structure again. Why? Because this way the chances are that the students will remain focused on the task and on the instructions. There is only one thing to look at (the book that the teacher is holding or demonstrating), no other books, no other pages in the students’ books etc.
  • Model: still with only the teacher’s book open, the teacher completes the first part of the activity. The teacher points at the first circle and asks ‘What is it?’, students answer ‘It’s a chair’. The teacher says: ‘Let’s take a red pencil’ and colours the chair in the circle and draws the line. The teacher repeats the question – answer again, pointing at the pictures ‘What is it?’ ‘It’s a chair’. Why? Because the kids need to see how to complete the task, step by step. Verbal instructions only are not going to be as effective and through looking at the task is completed, the children will understand better what they are to do in the following stage.
  • Open the books (students): the kids open their books. The teacher asks again, give out the red pencils / crayons to all the students, monitors. When the kids are ready, the teacher collects all the pencils and they all repeat the exchange again: point to the circle – What’s this? – It’s table – trace the line – point to the picture of the table. Why? This is for everyone the controlled practice task, repeating the teacher’s actions in their own coursebooks.
  • What’s this? It’s a crayon: repeat the procedure with the crayon and a new colour. The teacher gives out and collects the pencils or crayons after each round and elicits the question – answer. It might be a good idea to let the kids choose the colour of the pencil / crayon for each round. Why? By adding the element of the different colours and by pencils being given out and collected by the teacher in each round, the teacher ensures that the task is paced properly, that all the students complete the task and that everyone stays on the ball throughout that stage of the lesson.
  • Done! the teacher draws a star or a smile to signal that the task has been completed successfully. The kids close their books. Why? Because it helps the kids to understand that the task has been finished.

Post-book

  • Riddles: it will be a bit of a stretch from the original context but the structure can be used to play riddles, too. The teacher chooses a flashcard, keeps it hidden and asks ‘What is it?’, the kids make their sentences trying to guess the card. It might be necessary for the teacher to model first and provide the first few incorrect guesses to give the children an idea, for example ‘It’s a pencil’ – ‘No’, ‘It’s a sticker’ – ‘No’, ‘It’s a table’ – ‘Yes!’. Naturally, after a few rounds led by the teacher, the kids take turns to lead the game. Why? At this point, with a lot of exposure and practice, the kids should be able to take part in a game when they have to produce the langauge freely.
  • Pelmanism: in order to play this game, the teacher needs to prepare a set of flashcards, set A: the regular flashcards, with the objects fully seen and set B: either stencils of the objects or parts of the objects (like in the coursebook), matching or, the simplest set and the easiest to prepare: two sets of the regular flashcards printed in two different colours. Actually, with pre-school or primary students, I always use colour-coded sets as it makes it easier to set the game and to handle the materials. The students play together, led by the teacher. The kids take turns to uncover the cards and to find a match. Every single time they ask the question and answer it (What’s this? It’s a pencil). If they have a pair, they put it away. Why? This is another game that creates an appropriate setting for the use of the key question and answer. If the game is played together, without counting points, it is appropriate also for the youngest students.
  • Happy birthday to you: it is a silly game that we sometimes play as part of the new vocabulary practice and here it would be yet another way of providing another opportunity to practice the key structure within the appropriate context. The kids have to sit in a circle and you need to have a set of flashcards. First, to model the activity, the teacher chooses one card, keeps it secret, face down and gives it to the student on the left. This student passes it to their friend and so on until the card makes it back to the teacher. Then, the teacher takes another card and yet another one and the cards start circulating, all of them face down. The teacher start singing ‘Happy Birthday’ and at one point, the teacher stops abruptly. The teacher then asks ‘What’s this?’ and all the kids turn their cards over and tell everyone what they’ve got ‘It’s a sticker’, ‘It’s a pencil’ etc. Then, they play another round. If there are enough flashcards for all the kids, then, naturally, all the students will describe their flashcard. If, however, there are fewer, then the activity is easier to manage and the kids who end up without a flashcard, they can say ‘Oups’ and it is fun, too as the teacher is the one to manage the song and to make sure that different children get a chance to say ‘Oups’ during the game. Why? There are opportunities for the natural use of the key structure as it is a mystery and the game can be stopped at any moment which will be quite a useful feature at the end of the lesson, when the kids are naturally more tired and less likely to remain focused for a longer period of time.

Question to ask yourself while planning:

  • What is the aim of the lesson? Even if it is not a formally assessed lesson, it is a good idea to formulate it for yourself, even if only verbally. Why are you and the kids entering the classroom on the day? What would you like them to achieve as regards the language, the social skills, the motor skills or any other area?
  • How does the coursebook material help you meet these aims? What would you have to add or to adapt?
  • How much language are the students going to produce? Are there any ways of maximising production?
  • Will your students (those who are in your group, your student Misha, Peter, Tommy and Andy) be able to complete these tasks? Will they like them? Apart from the fact that you are the teacher (the one asking them to do things) and they are the students (they listen and follow), is there anything in the task and the materials that will get them involved?
  • How are you going to prepare the students for the task? What activities will you prepare to introduce and to revise the vocabulary and the structure? Is there anything that you can do to prepare them for the format of the task, too?

And now I am actually going to read the teacher’s book…

  • There is a different TL (Can you see? Yes, I can) which could be used very naturally in the classroom. At the same time, this is not the TL that is introduced and practised in the unit (Have you got? Yes, I have. No, I haven’t). We might argue which structure would be more useful for the students (Can you see? or ‘What is it?’) and both have got their benefits and it is up to the teacher whether to follow the book and what to supplement it with.
  • The teacher’s book suggest a slightly different procedure and there is a nice variety of structures introduced and practised (Can you see? What is it? What’s missing? Is it a…? Where is the other chair?). It is great to see a lot of natural language used during the lesson but since all of my students are EFL learners with a limited exposure of one or two real hours per week, I would want to focus the language practise and production and work on one structure at a time. Although, of course, the teacher would be creating a proper language environment, without limiting their own production to this one specific structure only.
  • I am afraid I would not use the original task with colouring the magnified objects to match the real objects. The chair and the crayon are easy but the book and the pencil would involve more than one colour and would take a bit longer than I would like to spend on that activity.
  • The same goes for the personalisation task. Most of my students are too young to draw such complicated pictures so I would be skipping that one, too. With the older children, I might use it for homework perhaps.
  • There is a great set of the digital resources to accompany the coursebook as well as the wall hanging to go with the flashcards and these could be a lovely addition to the lesson.

Happy teaching!

P.S. Don’t forget to check out the wonderful directory of all the useful things in the VYL world created by Sandy Millin. You can find it here.

‘Please be quiet. I’m trying to teach!’* Ten ideas for classroom management of the big(ger) pre-school groups

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Congratulations FunkySocks&Dragons! It looks like we have just got the longest blog post title in the history of this blog…

It was inspired by a wonderful song from Dream English Kids, a great tool to teach and to practise the Present Continous and the rooms in the house. If you don’t know it yet, please look it up asap. It is also based on the talk I gave at the TeachyForum in March 2022.

All the ideas that you see below come from my classrooms and represent the tricks and the techniques that I have developed or I have been using with my more numerous pre-school groups. Perhaps it is worth mentioning that I have not really had a chance to work with very very big groups. The biggest number that I have had in the pre-school classroom on permanent basis was 12 and I know that there are colleagues out there who teach more.

As usual, these are the things that have worked for me and I hope that you find some of it useful, too.

#1 Building the routine

This is one of the key words in the the VYL world and today we are lucky to have the access to quite a few different ideas for different classroom routines, either from the coursebooks authors who make an effort to even prepare the classroom routine chants and songs or from the teachers who share their ideas on the social media or their blogs. Lots of sources of inspiration!

But the most important thing as regards the routine for the bigger groups is the time investment. Some of us might be lucky to get only the little angels in their groups, some of us might have to deal with the ‘regular’ children who sometimes behave, who sometimes want to discover the world and to experiemtn, sometimes are up to no good at all…These children (regardless of whether there are three or ten) will need the time to get used to the lesson format, to the teacher and to the rules we want to implement.

When I started or took over those big groups (a situation even more complicated probably, since you have to ‘re-start’ the group), I would go step by step, aiming at getting a perfect hello circle first, just the way I would want it. Then, once this one done, I would work on improving the revision stage. Then and only when I already was at two stages of the lesson under control, I would move to the following one, working at one stage at a time, until I was finally happy with the entire lesson.

Nothing happens overnight. Be patient! Be good to yourself, too, dear teacher!

#2 Adapting the routine

The routine is never for ever and for always. Children get used to the lesson procedures and activities and they might need be in need of something new. Children get bored with what they know and they might be in need of something new. Children grow and develop their social, cognitive, motor and linguistic skills and they might be in need fo something new.

These changes may involve the physical rearrangements of the room (and related to that changes in the routine) or changing the rhythm of the lesson by splitting up the music and movement stage and replacing it with songs used throughout the entire lesson, as punctuation marks or introducing a whole new stage to the lesson in order to be able to secure a short 1-1 chat with all the students in a large group. Which I described here in more detail.

#3 Rewards’ chart

Yes, I would like to recommend using a rewards’ chart, despite the fact that some educators are against the idea. I don’t use it with all my groups, sometimes it is not necessary at all, but with those of the groups and children that need that, for me a rewards’ chart is a temporary solution and a tool of establishing the routine and visualising the kids’ behaviour. As soon as the target audience ie the kids are familiar with the rules and the routines, the chart is slowly abolished.

And yes, I have already written about it in this post here.

#4 Lesson planning aka balance

Lesson planning for a group of pre-schoolers is not necessarily the easiest thing to do. There are quite a few factors that have to be introduced and that have to be introduced in the appropriate ration. Some of these include

  • new material and revised material, vocabulary and structures
  • familiar (aka ‘safe’) and unfamiliar (aka ‘intriguing’) elements in order to ensure that the students are engaged but not bored.
  • skills, mostly listening and speaking but also reading and writing, when appropriate
  • settlers and stirrers
  • a variety of materials or, in other words, not only flashcards.
  • a variety of interaction patterns, not only individual work and not only whole class because all the children waiting for their turn, especially in large group, will find themselves alternative activities if there are too many T-S activities. If, on the other hand, the lesson is based on the whole class activities, the teacher is at risk of losing the contact with the individual students in the group.
  • games and ‘paper’ (aka hard work). Personally, I am of the opinion that one paper per lesson is just what is necessary. One page in the coursebook OR one handout OR one craft. No more. During the covid year when we were studying online, I gave up on paper completely. The children had their coursebooks but we used this material only for homework. The lesson time was devoted to interaction.

#5 Kids’ involvement

There are so many things that children can do in class and so many things that children will love to do in class because they want to be involved and they want to be a part of the classroom routine. This will help to make them more engaged and connected to the English bubble.

Kids can help with handing out and collecting materials and resources, choosing songs, games and songs, choosing the next student to take part, checking the register, cleaning the board, watering the plants etc etc. Even if in the beginning of the course, the kids are only separate individuals who don’t know anyone else and who perhaps do not feel like interacting with anyone else, this will be changing throughout the year. There is a lot that the teacher can do to help speed it up.

A community, be it a community made of three members or ten or twelve, will be much easier to manage than a group of individuals.

#6 Who’s the teacher?

To be honest, in my books, the main reason for inviting children to take part in taking control of the lesson is the fact that is maximising production. It is also one of the steps towards pair-work. However, there are other benefits, too. Children become more responsible for the lesson, they become more independent and they learn how to be in control. That, in itself, will have a positive impact on the classroom management and children’s behaviour. But there is more, too!

In a way, children become the teacher assistants, too, and that means that while they are leading the activity itself, the teacher can devote more (or all) of his or her attention to managing of the group and their behaviour.

#7 Pairwork

It is absolutely possible! Yes, yes, yes! I have done it and not once! I have also done it and kept and eye on how I was doing it in order to share it with my fellow teachers. You can read about it here in more detail. I will only say this: it did help me to deal with big groups and to create opportunities for all of my students to produce the language. With careful staging, with a mixed-ability goup and a mixed-age group it took thirteen lessons, from our first ‘Hello’ ever until the lesson when we played in pairs, in English.

#8 Staging

Staging is a topic that deserves its own post and I will eventually get down to typing it up. In the meantime, only a few words here.

Staging is important. Children being only 3 or 4 or 5 need the external help from the teacher in order to complete the tasks successfully. The first step is the successful choice of an activity.

The second step is how it is going to be done in class, what has to be done before the lesson, how the kids are sitting, what are the main mini-stages, what are going to be the teacher’s instructions and the way of modelling the teacher chooses and so on…It all matters and if it is not taken care of and planned carefull, the activity is likely to end up being a disaster, especially if it is a craft activity and especially if the group is big and the teacher cannot physically help with cutting, colouring, glueing and assembling…

Here you can find some of the tried and tested, teacher-friendly and VYL-friendly craft activities: don’t you just love a circle, a caterpillar and a butterfly, playdough activities.

#9 Songs

Songs are great and there are at least sixty reasons to use a song in the VYL classroom. Here it is important to highlight the huge potential they have as regards building a community, forming the everyday class routine and uniting the kids to balance the tasks they complete individually. And, as an easy stirrer. In that sense, these are especially imporatant and useufl with the bigger groups.

#10 Storytelling

In the same way as the songs are a stirrer easily included in the lesson, stories (storybooks, story boards, videos or stories told) are easy settlers. There are of course many more reasons to use these in class (I have found fifty so far) but, again, from the point of view of a teacher of a big pre-school groups, they also help build a community. They are also a great tool that can be effective with a group of one, three or twelve as all the children can participate in it simultaneously, if the activity is set up properly (some ideas of how it can be done can be found here).

Anything else? Please add your ideas in the comments!

Happy teaching!

Some other posts that you may found useful are here:

  1. When the world begins to fall apart post and teaching under the most unexpected circumstances
  2. About the impact of the classroom on the lesson, VYL-only classroom, adult EFL classroom adapted and teaching in kindergartens.
  3. Before you start working with preschoolers: a word of advice and the VYL starter kit
  4. About scaffolding
  5. The hidden perks of teaching VYL

Teaching English through Art: a palette of ideas for pre-school

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Hopper

The aim of this post is the following: by the end of the post, the readers will be more familiar with the concept of connecting the EFL with the elements of Art Exploration and the appropriate craft activities.

As a source of potential inspiration for anyone who might want to try it.

The group

The kids for whom this course has been designed were a group of preschoolers, aged 4 – 6, who are and were part of a greater project at MAMM with Fun Art Kids and I was responsible for the English language slot. I taught them from October 2021 until February 2022 and we had lots of creative fun in English. I used to joke that these classes were the reason for me to wake up on Tuesdays.

My students were beginners and for many of them, if not for all, those sixty minutes of English were the only real exposure and the only real lesson and, despite the fact that it is not a lot of time (at all) we made progress that I was really happy with.

The format

The whole idea behind the Kids in the Avangard programme was that children should be given an opportunity to experience art and all the many ways of creative communication, through music, through dance and movement, through theatre, through visual arts and through English. The programme was run in module, each with their own theme (colour, shape, line etc) and within those modules the kids would participate in lessons that were separate entities devoted to an artist, an artistic movement etc. At the same time, kids work on a performance which takes place at the end of the ‘term’.

It was not easy to nest the English classes in that format but it was not possible. The main idea is that the English classes in which we deal with the beginner students (or a mixed ability group), it was impossible to aim for a very content-rich input and some adaptations had to be made for that. What I decided to do is to focus on giving the kids a good basis of English, including the vocabulary and structure from the pre-A level (although not necessarily not synonymous with and not in the order of the ‘typical pre-school curriculum’) and to combine it with the introduction to the world of the world Art and related craft activities. Just like in the case of all the other classes of the programme, our lessons were connected but each of them was a separate module, too.

The format of the lessons followed a typical EFL pre-school lesson with the hello circle, revision, new material introduction, movement and table time and it was supplemented with and built on songs and stories, too.

The palette of ideas

In the chart below you can see the content and the ideas for some of the lessons I ran as part of the course. In many ways it was an experiment, this whole course and, overall, it was a very successful experiment, the kind that makes you shout out ‘I want more of that!”. However, it was an experiement and, naturally, some lessons were more effective than others, and some ideas better than others.

In the chart below, I have decided to include those that I have tried and tested and loved, as those that I can strongly recommend, ready to use almost. All the misshaped ones will be worked on and developed and presented at a later date, when I have improved them a tiny little bit at least. But, in order to be honest and to share the experience as it was, I have also decided to include some of the things I have learnt by making the mistakes I did make. All of those you will find in the final section of this post aka What not to do.

The gallery

Klee
Goncharova

Kandinsky, Malevich, El Lissitzky
van Gogh
Warhol

De Coster
Mashkov
Monet

The not-so-successful side of the experiment

  • The time allowances: either because it is a brand new thing for the kids (aka the entire course) or because it is a new element to the everyday class routine, the students need time to figure things out, to learn how to navigate around it and to make it familiar. Once they do, the whole programme will be a lot more effective and enjoyable. Don’t be upset if it is not an instant success.
  • The high expectations regarding the content and the input: the main aim of this programme is not to provide the kids with any substantial input on the artist’s life and career. Instead, they are supposed to be given an opportunity to be exposed to the world art and to interact with it.
  • Kids will produce the language, however, it is most likely to happen during the English language part of the lesson (introduction of the new vocabulary, practice, language games)
  • Each lesson has three separate objectives (language, Art and craft) and it is perfectly natural that only one of them will be given priority in a lesson and that English and the language production will not always be the main focus. If these classes are taught as a part of the general English course, then it is assumed that they will be balanced with the regular, more productive English lessons. In case of a separate course, this aspect (and potential parents’ expectations) are even easier to manage by outlining the course objectives beforehand.
  • Many craft activities look good on paper but they might not be easy to implement and to manage in a group of pre-schoolers. Trying, trialling and testing (aka making it first at home, before the lesson) is the best way to avoid and to get ready for at least some of the potential problems.
  • Time is on your side. Fnding a strong link between the three elements and preparing a coherent lesson gets easier with time. And more and more enjoyable.
  • There are plenty of things that can be done just with the simple resources such as markers, crayons or watercolours and paper but don’t forget that there is a lot more that can be done! Experimenting is fun!

Why?

If you are still wondering whether to start including art in your EFL lessons, please have a look at this earlier post and here you can find a great website with lots and lots ideas for art activities.

Happy teaching!

Lesson plan. A new take.

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What is a lesson plan?

It is not a lesson plan in a traditional meaning of the word, that is, a set of notes, more or less formal, that a teacher writes in order to prepare the activities for the lesson. It is a list of stages of the lesson, displayed on the board, written both for the teacher and for the students.

The photo that you can see above as the illustration to this post is my primary students’ take on the said plan, prepared for me one of these days, before the lesson. With a clear signal as regards the activities that they would really (really) be involved in. No homework whatsoever, no grammar, either, three games and a party…I have absolutely NO idea what this mysterious ’33’ was supposed to be…

Why do we need it?

For the teacher, it is a lesson in a nutshell, always there, always on display, a clear presentation of all the main stages of the lesson.

For the students, it is a lesson in a nutshell, always there, an overview of what to expect on the day. It serves as a classroom management tool as it helps the kids get a better idea of the lesson. This is how we keep track of the lesson proceedings as we go through it. This is how you can reward the students if you include a story or a game in it. Naturally, the game (at number 9) can happen ONLY if we go through numbers 1 through to 8 first.

The lesson plan also contains some opportunities as regards the students’ taking control of the lesson as they can be involved in erasing the stages that have been completed, after having confirmed that with the teacher, and, in some cases and to some extent, also the opportunity to choose the order of activities, when and if that is appropriate.

In case of the longer lessons, those that last two or even three academic hours, it is a great tool that helps the students manage their time, attention and focus throughout the lesson, the number of activities, the break and so on.

How to do it?

There are always ten points, regardless of how long the lesson is and #1 is almost always ‘Hello. Homework’ and #10 is almost always ‘Bye-bye. Homework’. Anything that I plan for the lesson has to fit in, in the remaining eight numbers.

This has got a lot to do with the fact that I personally like the ten sections in a lesson (and 10 is better than 12 and definitely better than 11) but it also helps the kids see the lesson as a whole, divided into the same number of sections, every single day. It also gives me an incentive to pack the lesson nicely into ten sections and, in turn, that means that they all might have a different length. It is never ‘the lesson time divided by ten’. Sometimes, half-way through the lesson we might be done only at number 2, sometimes we go through numbers 1 – 8 very quickly and what is left is only number 9 – a whole project planned for sixty minutes, for example.

As soon as we are done with a stage, we erase it off the board, moving towards number ten as the lesson progresses. Sometimes I do it, sometimes the students help. I noticed that they are paying attention, reminding me to erase a stage, checking whether we have already finished it or not yet, making sure that I have included the break or the game or the homework.

With my older kids, I try to be tricky and the names for the stages are very rarely revealing or direct. The only thing that I am always open about is the grammar introduction and practice and it normally features on the plan as: ‘Grrrr’. Everything else is as vague and random as possible. Another trick that helps the kids to manage the time and the attention. With the older students who take part in the decision making process as regards ‘What’s next?’ (or with the younger ones, when they are invited to choose), the students have to ask about the stages that interest them most and then make a decision.

Who is it for?

I use the plan for most of my classes, including the teacher training sessions for my teachers. With pres-schoolers, we use only elements of it and most of the time it is limited to annoucing ‘a surprise’ which, with time, began to translate ‘anything new’, ‘anything special’, ‘anything out of the ordinary’ and the kids were asking how many of these surprises I had, whether they were big or small and so on. I

I also try to get my youngest students ready for managing the time of the lesson by introducing stages for parts of the lesson. These of course have to be worded in a very careful way, using only the simple and familiar words and I always count the number of these stages on my fingers. This comes in handy at the end of the lesson, when the kids are already a bit more tired and less focused or, also, during the more complex craft activities. For example, at the end of the lesson, I can say: ‘We need to do ‘story’ (the thumb), ‘game’ (the index finger), ‘the homework’ (the middle finger), ‘Bye-bye song’ (the ring finger) and ‘stickers’ (the pinky). Then, we also check how many of these five we have got left. This really helps the kids to focus, even the youngest ones.

With my primary students, as soon as the kids are able to read, I start putting the plan on the board. I do it before the lesson and we read it together. Again, since they are only learning to manage the written word, I put only single words or even symbols. These may become more complex as the kids grow older.

Happy teaching!