Anka Zapart

The one phrase to teach your students. From the series: We Want More!

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Since we are going through the quieter period of the year, there is more time for looking back and for reflection and this is how the idea for this mini-series of post came from. Just because we started to use those and each of these phrases or words was like a key that opened many, many doors in our communication and not only.

The one thing to teach your kids is ‘because‘…

…and the whole thing can* start in primary, and maybe even in pre-school. It is a powerful world that invites the kids to build a simple discourse and to go beyond one sentence or simple sentence production, even in the most everyday situations.

We start with extentending the answer to ‘How do you feel today?‘ which is a part of our class routine and the question which I ask and which the kids ask in every single lesson. As soon as they have a good number of adjectives to use in response (you can read about it here), I try to encourage them to elaborate on their answers, both modeling (I’m happy because it is sunny) and by inviting them to continue. ‘I’m happy.‘ ‘Because...’

Of course, the sentences the kids produce are quite simple, very simple, in fact, and sometimes partially in their L1 but with time, they are becoming more familiar with it and they are improving and, as a result, are able to say more and more and more. In English. Not to mention that as we go through the course, there are more and more situations in which we need because, for example to explain why we like Friday and not Monday, why we didn’t do the homework, why the kids in the pictures look happy or sad or why they did something in the story.

The same can be done with pre-schoolers, with certain adjustments to their age and the number of years that they have been studying. Thinking about my groups in the previous academic year, with the level 1 and the level 2 groups I was more focused on the full sentence production and it was too early to introduce any linkers. The level 3 children, however, were ready the unit ‘I’m scared’ (Playway to English, CUP) was a perfect opportunity to talk about the things we are scared of and to explain why. Or, more frequently, the things we are not scared of. ‘I am not scared of spiders. I like spiders because they are beautiful.’ and so on.

I often tell my students (especially those new ones, and yes, also the adult ones recently) that I will always want to know ‘Why?’ and that even if I forget to ask, they should always imagine this word written all across my forehead and answer it anyway. To help the kids in the everyday lesson and to make it easier on myself, I used the idea I got from Herbert Puchta, only mine was not any error correction technique and it stayed displayed proudly on the wall for a good few years. In the beginning, I really had to do a lot of pointing and waving at the word, later, the habit was developed and the kids (yes, as early as in year 1 of primary!) started to use the word without any reminders whatsoever. They were producing the language and lots of it!

My two favourite because-related moments from the classroom have been those:

  • when we talk about things, someone is telling us how they are and I, somehow, forget to ask ‘Why?‘ or I am just too slow with it, there is always a voice (or two or three) taking over and kindly suggesting ‘Because…‘, with this perfect rise in the intonation, the voice trailing off in an invitation to continue. I wonder where they got that from!
  • when we talk about pictures or we retell the story or we describe something that happened at school on the day and, by accident, I want to take over and move on and, in response, I get my own because back, in an interjection, and again, with the intonation perfectly matching the purpose (‘I have NOT finished yet‘) and I am thinking to myself: ‘Oh dear, I cannot shut them up!’ which is, by far, my favourite teacher’s complaint.

*) ‘Can’ or ‘must’?:-))

The one thing to teach your kids is…’I think’.

Initially, I wanted to have a pretty post, ‘one phrase per age group’ but I realised that I simply cannot NOT mention ‘I think’ and the impact it had on my primary school students.

Unlike the previous item, here I cannot even remember how it came about and how I first introduced it. It has always been in the air. I know that I use it a lot to slow the kids down and to signal to them not to rush through tasks (i.e. ‘Think and write’) or to encourage them when they are struggling (i.e. ‘Think about it’ when I know that they do know it and it is only necessary to rack through their brains). We had used it a lot in different stories (‘Elmer was thinking and thinking and then he had an idea!’) and a while ago we also introduced ‘Thinking time’ as an official preparation stage for projects and role-plays. Thinking has been with us, only it is not quite clear for how long.

For the reason, when we got to practise expressing the opinion in winter last year (around the middle of A1 / Movers), I did not even bother to check the meaning of it and the question ‘What do you think about it?’ and the answer ‘I think it is interesting / boring / exciting etc’, the adjectives were the main aim and the focus. For me, at least.

What my students took out of this lesson for the rest of the course (and life!) was the little ‘I think’, which is essentially only an introduction and which is slightly unnecessary even. An opinion can surely be expressed without it. ‘Maths is easy‘ expresses the same view as ‘I think Maths is easy.’ Or so one would think.

I noticed, in the lesson in which we used it consciously for the first time and in the lessons afterwards, last year and this year, that my students began to start adding ‘I think‘ everywhere. ‘I think it is beautiful’, ‘I think it is easy‘, ‘I think he is sad‘, ‘I think it is a cat’ ‘And I think it is a dog‘ and so on. ‘I think’ gave them an opportunity to personalise the message, to signal the autonomy of that message (since by making it subjective you kind of accept that other people will have or may have a different view) and, I suppose, by doing so, it made the message more adult and more serious. And they simply and visibly adored it. Maybe because they were only 7 or 8 or 9 at the time.

As I said, I don’t quite remember the start of that adventure and I am not quite sure when the good time to introduce really is. What I know, though, is that the next time I am starting the group, ‘I think’ will be on the list of things to think about.

The one thing to teach your teens is…’What do you think about it?’

There are many phrases that were shortlisted for this paragraph because of the difference they made to the way my teens interacted with the world in the English lesson, ‘I agree‘ and ‘I don’t agree‘ or ‘On the one hand…on the other hand‘ among them but the real deal-breaker was ‘What do you think about?‘

This phrase, especially with a special stress on ‘you’ (‘What do you think about it?’) has become the wonderful phrase that helped my teens really get engaged and communicate in a really interactive way, not only expressing their opinion, agreeing and disagreeing but also to boomerang the conversation properly by involving the other participant or participants. I mean, truth be told, I know that they did it mostly to avoid making too much effort and producing extensively and this line has become a fantastic and polite tool which they used to dodge the ball. Of course, they produced, too but I just had a lot of fun observing how by trying to be super clever they were involved in a conversation that would give them some high marks during the speaking part of the FCE exam.

The one thing to teach your adults is…’it depends‘.

Especially if your adults are shy, not naturally very talkative and a messy A2 level. Especially if they have already experienced some failures and disappoinment while learning Engllish and when they current progress is closely related to the promotion at work. Or the lack of. Especially if, due to all the factors mentioned above, they reply with single words (the teacher sighs) or when they just say, in their L1: ‘I don’t know what to say’ (the teacher sighs again).

‘It depends’ came to us by accident. It was not a part of any text, a listening task or a functional language phrases lesson. It was a part of the emergent lesson but because I take notes of that and send these back to the students, it stayed with us. And what joy!

I can say with all the confidence that my students, in this one (1) group have wholeheartedly adopted the phrase and made it theirs. First of all, it is this gold key that opens the discourse. You cannot just answer with ‘It depends’ and stop there. You have to continue and explain at least the two different ways at looking at the issue. Especially if your teacher is raising her eyebrows and nodding encouragingly. What’s more, I have noticed that they like using it consciously as a natural time-bying tool that gives them the benefit of a few precious seconds to come up with an idea and a way of formulating it in English. Oh, what a find, this phrase!

The one thing to teach your teachers to use and to remember about is…’but’

This one is here as a joke only. I don’t need to teach my teachers any English, of course, but, as a trainer, this is the one word that I would like them to remember to use whenever they consider the theory of child development and the methodology of working with young learners. Or even while going through the teacher’s book and adapting the activities. This little but powerful word is everything you need to be equipped with to ensure that they always keep thinking of all the exceptions to all the rules and that the most important point of reference are the people in the classroom, not some non-existent ideal students or typical five-year-olds and all the other YL cliches.

Happy teaching!

How to choose a storybook?

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Seven. This is how many storybooks I own at this point in my life. To be honest, seven is a huge downgrade from these three shelves that I used to have a few months ago: one full shelf at the office, one full shelf at home and one, half-full shelf in the school…

I sigh and I try not to think about the absence of these shelves and, instead, I am thinking of my books circulating in the world, stuck all over the other, guest shelves, my storybooks out of reach but bringing joy to someone, somewhere. On a really good day, I can almost see myself as a fairy who sprinkles not golddust but beautiful pieces of literature.

The thing is, one cannot stay too far away from storybooks. Whether you want it or not, they start piling up, slowly, cautiously but still. Starting from scratch but I already have seven new books. Although ‘new’ should be taken with a pinch of salt here. I do recycle a lot, when possibly, and pick the gems to my collection in all the friendly charity shops. And some of them in my favourite book shop.

How do I choose the storybooks?

Oh, look, my unit 1 vocabulary! I buy the books to teach the lexis

In a perfect world there would be a library in which I would have a storybook for every unit (or for every set of vocabulary) that I am planning to teach. From colours, numbers, pets, transport, shapes to Christmas, Halloween and insects. This is probably never going to happen due to that inability to stick to a shelf for longer (see: Introduction) but it is good to daydream at least.

But I am trying!

When I choose storybooks, I like to look through the illustrations to see to what extent I will be able to use them with a specific topic. Sometimes I read the text, too, but I have also learnt to completely disregard it. The story can always be retold or adapted, graded to the needs of the people in the classroom and the lexis that they are working on at the moment.

That is why I bought Nick Sharratt and Sally Syme’s Something Beginning With Blue (yes, to teach colours!) and Debbie Harter’s Walking Through the Jungle, which has an amazing set of animals, habitats and verbs and which I will be also able to use alongside Walking in the Jungle by Super Simple Songs.

Grrrr! I buy the books to introduce and practise the structure

Because there is more than words, there is also the structure and sometimes I choose the books with the grammar that I will be able to introduce or to practise using a particular story. Oftentimes, the illustrations play the main role here (because, again, the story can be retold and adapted) although the story itself can help, too!

This is how Copy Cat by Mark Birchall landed in the bag and on the shelf. The adventures of the two friends, a cat and a dog, have a lot of verbs which means that I will be able to use it to practise Present Continuous or the Past Simple. I was also thinking of some functional language because the cat and the dog already talk a lot but they can talk even more in the future.

Say it again! I buy the books with repetitive language

Having read those two paragraphs, you might think that I buy the books not to read them but to look at the illustrations. It is not quite true. I use the text, too, but bearing in mind that my students are EFL kids, beginners, with somewhat limited exposure to the target language, I have to be selective as regards the text. At the same time, there are many amazing storybooks which can be used with a beginner child learner and that is because the language is repetitive and, even if it is above the child’s level and even if it has to be introduced, it is a good time investement because it appears throughout the entire story. Some good examples of that could be ‘I wrote to the zoo to send me a pet’ in Dear Zoo (another favourite) or ‘What do you see?’ in Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?.

The story mentioned above, ‘Walking Through the Jungle’ took a similar approach. The entire story is told through the following exchange: ‘Walking through the jungle, what do you see?’ ‘I think I see a lion chasing after me‘.

I know this story! I buy the books with traditional stories

It is great to see that traditional stories are making a comeback into the EFL VYL world. They are not the easiest material to work with, especially with the younger students, because the language is usually complex albeit beautiful, but they have one great advantage – the chances are that kids will be already familiar with them, the characters and the plot, because they are quite likely to have heard them before. At the very least, these are the stories that we can start with while taking the first steps in the traditional stories for pre-schoolers or primary.

That is why I picked up Alexei Tolstoy’s and Niamh Sharkey’s The Gigantic Turnip at the bookshop. I am hoping we are going to have a lot of fun with it, especially that the illustrations are beautiful and there is some repetition in the way the story is told.

Hello again! I buy the books I used to have

The list of the storybooks that are important and close to my heart is long, very long, indeed. The list includes Elmer, Barry, the Caterpillar, Gruffalo and many others, all of the books that I love, that I have been using in class for ages and that I could just take out of my bag and have a lesson with, without any real preparation. The trialled and tested. The best friends forever. The personal top ten, twenty, thirty.

However, when I start recreating the shelf, I do not start from this list, although, perhaps that would be a good idea. Making a fresh start brings with it an opportunity to find new treasures and that is what I like to do, I am on the look-out, I keep my eyes open and when I bump into a title that I know and love, I just get it.

Only when I get to the point of ‘Oh, how I miss Elmer!’, do I go online and just order all of these staples.

This time, my oldie but good is an Oliver Jeffers’ book, Lost and Found which I love for his illustrations and stories.

Guilty pleasures. I buy the books beacause they are just beautiful.

To be perfectly honest, I have to be double reasonable when it comes to this particular category because it is very easy to lose control and to end up with piles and piles of beautiful artifacts that I cannot really use in class. Self-restraint, moderation and temperance are not my favourite words but I have to make an effort, from time to time.

Once in a blue moon, however, comes the day when I am allowed to forage the shelves and the boxes and pick out publications which are (mainly) appealing visually. They are those that are to be used in my art lessons to develop taste, visual intelligence and symbolic representation in children.

This time, the two books that I picked for that very reason were Lauren Child’s Beware of the Storybook Wolves (for the trademark produced-by-a-child-like illustrations) and Kazuno Kohara’s Jack Frost (for the monochrome in black and in blue which will be a starting point for a lesson on the importance of colour). Or Lost and Found…

Most importantly…

It does not really matter why you buy the books as long as you buy them!

The stories that I could tell you of the books that were no one’s favourite and on no one’s wishlist but they came with other treasures or there was a really good price on them or they simply got donated and thus they made it to the shelf…True, they had to wait for their turn, for the inspiration to come, for this special lesson. Every dog has its day. Every storybook has its audience and its lesson.

Go, get the books! Bring them to the classroom!

Happy teaching!

P.S. The only problem now is that it is the middle of July and I already have a head full of new ideas and still – a good few weeks of waiting before I can put them into practice…

What an old dog learnt… A YL teacher goes back into the adult classroom

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Me and one of my best friends, Roman B. No old dogs in this photo. Only the amazing ones (The photo: courtesy of Yulia. The doggo: courtesy of Jill)

Back to the future

It just happened: a dedicated YL teacher (and a teacher who spent the last ten years doing her best to stay away from teaching adults (minus the trainees!) all of a sudden found herself in the classroom with some serious corportate clinets and their Business English, General English, English for Finance and Banking, A2 – C1. Full time.

It has to be said out loud: that was not a direction that this teacher dreamed of or the developement that the teacher planned or solicited but, at the same time, there is absolutely no need to wring hands or shed tears over such a giggle of the Fate. After all, the teacher is an experienced one, with an oh-dear number of years in the classroom (and different types of classrooms, everywhere) so the teacher will be just fine. After all, teaching is teachings, the students are great, the fun is being had. All the details are here just to set the context.

The old dog aka the adult classroom through a YL teacher

This particular started with a most random thing. I don’t even remember what we were doing and with whom, but, suddenly, I caught myself thinking ‘Blin, even my kids can do THAT‘. There was no anger in it or desperation, only curiosity and bemusement. I started to analyse the details and bits and pieces of this THAT and the reasons for that. It started with a sigh but it got interesting very quickly.

Here is a new post and an attempt at looking at the adult EFL learners through the eyes spoilt by her young students.

One. Inhibitions

This is something that is almost non-existant in the YL classroom. Minus all these cases in which the kid have had a negative first experience with English, at school, with the tutors or parents or when they are naturally introvert and shy and they simply need more time to settle in the group and to feel comfortable enough to talk. Most commonly, the kids enter the room, eyes wide-open, ready to discover and to enjoy the world of the English language.

Then, there are adults, a completely different picture. Naturally, there are quite a few factors that can contribute such as a lower level, a long break in learning or using the language, some negative previous learning experience or studying in one group with colleagues from the same company or being a low-level speaker of English when you are already a top manager.

The result? Silence in the classroom.

I guess that is the silence that is the time they need to think about their answer, to choose the words, to gather the courage to let them out and, naturally, they get it. They do have the right to the freedom of silence. For me, the teacher, it is also an interesting exercise in patience. I realised that I have been spoilt with hands shooting up into the air and the opinions voiced almost instantly. Here, I am getting used to breathing more and waiting for the students to be ready.

I am beginning to think that building up the students’ confidence suddenly gets the priority among the lesson and the course aims as regards the adult learners of English. Everything else, the vocabulary, the structures and the skills development will follow. Hopefully.

Two. Teacher-oriented communication

On the one hand, the YL classes are definitely more teacher-centred than the adult classes. That is, to some extent, fully justified. Students, especially the younger ones, are in need of the teacher and the adult as the lesson leader. But only to some extent. I strongly believe that this should be one of the main aims of the course to create the conditions in which the students will be learning to interact with the teacher BUT also giving them a chance to learn to interact with each other. After all, whatever happens in the classroom is only a warm-up, only the preparation, only the training before the real life interaction. In which, most likely, the teacher is not going to take part. For that reason, the students should be given the tools and opportunities to talk to each other, to lead the activities, to take part in pair-work. There is no need to wait with it until they turn ten or fifteen. Some elements of that can be introduced even much earlier and pair-work is feasible in pre-school.

Somehow, it is not a given with the older students. Adults, either because they are more inhibited or because they see it as a sign of respect towards the teacher, they hold back, they wait, for the teacher to call their name out or for the teacher to at least signal that it is their turn to speak. I have realised that sometimes I have to specifically highlight that I am stepping out of the conversation, that the students, in pairs or as a whole group, have to take responsiblity for the interaction and that I will not be encouraging, keeping it up and, of course, leading it. We have been studying together for about three months now and I can already see some improvement in that area. Hooray to that!

Three. Communication strategies

Communication strategies is one of my true professional passions and that is why it was chosen for my first research within the MA programme. Inspired by Haenni Hoti, Heinzman and Mueller (2003) (or, rather ‘taken aback by the comments of’) that claimed that young learners use a very limited range of communication strategies, basically limiting those to translation and code-switching (aka using a combination of L1 and L2), based on the gut feeling from the classroom, I decided to check it out. And, to prove them wrong. Hopefully.

Although my research was a very small scale and low-key and by a beginner researcher, I found out enough evidence to get me even more interested in the topic. My little students proved to be already effective communicators who work hard and who have a good range of different techniques to get the message across such as all-purpose words, approximation, direct appeal for help, indirect appeal for help, self-repair, other-repair and mime. The range was much wider. Translation and code-switching were used, too, and they were the most frequent ones, however, they were not the only ones.

Then, there are the adults and guess what, these adults, ‘Come as you are’, before I get to work on them, they know only one communication strategy and that is ‘translation’. falling back into their L1, straightaway, whenever something is unclear, unknown and uncertain. I am not even sure why it is assumed that the learners (let alone the young ones) will use these strategies of their accord. I haven’t researched that properly, yet, but perhaps it has got nothing to do with the age of the student or, rather, not only with the age of the student, and more with the learning experience and the opportunities to be acquainted with and to develop these strategies.

The adult students (my adult students) struggled in that area and if they didn’t know, they would immediately switch to L1 and they would expect an answer. Working around that by delaying the translation, encouraging them to try something else or, also, providing both, the L2 only and the translation was quite a challenge and I know that some of them were surprised that I don’t just provide the required service aka translation, that I am trying something else. They had it written all over the face. I can’t say my job is done here, far from it but we are working on it. And it is a bit better now.

Four. Sharing ideas

Teacher beliefs are a slippery topic and most of the time we don’t even think about them. It was only last year (and somewhere by the end of it) when I realised why I am a teacher and what I want from my lessons.

Everything happened thanks to one Sasha who joined our group and who, despite the eight months spent with the rest of the team, in a very welcoming and friendly environment, despite the fact that she got on with everyone, Sasha still would keep quiet in class unless I asked her a question and unless I called out her name. I had never even thought about it and only then did I understand that I want to create such an atmosphere in the lesson in which my students feel free to talk because they have something to share with the rest of the group, not because they have to, not because the teacher made them, not because the teacher asked the question or because the teacher is testing them. They talk because they have something to say. And I want them to feel that they can. This is something that we have been working on from the very beginning.

It was one more thing that was ‘not so obvious’ for my adult students. They stalled. They do, still, sometimes. Again, it might be due to a whole range of factors, the natural shyness, the lack of confidence, the level of English, the relations in the workplace, if they come from the same company, or even the natural politeness. It is not a given that everyone will be speaking during the lesson time because speaking and developing the communicative skills is the reason why we come to class.

Five. All ideas are good ideas.

That is a sad fact: adulthood and reality kills creativity and imagination. Long gone are the days of fairy tales and fantasy travels with Frodo or magical battles with Harry. Well, in most cases. For that reason, if the question is about playing football and the student does not play football, the rest, dramatically, is silence…With kids silence never ever happens, and that is especially amazing, because, more often than not, we do things that have nothing or very little to do with the real life. All these menus for the monster cafe, all these school trips around the world, or to the moon or, our life as pirates…Silence is a rare event. Thank heavens.

This post is not to be read as a huge, one thousand word, complaint about my adult students. It is certainly not. I am doing a good job, I like them and we are making progress. I am just positively amazed that with my young learners, we have done SO MUCH (and to be honest, so much we have done by accident, unwillingly, joyfully, just for laughs) to enable the kids and to ensure that they are effective communicators.

I would like to think that my kids are not in danger of being scared to scared, inhibited, with a strong affective factor. This ship has sailed.

This line, so frequently used in my kids classes, started to appear in my adult classes.

See this is basically what happens when you send a YL teacher into the adult classroom. There is a lot of dedication, professionalism and lots of good lessons are happening. But the teacher has a one track mind and everything is somehow YL-related:-)

Bibliography

A. Haenni Hoti, S. Heinzmann and S. Mueller (2003), I can help you? Assessing speaking skills and interaction strategies of young learners, In: M. Nikolov (ed), The Age Factor and and Early Language Learning, De Grutyer.

Happy teaching!

What do the teachers want from their primary coursebooks?

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Dedicated to my teachers and the publishers)

The list below is the result of brainstorming I decided to include in the session devoted to working with coursebooks, as part of the Teaching YL Course I ran recently. We were trying hard to stay away from the word ‘realistic’. The whole activity was more like writing a letter to Santa and asking for a unicorn, knowing that, most likely, it is not going to happen, but…

A perfect coursebook for primary school children learning English includes (in an alphabetical order):

  • a set of simple boardgames that could be used with a variety of activities
  • cartoons series, to support the early literacy development
  • characters: a combination of real children communicating and fantasy heroes
  • Content and Language Integrated Learning activities
  • flashcards
  • games ideas and suggestions
  • a grammar book to support grammar practise
  • a presentation kit for teachers
  • an appropriate level of challenge throughout the each unit, each level and the entire course and ideas how to manipulate it for the more or less talented children
  • a literacy skills development curriculum, thorough and detailed
  • mini-flashcards, photocopiable
  • mixed ability groups ideas and suggestions
  • an online component
  • activities that help to set up pair-work
  • posters
  • preparation for Cambridge YLE
  • project ideas and suggestions
  • songs
  • stickers activities
  • stories
  • a student book
  • a teacher’s book
  • a variety of visuals: photographs, drawings, paintings
  • a video course for teachers
  • a workbook

It struck me that nobody mentioned testing or assessment. Either we don’t see it as a part of the coursebook and one of the course components or, perhaps, we just don’t care that much about testing

Then, of course, I went online, to have a look at what the major publishers have on offer and I found some nice surprises such as lots of time and effort invested in creating the online components but also some more traditional ones such as posters or home booklets (kind of graded, coursebook-related magazines for kids), wordcards or professional development programme, to name just a few.

I will take it as a good sign. Here is to even better coursebooks and to publishers listening to teacher.

Happy teaching!

P.S. Anything else to add to the list? What do you think?

Crumbs #37 We are going to the beach! A summer lesson for pre-schoolers

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Ingredients and procedures

  • Few. Depending on what you can find at home
  • The lesson plan with all the ideas can be found here

Why we like it

  • Little preparation, only a few items of realia
  • A great lesson for the summer months
  • Works well with big groups
  • Lots of movement, the whole lesson is based on gesture
  • Lots of potential for production, especially if this lesson could be developed into a series of lessons
  • A fun lesson, we really went to the beach

Here you can read a bit more about the background of this lesson: How do you know that you are an experienced teacher...

And here: Big Thanks to Ola for letting me scavenge her house in search of realia aka resources)

How do you know that you are ‘an experienced teacher’?

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Based on real events.

This week’s story

I am on the move, resembling Snufkin from the Moomins now more than ever. It did so happen that this week I was asked to teach a demo lesson. While on the move.

Here are the details, just to give you a full picture

  • The lesson was supposed to last 30 minutes
  • The kids were 5 years old
  • There were eighteen kids in the group
  • I had not seen the kids before
  • I did not know the level of the group
  • Since I was on the move, I had no resources of any kind, no flashcards, no ball, no dice, no magic wand.
  • What is more, there was no flashcards at the school and I was not aware of any options related to the access to any electronic resources. I had to assume that there were none.
  • My laptop with its screen was just not good enough for such a big group.
  • Buying any new resources was absolutely out of the question
  • I could not consider any written work or craft for the same reason, no photocopying and getting enough markers and so on.
  • My performance was supposed to be evaluated. Of course.

There is a happy ending to this story…

…is probably the next thing that I should say while telling this story.

Desperation came first. And how else? I had a lesson to teach, a lesson that I wanted to teach but no tools to do it, no tools whatsoever. None. I could not use anything that I had ready and, because of my crazy timetable, I could not really set aside any time to produce the flashcards or to wander about a new city to look for resources… So, it started with desperation and anger and the foulest of mood followed. And then I just gave up.

Not on the lesson as such, although, of course that was an option, too. I could have just called and, in an attempt to be a reasonable adult and a professional, I could have called it all off (‘My apologies, that is all just plain impossible, I will have to say no.’) and forgotten about the whole business.

However, either because I do rejoice the unreasonable or because I did enjoy the idea of a challenge, I decided to go on with it. As soon as I ‘gave up‘ (on the resources, on the safety blanket of the experience so far, on the idea of a traditional lesson), I calmed down and things got interesting.

The first thing I did was to make a list of all the available resources or rather ‘resources’ aka junk, stuff, things that could be used in class and to come up with a topic, an aim and a set of activities that would match them.

The list included:

  • my magic trousers (red genie trousers with purple elephants, a sovenir from Portland, Maine)
  • my toy hen, Angelina, who travels everywhere with me anyway
  • and a set of random objects which I have gathered around Ola’s flatt (a shell, a towel, a straw hat, a storybook, in Polish) and my rucksack with a water bottle and a few coins.
  • the Invisibles and Intangible: the experience, the charisma, the presence

The thoughts accompanying me in the taxi, in the morning were of the following kind: ‘It’s either an amazing challenge or an attempt at the professional self-destruction’. I would want to say that I was nervous or anxious because it was really difficult to predict the outcomes here, it could really go one way (aka the success) or the other (aka a complete disaster).

But I was calm. So calm, in fact, that I started to suspect myself of having given up on the entire project and of sabotaging it subconsciously by not preparing meticulously.

While in the taxi, I was on life support from my best friend and in response to my list of resources, I got a comment along the lines of ‘The magic trousers and Angelina? That is a killer combo!‘

I arrived at the kindergarten running…

…almost late. I washed my hands, I kicked off the trainers and there I was, on the carpet, with a bunch of kids, left to my own devices and to my random resources. It turned out that the killer combo is just that. We had a great lesson.

I decided to go for the topic of the beach and things we do there, to introduce a few verbs and chunks in the Present Continous and to be able to use them in a game of the actual going to the beach and playing on the beach, to focus on TPR and movement and to avoid any handouts or paper altogether. The language was presented through realia since the five-year-old kids are ready to make a connection between two coins and ‘I am eating ice-cream’ or between a towel and ‘I am swimming’. I carry all my songs and chants, real and made-up in my brain and I do not hesitate to use them and it was great to have Angelina and have her help me keep the lesson in shape.

We had fun, we ‘went to the beach’ and we produced the language. The lesson aims were definitely met. I would also like to say that I love the fact that now I can say that my most fun job interview (because that’s what it was) involved me lying on the carpet with a bunch of kids. We were sunbathing, after all…

If anyone wants to look at the lesson notes, you can find them here.

To be perfectly honest, I am aware that apart from the Invisible and the Intangible that were obviously there, I was lucky: the kids were old enough and I could at least hope that they would be behaving more like students in the context of the classroom. Plus, the novelty value did work to my advantage, this crazy lady, in colourful pants, coming in, talking for herself and the hen, laughing a lot, that is enough to keep the kids interested for thirty minutes. I also had the safety blanket of the impossibility of the set-up, the reasonable trainer would always be able to say ‘What did you expect? That would never work’…

Only it did.

Conclusion: How do I know that I am ‘an experienced teacher’?

I know it because, when faced with an impossible challenge, I do not panic and I am able to get over the initial and the unavoidable discomfort, I can focus on planning, without bending over backwards but rather taking stock of what is available and making do, in order to meet my aims and keep the standards where I want them.

I know it because, when the conditions are favourable, I am willing to experiment and to go for it, in order to push myself, on the one hand, and in order to push the boundaries a little bit, if only possible.

What about you?

Somewhere through this post I realised that this conclusion is a very personal and a very subjective one. What is more, the answer to this question will be changing because I myself would have answered it differently a week or two ago. I caught myself thinking that I am unbelievably curious about what my fellow teachers think. I decided to ask and this is how this post got really interesting.

It quickly turned out that there are as many approaches as many people and the answer to this question is and will be very subjective, personal and precious. It can be measured in the number of years worked but only in the eyes of our employers or according to the labour law of your country and it has got nothing or very little to do with what we think of our own skills and abilities.

Here are some of the ways in which you can get the bagde of honour. You can call yourself ‘an experienced teacher’ because…

  • ‘when the lesson plan works’, not necessarily beacuse the lessons have to go plan but because it can be taken as evidence that we understand the group and their needs and because we can prepare activities for this particular group of kids
  • you can teach a good lesson even when you do not really have enough time to plan. It is not because being experienced gives you a green light to take the preparation lightly but because when it is really necessary, you can get by with the Invisibles and the Intangibles and still do a good job. You can handle it even with zero prep whatsoever in case of a last minute cover or some class details confusion.
  • you are observed by a senior teacher and you get a great feedback
  • you are observed by a peer and you get a great feedback
  • when your students start using the new vocabulary and grammar in class, especially when it is not in the tasks directly related to this grammar point and without the teacher’s reminders to use these
  • when your students get great results in the external exams or in their regular classes or in any context that could be labelled as ‘outside of the classroom’, especially, as Maegan said, because the fun in the EFL classroom translated and transferred into progress in a more traditional approach in the school
  • ‘not sure about that’ was also one of the answers that I got. Perhaps this is something to work on, perhaps not. I will just leave it here.

While chatting about with Maegan we also bumped into the idea that this feeling of ‘I got this’ is not a long-lasting one and perhaps it should not even be. On the one hand, because, at least partially, it is based on the external factors. On the other hand, due to the fact that we live in the moment, in every single lesson and every single activitiy, focusing on that is a lot more interesting than the constant feeling of pride and confidence. I am also thinking that perhaps this is how we protect ourselves from feeling complacent. Perhaps.

If you have something to add, any comment, question, story, please, pretty please, add it in the comments section below! I will keep asking and researching)

Happy teaching!

Big thanks to my contributors: Irina, Michael, Vita, Maegan, Anastasia, Nina, Aleksandra.

Crumbs #36 Andy Warhol anyone?

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This is a lesson I taught with the older YL which started in unit 1 of the National Geographic coursebook, Life that we are using with the summer courses for teens. If you are interested in the original lesson, you can find it in the coursebook, in the second edition.

My brain tends to walk its own ways so pretty quickly it became aparent that much as it is inspiring, we have our own plans (btw, I am really looking forward to teaching the rest of the unit). Since I have already put together bits and pieces that were inspired and dedicated to Andy, this lesson was a step further, to take Andy into the classroom with the older students, too.

So, Andy.

Two pretty girls in puffs posing for the camera in the studio. Blonde and brunette in stockings look confident in front of the camera, hugging each other

Colour. Two pictures aka introduction

  • Two illustrations (see below). Students work in pairs or small teams and discuss the questions below. Afterwards, they compare the ideas as a class.
  • Talk about these pictures.
  • Are they similar or different? What is similar? What is different?
  • Do you like them? Why?
  • How do they make you feel? Would you hang them in your bedroom or in your house?
  • How do the artists use the colours in both pictures? Which one do you prefer?
  • Would these pictures still be interesting in black and white? Why?

Colours. New idioms aka new language

  • Students work in small teams. They match the the idiom in the sentence with the meaning.
  • Check the answers as a class, additional clarification.
  • Students go back to work in pairs. They come up with the examples to illustrate each idiom and tell mini-stories.
  • The handout we used can be found here.

Colour. Associations aka production

  • A mini-lecture on Andy Warhol and the way he used to work (Marylin Monroe and the Cambpell Soup)
  • The whole class works on eliciting the associations with one of the colours, in our case it was grey. The teacher shows some of her associations with the colour. The students try to guess the rationale behind each of the ideas.
  • The students prepare for the main speaking task: they write the numbers 1 – 10 and they notes about at least three associations for each of the colours
  • The students work in pairs or small groups. Each of the students presents their associations for the partner to guess the colours and afterwards they explain their choices.
  • During the feedback session, the students share the most interesting or the most unexpected associations.
  • The handout we used can be found here.

Colour. Quiz

  • The students work as a team or a whole class.
  • They look at the photographs representing different cultures and countries. They analyse the colours and try to guess which countries they represent.
  • They check the answers.
  • The handout we used can be found here.

Colour. Comments

  • Any photograph can be used to accompany Andy’s Marylin. I have used the one that we had in the coursebook, one of a scene from a traditional Indian wedding. Today, if I taught this lesson again (or when I teach this lesson again), I would like to use even a wider range of colour such as a painting by Kandinsky, a a painting by Rothko, a storybook illustration, a child’s drawing etc.
  • The lesson was taught online so the craft / creation component had to be limited to a speaking task. I was tempted to use a variation of the craft activity we used with my younger students but it was simply impossible.

A lesson, in structures. Notes from the classroom

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The academic year has just finished.

We had our final lesson, we learned and we had a little online party, with snacks and dances. The final reports and the diplomas have all been sent out and it was only a few days later that, during a walk, I caught myself thinking that we have had a very good year in the classroom and I am really happy with what my kids have learned and how they have progressed.

I am here basically taking notes of where we got by the end of the year, not to forget how many structures and how much language can be squeezed in a lesson. Obviously, that is not everything and there is always room for improvement. Obviously, adaptations have to be considered for the younger, the older, the smaller or the bigger groups, the longer or the shorter classes…

Here is my group: 6 kids, (mostly) in their second year of learning English, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6 and 6 years old, for 60 minutes once a week (or 45 minutes when online), amazing parents included.

Here is my lesson, in structures…

Getting in

  • Hello, how are you? (I’m ok)
  • Where are you sitting? (A blue table and a pink stool (while putting the books down and while sitting down)
  • What have you got today? (I’ve got a spider (in the online classroom, showing us what they have brought or what is lying around)
  • Are you eating or drinking? (I’m eating. I’m drinking (online)
  • What are you eating / drinking? (I am eating cherries. I am drinking water (online, they bring snacks to the lesson)
  • Do you like bananas? (Yes, I do (an activity we played while walking into the classroom, they used to do it in pairs, the one entering and the one right behind them in line, with the flashcards they picked from the pile)
  • How many students have we got today? (Six. One boy and five girls. One teacher (before the hello song. Sometimes we also add: Who is not here?)
  • Where is Sasha? (Sasha is not here. She is ill) Here, it was the students who started to ask about the missing kids and for that reason we introduced the question. The kids were asking, the teacher was answering).
  • Who is it? (It is Sasha. It is Misha) This was something that we did only in the classroom and it was our reaction to kids coming late. Even in the classroom we could hear the main door bell (or answer phone) ring and we started to play the game trying to guess who might be coming through the door next. It was especially fun when a few kids were being late and, of course, we could play it only on some days:-)
  • Did you do your homework? (Yes. (online: we check the homework together, taking turns, classroom: there is more 1-1 interaction as we check the homework as the kids are walking in)

Hello circle

  • How do you feel today? (I am very happy, a little angry and very, very sleepy (online: we use the presentation, I am arranging the icons for each child, classroom: we use our faces flashcards, at this point we have about 12 in active use. Btw, at this point the kids are asking these questions to each other)
  • What’s the weather like today? (It is sunny (online: the presentation, classroom: we look outside of the window)
  • Who is wearing a t-shirt? (Not me / I am. I am wearing a blue t-shirt (online: presentation, classroom: flashcards)

Revision

  • What’s your favourite colour / pet / fruit? (I like green / cats / bananas (online: presentation, classroom: flashcards)
  • How is your mum? (My mum is happy (online: wordwall spinner, classroom: flashcards or dice, we usually do three family members)
  • What’s my secret? Look at me (It’s a car! It’s a train (used for the revision of pretty much any vocabulary, with the teacher and then the students miming their chosen word and the other kids guessing)
  • What’s my secret? It is big, it is loud, it is fast, it is red (It’s a rocket (used for description riddles, online: we use symbols on the chart to remember what to talk about or the discourse clock, offline: we use flascards. The aim here is to encourage the kids to make riddles, too, but with this particular group we haven’t got to the stage of the SS-led game)
  • Cat, how do you get to school? (I go to school by train (online: we use miro, the kids are producing the language, I am moving the images, the cat is actually getting on thet train, classroom: we use flascards, the kids put the animals on the transport)
  • I can see two cats. Yes or not? (No, I can see three cats (we use one picture, the teacher is producing, the kids are listening and correcting)
  • I can see a black cat. (I can see an orange cat (here we use two different pictures and we are looking for differences, the teacher describes picture A, the kids, in turns, describe picture B)

Songs and movement

  • Which song do you want to sing, Baby Shark or Old McDonald’s? (Let’s sing Baby Shark (while choosing the song, when we could choose)
  • Are you sitting or are you standing? (I am sitting. I am standing (while choosing what we want to do during the song)
  • Do you like the song? (I like it, I don’t like it (to ask after a new song is introduced. It is another activity in which the structure can be used but it is also good to find out if they like the song or not)
  • What’s your favourite shark / farm animal? (I like mummy shark (a short personalisation activity after a song)
  • Mummy shark is green. Yes or no? (No, mummy shark is pink (and more follow-up task, that can be used with pretty much any song)
  • Is it easy or difficult? (It’s easy. It’s difficult (another idea for a follow-up after a song, it works best with the more active songs such as Move, I am normally the one that struggles with some of the actions and the kids adore them)
  • Abracadabra, 123, you are a cat (Kids don’t really respond here, their only task is to mime a cat. However, the main aim here is to let the kids lead the game as soon as it is possible and once they do, they start producing a lot of language. The other variations include: You are a happy cat. You are a big happy cat. You are dancing. You are a cat and you are dancing)
  • Anka in the circle. Katya in the circle. Who’s next? (Sasha in the circle (classroom: we are getting up and making a circle before starting the first song. There is a follow-up: Let’s make a small circle. Let’s make a big circle.

Focused task

  • Are you ready? (Yes, I am) or I’m ready (I’m ready) (as we are sitting down in the classroom or as we are settling down in the online classroom)
  • I’ve got my book (I’ve got my book) (again, in the online or the offline classroom as we are getting ready for the task. We use it for the handouts in the online lessons, too. In the classroom, I would ask one of the kids to help hand these out. They would be saying: ‘One of Katya. One for Sasha’ and so on while giving them out. Only afterwards we would go ‘I’ve got my paper’)
  • You need one colour / three colours. What colour do you want? (Blue, please) while we were getting ready for the task, applicable in the offline classroom)
  • I’m taking blue (or, when appropriate: My car is blue) (I’m taking green. My car is green) We use these in the online lessons or in those lessons when the kids are given their whole set of markers or crayons to use. Sometimes we use ‘I’m taking’ when we only connect the dots, draw lines etc. When it is used for colouring, I prefer the describe the final product as it seems to be more natural in that case)
  • I’ve finished (I’ve finished) when the task or a part of the task is completed)
  • Close your books. Put the markers in the box.
  • There are also many specific task or specific craft-related verbs and instructions but it is impossible to add them all here.

Storytelling

  • Which story are we going to read, this one or this one? (This one) This is applicable only when we have two stories to choose from
  • Who is it? What is he doing? Is he big or small? Is he happy? Is he at home? (It’s a boy. He is sitting. He is big. He is sad. He is in the park) We talk about the character of the book, usually looking at the cover page. However, sometimes (like in case of Barry and the Scary Monster) it is much better to use one of the inside illustrations as the cover page reveals too much, you can see the monster and I like to keep him a surprise until a bit later in the game)
  • Do you like the story? (I like it / I don’t like it) This is the question we always ask at the end of the story)
  • Are you happy? How do you feel now? (I am happy) This one is also a follow-up question and it gives the kids a chance to express their emotions at the end of the story. Sometimes I use it during the story. It might be a good idea to pause and to gauge the audience to check and to ensure that the kids are not getting scared (re: Barry and the monster) or too sad (re: the little mouse in Playway 1. This is a topic that would perhaps deserve its own post, dealing with emotions in storytelling lessons, but when the character is getting too upset, I comfort him (It’s ok, mouse, don’t cry) or I suggest that the kids can close their eyes or look away)
  • What’s your favourite fish? (I like this one. I like the blue fish) one of the simpler follow-up activities)

Goodbye

  • Let’s sit down: we have homework, goodbye song and stickers (while we are getting ready for finishing the lesson. By the end of the year I am only counting on my fingers and the kids are enlisting what is left to do. I only need to correct the order, sometimes.)
  • I’ve got my homework (I’ve got my homework) only applicable in the offlince classroom when the homework is not in the book).
  • How many stickers are we getting today? Are you taking a sticker? We have got farm, sea animals and space. Which one do you want? (Three stickers. Yes, please. No, thank you. Farm, please) This is only applicable in the classroom. With my online pre-school groups we haven’t started giving out the online stickers and, although we shifted online half-way through the year when the kids were already used to stickers, they did not mind, they did not ask for stickers. I did not want to introduce the online stickers because we had too many new things at this point due to switching online. I did not want to add up to that.

Notes

  • Interaction: in most cases, kids answer in a messy choir manner (I am giggling because I have just come up with that term) and that is: they respond to the question in their own time, to produce the language, more or less at the same time. I am keeping an eye and sometimes I have to call out those that missed the moment and did not produce. We have been studying together for two years so by now this type of interaction has become a routine. There are also situations, especially with the new structures or in case of a very important message (well, you know:-) when I call them out one by one. However, since there are six of them it cannot be every single time. There are also questions and structures that the kids lead and they choose one of the other kids to answer.
  • L2 and L1: most children, most of the time reply in the way that is the preschool teacher’s dream: in a full sentence and in English. However, kids are kids and they are beginner learners so of course that would not happen in 100% of cases. Sometimes they use single words (because kids do) and sometimes they thrown in three other sentences to tell me why their mum is happy today and that is just the way it is. I am doing my best to promote English only in the classroom but my kids are 4 or 5 and it does not happen overnight. But it does happen eventually.
  • Activities: I do not use every single activity in every lesson but I do like to repeat them in order to ensure that the basic structures feature more or less regularly
  • Outcomes, before and after: This is our regular lesson in level 2 which is the middle level. As regards my level 1 students – they have been exposed to some of these structures from the very beginning and, for example, in December, after only four months of studying, they already had about ten adjectives to describe emotions at their disposal whereas all the other structures were introduced gradually and, as can be expected, the main aim for some of them was only the exposure. As regards level 3, we managed to expand the range of these structures, make them natural and get to the point when the kids would be using them spontaneously.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #35: Interaction patterns: a messy choir

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Ingredients

  • Any drilling activity, any Q&A game, practice or drill, any Finish the sentence activity
  • Online or offline
  • Resources as usual: wordwall games, flashcards, posters, puppets, miro

Procedures

  • I will describe the procedures for one of the games that we played in the messy choir manner with the use of the wordwall flashcards. It was done with a group of level 3 pre-schoolers and we used it to supplement Playway 3 (Puchta, Gerngross, CUP) materials.
  • The kids were sitting on the carpet looking at the screen. The teacher showed the cards and asked ‘Are you scared of lions?’ and the kids would answer ‘I’m scared’ or ‘I’m not scared’. They would behave precisely like a messy choir – kind of doing the same thing but totally (and purposefully) out of sync. The main aim here is not harmony or timing but production.
  • The teacher was participating, too, to model and to encourage production.
  • Later on, in the following lessons, the individual students were asked to lead the game and ask the questions. Everyone was answering.
  • The key element here is the slow (but not too slow) pace, without rushing through, giving the kids the ample time to make a decision, to be ready to speak and to be heard.
  • The teacher sometimes had to pause and ask the individual students ‘And you, Sasha?’, but it was more necessary during the introductory stages of the whole approach, to signal to the kids that, despite that being a whole class activity, the teacher is listening and paying attention and curious what everyone has to say.

Why we like it

  • It is especially useful with the pre-school or primary classes, especially those bigger ones. It can be a nice alternative to choral drilling (which can become boring if used constantly) and to 1-1 exchanges (which have to be limited in larger groups as they will be taking a lot of the lesson time and they might have negative implications for classroom management as kids get bored waiting for their turn and they start looking for something to do)
  • It does take some time for the kids and for the teacher to get used to. The kids take time to realised that despite the fact that they speak all at once everyone will be heard and acknowledge and that it is not necessary to shout or speak loudly or that, indeed, they are allowed to take their time to answer. The teacher needs time to slow it down, too, to wait for everyone to produce the language, to call out those who might not have answered or wait for those who are taking their time. Like with anything, the task requires staging and scaffolding and time.
  • The shy students still get ‘the protection’ of the group. They are not in the spotlight but at the same time they are not left to their own devices.
  • It resembles a natural conversation.
  • It might lead to extended production ie in the activity described above some kids will only say ‘I’m scared’ or ‘I am not scared’, some others (and when ready) might want to expand that and provide a rationale ie ‘I like snakes. They are beautiful’.
  • I think the main benefit of this approach is that it contributes to the general atmosphere that I want to have in my classroom and that is: we talk when we have something to say, not only when the teacher asks a question.

Happy teaching!

Teaching grammar in pre-school?

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This article was (and is) a double joy.

First of all, it got published in the Modern English Teacher in May 2022.

Apart from that, there are also these two videos that I would like to share with you

  • My MET Contributor Interview which you can find here
  • And the Pavillon ELT Vlog with Damien aka his take on my ideas which you can find here

Enjoy!

Happy teaching!