Today a post about a post about one of my favourite games ever: noughts and crosses. I have written about it already on this blog because I use with illustrations, to practise vocabulary and with my preschoolers, too, to increase production.
Today it is storytelling noughts and crosses!
Instructions
Demonstrate or check that all your students know how to play noughts and crosses, in the traditional, non-EFL way. It can be done with one of the stronger students, on the board.
Draw an EFL grid of the game, on the board, filling it up with the words you want the students to use. I normally start to use it to tell stories when we get to the lessons with the Past Simple and normally we play the game just to talk about our ‘yesterday’, our ‘last weekend’ or ‘last summer’, not to put too much pressure on the kids and to get them into the habit of using the language. These are some of the grids that we used with my A1 primary, aged 7 – 9. The symbols at the top mean nothing and they just help us identify different grids.
Introduce the characters that the kids are going to talk about. One of the unsung heroes of my lessons has been one Mr Milk who has been with us for a good few years* and who has been kind enough to bring some of his friends along. For that reason, figuring out who can be the character is never a problem. Mr Milk always goes first, the others follow suit.
Demonstrate how to play the game on the board. This time we have done it: teacher vs the group, represented by one of the students at the board and the whole class participating, choosing the verbs and telling the story.
This version of the game is slightly more challenging because you not only have to use the verb. It is very necessary that you also continue a story. Of course, students are allowed to use more than one sentence (yes, please, do!!!) but the key verb (or the key word) is the one that they have to use. These are some of the grids we used this week. As you can see, they are all very basic but hey, that’s what it is, the real classroom life. Sometimes the handouts are pretty and picture perfect, sometimes they are not. Sorry – not sorry.
Students play in pairs and they are told to play until the very end, when all the verbs have been used in the story.
The teacher monitors and eavesdrop on some of the precious lines created such as ‘Miss Apple ate an apple (a normal one, not a person!)‘ or ‘Miss Umbrella drank the rain‘.
In the end, when everybody has finished, the teacher asks some feedback questions, for example ‘Was it a happy story or a sad story?‘, ‘What happened in the end?‘, ‘What was the best part?’ and all the pairs are invited to share something about their stories.
Next step is the scores. I usually prepare a few sets, like this one in the photo. One of the students chooses one of the letters and the teacher draws the grid on the board. Students count their points and we write them on the board.
We normally play two or three rounds, depending on the time we have.
Why we love it
We love Mr Milk and all his friends.
We love stories.
It takes a few minutes to prepare (High five to all the lazy teachers!)
It generates lots and lots of language (High five to production greedy teachers!)
It is motivating because of the scoring system but it is not very competitive since we use the most random points sets and you never know what you might get, 1 point or 1 000 000 points.
It helps to develp creativity and imagination.
It has a lot more potential for developing listening skills (if only one round is played and the kids have to retell the story to the rest of the group) or reading and writing skills, too (if the sets are given for homework and the students are asked to write a short story using the same nine verbs that they have used in class. During the following lessons, the kids can exchange and read their stories, too).
Happy teaching!
*) I have just realised that Mr Milk has been accompanying my teaching life for about twelve years now… And that he might actually deserve his own post. Just a second, please!
Yes, you did read the title right. The invisible students are among us. I myself have had one for about eight years now. And yes, it has always been Pasha. Almost always, with the exception of one year…
How did it all start?
Well, I have no idea. Hard as it is to imagine now, there was definitely ‘the time before Pasha’ and then, all of a sudden, he became a part of the everyday.
I guess, perhaps, it was one of those days when the kids did something silly, I came in and asked ‘Who did it?’ and no one wanted to own up. I found the answer myself. ‘Ah, I see. It was Pasha, wasn’t it?’ and they just went with it.
That looks plausible but to be honest, I am not quite sure. I don’t remember. But Pasha stayed with us and today I would like to tell you what is great about that.
Why does everyone need a Pasha?
Pasha is extremely helpful when it comes to eliciting new language and providing language models. Every single time you need a semi-personalised sentence, a situation relevant to the students’ lives without, however, involving one of the real people present in the room (as they might be shy, not feeling very comfortable with having their name and person brought up while discussing some of the vocabulary and some of the situations), Pasha is at your service. He is more than happy to help.
Pasha does not mind when you say ‘Pasha failed an exam‘ or ‘If Pasha brings a bad mark, his mum will be angry’ or ‘Pasha got embarrassed because the teacher showed everyone his poem‘…Pasha is the epitome of cool when you discuss his love life, his problems with teachers and his fights with his brother.
Pasha never fights or frowns against any of the partners that you him to work with. Pasha is ok when you pair him up with Alex The Procrastinator. Alex working with Pasha will really have to make an effort and do something, instead of lazying about and pushing the task onto the more laborious student in the pair. You can say, for example, ‘Alex, today you are working with Pasha‘. Pasha will not mind. Funnily enough, Alex will not mind either. What’s more, Pasha is more than ecstatic when one Sasha The Introvert sometimes asks quietly ‘Can I work with Pasha today?‘. And yes, of course she can. This way she will be more motivated to work with the other (real-er) students on the other days.
Pasha is the best thing since the sliced bread on all of those occasions when you really need to be the disciplinarian and you have to make a point and get the message across, again, without referring to any of the students in particular, without pointing fingers and yet, highlighting the main points effectively. Maybe it is because you have forgotten the homework again. Maybe it is because they are cheating in test. Maybe they call each other names, come late or attempt a joke and fail and end up offending someone or almost destroy something…
In which case, you can make a speech like this one: ‘You can tell Pasha that this remote is quite expensive so if he throws it out again and it gets lost or broken, I will be getting in touch with his parents and they will have to pay for that. When you see Pasha, make sure he gets the message, alright?‘ Works wonders:-)
Last but not least, your class is a community, with its unique rules, traditions, habits and silly jokes and Pasha becomes a part of it, too. It is something that we share, something that is our thing.
Naturally, there are also things that Pasha is not and these include the following:
the only classroom management resource at the teacher’s disposal
the classroom management tool that will help sort out all the problems
the trick that will work with all the teachers, age groups and levels
My favourite Pasha moments
Well, there have been many, but here are the three gems.
One. Teens, pre-FCE, I cannot remember the topic but it might have been Past Continues as this always encourages the coursebook authors to write about disasters, accidents, explosions and other dramatic events. I cannot recall what we were doing and why Pasha’s life was in danger but at one point, someone asked ‘What about Pasha?‘ and one of my girls said, ‘He’s lying on the floor, there!‘ pointing at something with her chin. I remember that we burst into laughter but I also remember that at the same time, I took a step back and half of my students instinctively pulled their feet away and hid them under the chairs, as far as possible from the centre of the room where Pasha ‘was‘.
Two. Same group of teens and the invisible student who had been a part for about two years already and the admin bringing in a new student, a boy. When he walked in and introduced himself as ‘Pasha’, we all froze, in ten different ways as we were all digesting the same thought, until, finally, someone just said it out loud: ‘But what about Pasha, then?‘ It took some explaining (poor real Pasha) and our invisible boy got renamed, and he became ‘Styopa’, for a season.
Three. Teachers’ room and a conversation with my colleagues, someone casually bringing up the topic of the invisible students only to find out that Pasha is not the only one out there! Yay!
And I am here, writing this post because…
…this week, in the middle of the lesson, totally unexpectedly, Pasha reappeared and started to cheekily doodle on my zoom screen and my powerpoint. Of course, it was none of my amazing and well-behaved primary superstars. ‘I see. It must Pasha, the invisible student‘, I said and then, after a moment, I added ‘Pasha, can you stop, please?‘
Do you think the kids objected, doubted his presence or asked any questions? No, none of these, nothing at all. Pasha is back.
Are you looking for more (and new?) ideas for practising vocabulary with juniors and teens (or adults)? Well, here are some of my favourite ones. Some of them I have come up with myself, some of them I have found in places. If I remember where, I will reference them.
The main idea is that we have a set of vocabulary, words, phrases etc, not necessarily connected by the topic, a situation that is quite common with higher levels when we just go beyond learning about clothes, food, money and sport or for the vocabulary that we work on in relation to the text we are reading or listening to. In Russian, we say сборная солянка or a hodgepodge, of sorts, that is difficult to come up with a context and a meaningful activity. And that is precisely why these activities here were created or adapted to the needs of the EFL classroom.
All ideas are mine but you will see that the inspiration came from a variety of sources. All of them have been tried and tested with my students, although, to be honest, writing about them has led to even more ideas for adaptation and use. Yay to that.
They all start in the same place: on the board, with a list of words. Sometimes we also use the same list on the A4 paper or on separate cards. Sometimes, some additional scrap paper is necessary, too.
Whenever we try a new game, we play with the whole group, for everyone to learn the rules and to feel comfortable. Only later (perhaps only in the following lesson or the next time we play the game) do we move onto the pair work, just to get the students used to the format of the game and the way of thinking of the words and what we can do with them.
You can download them here! And after you have used them, please come back and let me know how it all went.
This was my first year in teaching and my first year in teaching in a state school. As it happened, I was assigned all the year 1 of middle school classes. That was and would be entertaining enough, even with the most amazing students (which most of them were, anyway).
One of them was class D, an unfortunate by-product of the educational reform in the country. Unlike all the other classes at school, it was made up of children coming from the villages surrounding my town (so that they could all go home together on the school bus) with a few students that were repeating the year. A rather unfortunate combination because it not only labelled them as the weak class academically (yes, at the time at least, the students coming from the regional schools did not achieve as good results as the city students) but it also set them apart as the ‘village class’ with all the preconceptions and biases. When it comes to English, they were the only class that was not given the privilege of mini-classes for the purpose of the English lessons (just because their total number did not go over 24).
I did try and I did have some superstars in this class, too, clever and dedicated students, but, overall, I also had quite a few weaker, not very motivated students, too, and a few really difficult cases. One of them was Sasha. She used to be a bright student in primary, with great results but then, due to the neglect in the family that the system could not really handle very well, she just resigned herself to being ‘a weak student’ and ‘a troublemaker’. They are there, in every class, and you just learn to manage them and I was doing ok, for the first-year teacher.
A morning from hell
Now, that particular day was different. Some handymen were in the classroom, during the break or before the lessons and they were fixing something there. They must have been in a hurry because they had left a hammer behind. When we entered, together, because the students were not allowed to be in the classroom without a teacher, it was just lying there, on one of the cupboards.
We got in and everyone got down to their regular start-of-the-lesson routine – sitting down, taking out coursebooks and pencil cases. Sasha, however, my dear student, Sasha, saw the hammer and the opportunity to create mayhem.
Before I had a chance to react by hiding it, she dropped her bag at her desk, ran back to the cupboard and grabbed the hammer. I did ask her a few times to put it down, but, of course, she did not pick it up just to put it down just because I was asking her to. At that point I knew I had lost, the class they I had lost and Sasha knew I had lost.
After a minute of this theatre, she just laughed in my face, opened the door and ran out into the hallway. And was running up and down, laughing. An empty hallway, at the time, but with a row of huge windows, potted plants, framed diplomas, cups awards glass cupboard and, potentially, a few late-comers wandering in the hallway. Not to mention the harm that she could have potentially inflicted on herself. Joy!
The dilemma
There are two ground rules that they teach you pretty quickly. One is that you should never leave the students on their own in the classroom because they are you are responsible for them with your life, pretty much. The same applies to any student that, officially, should be in class at the time of the lesson. You are responsible for them, too.
The other rule is that once you are in the classroom, the kids are your responsibility and if you need help you should ask for it in such a way that does not show your weakness. No matter who is going to come to the rescue, parents, mentor or headmaster, the lesson time is your kingdom and you should rule it. No one will do it for you. By asking for help too openly or by referring to the outsiders you are digging your own grave because it will become clear, pretty quickly, that you are not capable of handling it all by yourself.
So here was my dilemma that I had about a second to think about: I cannot leave the room because I cannot leave the kids all by themselves, I cannot let Sasha just ran in the hallway and I cannot really call anyone for help, really. Or that, rather, I should not.
Obviously, I wouldn’t have had any of those dilemmas to deal with if I had managed to remove the hammer in time but, in my defense, this is definitely something that I could not imagine being in the classroom and so there was no way that I could have prepared for that.
The last act
So I did what had to be done. I told the kids to stay in their seats, no matter what and I left the room but I kept the door open, to signal to anyone else, passing by that we are dealing with some kind of an emergency. And, walking past Sasha, still running and shouting in the hallway, I did go directly to the headmaster’s office. I needed help and I had to get it. I entered the office and I think I said three words: Mr Headmaster, Sir. Sasha found a hammer in the classroom and is running in the hallway. Please, help.
He did. I left him to deal with Sasha and I went back to my classroom. I was out for three minutes. Nothing happened. They sorted it out, talked to her, she came back to the classroom about 20 minutes into the lesson. We went on.
I am not sure what other choices I had at the time. To send one of my more reasonable students to inform the headmaster? Maybe. To inspect the entire classroom before we all get in? Possibly. To raise hell afterwards in order to find out why the hammer got forgotten in the classroom? Probably.
I am not sure whether what I did was the best way out. I am glad that the school where I work now is small enough and I only need to open the door and call out for help, in case of an emergency without having to leave the kids on their own. I am also curious whether the state schools, with many more students, in large buildings, have any system of early warning in place. In case of a hammer, a nosebleed, a loss of consciousness and what not…
Once upon a time, there was a young ADOS that was supposed to be observed for the very first time formally by a senior teacher trainer. It was supposed to be an observation with a group of year 1 of primary or, in other words, something that the said ADOS was supposed to be very good at as she had just been appointed to do. It was a small group, four boys that she had been working with for two months. The observation was arranged, the lesson plan was prepared, all good. Only not quite.
Kids during an observed lesson
This is now a hobby of mine, observing how the students behave and react whenever there is an alien element in the classroom. It can be a fellow teacher that has popped in to do some peer observation, or the parents during the open lesson or, of course, an observer during a formal observation. Why? Because anything can happen.
When the group is ‘under control‘, usually nothing happens, the kids treat the additional human as a piece of furniture, almost, they don’t pay attention at all. It must be that the routine is already so strong and the balance so ideal that it cannot be tilted by another human visiting. When these humans are parents, emotions do take over and it can go in many different ways. Either the kids are too excited and want to show off in front of the parents and behave themselves or they do not behave themselves or they are shy and are not there, almost.
There is one more option, too. On the day when the teacher trainer came to observe, my boys decided to put on a show. They were so dedicated to that noble task that I actually did manage to catch them repeatedly glance at the observer, then at me, do something that we would not really want to have and then look again at the observer and at me. I was being played. That was not fun, of course, but I did manage to stay still and more or less in control…apart from the rewards chart thing.
Enter rewards chart.
One of my students, let’s say Sasha, was really not in the mood for anything resembling good behaviour. I did have a rewards chart on the board and I would award smiley faces after each stage of the lesson. All the other students got a smiley face and Sasha got a sad face. Then, the next stage of the lesson took place and the situation repeated itself, a smiley face for everyone and a sad face for Sasha. Then, one more stage and again, all the other students were working, Sasha was not so I had to be consistent (yes) and so everyone got their smiley face and Sasha’s got his third sad face. And that was the end of the game for me. And for Sasha.
At this point, having those three sad faces right next to his name, on the board, for everyone to see was too much for him to handle. I completely lost him. He was not interested in anything at that point (luckily we were close to the end of the lesson) and I just let him be there. Really.
Thank Heavens, we were a few minutes away from the end of the lesson. I was, indeed, saved by the bell.
I did not fail the observation, not formally at least but it still keeps coming back to me, all the little details of it. They come to haunt me, almost like the Ghost in ‘Hamlet’…
The lessons that I have learnt
We need a rewards chart (although there are also teachers who oppose to them) but then need to be used not only consistently but also in a clever way
It is better to withhold a reward (a smiley face) rather than award a fine / a punishment (a sad face), nobody wants to see their name on display close to sad faces which are also accumulating
There must be chance for the student to make up and to catch up with the rest of the group. Here the teacher is in charge so another smiley face can be awarded to everyone when Sasha displays some attempt at working hard. His efforts should be acknowledged (Catch them being good) or else it is going nowhere and there is nothing that can be done to get the student back.
Happy teaching!
Have you read about a rebellion in a primary EFL class yet? You can find it here.
It started with something Michael said. He is a fellow teacher and he was telling me a story of how Teacher X went to peer observe an experienced colleague, Teacher Z and how the lesson was, well, not very good, bad, horrible, ‘a disaster’…It was not a very pleasant experience for Teacher Z, of course, but a learning opportunity for Teacher X, nonetheless (and for Teacher Z, too, actually). ‘This is what I want to hear, that even with the best intentions, it can all go ‘tits up’ but nobody is prepared to say it‘.
I got inspired. I am ready to share. I don’t mind. We repeat that to our students, constantly, that mistakes are noble and that we can learn from them. If our students can, so can we, the teachers. The same principles apply.
By the way, the Epic Fail Award is actually a real concept. It is a real award given out to employees at Hill Holliday agency, since, as Robert F. Kennedy once said ‘Only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly’ (apparently, have a look at the whole article here)
With that in mine off we go, to the first of my personal disasters or ‘When things did not go to plan‘.
One: The (stupid) Christmas tree craft
Here it is, look!
Did you go ‘Awn’? I bet you did. I did when I saw it and so did my kids when I showed it to them, during the pre-Xmas lesson. It did take place three years ago, I think and back then I was already an experienced teacher etc.
I did a great job, preparing for the task. I did prepare all the materials; I did make the tree at home. I did think of the staging. I did plan to teach the kids the verbs we needed to make it (fold, press, pause). I did think of how old they were and I knew them, they had been my students for over two years at the time so I could imagine what they were or were not able to do. We had done plenty of craft activities, we had worked with the pipe cleaners in a few different arrangements. I did pre-cut the triangles and tied pipe cleaners (three of them joined would be necessary to cover one tree). I punched the holes at the top of each tree. I wrote the main steps.
You would have thought the conditions were perfect. Yes, yes, they were. And yet it was the biggest craft disaster known to mankind. In my kingdom.
It turned out that even with all of these preparations and the previous experience and knowledge, the task turned out to be too tricky for my students. They were involved, yes, they loved the idea but we soon discovered that if you do not press the pipe cleaner real hard, applying all the strength (that the 5 y.o. did not quite have), it starts sliding, coming off and not looking at all as this ‘Awn’ model that I had already shown and that everyone had already managed to fall in love with and to start dreaming about of taking home.
The point of no return, in other words. Stopping, pausing or aborting the task was completely out of the question at that point. We went on, with me helping to complete eight Christmas trees simultaneously, perhaps singing the song to keep everyone occupied (though, really, I cannot be sure) with me hating absolutely every second of it and swearing that this very craft will never be seen again in any of my lessons. This or any craft, actually.
Everyone survived. Apart from all the leftover trees. I binned them all. With a lot of vidictive satisfaction. The one you can see in the photograph was recreated for teacher training purposes.
Today, I think that the craft is actually child-friendly, provided that you don’t go too minimalistic and that you keep the real Christmas tree-shape. Or that you at least cut the edges of the simple triangle in a few places, on both sides, to ensure that the pipe cleaner has somewhere to get attached and to stay in one place and still look ‘Awn’.
But it is also true that with this particular craft, I did allow myself to fall far the ‘awn’ effect and its strictly decorative value. Linguistically, there would be very little for us to do with it, apart from a few verbs and a few functional language phrases that we use and practise with any craft activity. Maybe, just maybe, I should not have fallen for it and, as a language teacher, first and foremost, I should have prioritised the linguistic aim.
Well, lesson learnt, that’s for sure!
P.S. It was unpleasant but I have not given up on craft! Experiments will sometimes lead to great achievements and sometimes to disasters but the best thing is – we learn, one way or another!
P.S.S. There is more to come in this chapter! I will see you soon with more epic fails stories. If you have some that you would like to share, please, do in the comments below!
She is five years old and is a big sister to a baby brother. She is in the second year of our EFL course. The group in which she is studying is not big at all, only four kids, two boys and two girls. We can meet only once a week, on Saturday morning, for two real hours.
It happens in the second half of the lesson. The kids are completing the literacy development activities, tracing letter M and gluing in a few pictures with mum, a mouse, a monkey. They are having fun because at the same time we are playing our new favourite game: what colour is it? Which is about making up new names for all the colours. No more ‘green marker’ then, no more ‘purple marker’. They have been rebranded as ‘a cucumber marker’ and ‘an aubergine marker’. All of a sudden brown is the new black because we all call it ‘a chocolate marker’ and everyone wants to use it.
Just then, both Sasha and Andrey reach out for the same marker and Sasha waves her hand so unfortunately that she hits Andrey, not very hard to make him cry but hard enough to cause discomfort. Andrey gets upset.
The teacher says ‘Oh, Andrey, are you ok? Sasha didn’t mean it. She will say sorry. Sasha, please say sorry.’
But Sasha shakes her head.
Teacher continues ‘Sasha, you are fantastic and you did not mean it. But Andrey is sad. If you say ‘I am sorry’, he will be happy’ (all that navigating carefully between the buoys of acceptable English and English graded to the pre-A level, with all the gestures, soft voice and empathy). Andrey is calmer but Sasha shakes her head. ‘Sasha, please say sorry’
And this is when she raises her head, looks at the teacher with defiance and says, in her L1 ‘You can’t tell me what to do. You are not my boss’
The teacher sighs, struggling to keep a straight face because it is hilarious. Even more so because the word she uses is very formal, strong and way above the 5-year-old range. A corporate culture vernacular, she has picked up somewhere. The teacher gives up and once again smiles at Andrey. ‘It’s OK, Andrey. Don’t worry. It’s going to be OK’
The lesson goes on…
The kids go back to tracing the letters. Just then, Sasha suddenly stands up and starts walking. The teacher looks up and says ‘Sasha, please sit down’ but this is when the little girl looks at the teacher again, right in the eye. The last traces of defiance are gone and now she is something new about her, something in her eyes, as if she is saying ‘Please, let me do it’. The teacher nods her head.
Sasha goes around the table, behind the other kids’ backs, until she reaches Andrey. He looks at her but she bends, with her hands cupped around her mouth and his ear and says in L1 and in that child whisper that absolutely everyone in the room can hear clearly ‘Andrey, please don’t tell anyone, it is a secret. I am really sorry. I didn’t mean it’. The she just goes back to her seat and finishes her task, as if nothing has happened. Nothing at all.
The things that I have learnt from this story
Kids are different and even the bravest and the most outspoken ones will not feel very comfortable with all the limelight and attention on them, positive or negative, even if the audience comprises of only four other people that they know really well.
The teacher has to react to any unwanted behaviour to signal that this is not what we are going to tolerate, however, it is also up to the teacher to decide how long this ‘reaction’ should last. When does it stop being effective and turns into ‘torture’ and ‘punishment’
Is it always a good idea to encourage or to make the kids say that they are sorry there and then even if they don’t mean it and don’t want to do it? Debatable. It might be a good idea to leave some room for the learner and human autonomy and let them sort it out themselves, under a teacher’s supervision, of course.
What Sasha said to the teacher could have been potentially interpreted as a lack of respect but it was something that was clearly overheard at home and applied in a different context, in a similar situation. It never happened before and it never happened again afterwards and, to be honest, the only difficult thing about it was that I had to keep a straight face, although inside I was rolling with laughter.
Sasha did understand very well that she was the responsible one, she did not feel comfortable with it and wanted to signal her discomfort to the world. And, in a way, she did and effectively so. Perhaps a sad face or tears would be a more typical way of reacting in such a situation, a more predictable one but children are different and they react differently.
We did have our happy ending but if I were to give any advice to this teacher (well, myself from a few years ago), I would suggest telling Sasha a secret, instead of drawing even more attention to something that she did do.
Why this series? Child development is one of the key areas when it comes to the teacher education in the area of primary and pre-primary. At the same time, whereas the other two areas, the knowledge of the language and the appropriate methodology, are better taken care of, child development for the EFL teachers is still waiting to happen. Hence this series.
I hope that some of my adventures will contribute to understanding who the little people in our classrooms are and how to approach them.
All of this really did happen but we want to protect real kids and their stories so for the purpose of this little exercise here, everyone will be a Sasha as it can be a boy or a girl and the name is used worldwide, too.
Enter Sasha.
On the one hand, there is nothing unusual about it, really, there is always one child in (each) group that is going to be your space cadet, daydreamer, lost, your head in the clouds, moony, your Luna Lovegood, your Tigger, Little Miss Scatterbrain. There is always one and it is perfectly fine.
My Luna was a boy, aged 5, Alexander, although this name was too big for him, so we just called him Sasha or Sanya.
Sanya could not stay focused…
…throughout the lesson for as long as all the other kids, and despite the fact that it was year 2, with plenty of time for him to get used to the routine and the length of the lesson. He did not pay attention, he would switch off, he had to be called back. He would come late every now and again and very very rarely did he bring the homework.
He did not interact with the kids well, either.
He did not make friends with the girls, who stayed in their own circle but he did not seem to be getting on very well with the other three boys in the group. Grisha, the youngest always chose to sit with his older brother and Artem refused to sit with him. Of course, they did play together and interact during the lesson, I did take care of it, but they only did the absolute minimum.
And yet, Sanya, did look for this interaction only his methods were not approved of by the boys. For example, one day, in the middle of the lesson, he went to Artem and hugged him to which Artem pushed him off with ‘Don’t kiss me, you are not my mum’…All of it was rather unusual and a definite change of behaviour.
But even before I managed to get in touch and talk to Sanya’s mum…
the truth revealed itself. One of these days in November, the lesson finished and Sanya was still there in the classroom. When I asked ‘Where is your mummy?’, he explained that today his mummy is not coming to pick him upstairs (3rd floor) but that he should walk downstairs those six flight of stairs and meet her on the ground floor, by the cloakroom, a strange request and a real challenge, in that building. I let the assistant know and I said ‘Let’s go’ reaching out my hand. And because it was a long trip, step by step by step, hand in hand and because he was a little gloomy, I decided to talk to him. Now, mind you, he was still a pre-A level and so I did speak English and he replied in Russian. We counted stairs, I praised him for the lesson and then, I decided to ask, just making small talk, ‘Sanya, who is coming today, mummy or daddy?’ and this is when the heartbreak began. And the understanding.
Sanya just answered the question and because it must have been something that has been bothering him, he just went on talking.
‘My uncle is coming today. I don’t have a daddy. He doesn’t live with us anymore. He’s got a new home and a new baby son. We live with the uncle, my mummy and me’
At the age of 5, Sanya had already been through his parents’ separation, at an unknown cost and stress, his half-brother’s birth and who knows what else. No wonder he was a little bit off. No wonder mum had other issues to deal with rather than the homework. No wonder he needed some more attention from the other kids and from the teacher.
Back then I was still a very young and shy teacher.
I did not talk to Sanya’s mum. What I focused on was making Sanya’s time in class a little bit more bearable: no stickers for homework, homework replacement that he could do in class when I was checking other kids’ tasks and deal with his in the end, praising him and putting more effort in creating opportunities for him to bond with other children, making sure he is fine.
And walking him downstairs to the cloakroom after the lesson.
Today, it would have been different. I would have more energy and more confidence to talk to mum and voice my concerns and try to work with her more closely.
Here is my favourite character who would be a perfect amabassador for ‘We want more‘, my professional obsession (you might have noticed:-) and some of my favourite solutions for the classroom.
Trick number 1: The language
Regardless of what coursebook is used or what curriculum is followed, there are certain language items that can be included even in the pre-primary programme that will enable children to communicate and produce more language.
Some of these language items include:
descriptive adjectives, such as big – small, long – short, happy – sad, beautiful – ugly, serious – funny, old – new, etc. Introducing them in opposites will make it easier for the students to understand and to remember
simple linkers, introduced gradually, starting with ‘and’ (‘blue and green’, ‘cats and dogs’, ‘I like bananas and apples’), then moving on to ‘because’ ( starting with ‘I am happy because it is sunny’) and perhaps even ‘but’ (‘I like dancing but I don’t like dancing with a bear’, like in the song from Super Simple Songs).
introduce Present Continuous, because it will be easy to play with it in all the miming games and it will come in very handy while describing pictures and telling stories.
talking about other people. Personalisation is very important while learning language, not only with the little ones, but it is also a good idea to start introducing other people and the language we need to talk about them such as ‘she/he is / has got / can / likes’
Trick number 2: The freedom of speech
This freedom of speech has got very little with the civil rights. It is all about the degree of freedom that the students are given or, in other words, about the scaffolding and the support that are slowly removed in order not to limit the students and to enable them to choose what they want to talk about.
One way of doing it is shifting from closed yes/no questions towards more open-ended questions. ‘What do you like to eat?’ is more likely to generate more language that only ‘Do you like bananas?’ which will lead to one-word answers or maybe even only gestures. ‘Tell me about‘ will be a lot more generative.
Using this approach while working with illustrations, pictures or any kind of visuals will give students the opportunity to choose for themselves what to talk about. And it is quite likely that they will pick the topics (elements or aspects of the picture) that they are either more interested in, have more knowledge of or are better prepared to discuss. In any case, more language is likely to be generated.
Examples or real activities? Here you are:
Pairs is a speaking activity that uses a simple material of a set of pictures. The students put them in pairs, in any way they want. They also have to justify their choice. In case of the younger learners, this principle can be the colour (‘Panda and zebra. They are black and white’) but kids can also choose any other reason for that, like ‘Zebra and horse, they have 4 legs’ or ‘Bear and deer. They live in the forest’.
This activity can be also used with the older students who are given a list of words and have to put them in pairs, according the knowledge and the language they have.
Below you can see the end of the game with my pre-primary student. It started off slowly, with simple sentences about the colours that the animals have in common but as the activity progressed, the categories changed, too and we have here an example of animals that have a long tail (a lizard and a monkey), animals that live in the forest (a bear, a fox and a deer) or animals that like meat (a tiger and a lion).
This is the final product of our Pairs activity, using the visuals on Miro
Tell me about is another activity that uses a visual, for example a set of pictures with animals or a picture scene. Students choose an element for their peers to describe, for example Tell me about this boy’ and it is easy to imagine the variety of responses that these can generate. Students can choose to talk they boy’s clothes, feelings or actions.
Trick number 3: The appropriate activities and materials
Our students do what we want them to do. It is assumed so, precisely because we are teachers and they are students. The roles have been assigned once and for all. The question to ask yourself, though, is Would they really want to do it, if they had a choice?Is there anything in the task itself that would encourage them to? Or not.
Certainly, it does not meant that all those less-exciting-but-crucial activities will be renounced forever, because even though they are not always fun from the point of view of our students, they might still be necessary and useful, but it is an interesting aspect to start taking into consideration while lesson planning.
Here a few activities that use that principle
Yes or no? This is an activity that also uses visuals as the basis. In the first stages of the activity, the teacher describes the picture using very simple structure ‘I can see’ when some of the sentences are true and some are false. Students listen to the sentences and correct the sentences. In case of the pre-primary students, this is likely to be one-word production but with time, they are learning to respond in full sentences. Later on, when the students are familiar with the format of the activity, they are invited to take a leading role in the activity, also producing true or false sentences about the picture for the teacher and their peers to correct.
Kids love the game because they can correct the teacher’s mistake and they are allowed to create their own un-true sentences about the pictures and to try to trick the teacher. I have used it both with primary and pre-primary students. The younger kids, naturally, needed more time to adjust and to start producing full sentences, in the beginning they would only provide the key information, for example the colour or the number of objects but, eventually, they were comfortable enough with producing full sentences. At approximately the same time, they were ready to lead the game, too. The older, primary students could make this transition within a lesson.
This is how we were telling our own version of ‘Pete the Cat. I’m rocking in my school shoes’ using the visuals on Miro
Storytelling for pre-primary is based on picture description. Here, the easily available materials might involve the stories from the coursebooks for pre-primary, retelling together any other story used in class or even any of the materials in the YLE Starters materials. In this case storytelling is scaled down to simple picture description, in the appropriate sequence.
Storytelling for primary can also use the visuals but it can be more challenging with the use of storydice or a storytelling treasure hunt (see here)
The lion and the kitten is a simple boardgame that has been very helpful in encouraging the students to produce the language. It was created and used with the online 1-1 pre-primary students. The game does not use a dice. Instead the students can choose the box where they want to go next and in each round, they have to talk about one of the pictures hidden under the yellow, orange and blue diamonds. In the beginning the sentences are very simple and focus on simple vocabulary (‘It’s mommy‘), later on these can be exchanged for a more detailed description (‘Mommy is happy‘ or ‘Mommy is dancing‘) and even further extended with the use of ‘because’ (‘Mommy is dancing because she is happy’) or in any other way that is within the children’s linguistic ability.
This game gives children a lot of freedom and almost a guaranteed victory. The cards can be changed easily, especially in the online format, and even if not, new sentences can be made every time the game is played. With a group of children, a dice would probably have to be used.
This is the board for our boardgame, also created using the visuals available on Miro.
Are you in the park? is a simple guessing game turned into a role-play. Each student has a city plan (since this was the language that we were working at the time) and three stickers which they glue somewhere ‘in the city’. They keep their picture secret and they try to guess where their partner is at the time.
Student A: Are you at the bank / park / market?
Student B: Yes, I am / No, I am not.
After a while, they can ask for help.
Student A: Please help me.
Student B: I can see…I can hear…I can smell….
Student A: You are…
Initially, the stickers were introduce only to prevent the kids from ‘cheating’ but they absolutely loved having random leftover stickers all over the place. In the first lesson we play, it was pirates, in the second one, it was farm. They laughed a lot about having little pigs and chicks all over their cities. The other incentive was the opportunity to imagine and to describe the places from the angle of what they saw, heard and smelled in different places in the city. The kids had the full control over the game and they were making the decision themselves when to move to the second stage.
Prepare a set of vocabulary sets for example: characters, adjectives, verbs, places, objects and animals, one, two or three per team of students. Cut these up and put them in the envelopes. I have used a set like that one here.
Prepare a treasure hunt around the classroom or the school. Students will walk around the school, as a whole group, they will be looking for the clues. At each station, they will collect their words, for example station 1: a character or two characters, station 2: a verb or two verbs etc.
Divide the students into pairs or groups of three.
Go on the treasure hunt, collect the cards.Take a set for yourself, it will come in handy for modelling and giving instructions in the second part of the activity
Once back in the classroom, let the kids sit with their partner. Check out that the kids have all the cards, ask ‘Have you got a character?’ and let the kids call out their words.
Explain that all these words come from a story. Tell your story using all your words. The structures used will depend on how advanced the students are. With my A1 students, we used only Present Simple and Present Continous.
It might be a good idea to write the key structures on the board, to support production.
Students are asked to work in pairs and prepare for telling their story.
Students tell their stories to the rest of the class.
For homework, students are asked to draw their character(s) or an illustration to their story.
In the following lesson, they show their pictures and talk about them. All the pictures are put on display in the classroom.
Why we love it
The treasure hunt was an adventure in itself and it gave us an opportunity to use preposions of place in a real context and to practise our reading skills.
The students were given a chance to work in pairs and giving them the time to prepare really made a difference. The basically told the story twice, first in pairs, while getting ready, then once more while retelling the story to the rest of the class.
All the cards were displayed on the table and while telling the story, we were putting the cards back into the boxes in which we were collecting them during the treasure hunt. This small trick added a small kinesthetic element to the story and it helped them to remember to use all the words.
The treasure hunt element can be skipped and the cards can be used on their own. It will definitely minimise the preparation time. The cards can be re-used, too and students can choose their own characters, objects, verbs etc.
In the future, when the stuents become a lot more comfortable with the format of the task, I would want them to mingle and tell and retell their stories in pairs, to ensure that everyone is producing the language.
