This post is dedicated to all the teachers who soon are going to be entering the VYL or YL classrooms for the first time ever and are now wondering how to prepare for that.
Why?
Songs are definitely the resource that a teacher should use while teaching primary or pre-primary. A while ago I have tried to collect all the reasons to sing a song in one post (the full list here) but if you have never sung before in the classroom, here are the five most important reasons
songs will help you create a framework for the lesson, something to begin with, something to finish with, some nice punctuation marks in the lesson
they will be the easiest way of changing the pace of the lesson. Even if the kids don’t participate fully from the very beginning by singing, the song itself will work as a stirrer (or a settler, if you choose a very calm and peaceful one)
they will create an opportunity for the children to participate, at least with movement and gestures and, depending on the song, even with a few words or structures
songs are something that we all do together so they will help you ‘unite’ the group after the tasks on which the kids work individually and they will help to create a community
you can share them with the parents, to listen at home, this way taking English out of the classroom
Some do’s and don’t’s
Staging a song lesson for pre-primary or primary should, in fact, be a separate post, because there is a great variety of techniques and activties that can be used. For now, I can recommend having a look at this post here as well as the five tips.
Listen to the song before the lesson and get ready. Plan how you are going to introduce it. Simply pressing the PLAY button and saying ‘Let’s sing’ is not going to do the job with songs in the EFL / ESL classroom.
Play the video. It will really help the kids understand what the song is about.
Sometimes they are already in the song and in the video, sometimes not and we have to come up with a set to use with each song. It is something worth investing your time in because the gestures will help the kids understand and remember the lyrics. What’s even more important, especially in the first lesson with a new song – gestures will give the children a real opportunity to participate.
Sing yourself, do all the gestures yourself. And with a smile, too! Even if you are the only one and even if the students don’t join you straight away. It is perfectly natural, they need time to get used to the music, the lyrics, the gestures, the rhythm. Plus, you are the leader! If you don’t get involved, why would your students?
Share the song with the parents and use it again. A song is never just for one lesson.
My favourite hello songs
Hello. Super Simple Songs – a real hit and a good start, with 6 emotions, including ‘not so good’, to show the kids that it is ok to feel not happy, sometimes.
Hello Song. Fun Kids English– another good one, with monsters, there are actually two parts of it, each with 4 emotions. It is good to have a new version when the kids get bored with the first one.
Hello Song For Kids, The Singing Walrus – I love it because it includes not only the hello questions but also some Present Simple sentences and questions about the everyday school routine (‘Everyday I go to school) and each of them is repeated twice, in the classroom it can be T and then kids. Lots of potential.
Hello Song for Kids, EFL Kids Videos – very simple but very energetic, lots of repetition but also a nice variation of verses sung loudly and quietly. We loved it.
Hello Hello! Can you clap your hands. Super Simple Songs – another simple one with a few movements, perfect if you want to get up and move a bit
My favourite goodbye songs
Goodbye to you! EFL Kids Videos – using the same melody and the same pattern as the hello song from EFL Kids Videos, helps to save the time and works both as ‘something old’ and ‘something new’
Bye Bye Goodbye Super Simple Songs – a kind of a follow-up to the Hello Hello Can you clap your hands, the music is different but the song uses some of the verbs.
Goodbye Song for Kids, The Singing Walrus – this one is a bit more complex, but again, as their hello song, it uses full sentences. Lots of potential.
See you later, aligator, Super Simple Songs – a very short one, includes gestures for alligator and butterfuly and if you want, it can go on forever.
My favourite movement songs
Head, shoulders, knees and toes, Super Simple Songs – everything you may need in your first lessons, just getting up and moving a bit, even if the topic of body parts is scheduled for some other day
Move. Dance Song For Kids. Super Simple Songs – my latest discovery, lots of movement (verbs), a great melody. It can be used partially ie the first three parts of as a whole. It can be also extended if kids have their own ideas.
Jump, Run and Shout. The Singing Walrus – another energetic, rock song with movement. Just like Move, we like to sing it in the beginning of the lesson. It helps to get rid of lots of energy.
The Jellyfish Song. Super Simple Songs – a simple but effective song, very little langauge here, you are going to be pretending that you are jellyfish. Somehow, the kids get a chance to move but also to calm down.
Shake Your Sillies Out. Brain Breaks For Kids. – this is one is for older kids, lots of great ideas here and quite tiring, when used from the beginning until the end, but my kids loved the idea of ‘shaking the sillies out’ or ‘clapping our crazies out’ (very necessary on some days) so we only used the movements, not the song.
My favourite randomness
Open Shut Them, Super Simple Songs– one of my favourite songs ever because it teaches adjectives and opposites (somehow neglected by many of the coursebooks and programmes) and you can easily include gestures. Plus there are four parts of it which means that a new one can be added as soon as necessary. Open Shut Them can almost become a part of the classroom routine for the whole year and later on, the teacher can even extend it by creating own versions.
Hickory Dickory Dock, Super Simple Songs – some counting, some animals and an unexpected ending.
What’s your favourite colour? Super Simple Songs – first of all, it can be inroduced from the beginning of the course (colours), it can be used as a game (to point at different colours in the room as the come up in the song) and, last but not least, it contains a great Q&A set (‘What’s your favourite…?’ ‘I like…’) and it can be turned into a real conversation and easily extended into other topics, as they come up i.e. toys, numbers, pets, letters.
…is the name of the series of great posts collected by Naomi Epstein in her blog. Naomi asked a great bunch of people about their Teaching During the Pandemic Experience and I had the pleasure of being one of these teachers. You can find my post here.
Don’t forget to check out her other posts, too! Highly recommended!
This is the second post in the series devoted to no/little prep activities that might save your teaching skin (and sanity) when unexpectedly you find yourself in the classroom and no Earthly rules apply, due to the unfortunate combination of factors. Today, a lesson for the little people.
Pre-scriptum #1 Don’t forget to check out the introduction to the series, here and the first episode, here.
Pre-scriptum #2 All the photos in this post are the memories of all these blissful days when there WAS time to prepare…
Pre-scriptum # 3 Just as a reminder, these are the rules of the game: due to some combination of factors, regardless of who might be to blame, a teacher unexpectedly finds herself (himself) in a situation when there is no lesson plan, very few resources (perhaps nothing or almost nothing from The List) and you still have to survive a lesson with an age group. Here are some ideas on how to survive that. And the kids are about to enter the room in 3…2…1…
Before a two-hour summer camp lesson for VYL. You need to prepare just a few things)))
First things first
No matter how little time you have and whether you have been to this particular Mars before (I mean the school), do not let the kids into the classroom before the lesson. If you want to read more about why not, you can find my earlier post here.
If it so happens that your students are already in the classroom, don’t worry, nothing is lost. You can just take all the kids out first, line them up, count them and take them into the classroom, one by one. You are not going to do it in order to kill the lesson time, quite the contrary, it is going to help to re-introduce the order and to show the children who is in charge. Even if they don’t know you or, especially if they don’t know you. They will be curious and it will be easier to manage them.
If you really don’t want to take them out or if it is impossible, you can move to step two: try to include an activity that the whole group is going to be involved in. Get everyone to sit in a circle (on the stools or on the carpet) or to stand in a circle, wait for the kids to calm down (counting from 10 to 0 showing your fingers might help) and the proceed with a few miming activities. There is no need to give very specific instructions or to explain what you are going to do, use ‘a punctuation mark’, for instance (3,2,1 everybody is…) and add an activity. ‘Everybody is clapping’, ‘Everybody is marching’, ‘Everybody is waving’, ‘Everybody is dancing’, etc. For the kids it will be an opportunity to be involved in some movement and it will help them to focus in the following activities. It will be also a chance to do something together, as a group. For the teacher it will be a chance to show authority and to see how follows the rules.
Say hello and get the kids’ names will be the next step. The kids will have already listened to you, they have started the lesson in a fun way and that is the best time to find out their names. If the group is a new one, I like to put their names on the board (ideally using different colour markers so that the kids can recognise their names, too, or by adding a different symbol for each child, something that is easy to draw i.e. a flower, a car, a star etc) .
Revision might not be applicable but regardless of the kids’ level, I would like to go back to something that they are likely to know and respond to well, and one of such topics are colours and numbers. Some of the activities that are easily implemented can include:
counting a few times, first chorally, then individually, using different voices (happy, sad, angry, sleepy) and pace (very fast, very slow)
counting forward and counting backwards or counting with skipping one of the numbers or by skipping every other number and replacing it with a random word. Here, I would use ‘a banana’ or ‘a zebra’ because they are the same in Russian and they are definitely not a number so they will be easy to use in this activity. You can count again but in a crazy way, for instance ‘One, zebra, three, zebra, five, zebra, seven, zebra, nine, zebra’ etc.
counting things in the classroom ie boys and girls present, all the hands, legs and noses present, lamps, windows, pictures. It is not a given that the children will know all these words but they can still count them with the teacher.
colours: first revise the colours with all the objects that are available in the classroom. Kids usually wear colourful clothes so your students alone are quite likely to have all the colours on them already.
I can see, I can see, I can see something….blue, which is a version of ‘I spy with my little eye’ but with a slightly easier rhyme and much easier to show (I tap my chest twice for ‘I’ and ‘can’ and then I point to my eyes). When the kids hear the colour, they point at something of that colour. If the group is strong, the students can take turns and be the teacher. It might be also possible to add two adjectives here ‘big’ and ‘small’ and then it turns into a real game, with the entire classroom.
Before an online fruit lesson (Carrot in the role of ‘Surprise, Surprise!’)
Option 1: there are flashcards on Mars and, if so, I pick up the folder with animals.
Why? Because animals are one of the coolest topics that most kids can relate to, a generative topic appropriate for the more or less ‘advanced’, a topic that can be made digestible because at least some of the animals can be chosen based on principle ‘the same / similar as in L1’, this topic lends itself to a great variety of activities.
new vocabulary: introduction using voices, drilling, riddles (What’s this?), missing cards
miming: first the teacher mimes the animals for the kids, then the kids mime for each other
new structures: a variety of structures can be used here ie I am green / yellow / blue, I am big / small / happy / sad / angry, I can run / fly / swim, I like grass / meat / fish / fruit
focused task: based on my craft activity ‘don’t you just love a circle’. The original activity involves some additional resources (coloured paper and glue for kids) and preparation (pre-cutting the circles for each child, had to be done before the lesson) but it can be skipped, too as all the circles that are used for the basis of all the animals can be drawn by the kids. You can start with drawing circles in the air and drawing circles with a finger on the desk. Only afterwards the teacher gives out a piece of paper and a simple pencil per student. The teacher asks the kids to draw five circles on the paper and, step by step, the kids transform all the circles into animals. The cat, the frog, the bird and the fish are among the easier ones. The kids are able to draw their own as long as the teacher leads them through the activity and transforms the circles into animals, step by step, drawing on the board for the kids to copy. Afterwards, if there are crayons or markers, the kids can colour the animals. If not, they can do it at home.
focused task production: once the circle animals are ready, they can be used in a listening / speaking game. The teacher makes sentences about animals, using the first singular and the structures that the students have practised ie I am big. The kids listen and point at one of the animals. Afterwards the kids take turns to produce sentences.
songs: I would probably go for ‘Old McDonald’s’ because this is a song that can be sung from memory, almost forever, with different animal voices that the kids will be able to join and I am sure that nobody will mind if our farm of Mr McDonald also houses tigers, elephants and seals…
Before a craft lesson with fingerpaints. Rehearsals
Option 2: there are no flashcards on Mars and, if so, I choose the topic: shapes
Why? Because shapes are one of the topics that is definitely under-loved and under-appreciated in all the coursebooks, despite the fact that shapes are everywhere around us and that shapes is teaching logic, maths and developing cognitive skills. Children are familiar with them and they can be used in a variety of ways.
new vocabulary: shapes flashcards are very easy to produce, even if there is no coloured paper or no time to colour, they can be easily cut out of white paper, in the worst case scenario. I would use these to introduce and practise vocabulary. If there was no time to cut things out, I would draw them on the board or on a piece of paper, while already in class, and this would be my main tool to work with the new vocabulary.
practice: drill the new words using different voices, point at the shape, draw the shape in the air / on the floor
movement: make the shape with your hands, make the shape with your friends with kids holding hands, standing on the carpet, the circle will be the easiest to do and to start with, all the other ones can be started with the kids standing as the tops of the angles in each shapes
Can you see a circle?: the teacher draws one of the shapes on the board and asks the kids to look for circles in the classroom and pointing at them (‘I can see a circle’). These circles can also be counted.
focused task / production (1): the kids practise drawing in the air and on the desk with their fingers. The teacher gives out paper and pencils. The teacher draws a circle on the board and the kids on their papers. The teacher draws the eyes and the smile, the students choose the emotions for their shapes. They proceed with the other shapes. Apart from the circle, the other shapes might be challenging for some children and they need to be taught how to draw these. The teacher can start with marking three dots for the triangle first and then connecting them with lines and the same for the other shapes. If time, the kids can turn their shapes into characters by adding legs and arms. The teacher and the students describe their shapes ie My circle is happy.
focused task / production (2): the kids practise drawing in the air and on the desk with their fingers. The teacher gives out paper and pencils. The teacher dictates and models, the students draw the shapes, one by one. The teacher says ‘It’s a circle’, then she covers the circle and turns into something else ie a ball, a clock, a flower, a balloon, etc. The teacher says ‘Abracadabra, it’s a clock’. The kids turn their circles into a clock. The teacher says ‘It’s a clock’, the kids repeat. Then the same procedure with the other shapes: the square (a house, a picture, a book, a present), the rectangle (a robot, a car, a tower), the rhombus (a kite, a flower), the triangle (a boat, a house, a volcano).
Before a craft lesson and making cards…lots and lots of pre-cutting
Coda
I wouldn’t like you to think, dear reader, that I do not care about the standards and that, as a teacher or as a mentor, I might accept the approach in which the teacher enters the classroom ‘just to hang out’ or ‘to babysit’ perhaps following what Reilly and Ward (1997) have been promoting in their book (the two quotes that I still haven’t forgiven them for and I doubt I ever will)*. That is definitely NOT the case.
We are teachers and we are professionals, we enter the classroom to impart knowledge, not to kill the time. However, there might be situations in which you actually are as if on another planet and you want to use the lesson time as well as it is only possibly, albeit with very limited resources and no time to prepare. I hope that never happens to you in real life but if it does, now you are better prepared for that. Hopefully.
Happy teaching!
Sorting out the pencils in August…
P.S.
Here is a real life account of a first lesson with VYL from Sandy Millin, with some more ideas.
P.P.S. The unforgiven
Quote 1: ‘There are certain advantages in teaching the pre-school age group. One of the main bonuses for the teacher is that there are usually no strict syllabuses to follow, no tests, and no performance objectives to be met’ (Reilly and Ward, 1997: 7)
Quote 2: ‘However, if you have been using English, they will have been learning even if you have not done a single thing on your lesson plan’ (Reilly and Ward, 1997: 8).
Both quotes come from the book by Vanessa Reilly and Sheila M. Ward, Very Young Learners, published by OUP in 1997. I do appreciate the authors as for a very (very, very, very) long time (20 years!!!!), this was the only book that teachers could use to get any idea about the age group and the activities that might be used in the classroom. I will be eternally grateful to the authors for being there to support many generations of VYL teachers. BUT at the same time it makes me very unhappy that these two quotes found their way into the book (even in my 2011 edition) and that for two decades these VYL teachers were learning that, essentially, it does not matter what you do with your pre-schoolers as long as you do it in L2. It does not matter whether they speak, it does not matter what they take out anything of the lesson and whether there is any progress at all.
That is, of course, not true. I doubt it was true in 1997 and it definitely is not true in 2021. So there.
My name is Vader, Darth Vader. I am a teacher and a teacher trainer, I work with VYL and YL teachers.
Well, not really. I would like to think that, as a trainer, I smile a lot, I am supportive and open to questions and debates and I only shout at football matches. But there are those moments, on the courses that I teach or just in the everyday mentoring life, when I feel I am taking on some of Mr Vader’s traits. Although even then it is more in the style of the Darth Vader in the photo above.
One of those Darth Vader moments is defnitely induced by some of the concepts and beliefs related to teaching English to young and very young learners. They are out there, in the world, and although they are entirely ‘wrong’ or ‘incorrect’, they have already become some EFL YL clichés that can cause more harm than good.
In the post below I will share with you my top five ‘Think Twice Concepts’ in the early years EFL. A very subjective approach, I must warn you. Are you ready? Fasten your seatbelts! Let’s go!
courtesy of Юлец
Bad behaviour
There is nothing that could be labelled as ‘bad behaviour’, not in the EFL classroom full of pre-schoolers. There is curiosity put to practice, there are emotions in action, there are boredom- induced replacement activities. There is fear that materialises itself as agreession and a general lack of goodwill. There is tiredness, hunger, possibly, or, on the contrary, the high levels of sugar from the chocolate bar eaten five minutes right before the lesson or the memory of the morning visit to the doctor and the unpleasantness of it that still lingers in the air (although the arm really did stop to hurt after a jab about three hours ago). There are, also, plenty of examples of ‘I will do what I have always done in such situations and if it has always worked so far with mum, with nanny, at home, at pre-school and at the playground, it is bound to take the required effect here, too!’
There is no bad behaviour, although sometimes we get to deal with ‘the unwanted behaviour’, that might be getting in the way of our lesson or other children’s physical or mental well-being.
Solutions: first of all, react, ideally to stop this unwanted behaviour, or, at the very least, to signal that it is not what we want to have. If one thing is certain, it is that it is not just going to happen, all by itself. Then, after the lesson, when everyone has already left and when the dust has settled – reflection. Was the first time that it happened? Does it always happen? Is there any chance that some triggers could be identified? Was it in anyway related to the activities, to what the teacher did, to what other children did? What happened later?
It is always a good idea to talk to the parents or carers, too. Not to complain or to blame the child or the adults but mostly to understand what really happened and why. And perhaps (but just unfortunately ‘perhaps’) this information will come in handy the next time it happens.
Egocentric
I don’t think I will ever be able to forgive Piaget for using this particular adjective to describe the little kids’ attitude to the world and to the people in it. It is a perfect example of a concept created by adults and used to refer to people who are not adult yet and whose attitudes and reactions are what they are simply because they have not had a chance yet to grow and to develop fully. In the EFL terms, it would be like sending a seven-year-old beginner to take an FCE exam and then scolding them for failing while they are simply not there, not yet and they should be seen nowhere near the exam room.
Of course, pre-schoolers might struggle with sharing the box of crayons, they might want to always be first and always hold the teacher’s hand. They may not like to sit next to Pasha today and they will not want the other children to touch the car they brought to class, to show off a little bit. They will not be happy about leaving their picture in the classroom for the teacher to display on the noticeboard. And they will all want the princess flashcard. But all of that happens because they are just learning how to be a person in the world full of people and a person in that particular group of children learning English.
Solutions: The most important of them comes from Mick Jagger because, indeed, ‘Time is on my side, yes, it is!’. The group of children starting to study together in September will be changing, from lesson to lesson, and even after a week or two or three, they will be a completely different bunch, only because they have had a chance to interact with each other, to do something together and to find out that a group is not Anka and five other someones but Anka and Sasha, Pasha, Kirill, Mitya and Olya, some of whom we like a little more, some of whom we like a little bit less.
Apart from that, there are also all the tricks that the teacher can use throughout the course, to help the little people bond and start noticing the other children and start to learn how to share the lesson with them.
So, no ‘egocentrism’ but ‘social skills that are still developing’.
A typical five-year-old child…
Apart from the knowledge of the language and the knowledge of the methodology, the knowledge of the child development stages is one of the three areas that an EFL teacher working with young learners needs to be familar with (Mourão, 2018: 429) and it is great to see that a summary of these characteristics have made it into the professional literature ( Mourão, 2020: 33 – 39) and are easily available online.
At the same time, there is a danger that teachers will be looking into these and applying them too religiously, without considering the differences between the individual children. As Mourão (2020: 215) says ‘Children develop holistically, show individual differences in development and progress at different rates’. That means that even if we had a group of only five-year-olds, all of them coming from similar environmenta and all of them provided with the same opportunities and, even, why not, all of them born on the same day, they could all develop their cognitive, motor, social or linguistic skills at completely different rates. As a result, despite the fact that the group would be theoretically homogenous, a teacher would still have to deal with a mix of abilities. It seems that a teacher equipped with a little knowledge and induced by this knowledge expectations of the children and of the lesson might be even more damaging that no knowledge at all. Because typical five-year-olds don’t exist.
Solution: an open-mind and an organic approach to the little people sitting in the classroom. Instead of applying strict frameworks and checklists and trying to make the kids fit in the tables (which they are more than likely not to be able to do, as a group or as individuals), reading and researching the age group in a close connection with the specific students whom we teach at the moment.
Short attention span
This is, without any doubt, one of the most important differences between an adult and a child learner and this is the one that gets highlighted most frequently. For a reason, too.
However, at the same time, any attempt at specifing what that attention span is or, even more, at quantifying is, simply, pointless. Much as it may give the (false) impression that once the concept has been assigned a number, it is not as scary and it will be easier to deal with, especially for those of the teachers who have little or no experience of working with the younger children. It is from them that I often hear that ‘an activity should not take more than five minutes’ or, even, ‘it is the child’s age plus one minute’.
Well, I wish it had been that straightforward.
In real life, the attention span will be very much dependent on a number of factors that nobody is able to predict or enlist, and, as such, it is simply impossible determine once and for all. Children’s attention span will be related to their age, to some extent (although it will materialise itself in a way unique for each child) but it will also be affected by absolutely everything that might have had an impact on the children’s mood before and in the lesson and the teacher’s mood before and in the lesson. Such as? Such as the first snow of the year, a spider in the classroom, a visit to the doctor just before the lesson, a swimming lesson just before the lesson, a birthday party attended, a grandma’s visit, candy eaten before the lesson…Or a teacher who has had an especially tiring or stressful day, any malfunctioning technology or a handout lost. Any of these and the tried and tested activity that has always worked with the same group or the same age group, that has had the kids in awe and involved for five or even ten minutes, can quickly turn into a failure or the most boring and unappealing activity in the entire world.
Solution: first and foremost, switch off your adult thinking of what happens in the classroom. The kids, young or very young, they will not be just sitting behind the table, patiently waiting for you to start what you have prepared for the day AND they will not stay involved in it for a prolonged period of time as long as you think they should. Second, while planning a lesson, think about it from your student’s perspective and ask yourself what your students might find interesting about an activity. Is there anything that would motivate them to engage in in? Anything else that just the mere fact of this being an activity done in a lesson.
Then, in the lesson, itself, keeping your eyes open and adapting to who (and in what state) you have in the classroom on the day is the best way of dealing with all the implications of the short attention span. And, although I would argue that this applies to all the age groups and levels, being ready to let go and teaching the students and not the plan, not the coursebook, not the handout and not the activity.
‘They don’t like singing’
Sorry, permission to disagree here and yes, even before I have seen you in the classroom and before I have met your little students. I don’t think it is true, simple as that. Why do the teachers say that then?
Partially, it is because, again, the adult perception of what song and singing is and should be gets in the way. On the one hand, when we listen to songs in our non-teaching life, we do just that, we listen and take pleasure in it, hopefully. There is nothing wrong with it, and, indeed, I believe that listening for pleasure should be sometimes included in our lessons, too. The only ‘problem’ with very young learners is that they might not be familiar with that kind of an exercise and after a minute or two, with no other task, they will be getting bored and distracted. And, possibly engaging in other, unwanted, activities.
On the other hand, when we use songs in the EFL lessons, we expect the students to sing these songs and in case of pre-schoolers or even primary school children, it will take them for them to master all the elements of the song, the music, the rhythm, the lyrics, before they are actually ready to sing. If the teacher expects a real performance in the lesson in which the song was introduced for the first time, they will be disappointed. Again, the children might remain focused for a minute or two and then, again, they will find something else to do and the teacher will arrive at a conclusion already mentioned in the heading to this paragraph.
It is true, that the word ‘singing‘ could be replaced with absolutely any type of a YL activity, ‘craft’, ‘miming’, literacy’, ‘animals’, ‘this game’ and the implications would be the same or almost the same. It is also true that music-related activities are more likely to feature here. Mostly because teachers often worry that they themselves cannot hold a tune or that they are not confident enough to sing in front of others.
Solution: forget about you and your pre-conceptions, your teacher previous knowledge and try. It might be that you yourself are not the world greatest fan of Baby Shark and of pretending that you are a…melting ice-cream (btw, one of the real ideas suggested for the miming game by my students) but the simple truth is, if the teacher does not make an effort and if the teacher does not get properly involved in a song or in an activity, it is almost a given, that the students will not, either. Especially, the little ones. And, really, the most amazing thing about the VYL audience is that they really do not care whether their teachers sing well or badly. The only thing that matters is whether they put their hearts in it or not.
And as for the other problems, be it music or craft, scaffolding and lesson planning is the answer and no two ways about it. If you need any more convincing to why we should use songs with children, please have a look here and if you are looking for some ideas of what can be done with a song to maximise language production, you should definitely look at this post here.
Coda
This post is not only about me having a little venting session on a Monday morning. It is not a critique on the people who use these terms and it is definitely not about my ‘What not to say’ list that I will be handing in to all my teachers and trainees from now on.
I decided to put this post together because it seems that all these clichés start in the very same place and that is when adults try to apply adult categories, labels and concepts to children and to how they see the world, how they learn and how they grow which might lead to misunderstanding, confusion and frustration in the classroom.
Perhaps there should be one more thing added to the list of skills and areas that a VYL or YL teacher should be equipped with, apart from the three mentioned by Mourão (2018)? The knowledge of the subject and of the appropriate methodolody is absolutely crucial and so is the awareness of the child development stages. They are an absolute must and a starting point. Still, they are going to be of little use in the real life if a teacher is not going to be willing to switch the perspective and to try to see the lesson and everything that happens in it from the point of view of a three-year-old or a seven-year-old.
As everything in teaching, nothing happens overnight, and it takes time to develop the ability to observe and to analyse your students and their behaviour and to learn from that. The good thing is that the very willingness to accept the fact that a different perspective is needed is already a big step towards success.
Sometimes, changing the perspective physically can make a real difference, too. In our teacher training courses, we sit at the big tables (of course, we are adults!) but there always comes the time when we transfer to the little stools in a small circle. We do it to practise different games and to reflect on them but this is also a great opportunity to experience how the furniture and the set up can influence the activities and the emotions.
This blog post can hopefully be a good first step, too!
What do you think, dear reader? Are there any other terms that you would add to this list? Please leave your commetns below!
Happy teaching!
P.S. All the amazing animals in the photos live in the streets of Yaroslavl. Mr Vader found a home in a coffee shop Free-da there. All photos – mine, apart from the rooster taken by Юлец and used here with her permission.
References
Development Matters in the Early Years Foundation Stage (2012), to be downloaded here
Mourão, S. (2018), Research into teaching of English as a Foreign Language in early childhood and care, In: S. Garton and F. Copland (eds), The Routledge Book of Teaching English to Young Learners, Milton Park and New York: Routledge, p. 425 – 440.
Mourão, S. & G. Ellis (2020), Teaching English to Pre-Primary Children, Stuttgard: Delta Publishing
It is one of those lines that you deliver, sometimes carelessly: ‘This is my favourite ….’, often followed by a softening line, ‘Oh, well, at least one of the top 10.’ I do it all the time. Carefreely. Until, last week, one of my readers and fellow teachers, commented, ‘Ok, but what are the other nine out of this 10?’
And I thought that it will be a perfect idea for a new post. So here we are.
One: Dice
Definitely, one of my favourites, the one that I always have in my bag and the one that I have managed to use with the little ones and with the older ones. There is already a post on that. You can find it here.
Two: Noughts and crosses grid
Another ‘love of my life’, something that I have been using for ages and adapting and perfecting on the way. Obviously, right now, I cannot simply live without this resource. Nor can my students. Some of the ways of using it, there are a few posts that you can read: here – a post about using noughts and crosses with primary or pre-primary, here – another one on using noughts and crosses in storytelling, here – on using noughts and crosses with visuals.
The super important advantage is that, if needed and there is no template and no handout, it can be easily re-created on the board or even by the students, on a piece of paper and filled up with words, phrases or even pictures for the students to use later.
Three: Wordwall
This is the online tool, (www.wordwall.net) that, for me personally, was the number 1 discovery of the lockdown times. For those of you who are not yet familiar with it, it is an online community that shares online games which can be used to learn English among subjects. There are a great number of templates available such as simple cards, a spinner, a quiz, a wordsearch etc. Anyone can join the community and the community library for free. Those teachers who want to create their own games and to share them with the said community, have to choose a plan. That part might be a bit of a hurdle for some, but $ 2.50 or $3.50 per month is a ridiculously small amount of money to pay for the privilege of creating an unlimited number of activities for the particular texts, coursebooks or videos that you want to use with your students, especially if you teach a few groups of the same level / coursebook or, if, like me, you want to share these activities with all the teachers in your school.
I am using these activities with all levels and age groups, both with my students and my trainee teachers, sometimes in class, sometimes as an additional homework.
Here are a few examples of the templates and the activities that we use them in
simple cards, instead of electronic flashcards, here ‘My day‘, just to introduce the vocabulary
a similar set of simple cards but used with a specific structure(s). This one here was used with my primary students to share opinions about different activities.
boxes used in a speaking game ‘Tell me about it‘: students choose one of the boxes and talk about the object, animal, person. They have to produce a required number of sentences and they get a certain number of points in each round.
pelmanism online. Here students have to match a country with a product and we used it as an introduction in a lesson on the passive voice.
a quiz to develop the early literacy skills with pre-primary. This one here was used to practise the letters, sounds and the key words for each of there.
In my classroom, we actually have both, three mini-whiteboards and about ten erasable notebooks and we use them with all my groups. With my pre-primary students and the first and second year of primary, they are our main tool in all the literacy-related activities. Holding a big and thick marker is easier than managing a pencil or a pen, writing on the surface which is smooth and almost slipper means that the students do not have to apply so much strength and can produce a line more easily and, last but not least, even if they make a mistake (or if they are not very happy with what they produce), it is very easily to repair a mis-shaped ‘a’ or ‘n’. All these features make these resources especially suitable.
With my younger students we use these in the following activities:
doing the lines (rarely, I prefer to set it as homework)
copying the words from the board
the game of ‘fake scrabble’ – students in pairs, using two markers of different colours, take turns to add more and more words to the initial word set by the teacher, during a set amount of time. The students earn points for each letter in their words. The longer words they add, the more points they earn.
the game of ‘scramble, unscramble’ – teacher dictates words, letter by letter, in a random order. Students write these down and try to unscramble the word. This is not a competitive game, no points are awarded.
the game of ‘how many words’ – teacher writes on the board a sentence in English ie ‘We love to play games in English‘, students work in pairs and try to make a list of new words that can be put together using some of the letters in the sentences, for example ‘lamp’ because all these letters feature in the sentence. Students can reuse all the letters, for example they can use the letter ‘s’ in quite a few words but the words which contain more than two letters ‘s’ because there are only two of them in the sentence. This is a competitive game and there are points at the end of the game.
the game of ‘lazy bingo’ – students simply make a list of seven or ten words from the set that is being practised at the moment ie toys. Teacher then calls out the words in a random order, the student or the team which crosses or erases all their words first, wins the game.
depending on the set up in the classroom, I sometimes use the erasable whiteboards to put up the langauge that I want the students to use or the questions to discuss, especially if we are sitting away from the board.
We use the same games with my older students but, apart from that, we also use these in these activities:
a variety of quizzes – students write their answers, either full words or simply letters ‘a’, ‘b’ or ‘c’ in multiple answer quizzes
short story writing – writing a Flyers or KET story, whole class writing in which the students contribute only a sentence or a word at a time and then exchange the notebooks, etc.
the game of ‘A to Z’ – students work in pairs, write the letters of the alphabet in a column. Later on, their main task is to come up with one word for each letter of the alphabet within a certain topic. There is a time limit and the team or pair who can make the longest list, wins the challenge. In the follow up, we reflect on these words discussing the questions such as: What is the strangest word here? What is the best word? Are there any words you don’t know? Which words you don’t approve of? This game works best at the start of a new topic and it helps the teacher to understand whether the new topic is actually new to the group and, consequently, to adapt the classroom procedures.
Understandably, in all of the activities, the mini-whiteboards or the earasable workbooks can be easily replaced with a simple piece of paper and a pencil and the activities would work just as well. Using the whiteboards simply adds to the excitement and it can be a nice way of spicing up the lesson.
Five: Tornadoes aka Points cards
Long, long time ago, at one of the trainings, someone showed us how to play the game of ‘Guns, Bombs and Lives’. I do not remember who it was (but thank you, anonymous benefactor!).
It was a very simple game of gamifying any boring activity such any typical controlled practice exercise. Students were giving their answers and uncovering the boxes in the grid. If they found ‘a gun’, they lost one of their three initial lives, if they found ‘a bomb’, they could steal a life from one of the other teams. If they found ‘a heart’, they did gain an additional life. There was a similar version of the same game, called Tornadoes’.
It worked very well and it helped to encourage the kids to get involved and to stay involved in the controlled practice activities but, even with the older students, I did not like the idea of all the guns, bombs and natural disasters, all the destruction that I personally would be bringing into the classroom. The other contributing factor was the fact that, at the time, I desperately needed a system points that I could also use with my 1-1 students. The regular grid would not work (it was always created by the teacher). Our game of Tornadoes had to transform into something else.
It did. It underwent a proper evolution as with my student, Nick, we did come up with new ideas, cards and tasks and we would play it for a few times, like proper gamers, and then, based on the data collected, we would accept these new rules or reject them.
At the moment, in its 4.0 we have the following cards:
the simple: 1, 2, 5 points
donate 1, 2, 5 points (you give away some of your points to one of the other teams)
lose 1, 2, 5 points (you lose some of your points, no one gets them)
add 50% of the number of your points
lose 50% of the number of your points
multiply your points by 2
take away 1, 2, 5 points from one of the other teams
shield which you can use to protect yourself agains any bad luck which, if not used, turns into 10 points at the end of the game
the crown – whoever picks the crown is the ultimate winner, regardless of the number of points collected. We add this card to the deck only for the final round.
You can see the cards in the photo. I have been using them for about three years now and I have just realised that it is the high time to print and to laminate them…Here is my new resolution for the new academic year.
Six: Magic wand
Well, yes, this particular tool is used only with my pre-schoolers, but it is an absolute staple food with this particular age group.
Magic wands can be found in many different toy shops or kiosks but it is so much fun to be making one! It is actually so easy that it can be turned into a craft activity with preschoolers. At the same time, a magic wand is not even necessary. Kids are amazing and, really, if played properly a simple pencil will do the job just as well. For that reason, when we used to study online with my students, I was using my handmade magic wand and my students were using markers, pencils, whatever was lying nearest!
Magic wands are used in one activity that can have many different variations. Whoever is wielding the wand is responsible for casting ‘the spell’ of their choice. The whole group, including the teacher has to perform the action and to mime. We use a simple rhyme ‘Abracadabra, 1, 2, 3. You are…’ with many different endings:
verbs ‘You are dancing’
nouns ‘You are a cat’
nouns with adjectives ‘You are a happy cat’, ‘You are an angry princess’
Seven: Word picturebooks
If I were to go to Mars and take one set of resources, I would love to take a set of visuals. If, however, I had a limited space in my bag and / or no access to google, I would take the printed version (because I am lucky to have the hard copy) of Cambridge YLE Picture Wordlist, Starters, Movers and Flyers. These are beautifully done picture scenes, especially useful for those of us who prepare kids for YL exams but, at the same time, so lovely and colourful, that I could actually live with them in a teen or adult group.
You can download them from here: Starters, Movers and Flyers, and if only anyone even mildly related to Cambridge University Press is reading this, here is my message: please, print them and sell them! We are going to buy them.
Eight: Small pieces of paper (basically)
Well, this is so basic that it is almost disappointing but, looking at the regular proceedings in my classes, I have to be honest and say that, yes, small pieces of paper (A4 white or coloured cut up into 16 or 32) appear there regularly and frequently.
Sometimes, I prepare them myself, they are typed up, printed and cut up but, since this whole series is devoted to the minimal resources and last-minute solutions, I will not include these here. The main assumption is: no time for any pre-lesson preparations. All of the activities mentioned before start with the teacher giving out a number of cards to each student, pairs or teams.
vocabulary: My Words: working with a set of vocabulary (connected by the topic or the text), each student has to choose five favourite words (the best, the worst, the most unusual, the strangest, the most interesting, the most difficult) and write them all on separate cards. Students can explain their choices, ask their partner a question with the word, make riddles with these or exchange their cards and guess their partner’s choices. Afterwards, the students repeat the activity with another partner.
vocabulary: write five words from the set of the key vocabulary, work with your partner, take out one of your words, randomly, put it on the table. Compare the two words, either using comparatives (works best with animals, transport, countries etc) or just say if they are similar or different taking into account their meaning, pronunciation, use, the part of speech they are etc.
vocabulary / functional langauge: Have you got…?: it is one of my favourite games with all the students, based loosely on Go Fish (or at least this is where it started). There is only one set of words that is necessary and students can help make these. The game is played best in 3 or 4 teams. Each team gets a set of the key words and the students take turns to try to guess what they partners have. As soon as someone guesses the word, the team loses it and puts the card away. The winner is usually the team that managed to keep all their words secret (ro the team that has most cards at the end of the game). Everyone has to listen to everyone else, collecting information and drawing conclusions. With my younger kids, we often play with ‘Have you got’ or even with ‘Blue, please’ during the first lessons of the course. With my older students, we turn it into proper themed mini-roleplays, for instance while practising the airport vocabulary, they have to ask ‘Excuse me, where is the departure lounge?’ and their partners reply with ‘It is next to the souvenir shop’ (if they have the card) or ‘Sorry, I don’t know’ (if they don’t have the card)
grammar: write five questions to ask your partner using the key structure (ie Did you go to the cinema yesterday?) or write five time expressions to use in the past to later ask questions with these words etc.
Nine: Puppets
Thinking about my classrooms now, I think there are at least two puppets occupying the shelves there, Angelina and the Flying Cow in the older kids classroom and Teddy and Orange Cat in the pre-primary classroom. If you want to find out how we use them, please pop in here.
Ten: The indispensables
This short (?) will be devoted not to teaching resources per se but to a whole selection of objects that I cannot imagine NOT being in my classroom
a clock, a big one, on the wall, right above the desk or behind the students’ back so that I can always be aware of the time and to proceed accordingly
a big box of felt-tip pens because we all like a bit of colour and a bit of variety when it comes to writing materials. The students always have a choice between a pen, a pencil or felt-tip pens and very often they choose the latter. Colour rules!
a roll of painter’s tape because you can use it to attach things to the walls (treasure hunts), to the floor (the plan of our ideal city), to the tables and chairs (assigning who is sitting there) and clothes (who is who today). The best thing – you can write on it so the teacher does and the kids do, too!
a big fat pencil case full of colourful whiteboard markers which we need to make the boardwork more appealing and to write in our erasable notebooks
If I ever went to Mars to teach, these are the things that I would be putting into my Mary Poppins’ rucksack. And you? What would you take?
Don’t forget to look out for the series of posts ‘When you suddenly land on Mars…’ in which I am going to share my ideas for lessons with pre-primary, primary, teenage and adult students, based only (or almost) on what we can find in every classroom: pen and paper! I have already started writing them and I will be sharing shortly!
What do you mean you can’t suddenly land on Mars? Sure you can! You get ready for something else, as far from space travel as only possible, you arrange all the bits and pieces, you make your copies (because you assume you are preparing for teaching) and then, suddenly, due to a combination of factors (although the Russian phrase стечение обстоятельств somehow fits better here), you open your eyes, you open the door of what turns out to be a rocket and, ta dam, you find yourself on Mars!
Naturally, everything that you have prepared, on paper or in your head, is, all of a sudden, absolutely useless. The whole lot of it, so, immediately, it lands in the bin or, what we refer to as with my kids, ‘Our Tresure Chest’. Hence the photo.
Congratulations! One of the most amazing adventures of your teaching life (probably) is about to start in…3…2…1…
What really happened?
It was supposed to be a short summer course, for kids, primary, whose main aim was to be a revision and reinforcement of everything that the kids knew, based on games, speaking activities and project. It was a programme I prepared myself, a programme I had run in the past, a programme that had been tried and tested. There are no coursebooks.
However, on the day, due to this amazing combination of factors, all of a sudden, there are four great kids sitting in the classroom, a ten-year-old, a seven-year-old, an almost-seven-year-old and a five-year-old. As regards the levels, one of them is more of less a Starters level and three false-start beginners which means that they know an occasional number, a few colours and a pet or two. Plus, they have had some exposure so, rather than run away, they make an effort to listen and to follow instructions.
Of course, since it is the first day, they trickle into the classroom (a new routine is building up, also for the parents) and the lesson takes off three times in a row. It is an interesting feeling to become aware of the fact that the lesson is 120-minutes long (or very very long), especially when you have nothing ready.
By nothing, I mean ‘literally nothing’. All of the materials and the lesson plans I had prepared were lying on the nearby table, I could see them from the corner of the eye throughout the lesson. I knew that they were entirely irrelevant at the moment and that maybe, if I am lucky, I might use them later on, with some other group. Maybe, not during this particular lesson that I was very much a part of and responsible for.
What I learnt from this experience
Spoiler: Plenty.
First of all, finally, I was able to pinpoint what ‘being experienced‘ means. It’s been a while since I started teaching and another while again since I could label myself as ‘experienced’. At the same time, I have never really thought what exactly it means to me. Because, normally, you don’t think about it, do you? Unless, sometimes, you are asked to add the number of your teaching years while putting together a bio for one conference or another…Or when you bump into ‘a student of yore’ and you notice how much they’ve grown. And how much time has passed.
I was teaching, peaceful and quiet, thinking that ‘It’s ok. Everything is going to be alright. The patient will live’. I was not happy because I really hate coming into the classroom not having planned my classes. I was not excited about the potential challenge and an opportunity to experiemnt and learnt. But I was angry, scared or even stressed out, just teaching. Anyway, the kids were in the classroom already so, if not for anyone else’s sake, it would be recommended that I behave for them. I don’t know if it works for everyone in the exact same way, but for me, yes, the students’ presence (insert here: kids, teens, adults, trainees) has a calming effect on me. All in all, that would be the definition of ‘experienced’ for me.
Then, this particular lesson (or the course) has made me think again about the case when students, who belong to different age groups but study together. Of course, there is a reason why we take these two factors into consideration: the age and the language level and we want to provide the best service, always suited to the individual students’ needs. There is no doubt about that. However, at the same time, over the years, I have been in a situation when the younger were together with the older and it did work. Because it did work in that case, too. It has worked, rather, (we are not done yet) and I am trying to understand why and how.
I don’t fully understand it yet, I am collecting evidence, so to speak, but whenever that happens, I always think of siblings playing together and doing things together, despite the age gap.
The most interesting part of it was the teacher’s brain at work. At one point in the lesson, I realised that it was working on as many as four levels simultaneously. One – because I was actually fully involved in the activity that was taking place at the moment, a game that we were all playing. Two – because I was thinking fast on my feet, trying to plan the next few activities, until the break. Three – because there was also the second half of the lesson after the break and I had to plan this part, too and four – because I was doing all that and also reflecting, on the go.
It was not all about killing the time and making sure that the kids leave the classroom alive and kicking, happy and healthy. It was about making sure that the children learn something and that we meet our lesson aims, although, admittedly, these were the aims that were set in the course of the lesson. All in all, it was a successful lesson. We learnt and practised some vocabulary and the kids learnt the room as humans who can use ‘I like’, ‘I don’t like’ and ask the question ‘Have you got?’ because we needed it in a game. If I had been observing this lesson, I would have given myself a ‘To Standard (strong)’ or maybe even ‘Above standard’. What a relief:-)
The only problem with it is that the brain gets really, really tired with such entertainment. As soon as the kids left, I just slumped on the desk and took a 15-min power nap, then lunch. Then, I was good to go, as if nothing ever happened.
Coda and the follow-up
Last but not least, it made me think about all the less experienced teachers and how they might react in such a situation and what I could tell them to help deal with the stress and the students in such a situation.
For that reason, next blog series will be about that, landing on the teaching Mars and surviving. I am planning a post on the top ten resources that might come in handy and that will help to save the world (kind of) and on a three posts in which I am going to share my ideas for the lessons based almost entirely on paper. Soon in cinemas near you!
Good news: I am working on a proper article at the moment and having lots of fun with that.
Bad news: This one article is a priority at the moment and all the creative energy needs to be going towards that. Or I will never ever finish.
Good news: I have an article that I commited for the IH Journal in spring 2019, in which I am sharing some of the ways of using dice in the EFL classroom. Two years on, dice are still one of my favourite tools, so here you are, if you are looking for ideas.
PS And as a bonus, here are the two posts from Naomi Epstein, my blogger friend.
This one here, the introduction to using different types of dice. The other one, here, about D.G., the angry dice. I really liked the story of D.G. and I am planning to use it in a revision game with my students as soon as they get back from their holidays. Something along the lines of ‘Roll. Give me 7 examples of…’ or ‘Tell me about. You have to use…(roll) 5 sentences’. Or something like that. We will definitely get back to it:-)
This is my first wonderful adventure with writing in the area of EFL, with some of the resources and strategies that can be used in the classroom to develop the speaking skills in the pre-primary and primary learners.
There are many roads that lead to Rome which here will be a synonym of a good lesson. Sometimes it is boredom, when the teacher cannot even bear to look at the coursebook and the official educational materials. Sometimes it is the students, when they bring their world with them, when they learn quickly or, why not, when they don’t behave in the way that we would dream of. Sometimes, it is a random resource, a storybook or craft materials, that you really (really!) want to use.
Sometimes, however, you also find yourself in the middle of a film, Off the Record, a documentary on Laurent Garnier, the DJ, and you gasp because you find out how among all the other things cool that he has done and does, he also takes part in music lessons in a small school, somewhere in a French village, and there, with teens, he explores the meaning of different music styles, he gives them a chance to experience different kinds of music and he guides them into translating these impressions into visual art…
I gasped because I could not decide which reaction I should go for first. Shout out loud ‘Laurent, I love you!’ (just because he finds time to do something for his community and because of all things, he chooses to teach)? Shout out ‘Laurent, me, too! We do it, too!’ (because we entertain ourselves with my students with a similar exercise, albeit on a much smaller scale, when we play the Musical Challenge)? Or shout out ‘Pause the movie, for a moment, for heavens’ sake! I am being flooded with ideas and I need time to take notes!’ Because the Musical Challenge I have put together, good as it was as a warmer or a speaking activity, turned out to have a lot more potential and it be a brand new direction and at the same time an opportunity to combine teaching English through Art that I have been toying with for years now, craft and project work that, I was sure, could help me generate lots and lots of English. What’s not to like?
Crumbs # 19: Teaching English Through Music: Igor Stravinsky
The notes below constitute the outline of a 45-minute lesson I taught during the summer to my primary students aged 8 – 9, of a strong A1 / YLE Movers level whose speaking and listening skills are closer to A2 / YLE Flyers. I had only two students on the day so we did all of the activities whole class.
Revision
A revision game: adjectives – opposites, with the wordwall cards and then a miming game (one of the students choosing the word to mime for the other kids to guess). Another option are the present tenses or the verbs that the kids might need for storytelling.
Russian fairytales
Illustrations of the four traditional stories : About the Fisherman and the Goldfish, the Three Pigs, The Hen Ryaba and The Firebird
Kids turn turns to retell the stories. There is no pre-teaching of any vocabulary, the teacher feeds in the words on the go.
Kids choose their favourite story and talk about their favourite Russian story
Listening number 1
Teacher shows the photograph of Igor Stravinsky, introduces him briefly
Teacher tells the students that he wrote music for one of the four stories
Teacher plays a short piece of the Firebird (for example 38’40 – 40′) and asks the students to guess which of the stories the music could illustrate
Feedback, teacher tells them that the music they heard is called ‘Firebird’ and that it is one of the most popular pieces of modern music.
Listening number 2 / Art
Teacher gives out the template and tells the students that it is a cover of a record / CD with Firebird and that they they are going to design the cover and the illustration.
Teacher says that they are going to listen to another piece of music and draw what they hear. Teacher tells them that perhaps it will be for people who don’t know the story of the firebird, who don’t know Russian fairytales at all and that we need to help them understand what kind of music they might hear.
‘All ideas are good ideas’ is the motto of all of our creative projects, it is good to bring that up again.
Teacher puts the drawing materials and ideally there would be a choice of pencils, markers, crayons, finger paints, watercolours etc. Each student can choose their own.
Teacher plays the final piece of the Firebird (40′ – 46′) and the students are creating their piece. The length of the listening can be extended, either a longer piece can be chosen or the another excerpt can be added, depending on the group and their involvement.
If possible, the kids can be involved in discussing what the music might be illustrating. The Firebird is very energetic and varied, there is a lot of potential for that.
If there is time, kids can prepare two covers, based on two different excerpts from the suite.
Presentation
Kids take turn to present their album covers. They can use the following questions as framework: What is there in your picture? Why? Do you like the music? Why? What are you thinking about when you are listening to it? Kids can either ask each other these questions or use them to prepare a discourse.
All the album covers are displayed on the walls. If there is time, the group can listen to the chosen excerpt again.
Feedback and error correction.
How it went and what I learnt
In short: we loved it.
The kids produced a lot of language throughout the lesson (the teacher is happy).
The kids loved the fact that they could talk about the stories they knew and that they could paint (something that we rarely do). They seemed to enjoy listening to the music, too.
Observing how their ideas are born and shaped was a fascinating experience for the teacher, too. The first impulse was to draw a bird made of fire but, as they listened on, the other, better, more individual and special things began to appear. And they kept working on them, as the music led them.
Afterwards, they talked a lot about their pictures and the creative process. Normally, I ask if I can take the final product, if it is ok to photograph it or to put it on display. This time they were the ones to ask whether I was going to put them up on the noticeboard. It was a lovely moment.
The thing that surprised me most and that was the biggest challenge (or ‘challenge’) was the same thing that made the activity meaningful, motivating and generative, namely the fact that we used the Russian traditional stories as the basis. First of all, they had a lot to say about them and cutting corners (aka a short summary of the story) was out of the question. They wanted to tell me everything (as in: every little detail, significant or not). Second of all, because they were retelling the stories as they knew them, in Russian, they were very reluctant to give up on the beautiful, literary language for which they are not ready yet, in English and looking for those higher-shelf equivalents did get in the way and it did slow them down. Sometimes they were so unwilling to abandon the beauty that they used Russian. It was touching and it was beautiful and I still have not decided what I can do about it and how I can overcome this ‘problem‘ in the future. Because, of course, I want more!
What you can see in the pictures is a beautiful birch tree Daria and a tsunami, to which a sunrise was added, as an afterthought, a few notes later belongs to Antonina. Mine is the sunset which, lame as it is, I am quite happy with because only now did I make a connection between the firebird and the sun. Let it be.
Happy teaching!
P.S. Why Stravinsky? Apart from the fact that “Firebird’ is one of my favourite music pieces ever, it happened so that a few months ago, I used him as a reference with my young teens and their brains just went blank. They had never heard of him. Naturally, I decided to fix that. I rather like the idea that in about twenty years from now, my kids will hear the name Stravinsky in the conversation and their first association will be ‘Yes, we had this lesson once with our English teacher, Anka…’
Malevich and his Black Square are next in line, for the same reason.
It is quite likely that the next few posts to come will be (heavily) influenced by the very intense experience of tutoring on the IH CYLT course. I train up teachers throughout the whole academic year, in one way or another, but that particular course is as engaging and absorbing as it is demanding. And, naturally, inspiring. Hence this post.
First of all, we love our coursebooks. We love our authors. We love our publishers. We would never give up and teach completely without the coursebook because we appreciate the curriculum, the ready-made activities, the photographs, the audio and the ideas. And we are beyond happy to be able to have a coursebook from a recognised publisher who has been in the business for decades and who is putting a lot of effort into putting together a coursebook. We have worked without coursebooks (not fun), we have worked with horrendous coursebooks from aspiring local publishers/writers (not fun) and, having been in business for decades (oh dear), we have experienced the coursebooks of the 70s and 80s (not fun) and it is obvious the coursebooks have become better. Much better, in fact.
But.
My favourite metaphor
A hammer is a very useful thing, no doubt about that, but would any carpenter let the hammer decide what the table should look like? A knife is a wonderful tool, too, but no chef would be asking the knife for advice on how to cook a steak. Scissors, another amazing creation, but no hair stylist would let the scissors take the lead and make decisions about the haircut. They are all tools and what matters here is the human that manipulates them, a human who understands when the tools contribute to the aim that he or she has and then they don’t and have to be put away (fixed, sharpened, and so on, depending on which part of the metaphor you choose).
In the same vein, with all due respect and no offence meant, the coursebook cannot make the decisions about the lesson. It is a tool, a great tool but only a tool that has to be used wisely.
‘Easy for you to say. You don’t have to teach and you won’t be assessed…’
…is actually something that one of my trainees actually said during the lesson planning session when I suggested (yet again) to put the coursebook aside. On a few other occasions not a word was said but I caught a glance or two that did express the same thought. As if I was the meanest creature in the world, asking the drowning man to let go of the swim ring they are desperately holding on to…
It is, of course, true, I am not teaching to be assessed (well, not on the course) and yes, it is easy to (carelessly) suggest putting the book aside. Why would I want to do that? Ok, here are the reasons:
The coursebook authors do not know the children (or the students) who sit in your classroom and, try hard as they may, they will never be able to come up with the activities that suit those students’ needs. Only the teacher who works with them can do it.
The students for whom the coursebooks are written belong to some non-existant category of children: they never cause any problems, they never misbehave, they always come energetic and motivated, they are always focused, they understand and follow instructions at the first attempt, they always match the coursebook level and the ministry description of what a seven- or ten-year old should be like and they are interested in all the possible subjects in the world. Unlike our Pasha, Sasha and Fedya.
The coursebook authors choose the texts or vocabulary or listening or grammar practice activities based on the principles that might not go with the abilities or interests of your students.
The summer courses are a perfect opportunity to let the hair down and see what teaching can be like, when the student is at the heart of everything that happens in the classroom
The training teaching practice on the course is even a perfect-er opportunity because forgetting the coursebook is done under the supervision and with the help of a tutor who will help to make sure that this grand experiment does not get out of hand and that there is a happy ending to that story. There will be also your peers and, obviously, seven heads thinking together are much better than one.
Forgetting the coursebook also means that the teachers set themselves free and start thinking about the lesson (or the course) in a more organic way. What topic do you want to teach? What vocabulary would you like to include? Which grammar structures will go well with that? What can be the main productive activity? What do you need to prepare your students for it? Do you want to include a song, a story, a video? How much time do you have for all that? And when all these questions are answered (and only then!), opening the book to check how many of your personal dreams can come true with whatever is in the coursebook. Not the other way round.
Adapting, creating or finding all the missing element will take time but the final product – a lesson that you want to teach, is definitely worth it. Even if it is not the best lesson you ever teach. Learning from mistakes is as important as learning from the great achievements.
The happy ending (because there is one!)
Breathe, dear teacher, it is not forever, of course. Nobody is taking the coursebooks away (we love them, remember?) but I can (almost) guarantee that one summer like that, at a teacher training course, at a summer city camp or at a regular summer camp in a far-away forest can change your approach to teaching forever, with young learners or with adults, with the priorities set right: the teacher and the students, the lesson, the coursebook and lesson planning will never be the same!
Happy teaching!
Instead of a coda, a song by the Chemical Brothers which inspired the title of the blog. I am thinking that I will have to a lot more of the Chemical Brothers’ songs
P.S. My trainees on the course were amazing and I managed to convince them to let go of the coursebook at least once while on the course, partially or fully. With great results. So there.
