Anka Zapart

Crumbs #5 End-of-course Goodbye-Letter

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This is one of my favourite end-of-course activities for all young learners.

Instructions

You need a piece of A4 paper per student. You can use regular white or colourful photocopying paper.

Write the names of the students on the sheets, one per student, and put them up in the hallway, ideally at a distance from each other. Have a card with your name, too but keep it in the classroom. It will be used for demonstration.

Show your card and tell the students that everyone has a card like that in the hallway. Explain that they are going to walk around and write something for everyone.

If necessary, pre-teach or revise some language, for instance ‘You are…’ and adjectives or ‘Thank you for…’.

Clarify the rules: a) we don’t come up to the card with our name, b) we write something for everyone, c) we can leave anonymous notes or we can write our names, d) we only write nice things, e) if we have nothing nice to write, we only leave a smiley

Give our markers, line up and go out. Monitor and keep an eye on the clock. This part of the task takes about 15 minutes with a group of twelve.

Ask the students to go back into the classroom and quickly collect the letters. Give them out in the final lesson.

Why we love it

  • It is a great opportunity for the students to read and to write something that they really care about and it is a great souvenir from the course, handmade and personalised.
  • The students have a lot of freedom and can write as much as they want or only leave a smiley in case they really have nothing to say.
  • This activity can be adapted to the level and age of the students. It can be done in the classroom, with the papers being passed from student to student, until they make a full circle and return to the owner and the youngest kids can only draw some simple shapes for example a smiley, a heart, a sun, a star and their name.
  • The first time I did this activity, I planned for the kids to re-write the letters before handing them out to the addressee but they stopped me (‘But Anka, this is much cooler and more beautiful!!!!”) and they were right!
  • I keep my card on the board but I don’t actively encourage the students to write something for me, too. Somehow they always do anyway))

Happy teaching!

About growing cactuses.

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No, just kidding.

Teaching teens.

A few weeks ago, I got to do my personal version of The Matrix: Reloaded: after eight years’ break, I went back to the forest to teach at a summer camp. If you’ve never had a chance to try it, there is one thing you should know – camp, among all the other things, is also an alternative universe and an academic year in a nutshell, and hence, a perfect opportunity for reflection. This time about teenagers…In a flipped classroom manner.

The last scene

It is one of my end-of-the course traditions, a good-bye letter writing. I participate, too because it is a chance to tell my students that they are amazing. The card with my name is in the classroom, to model the activity but I never specifically encourage them to leave any notes there. Asking for compliments is just…not cool, basically. But, somehow, this page never stays blank. Magic, I presume😊

I don’t need to tell you that it is really sweet and touching to be getting a letter like that:

‘You are the best teacher’‘I liked ur lessons, thanks’, ‘Thank you for interesting lessons! You are the best teacher’, ‘I do love you!’, ‘love u’, ‘it’s really interesting and funny. It’s better than lessons at school’

A letter that is followed by an avalanche of hugs. And a cabbage, a капуста, a group hug, another camp tradition. In the middle of which, this year exclusively, one is just trying not to think of the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing.

Looking at the last scene, you’d think that we had two weeks’ worth of the most amazing lessons, in the great atmosphere, with the students who wanted to learn and make the most of the summer camp lessons’ opportunities. A dream come true!

Only it wasn’t that.

The typical lesson

It’s not the students tried to find excuses not to be in class or that they complained or, even refused to participate point blank. No, they were there, every morning, all twelve of them, they did do what I asked them to but a regular lesson would also feature at least one of the following:

  • Yawning
  • Resting their heads on the tables
  • Sighing deeply when you present the model of the project
  • Sighing deeply when you explain how the walking gallery is going to work
  • Sighing deeply when you hand out the papers
  • Rolling their eyes when you want them to mingle
  • Chatting (in English but not about what they were supposed to)
  • Not sitting like the model students from the stock photography snapshots
  • Asking (seemingly) provocative questions
  • Saying just what they think, no filter whatsoever
  • Answering in single words
  • Never volunteering just to do something
  • Questioning the point of every other activity and trying to convince you to abort the whole plan
  • Sitting with a perfectly expressionless face
  • Sitting quietly until you call out their name and ask them directly

The bad news is…

…that, paradoxically, starting the academic year and the course might actually be easier with the younger students, primary or pre-schoolers. Yes, classroom management and behaviour will be a challenge but the kids will be expecting to be charmed, to be swept off their feet with your puppets, stickers, flashcards and your smile. You will have to cast the correct spell but once you do, they will be on your side, within the first five minutes of the lesson, stars in their eyes… And yes, if you are confused and you don’t quite know what you are doing, the magic will be very short-lived and you will be in trouble, but a little bit later.

It does not really work that way with teenagers. They will probably not be running around the room and demolishing the classroom while waiting for you. They will not cry or ask to go out to see mum. They will not fight over the last pink marker. What a relief. Still, the first few lessons might feel a bit awkward for the teacher. No matter how much enthusiasm you project and how much energy and effort you put into the lesson preparation, the reaction that you get might still be more resembling of Coke that has been standing in the fridge for too long – still admittedly a liquid, but as flat and un-fizzy as could be. And nowhere near the ‘WOW’ effect that you were going for. In lesson one and in lesson two and in lesson three…Oups.

The good news is…

…that it is just the way things are and that it is not the teacher’s fault, usually. Teenagers are a more demanding audience and it takes more than just one academic hour and one set of stickers to charm them.  

It makes me think of a window sill or, better even, a greenhouse, with long rows of pots, with all the imaginable species and variations of cactuses. Most of them with needles, long or short and always sharp. Or those that look like soft white hair only are as prickly and unpleasant as all the more obvious ones.

It would be silly of me to think that one blog post can effectively summarise everything that has been written about teenagers and growing up so I am not even going to try. But perhaps these few comments and ideas will make someone’s life in the classroom a bit easier. Here we go.

Peers are more important than adults.

We, dear teacher, we do not really matter that much. We are not the priority. In a group in a language school that has just been put together and in which the students don’t know each other, their energy and time and attention will inevitably be devoted to figuring each other out and finding their own place in the group. At a state school, they will probably know each other very well and the group will have been formed already but, because of that, they will act as a group, as a team, all against the world (which, in this case, is us, unfortunately). It will have nothing to do with aggression and real dislike. It will be all about not breaking the ranks to make the teacher happy. Because, really, who would want to do that?

You can help them by facilitating interaction with different people in the group. If it is teacher-imposed, it will be easier for them to put up with. They are not losing the face because they have to do it but they will be given a chance to get to know each other and to slowly bond with everybody, working together on a task, playing the game, role-playing and so on. Especially if done frequently, in a random manner (for example using cards with their names that one of the students will pick out from the bag, thus forming the teams) and if punctuated with the periods of ‘the safety blanket’ that is sitting and collaborating with their favourite people.

It works well both for the newly-formed groups and for the existing groups that the teacher only takes over because in any case it gives plenty of opportunities to observe how different students interact with different partners. For example, someone who, at the first glance, looks like the ringleader of the group might turn out to be the most laborious student when separated from his or her followers…And the quiet student might start talking when paired-up with someone who is not their best friend.

The teacher is, potentially, an enemy, too.

First of all, the teacher is old and has no idea what life is about, what struggles they everyday might bring and how difficult it is to be a teenager. Yes, the teacher used to be a teenager, too, but, clearly it has been a while and things have been forgotten already.

Second of all, the teacher seems to be on some kind of a mission (duh!) and she always wants something. Usually, that particular thins is the least interesting option of all of those available at the moment. As if that has not been bad enough, the teacher has the power to make the students do things, even if only those little, non-oppressive things such as answering questions, completing the homework tasks or changing partners. Fighting back is possible, but in the end, it is the adult who has the winning card.

Last but not least, this teacher is new and it will take some time for everyone to figure out if he or she is to be their own Professor Dumbledore, Professor Snape, Professor McGonagall or …Professor Umbridge. Teenagers do not have a lot of life experience but all of them have already had a chance to be exposed to different kinds of teachers, not only in books and films. They will be bringing this prior knowledge into our lesson, too and we will have no choice but to deal with that.

You can help by being yourself and smiling and by not letting their apparent lack of enthusiasm get to you. ‘Time is on your side’, as Mick Jagger says.

A few years ago, Katherine Bilsborough gave a great talk at the IH YL Conference in which she called for ‘More Democracy in the Classroom’ by getting the students involved in the shaping of the lesson and taking responsibility for it. It was a real eye-opener for me as I realised that my 4-year-olds get to make more decisions about the lesson (the favourite songs, the favourite games, the colour of the chair etc) than my pre-adults, who, actually, are the ones who need the most practice.

Drafting the class contract might be the first step but the students can also make some decisions regarding the homework they want to do, the order of the activities in the lesson, the test date, the topics to include…All within reason, of course, but something to let them see that it is not a one man show and that they matter, too.

They are looking for and finding their own voice.

That is why they are always ready to potentially question anything that we say (we are old, we don’t matter). They will be doing their ‘Mary, Mary, Quite contrary’ just to see where it gets them and how you are going to react to their actions and views and opinions and questions. Will you accept their weirdness and their alternative approach or will you try to mould them into something?

You can help by developing their critical thinking as well as including a lot of open-ended activities and opportunities for them to express their opinions and views. Teaching them how to agree in English, how to disagree politely, how to express doubt, justify opinion will all come in handy. All of it will come in handy, in your English lessons and in their lives.

The last scene. Revisited.

So here they are, your cactuses. Until they know that they are safe, until they confirm that they can trust you, they will be not be ‘nice’ and ‘sweet’ and ‘lovely students’ that every teacher dreams off.

It might take some time. It might even take the whole course. And only when it is time to say good-bye, during one of those final lessons, they take the masks off and you get to see the real, vulnerable people. People who like you, people who respect you and people who appreciate what you do. Even though they do their best not to show it.

They are also the people who care enough to ask ‘Will you remember us?’

Of course, I will.

Dear teacher, if you are preparing for the first lessons with a new group of teens, just fasten the seatbelt and get ready for the ride. And if you have got any oven mittens lying around, pack these, too. They might be just the thing you need.

Happy teaching!

P.S. I have always loved cactuses:-)

The first VYL lesson survival kit

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My first VYL teaching experience…

…was in Spain. There were eleven kids in the group, we met for two real hours but only once a week. Some of the students were five and some were six and already in school which, of course, made everything a bit easier.

Our classroom was not quite what you would call a VYL teacher’s dream come true. We had huge, wardrobe-size tables that no one, save for Hulk, possibly, would have been able to move and they were so big that when my students sat down, they were barely visible. There were only eleven little heads bobbing above these huge tops…

In terms of the space, we had a tiny strip of the floor in the aisle and another one between the first row and the podium with the teacher’s desk stood because, of course, there had to be a podium. I did not speak my students’ first language and they were beginners in English.

If that had not been enough, just before the first lesson, I was informed that one of my students was allergic to most foods, and the allergy was so strong that we were not allowed to bring anything edible into the classroom, not to put his life at risk. I was also told that, should I notice anything suspicious, any potential symptoms of an allergic reaction, I should immediately leave the classroom with my underage students (one of them unwell) and run about 200 meters along the hallway to fetch the person who was qualified and equipped with the injection that would save his life.

As a result, naturally, I spent the entire academic year stressing out to the maximum of my brain’s capacity. Because something might happen to him, he might try to tell me and I might not understand. And perhaps I don’t run fast enough to get to the office room on time…Or I have to leave all the kids in the classroom and it will be a huge traumatic experience for them…I was dying before, during and after the lesson and perhaps because of that I managed not to focus too much on the potential methodological failings of my first year with the little ones. We had fun, we learnt a lot and my kids were amazing. And, probably, because of that experience, I am what I am today. Alvaro, Jesus, Luz, Uliana, Itziar, Amalia, Oihana, Beatrice, Andre, Eva, Maria. The amazing students.

If you are about to start teaching English to preschoolers…

Let’s start from a happy ending because there will be one: you will start teaching a new group of preschool beginners, they will fall in love with you and with learning English. You will get the access to a source of pure, undiluted life energy twice a week. You will adore teaching the future to speak a foreign language. The parents will be grateful, the kids will start shouting their first words as soon as they enter the school. The songs you teach will stay with them forever and they will sing them while in the car on the way home. And, many many years later, while they are taking their FCE or CAE exam in a few years’ time, they are going to look back and smile thinking of their first English teacher. See? A happy ending.

Before you get there, though, and it is still a long, long way from now, you just have to survive the first 45 minutes of the first lesson.

Surprise!

That is potentially the biggest problem that during that first lesson anything can happen, literally anything. Some kids will have already started kindergarten so they are used to staying on their own, with ‘a stranger’. Some children have started ballet classes or swimming lessons so they know that mum is not always around and, instead, there is another adult and that they will be ‘learning’. Some kids have had a conversation with their parents that prepared them for this new experience and now they know what to expect. Some children may have even learnt a few words, some red, blue, green, pink and onetwthreefourfivesixseveneightnineten, usually like that, as one word. Some are ready.

However, it will be only some of them and this year, due to the pandemic, possibly fewer than in a regular year since for quite a few of them the academic year and the socialising would have been interrupted. The thing is that you really need to meet them in person and then start discovering them all by yourself.

What can go wrong?

Well, let me think and reminisce a little:

  • tears as soon as you enter the room (for the first two weeks straight, actually)
  • running in the hallway screaming (in their L1) ‘I don’t want to learn any English’.
  • lying on the carpet for 40 out of 45 minutes of the lesson time, looking at you but absolutely refusing to interact in any way whatsoever
  • covering their ears when you speak English
  • responding to you in Turkish (the L2), not in Russian (the L1) and not in English (the foreign language, that was a fun one!)
  • leaving the room to bring the nanny in
  • hiding under the table. Standing by the door during the entire lesson
  • speaking very very quietly
  • asking to see mum every ten minutes
  • asking why you don’t speak Russian
  • hugging the bear and not letting go

Just to name a few things.

Ten things that you can do

One. Do not panic.

Being experienced does give you some heads-up, true, but it is a bit nerve-wracking anyway, no matter how many years you have on your resume. It is quite likely that the first lesson will be an awkward one. It’s ok.

Two. The parents are on your side.

It might not always be possible but it would be great to meet the parents and let them know what you are going to do during the first lesson. Ask the parents to stay at the school, close to the classroom. You will be on your own during the lesson but it is good to know that, should it come to the worst, you can just open the door and call Masha’s dad or Tima’s mum to help you deal with the tears or the unwanted behaviour. Keep the doors of the classroom closed and collect the kids in the hallway. Line the kids up and find out what their names are. Say hello and count everyone. Open the door to the classroom and take the kids in, one by one. The parents will help you here, they will wait with their children and keep an eye of them while you are organising the students in the room.

After the lesson, take the kids out and explain the homework to the parents, too.

Three. Get ready.

Prepare a lesson plan, trying to predict what can go wrong, with the classroom management, instructions or materials and to prepare a plan B. I have found it very useful to put up a poster on the wall with a simplified version of your lesson plan, big font and colour-coded, something that you will be able to glance at without turning your back or taking the eyes off your group.

Get all your resources ready and in order. You will have your plate full as it is so you don’t need to wonder where the pencils are or try to reorganize all your papers when the kids are already in the classroom.

Four. Priorities.

One of the most important things during the first lesson and during the first ten or even twenty lessons, is working on the classroom routine. Your students have no previous learning experience of that kind. They don’t know what is expected of them because they literally, have never done that before. Go step by step, especially between the stages or when you are moving between the parts of the room. In a few weeks’ time, yes, you will be able to say ‘Everyone, let’s make a circle’ but for the time being, do get up, stand where the circle is supposed to be and call Petya. Wait for him. Then call Misha, wait for him to come. Then Marusya, wait for her to join the circle…Don’t worry that you are wasting the precious lesson time. No, you are not. You are establishing the routine and investing in the future.

Five. Your basic teaching tools.

Don’t forget that you have the most important teaching tools on you – your face, your hands and your voice. Use them to help you, to show the kids what to do, to praise them or to discipline them. They don’t speak the language, yet. Your face and your voice and gestures must match the message you want to convey, your soft voice and a smile for praising, your other voice and a serious face when you want to tell them that something should not be happening.

Six. Model.

Demonstrate. Model. Show. Always. Verbal instructions and ICQs (instruction checking questions) matter, too but your students will not know any of the words you are using and modelling will be essential. No matter what your activities are, give the instructions and do it first yourself, possibly a few times. If you are going to use a handout, prepare two spare copies for yourself – one to complete before the lesson and to use as the finished product to show the kids what the aim is and another one to be completing with the kids during the lesson.

Seven. Peer observations

Ideally, there would be enough time for you to arrange a live peer observation session with somes more experienced colleagues. Watching real kids during a real lesson can be especially beneficial, and even more so if you can have a look at the lesson plan and to talk to the teacher after the lesson. Arranging peer observations of the online lessons should be even easier to manage. In the school where I work, we also record lessons for teacher training purposes and we keep them on the database. This way, the newly qualified teachers can access them easily and watch them from home.

If none of these is available, there is still youtube and lots and lots of videos of teachers who want to share their activities and favourite tools. Every little does actually help. A lot!

Eight. Do the reading.

There might not always be enough time for the extensive reading and research before the first lesson but you have to start somewhere. Have a look at these two posts, on the methodology videos and the literature devoted to teaching English to very young learners.

Nine. Smile.

No matter what, keep it up. Smile.

Ten. Bring the ferret.

Last but not least, to quote a great mainstream Hollywood manual into the work with the very young learners ‘The kindergarten is like the ocean. You don’t want to turn your back to it’. Kind of.

But, actually, go on and re-watch the Kindergarten Cop with your teacher’s eyes. Especially the ferret bit…

Have a good one! And remember – the second lesson will be better than the first and the third one – better than the second one. I promise!

Happy teaching!

P.S. Here you can read about how I plan my lessons with pre-schoolers and here about our entering the room routine.

There is one more, newer post, with more focus on the teacher during the first VYL lesson.

Colourful Semantics in EFL?

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Have you got something that you could file under ‘professional interests‘ (or, more to the point in some cases, ‘professional obsessions’)? Mine is language production.

That is why I am always on the lookout for new ideas on how to trick my students into producing more and more. And more. Some of these ideas can be found on this blog, in the posts on the discourse clock, pairwork for pre-schoolers, using songs or cognitive skills-based activities to develop speaking. Today – a new post in the series.

It was probably one of those free-falling searches on Instagram, with no rhyme and reason, that got me to Saffira Mattfield’s (@onlinespeechie) Instagram post on Colourful Semantics. A very special moment, like when you stumble upon a proper toolbox with the screwdrivers and bolts and saws and monkey wrenches…Or, when in the supermarket, you wander into the baking aisle and, all of a sudden, all the professional decorations and ingredients right within your arm’s reach…This amazing and a very powerful feeling of: ‘I could do so much with it!’

Colourful Semantics

The approach was created in the 90s by a UK-based speech therapist Alison Bryan in order to help children develop their speaking skills especially as regards the use of full sentences, storytelling and so on.

The main idea behind colourful semantics is the colour-coding of parts of speech and the parts of the sentence and developing the habit of including all the necessary ‘ingredients’ in the simpler or more complex sentences. This is done with the use of the cards, like those in the photograph below. Subject (who?) is orange, verb (what doing) – yellow, object (what?) – green and, location (where?) – blue.

Colourful Semantics cards from @onlinespeechie Saffira Mattfield

Children start with building simple sentences by using only two cards, for example ‘The girl’ (an orange card) and ‘is painting’ (a yellow card) and putting them next to each other on the template. Later on they move to constructing sentences made of three elements, for example ‘The girl’ (an orange card), ‘is painting’ (a yellow card) and ‘a balloon’ (a green card) or even four, by adding the blue card with the location, for example ‘in the park’. They not only learn to remember to include all the elements but they can also manipulate them physically. The sentence itself becomes less abstract since it all its key elements are represented visually.

If you are interested in all the details, please have a look at the bibliography.

Colourful Semantics cards from @onlinespeechie Saffira Mattfield

Colourful Semantics in EFL? Yes, please!

Colourful semantics perfectly resonates with everything that I have been doing in my lessons. Grammar structures and the format of the sentence are an abstract concept, beyond the grasp of pre-schoolers especially those who live in their own country, surrounded mostly by their mother tongue and not exposed to a sufficient amount of the target language. By using some kind of a visual representation of the parts of speech or the parts of the sentence, we make it more accessible to them and we enable production.

This visual representation can be realised through:

  • using gestures such as ‘pointing at yourself and sliding the hand along your body to draw attention to your clothes’ for ‘I am wearing’
  • using symbols such as ‘a heart’ for ‘I like’ and ‘a crossed heart’ for ‘I don’t like’
  • using flashcards such as ‘big’ and ‘cat’ to elicit a chunk ‘a big cat’

And…colours!

While making the sentences, students will be required to use all the required colours, ‘to tick all the boxes’, this way building a full sentence or a phrase. Of course, they might require more support from the teacher who will have to ensure that they did not skip any of the elements, but, the hope is that with time, including all the elements will become a habit.

Colourful semantics in the EFL classroom: how to get started

Step one: very easy

Get in touch with Saffira (@onlinespeechie) in order to get your own set of the ready-made cards. It is a perfect way of familiarising yourself with the colourful semantics in practice and to understand how it can be adapted to our EFL context. Although, of course, these cards can be used in the EFL classroom as they are, depending on the level of your students.

Step two: adapting the idea to your groups’ needs

The materials presented below were used with a group of the second level of four- and five-year-olds. Since they were still learning online, they were not using any real cards but only the visuals created with the Miro board. The unit was built around the topic of the house and included some furniture vocabulary, the prepositional phrases ‘the cat is on the sofa’ and some of the Present Continuous based on a story as well as a song.

The boards were used to practise these phrases were used later in the unit, when the student had become familiar with all the basic components. The main structure ‘The mice are having fun’ was introduced through a song. The first time the cards were used, the teacher was a very active participant, taking turns with all the kids to make sentences. In the following lessons, the teacher only modelled the activity and was responsible for moving the pictures around in accordance with the sentences the kids were producing.

The first set was designed to support the production of the sentences with the preposition ‘on’ which were later practised in a freer practise activity (‘My room’) whereas the second one focused on Present Continuous which was later reinforced in a storybook activity.

For the time being, a decision was made not to adapt the original colour-coding system and instead, a set of colours was assigned freely to each structure, to help the children associate them with each particular components of different structures, rather than with the whole system.

Reflection time

I have just started experimenting with this approach in my classes but the first steps in the world of Colourful Semantics have been more than exciting. This is definitely not the end of that adventure. Right now I am working on a set of cards that I could share with the parents of my students so that they could be printed, cut up and used at home.

Want to find out more? Start here:

Bryan, A. (1997) Colourful Semantics: thematic role therapy. In Chiat, S., Law, J. and Marshall, J. (Eds) Language Disorders in Children and Adults: Psycholinguistic approaches to therapy. London

Bolderson et al in (2011) Colourful Semantics: A Clinical Investigation. Child Language Teaching and Therapy October 2011 vol. 27 no. 3 344-353

Saffira Mattfiled @onlinespeechie

Colourful Semantics from London Speech Therapy

P.S. A request!

It is very simple.

I would like to know a tiny little bit more about my readers. There are so many of you, popping in here, again and again, and the numbers of visitors and visits are going up and make my heart sweel with joy. But I realised I don’t know anything about my readers and I would love to know, a tiny little bit more.

Hence the survey.

Crumbs #4 Sheppard Software

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Are you thinking what I am thinking?

Does the name in the title look to you like the most uninspiring name and something that in no way could be related to teaching English to children or to children in general? Yes, same here.

Sheppard Software is a perfect example of how a random name can be a perfect cover up for a treasure chest, full of amazing tools that will make a VYL and a YL teacher happy.

www.sheppardsoftware.com

Instructions

Go to https://www.sheppardsoftware.com/ but first make sure that you have at least an hour to kill. There is so much there that even an adult (who is definitely NOT a fan of computer games) gets glued to the screen and wants to try out and play and play and play. Now that you have been warned, you are ready.

The VYL teachers: start with the preschool section https://www.sheppardsoftware.com/preschool/preschool.htm and start discovering. You can find here some games to practice colours, numbers, alphabet, shapes and animals.

The primary EFL teachers: you can start anywhere. It will all depend on what topic you are planning to teach. The website has a lot to offer to anyone who is teaching CLIL, for example Maths, Science, Art, Geography, Chemistry, Seasons, History… If you don’t have any specific idea in mind, you may as well start where I started at the Food Chain Game https://www.sheppardsoftware.com/science/animals/games/food-chain/ and think of all its potential while having fun playing. Then, slowly, bit by bit start browsing through the other gems

All the teachers: do yourself a favour and start with the sound off. It is great that practically everything on the page has got the audio added on, instructions, noises for animals and so but I can tell you that even a tiny little movement of the mouse/ cursor on the screen can lead to a lot maddening noise, so beware and tread lightly.

We loved it because

  • It it is beautiful
  • It has a lot of potential for speaking activities.
  • It can be used to teach a great range of CLIL topics but it can also be used to supplement any vocabulary / structure lessons with primary and pre-primary, online and offline.
  • the games can be shared with parents after the lesson and the students can play all of them at home again (and again and again)

The Unthinkable or About choosing to stay online with VYLs.

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To online or not to online, that is the question?

No, not really. That, for sure was never a question!

Not for me, that is. I am a dinosaur teacher and I had always been against teaching pre-schoolers online. Or, actually, teaching online in general. If, before the 15th of March 2020, you had asked me what I thought about it, my answer would have been as short as it would have been decisive. No.

No. No. No.

I love my beautiful classroom, all the puppets, the flashcards…My rucksack that makes me look and feel like a proper Mary Poppins, the box with all the precious junk. How we sit in a circle to read a story and how we make stuff or play with a Magic Bag…

But, then, hey-ho, the pandemic happened and I and we just moved online. Just like that. Just to prove that the EFL teachers are the most amazing species. Just to see whether one can, in fact, develop professionally, at a head-spinning pace, learning about new approaches, techqniues, platforms, games, tools, tricks, websites, solutions…and about their effective use in the online EFL lesson.

Yes, indeed, one can. In March many of us (including myself) had very little or no idea about the online classes but look at us now. Superheroes!

But guess what? The Universe had other surprises in store for us (I mean, of course, it is 2020, the year of surprises), like this idea, here…

‘Can we just stay online?’

I don’t know about you but I have spent the last 100+ days dreaming and daydreaming of going back offline. But while I was doing this, the other stakeholders had their own ideas and this is how we (the parents, the admin and the Mary Poppins here) found ourselves discussing the options and, actually, willingly, considering choosing to stay online with the youngest children, regardless of the situation in the city.

Well, that was a bit unexpected, to put it mildly. However, once I got past the stage of the initial shock, I was able to look at it all in a more objective way (as in: not blinded by my own old age and stubbornness:-) and actually see some of the benefits, for all of us.

So here goes, in no particular order

Pre-primary online is better because…

  • We can do it! A good quality online classes for pre-schoolers are not a marketing spin. Impossible is nothing! We learn, we are engaged, we have fun, we produce, we develop, we bond. We are loving it and we are looking forward to the next one. You only need to want to make it work and just like with the regular classes, everyone needs time to get used to each other, the routine and the rules of the game.

  • It’s virus-free. Covid 19 aside, little children get ill more frequently. That’s just the way it is. It does happen that they might not be entirely healthy when they come to their afternoon English lesson or that, being ill, they miss a lesson here and a lesson there and they do not make as much progress as they could have. The online classroom is a perfect solution here: we can all participate, even if we sneeze and cough and the school and the teacher do not lose money over the classes that would have to be cancelled.

  • It lowers the affective filter. There were a few students in my groups this year who definitely benefitted from moving online. In the classroom, they were amazing and a pleasure to teach. They participated but at the same time struggled, now and again, with being separated from mum. They simply flourished in the online classroom. I can see how much more confident and at ease they are, sitting in their own chairs, in their bedrooms, with cats, toys and, most importantly, with Mum at an arm’s reach. What’s not to like here?

  • It is less stressful for the teacher. It is a little know fact that VYL teachers, in the course of their career, develop a set of eyes around their heads and can produce a pair of additional arms, on request. They are ready for everything that is happening, for everything that is to happen and for everything that might potentially happen, too. Why? Because acting in loco parentis is a huge responsibility. And a lot of stress, even for those experienced teachers. The online classroom comes with an army of the best teaching assistants there are: mums, dads, grandmas, sisters, brothers and nannies. The kids are safe, every single one of them.

  • Parents like being in the classroom. So far, the classroom has been this galaxy far-away which the parents had no or very little access to. Of course, teachers talk to parents, they explain the homework, they give feedback. They share songs and send out the invitations to the open lesson, twice a year. Now, however, the whole course is one big open lesson and the parents are a part of it. More even, they are having fun. Not because they want to interrupt or tell the teacher off, not to take over and not because they do not trust the teacher and would rather keep an eye on things. It’s because they can finally see how their children operate in the world of the foreign language, how they become more independent and how they are learning new things and making progress.

  • Parents can get properly involved now. The parents are there, they learn our songs, they play our games and they see exactly what we practise and how. If there is time and willingness, they can easily extend the English lesson time, take it ‘out of the classroom’, this way contributing to their children’s progress. During the lesson time, they can be involved in too, helping the teacher model the activity but also helping their child understand that, yes, you can sometimes speak to your mum in English, too.

  • Flexibility and frequency. 45 minutes in the real classroom is just enough for the little people. 45 minutes in front of the computer screen might be a challenge, especially if they audience is only 3 or 4 years old. For that reason, we decided to experiment and chop the lesson time into smaller bites. Now we meet for thirty or even fifteen minutes at a time but more often. The students are involved throughout and stay focused, the financial expenses or profits are the same, and such lessons are very easy to plan. The most important thing, however, for me as a teacher, are the benefits for the learning process. When you are 5, you learn quickly but you also forget quickly, so by increasing the frequency of the lessons, we create better conditions for learning and can expect better results. It is already happening!

  • The lesson time = the speaking time. The ‘time constraints’ mentioned above as well as the online format had an impact on the lesson structure and routines. The students have the coursebooks but it is used only at home, for revision and for homework. When we meet in our online classroom, it is to learn new things, to listen, to sing and to speak and speak and speak. And I really like that way.

Much to my amazement, I am a happy online teacher but that doesn’t mean that I have stopped dreaming about the offline world or that any decisions have been made. It’s too early, anyway, so I am still on the fence, just ‘sitting, waiting, wishing’, like in a song.

What about you? Has this been your experience, too? Have you noticed any other benefits of the pre-primary EFL online classes? I would love to hear from you.

Happy teaching (online or off:-)

The W.O.R.L.D. or What is an ideal craft activity for the EFL classroom?

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A post for those who have been contemplating using craft activities in their pre-primary lessons, especially for those who have not started yet or those who have tried but have not really been quite successful with it.

First of all, let’s get started from the facts.

Fact number 1: kids love craft and no wonder they do – you get to creat; you produce something real and you can take it home. Even if your creation has a limited durability and appeal and after some time (a day in the playroom and a week on the fridge door) it gets destroyed and lands in the bin or it gets folded carefully and is stored in the ‘Ania/kindergarten’ box.

Fact number 2: teachers are a little bit more cautious with expressing their love for the craft activities. Some of them do, of course, but there are still quite a few who don’t really appreciate all the hurdles you are required to jump over in order to get to the finish line called ‘A great craft EFL lesson’. Because it can get messy, because it requires more preparation than other acitivities and because it needs to be planned properly to ensure that you don’t spend the lesson colouring and cutting and NOT using the target langauge.

Perhaps that is also the reason why even the most recent coursebooks for primary and pre-primary (which shall not be named here) do not really seem to promote craft activities as much as they should in my humble and very subjective opinion. Alas.

Why craft?

There are many great blog posts and articles on the advantages of using craft, I am not going to be attempting to reinvent the wheel here. Here are those that I have found useful. Have a look yourself.

  1. Kids and Arts and Crafts https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/kids-arts-crafts
  2. Arts and Crafts with Young Learners https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/arts-crafts-young-learners
  3. Using Arts and Crafts to teaching languages to young children https://www.teatimemonkeys.com/using-arts-and-crafts-to-teach-languages-to-young-children/
  4. Adding Language to Crafts https://www.englishclub.com/efl/tefl-articles/adding-language-to-crafts/
  5. R. Bastianoni, The Linguistic Benefits of Using Crafts in TEYL http://www.teyl.org/article16.html

Planning a lesson with a craft activity

If you are looking for a manual how to set up a craft activity and what to think about while planning it, then you should definitely start from reading the introduction to the craft chapter in Carol Read’s 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom where she outlines the principles of the MAD FOX (which, by the way can be used as a framework for all of the VYL and YL activities). Strongly recommended!

Where to find a craft activity?

Well, this is the best news ever: nowadays, finding out about available craft activities is really a piece of cake. There are plenty of websites, blogs, Instagram accounts written by and for:

  • The teachers of English as a foreign language
  • The parents of young children
  • The teachers of kindergarten

There are also multiple groups on facebook, vkontatke (or whatever is your local equivalent), pintrest and just the good old google or Yandex search enginge.

How to choose a craft activity for the EFL lesson?

Well, this is where the W.O.R.L.D. might come in handy. This is an acronym that I made up for myself and for one of the workshops that I was giving a few years ago. Also, because I really wanted to have an acronym:-)

Here it is!

W is for ‘WHY?‘

Probably the most important question a teacher can ask while planning a lesson with a craft activity: why am I even doing it? It is great to include craft only for the sake of ‘the variety in the classroom’, but I strongly believe that a craft activity must have a follow-up, that it cannot be an end in itself. After all, we are language teachers and not art teachers.

An ideal craft activity is only the preparation for the proper language exercise, it is our way of getting the kids interested in what we are doing and using the finished product to encourage them to engage in a language activity. If this element is missing, there should be a really good reason for including it in your lesson. Is there?

O is for ‘On their own‘

No matter how amazing an activity looks in the photograph or the video, no matter how beautiful and colourful it is, no matter how strong its ‘wow’ effect might be, there is no point of bringing it into the EFL classroom if your students cannot complete it on their own.

Perhaps, the assembling process is too long and too complex and the materials too small and too flimsy and your students will not be able to complete it all by themselves. If it is a 1-1 lesson, sure, you can help but let’s take ‘the worst case’ scenario, a lesson with a group of 8 students, each of whom gets stuck at precisely the same moment in the activity and the teacher having to help every single one of the 8 students at 17:25:04…No. Not worth it.

R is for ‘Recycle‘

It will not always be possible but in order to justify the time and work invested in preparing and carrying out a craft activity, it should be possible to recycle ‘the product’ in one of the following ways:

  • The same product is used throughout the course to recycle the particular vocabulary set, story or functional language phrases
  • The same product is used throughout the course with different vocabulary sets, for example the boardgame the children made is used to practise vegetables, then fruit, then transport
  • The same type of product can be made again, with different vocabulary or structures, for example mini-flashcards booklets, flapbooks, window decorations. If the format of the activity is used later on in the year, setting it up and executing it will be much easier because both the teacher and the students will be familiar with it.

L for ‘Language‘

First and foremost, we are the teachers of English and our main aim and priority should be the development of the linguistic skills in our students, regardless of how old there are. In the same vein, the main advantage of a craft activity is how it contributes to generating language.

Level A: the exposure. This is of course, always there, teachers speak, students listen. No matter what they do, they are also develop their listening skills and the ability to focus. So, technically, any craft activity will score high in that area as the teacher gives instructions and students follow them. What’s more, it is instantly obvious – the kids are leaving the room with a card, a puppet or a mask hence they have understoon the instructions. Good but not good enough.

Level B: the functional language. All craft activities have their stages, the students are encouraged to ask for the coloured pencils, glue, scissors, react to the teacher’s praise, sometimes praise their friends’ work and this is how some functional language comes into the picture and students are given an opportunity to practise it in context. Better but not good enough still.

Level C: the production. In an ideal craft activity, the making of is only the first step towards the follow-up stage in which the finished product will encourage them and will give them a chance to speak English.

D is for ‘Duration‘

Realistically speaking, how much time of the lesson time is the activity going to take, from the moment it is presented to the moment the last scraps of paper end up in the bin and the crayons, scissors and glue back in the box where they live? 5 mintes? 10 minutes? 15? 20? More than 20?

I am not going to try to discourage anyone from those longer craft activities because they need to be seen in perspective, together with all the other pieces of the puzzle, but it needs to be remembered that the longer the activity lasts, the higher the chances that kids will lose interest, that they will find alternative things to do, start chatting in their L1, get bored and tired and that, basically, it will be increasingly difficult to manage them and to get something out of the activity.

The potential time contraints apply to teachers’ too, actually. How much time and effort does the teacher want to spend on preparing the activity? Will they inolve the whole family into pre-cutting and pre-folding the night before? Will it be really worth it?

What is the ratio between the before-the-lesson preparation time, the activity-in-class time and the follow-up production stage time?

For that reason…

  • Cutting out a bunch of grapes that takes twenty minutes to complete: no
  • Making a complex puppet that takes half of your lesson so that you could use to say ‘hello, my name is Mitya’: no
  • A set of tiny little bits that have to be carefully glued onto the piece of paper: no
  • A picture to colour: no (not when it is just that ‘a picture to colour’)
  • Goggly eyes: no
  • Food craft without consulting parents first: no
  • Draw your…: no
  • Glittter: no (but that’s just me) and any ultra fancy materials that teachers would have to purchase themselves in specialised shops: also no

Anything else you would like to add? Anything that you don’t agree with? Please, let me know!

And don’t forget to pop in here to read about one ideal (and tried and tested) craft activity for the EFL preschoolers.

About a caterpillar, sometimes hungry, sometimes not. An ideal EFL craft activity?

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Despite the fact that there are piles and piles of amazingly beautiful craft ideas for the caterpillar – butterfly lessons, such as https://www.k4craft.com/paper-caterpillar-craft-for-kids/, https://www.firstpalette.com/craft/cupcake-liner-butterflies.html or https://www.craftymorning.com/cupcake-liner-clothespin-butterfly-craft/, I have decided to design my own in order to comply with W.O.R.L.D principles aka my own acronym for craft activities (you can find it here)

W is for ‘Why?’

With this particular craft, the making of is only the introductory stage, namely the activity in which we are use the final product to generate even more language.

O is ‘On their own?’

I wanted something that my little students will be able to work on and complete on their own, with as little of my involvement as possible. Partially it is connected to the fact that we are developing learner autonomy, also in the EFL classroom, partially due to the fact that with six or eight children in the group, a craft activity can quickly turn into a nightmare experience if the teacher is required to help make eight caterpillars at the same time. The caterpillar still looks very caterpillary and sweet even if the folds are not very neat or even. The butterfly can be squeezed into the peg by even very young hands without much damage to its beauty.


R for ‘Recycle’

Most caterpillars and butterflies will most likely be taken home because it is not always easy to convince the little kids to leave their precious creations behind, in the classroom, at night, all by themselves, but as long as there is at least one caterpillar and one butterfly left (teacher’s), they can be invited to participate in all the class activities over and over again, with different topics, vocabulary and structures. Not all of us have the luxury of having a teacher assistant in the classroom but the caterpillar and the butterfly can play the part – model the activity, get involved in classroom management, give instructions and so on.

L is for ‘Language‘

No matter how much fun we have making something in class, first and foremost, a craft activity is an opportunity to use the target language, either while producing something or while playing with it.

This particular buttefly and this particular caterpillar were used in different lessons. We used it to retell the story of the most renown hungry caterillar from Eric Carle’s story, we used it to talk about a lesser known caterpillar sleeping through different weather days only to wake up as a butterfly (Playway to English 1 by CUP, Activity Book, page 37) as well as six caterpillars wreaking havoc in Mr Smith’s garden (Playway to English 3 by CUP, Student’s Book, page 54 – 55). The same duo accompanied me in a few spring lessons, accompanied by the great song from Kids TV 123 ‘In the garden‘ while we were practising the structure ‘I can see’ as well as the Science lessons on the butterfly life cycle.

D is for DURATION

I have used the same craft activity with my three year-olds and with my six year-olds and with everyone in-between, with only slight adaptations. This particular caterpillar and this particular butterfly are expected to take about 7 minutes of the lesson time and are made on two separate occasions in order to facilitate staging and classroom management.

The tissue paper version is more 3-year-old friendly and it does not involve any folding or careful handling. The older kids can be prepare a more intricate butterfly, by colouring a rectangle of regular white or colourful photocopier paper, coloured paper or tissue and decorating them with leftover stickers. As for the caterpillars, they can be pre-folded for the younger children, the teacher can also draw the lines where the folds should be and glue the heads on before the lesson.

Butterflies made using a cupcake case (front and back), decorated paper, paper napkins, coloured paper, a magazine (featuring: a raspberry cheesecake:-)

Step-by-step staging

Caterpillar

  • Show the final product
  • Demonstrate how to fold it, use simple instructions (‘fold’, ‘press’)
  • Hand out the strips of paper
  • Fold the caterpillar, making another one together with the kids, step by step, pause if necessary, to let the kids catch up
  • Glue on the head
  • Draw the eyes and a smile

Butterfly

  • Show the final product
  • Give out the paper you are going to use for the wings, decorate it (markers, crayons, leftover stickers)
  • Make another one together with the kids
  • Take a peg, open it, show the kids how you squeeze the wings inside (with the wings made of paper, it will be necessary to demonstrate how to gently gather the wings in the middle and how to crumple the paper), close the peg.
  • Give out the pieces of pipe cleaners
  • Bend them in half
  • Open the peg, put the antennas in

Happy teaching!

DIY Rulez! Listening homework tasks.

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DIY is the answer, in most cases. Especially in the VYL world.

All those missing, lost or non-existent flashcards, magic wands, puppets, handouts, balls, hats, masks, storybooks that we just nevermind-gonna-make-my-own-then (it really should be a verb).

DIY was the answer, an obvious answer and, yet, an answer that, on this particular occasion, took quite ages to land on the table and to become obvious.

The equation? A group of very young learners, studying online, helpful parents (but no printers at home so no customized handouts), a coursebook (but with tasks that I could make work only in the classroom), no ready-made material (and two steps away from regretting the decision to use the book altogether).

The first fifteen minutes went by peacefully, filled with sighing and staring blankly at the page in the coursebook. The next fifteen minutes were similar, only the sighs became more desperate and angrier.

Not happy at all. Until…Nevermind, gonna make my own then.

This time: Listening homework tasks! It’s been only a month but I am absolutely loving it!

How to?

  • Minimal requirements, your phone recording app will do.
  • Usually two takes are enough to record (although, suspiciously enough, as soon as I start, there is always a police car or a fire engine whee-yoo-ing just outside my window)
  • After a first few exercises, I started to type up ‘the script’ and it made everything much smoother.

Why?

  • An opportunity to take English out of the classroom and a recording that the kids can listen to as many times as they want to
  • Extended exposure to English, especially in the area of the functional language that the teacher can create, shape and enlarge as the course progresses
  • A great support for the parents, to help them work at home with the child and to structure it properly
  • Any picture, any illustration or any photograph in the coursebook (or online) can be used as the basis for it.
  • Widens the range of homework activities (see the ideas below)
  • Amazingly, it is also a great tool to practise scaffolding for teachers because you have to dissect an activity and verbalize all the procedures in simple English and only then you start think of all the micro-stages and you can hear what your students might hear.

Some of the activities we have done so far

  • Identifying pictures (pre-primary): It is a simple riddles game, based on an illustration with the key vocabulary. Most coursebooks for pre-primary include a page which introduces all the new words. In the example that I am sharing with you, I also managed to incorporate a verse from song ‘Are you hungry?’ by Super Simple Songs.
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onlENphATDQ

  • Dictation (pre-primary) It is better to use a black and white picture, perhaps from the workbook
  • Any illustration can be used for this kind of an activity. A chapter usually starts with an illustration of all the key woIt’s a teddy. Brown (children circle the bear brown)
  • Identifying differences (primary). Additional listening and speaking practice in the format inspired by the YLE. You can use set of pictures from Movers or Flyers, a set of illustrations for Movers or Flyers story or your own set prepared using the miro board (my example uses a picture from classroomclipart.com and the miro icons). Students listen and describe how their picture is different. The same activity can be prepared using only one picture. In that case, the students are listen to the sentences about the picture and correct the mistakes, for example: In my picture, the white cat is sitting on the chair.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTBhq4TkE_M

  • Find a mistake (primary). The audio is a follow-up to the story / text done in class, record a summary of the story with some mistakes (and with pauses between sentences). Children listen and correct the mistakes. This is also an opportunity to expose them to a lot of past tense.The following task was prepared to follow-up a cartoon lesson from Superminds 1 by Cambridge University Press. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbwiidV_i7Y

  • Ask your mum! (pre-primary) Here, the audio is only used to set up a conversation between the child and the mum. A set of pictures (for example a picture dictionary at the back of the book) can be used as the worksheet for the kids to mark the answers they get from the parents, for example: ask ‘Mummy, do you like carrot?’ (and circle / cross the fruit that mum likes and doesn’t like, these symbols have been used in class before, the kids are familiar with them). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onlENphATDQ

Happy teaching!

Jerome et al or how the EFL world started to scaffold

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https://ru.freepik.com/free-photo/construction-site-silhouettes_1243080.htm#page=1&query=scaffolding&position=7

This is the first post in the series of ‘Reading and Research’ in which I would like to at least try to bring forward the great thinkers and researchers that stand behind everything that we do in the classroom, in the hope that in the worst case scenario it will be a tiny contribution to spreading the word and in the best case scenario, someone is going to reach out and read the original article and look at the procedures in the classroom from a different angle. Today: Jerome. Then Leo, Lily and all the other ones. And yes, I am using their first names as a sign of my utmost respect because over the years, we have grown really close.

Let me introduce my first superhero, Jerome S. Bruner.

However, before we get to scaffolding and the EFL classroom, please start with watching one of the last interviews that Jerome S. Bruner gave, in 2013, three years before his death. Why? Just to find out more about the life of a great scholar who cheated in order to be able to be enlisted to fight in WWW II, served under general Dwight Eisenhower and who, upon moving to England to start teaching at the University of Oxford in 1972, wanted to take his boat with him so badly that he basically organised an across-the-ocean sailing do with a bunch of his friends…

Now, scaffolding.

It is probably one of the very few methodology terms that made it into the everyday vernacular of teachers, used not only by trainers and resource book writers but also teachers. Such a concept! So much potential!

That is one single reason why digging deep (and deeper), it is worthwhile to be inquisitive about the beginnings of all of these concepts that are so familiar and yet so unknown and which, initially, had nothing or, indeed, very little to do with learning language.

Jerome S. Bruner and his two colleagues David Wood (University of Nottigham) and Gail Ross (Harvard University) carried out an experiment on a group of children, aged 3, 4 and 5 in order to find out how these childrenfor the first time introduced this term in relation of learning and, funnily enough, initially it had nothing, or very little, to do with learning languages.

The article was the report of the research that the three psychologists conduced on a group of children, aged 3, 4 and 5 to find out how these learners behave in a specific learning situation and how the tutor’s support, its amount and quality, varies in relation to the child’s age. This research was carried out in the light of the socio-cultural theory of learning which assumes that adults (teachers, parents, older siblings also known as ‘experts’) help children (or not adults, not experts but novices) to learn. Based on what they observed, they defined scaffolding as the ‘process that enables a child or novice to solve a problem, carry out a task or achieve a goal which would be beyond his unassisted efforts’ (Woods et al, 1976: 90).

The research

The experiment itself is a fascinating piece of reading and I would recommend having a look at it to every teacher working with young or very young learners.

Let’s take the task, first of all. The three gentlemen designed the task (and ‘the toy’) themselves with a few objectives in mind, namely it had to be interesting enough for the children to be willing to get involved or as they call it ‘feature rich’. It had to be complex to challenge the kids but at the same time achievable, both for 3 y.o. and 5 y.o. and for example it could not be very complex as regards fine motor skills of physical strength as the younger children would not be able to participate in it. What is more, it had to be repetitive to enable the children to learn while dealing with the task and to apply the developed skills in later stages of the activity.

The final result was a set of interlocking blocks, that, if used properly, come together as a pyramid. The children were allowed to play with the blocks alone, under the supervision of an experienced tutor, who would apply what techniques she found most suitable to help each child complete the task as independently as it was only possible in each case. Then, the quality of this support was analysed and conclusions drawn.

The findings

The most fascinating part of this research are the differences in they way in which children of different age groups of preschoolers reacted to the task.

During the interaction with the tutor, the youngest children needed most help but also, that, because of their age, they were not quite interested in observing the demonstration and instructions. The other children, most likely already familiar with the school set-up and the roles of the learner and the teacher, were indeed ready to listen, ready to be taught.

When it comes to the oldest children in the group, because of their cognitive development, they were ready to deal with the task, almost from the word ‘go’, with a minimal tutor support. It can be assumed that for slightly older children, the presence of the tutor would be completely redundant.

What do we, the YL teachers, get from this?

A better understandig of how the same task may or may not work with students from different age groups.

This is especially important for the teachers of very young learners. It might happen (and it often does) that, for whatever the reason, children of different ages end up studying in the same group, for example a 3 year-old with a 5 year-old, since they are both pre-school beginners. Or, even more frequently, the same coursebook is used with a group of 3 year-old beginners and with a group of 5 year-old beginners, although they are miles away in terms of social, cognitive, linguistic development.

No need to panic, however, here is the good news from Jerome et al: we can make it work. In most cases there is a leeway and the same resource, activity, handout, craft, game can be used with the younger and with the older preschoolers and the things to change will be the instructions, staging and the amoung of the teacher’s inolvement and support. A post with more examples and practical solutions soon to come!

A better understanding of what a VYL or YL activity should be, from the perspective of child development

For language teachers the most important factor to take into consideration while assessing materials and activities is their potential contribution to a meaningful language production. However, teachers working with early years, primary or pre-primary, are aware of the fact that they cannot open the book or bring a handout and hope that their students will get involved in completing the activities just because this is something that the teacher wants them to do. The criteria that Bruner et al outlined while designing their ‘toy’ are a good starting point for the teachers who can be asking the following questions while lesson planning

  • Is the task going to be ‘interesting’ for the students? Why would they want to do it? Is it a game? Is it fun? Is it colourful? Does it involve their favourite characters? It does not mean that all these criteria need to be met every single time but is it a little bit more than ‘exercise 2 on page 11’?
  • Will they be able to do it? Is it achievable for the students whose hands, brains and social skills are only 4 years old? Is it challenging enough (in terms of the congitive skills, the linguistic skills, the motor skills)?
  • Is there any point in investing the teacher’s and the students’ time and energy in it? Can it be recycled later, in any way? The game which might be possibly time-consuming to set up the first time but that can be played again and again, with different sets of vocabulary…Learning a song that, intially, might be too long and to complex but which will become the group’s feel-good anthem…Making the puppet of a favourite character that perhaps will not generate too much language in the first three months but that will be your students’ safely blanet and will make them feel safer in class…I don’t think there is one one definite answer here that would work for all the children, all the teachers and all the groups but, nonetheless, it is a good question to bear in mind.

A better understanding of how we can support our students in class

Before the concept of ‘scaffolding’ became one of the key words in EFL and before it got watered down a bit, Wood, Bruner and Ross, based on all their observations of children, managed to highlight six ways in which a tutor (or a teacher) can actually scaffold an activity. Among them (only) three are directly related to teaching:

  • demonstration (or modelling and instructions appropriate for the students’ age, level and cognitive skills),
  • marking critical features (or monitoring and feedback)
  • reduction in degrees of freedom (which stands for what is most frequently associated with scaffolding – task simplification by providing more support for the student).

The other three are more related to the fact that the group were preschool children and involve

  • getting the kids interested in the task (recruitment),
  • making sure they stay interested (direction maintenance)
  • dealing with tantrums and demotivation (frustration control) in order to enable them to complete the task.

So every single time you are demonstrating, getting your kids’ attention, calling their name to get them back or every time you praise them because you can see they are struggling and are about to burst into tears…Every time you are colour-coding the handout or manipulating it in any way to make it doable…Anytime you are putting on your silly voice to turn it into magic or counting down to signal that they should be settling down, you are, in fact, scaffolding! And that is the way to go!

References

Wood, D., J.S. Bruner and G.Ross (1976), The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving, Journal of Child Psychology, 17, pp 89 – 100.

Inside the Psychologist’s Studio with Jeremy Harmer (2013), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxn6IpAJEz8