Anka Zapart

From the life of an Art teacher…

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The dreamcatchers lesson

This is the first of the three posts that I have promised myself as a reward for this academic year to reflect the three main directions in which my professional life took me in this academic year. With my transition into the bilingual primary school as the year 1 (or year 3 of the British National Curriculum), I have become a full-time Art teacher, a full-time Maths teacher and a full-time English teacher. All of these things I have done before and yet, all of them turned out to have some surprises for me and, as a result, all became new chapters, with new discoveries, new knowledge and new skills. Which only proves that there is ALWAYS some room for improvement.

The still life lesson

Something old!

I am not new to teaching Art and teaching English through Art. Even before I moved to Newton, I had been teaching English through Art for two years, with BKC and with the Fun Art Kids at the Moscow Museum of Multimedia Art, both online and offline. Not to mention all of these years when I pestered my young learners and teens and adults with Art in our EFL lessons.

I have already managed to share ideas and experience in an article published in the MET and a session at the YL IH Conference as well as some workshops at my school and lots (and lots and lots) of posts here on this blog. One of the most popular articles was written in November 2021, almost three years ago, and even then I already knew what I was talking about.

However, and I say it with full responsibilty for every word, it was only in September 2023, with the Art Explorers at Newton, that I really became an Art teacher.

Yves Klein and rollers

Something new!

This has been a year full of artistic adventures.

One of the most important things and one of the biggest changes, in comparison with the previous year, is that I am the one completely in charge of the whole programme. I do not have any external artistic curriculum to follow and I am not bound by any linguistic curriculum either. That is a huge responsibility, of course, but it also a source of power because it gives you all the freedom you want and may need. The only limitation is the time, these 45 minutes of a lesson that I need to fit everything in.

In the beginning of the year we had two lessons a week but it wasn’t working well, with a huge span of the age and the actual numbers of kids in the classroom. It was very difficult to run two the activities on two different levels of motor skills and two different level of linguistic skills and to constantly have to find a way of creating something that both my 5-year-olds and my 10-year-olds could do and benefit from. Plus, for the teacher, two different activities a week…it’s not impossible only extremely exhausting. Luckily, we were able to adapt the timetable. The younger group, pre-school and year 1, started to attend on Mondays, the older group, the years 2 – 4, on Wednesdays.

The raised salt pictures lesson and My Favourite Box

Because of that I could teach the same lesson twice (always an advantage, not only because of the lesson planning time) and I was able to adjust the levels of challenge, artistic, linguistic, cognitive, motor, to both levels. And it was a joy to see it work. The younger kids could focus on the vocabulary and grammar practice, the older could be involved in a real debate, in L2.

It was also interesting for me to teach these two same lessons in a different order. Because of the calendar and random holidays along the way, sometimes I started the new lesson in the younger group and then had to adapt it to the older one and the other way round. That was an interesting experience, from the point of view of methodology.

Not to mention the difference in the reception that different artists and techniques got. All (as in: every single one) of my students are amazing but it was interesting to see that, naturally, my older group were more capable in terms of their motor skills and more critical and willing to challenge ideas, because of their language skills. However, my younger kids were definitely more open to all the new things and all the lessons on contemporary art were a proper blast with them.

It is almost ridiculous how much my students have grown, as artists. They have not only had a chance to interact with different artists and to experiment with a great variety of materials and techniques but also got better at manging time and materials. May is a completely different month in terms of the Mess At the End Of an Art Class. And they have become more sophisticated and skilled at expressing themselves through Art. What started as an exercise in recreating the teacher’s model, led to kids observing, managing the technique and just creating their own masterpieces with whatever was at hand on the day. It was fun to watch them get excited at the announcement that the topic of the day was ‘What You Want’, as it was with at least some of the new technique. It was also fun to have them try to convince me to let them interpret the topic and to see them negotiate that. Apart from that, thanks to one OK lesson in February, I got to see how much they have developed and how much they have progress, way beyond just a regular craft activity. They even figured out how we roll in our Art classes (see the plan below).

A lesson plan, by one of my students. 100% accurate

Thanks to my Art classes I also started to create more. On the one hand, it was because I needed to experiment with all the materials, techniques and styles in order to show the children where we were going with things. I did that before. This year, however, I discovered that I really like painting and that it calms me down. I got myself a sketchbook and I started to paint, keeping kind of a visual diary and checking out how I can express how I feel though images. A new thing for me because I am the human of a word (or I have been so far). I don’t show these to anyone, although, I really like some of them. And painting is my new zen.

I love planning my Art classes, combining the language, the artist and the tools. I love coming up with a theme for the month and research Art to find exactly what I need. Naturally, over this year, I have learnt a lot about the artists that I had never heard before. I love introducing these artists and my favourite artists to my students. This year we have had a visit from the biggest and the lesser known, the world Art creators and the Russian artists, the legends and our contemporaries. Andy Warhol, Kasimir Malevich, Shantell Martin, Natalia Goncharova, Ilya Mashkov, Yves Klein, Pablo Picasso, Marisa Dube. We learnt about the alternative techniques, we have worked with a whole wide range of materials, from watercolours, to seeds and everything in between.

I wish I could try to choose my favourite lesson this year. That is simply impossible. Instead I will attempt a top ten, instead, in no specific order.

One of the coolest moment this year was in March when I got to curate a retrospective of our Art Explorers on the walls in our school. I have some works stashed at school, some pieces stashed at home although, the best ones, were already taken home by the proud artists. Still, showing a great selection of them on the walls of the school made me realise how much we have achieved. The kids were also beyond excited to see their pieces displayed. Am I dreaming now of a proper exhibition in a real hall? Of course I am!

The mandala lesson prep

Something borrowed, something blue!

Something borrowed is easy as all my lessons are based on the amazing creations by artists from around the world, from our contemporaries and from the days of yore. It is something that all the kids in the world should be given the access to, in order to learn about the different ways of looking at things and of expressing your emotions, learning how to do something new and becoming more confident about what you have to say. One of the most important lessons that I got to teach them was the one about the artists independence (‘You are the artist. If you call it a sunset, it is the sunset’) and another about the different ways of perceiving the world (‘You are the artist. If you decide that the apples are purple, they are going to be purple’).

My something blue is going to be the next academic year. I am hoping to continue to run the programme and I am already looking forward to all the new artists and all the new techniques. Some of my current students are going to continue with us so I cannot just repeat the programme. And just as well. ‘There is such a lot of world to see’. As the song goes (‘Moon river’).

Our exhibition

Happy teaching!

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.

The things we will do! Teaching the future form to kids

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The future!

Well, that was bound to happen! We have done the past simple and now we start every Monday’s lesson with talking about our weekends and it was just a matter of time for the future to enter our lives.

Presentation

For the context of the presentation I chose our classroom and ourselves. We already know Present Continuous to describe current events.

We started with talking about what everyone is doing and since my year 1 are creative it is never just a limited set of boring sentences, for examples, ‘I am sitting’ or ‘I am looking at the board’. There is at least one person who is doing something out of the ordinary and memorable. Sigh.

While the kids were talking, I was taking notes on the board, using their names and the 3rd singular. After the exercise was completed, we read all the sentences together.

Then I wrote the word next and a sentence about myself, for example: ‘Miss Anka is talking to her students now. Next, she will have lunch.’ The kids know the school timetable and it is obvious what will happen next, at least some things and that is what makes the context obvious and clear to everyone.

Practice

  • What will they do next? We were in the middle of the insects unit and that is why I decided to choose this particular context for our first focused task in the lesson. It followed the pattern of the previous activity in the presentation stage, only this time with bugs.
  • What will happen next? A very simple, visuals-based activity, in which the students make simple sentences trying to predict what will happen next. The only trick and the challenge is to look for appropriate, funny or intriguing pictures.
  • Dice games. Based on the success of these activities in the past tense lessons, I decided to repeat them here, with the future tense context. We did the dice game #1 with kids rolling the dice to produce their own sentences and to ask their partner (‘I will eat pasta. And you?’) and the other one, the dice #2 to ask the questions (“Will you go to school tomorrow?’). Depending on the day of the week, we adapted the context, choosing either ‘later today’, ‘tomorrow’ or ‘at the weekend’.
  • What will you do at the weekend? This is another activity that was introduced to mirror the activities we do for the past tense. This one we usually do on the last day of the week, which for me is Thursday, and we play a ball game to talk about the near future. I write the starter sentence, for example ‘I will go to…’ and throw the ball to kids encouraging them to produce a sentence. We play a few rounds, depending on the time and the focus. The ball is always in the classroom so it is very easy to add this activity to all of our activities of the day, regardless of the subject.
  • ‘What’s the missing word?’ is another one of our favourite games that we have used before, reading and choosing the missing word. This particular activity also includes the ‘What about you?’ bit which also encourages the children to react to what one of the students is saying.
  • Prediction. It is not one specific activity but something that can be used with every story we do or even in an experiment done in class and we have already had a chance to put it to practice a few times already. I still have to write the target structure on the board, to encourage production but will is slowly becoming a part of our everyday conversations.
  • I haven’t done it yet but this very topic is begging for another Dr Seuss, ‘Oh, the places you’ll go!’…

Happy teaching!

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 #79 15 words. One more way to stage a storytelling lesson

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Ingredients

  • A story that you are supposed to teach, anything from the Movers (Reading and Writing, part 5) and up, just to highlight the length. I prepared it for a story, ‘A fair solution’, from Global English 3 by CUP.
  • A set of the key words and phrases, a mix of the new vocabulary that needs to be pretaught and the phrases or words that are important for the story. Here are the cards I used.
  • A set of pictures that accompany the story. They will be available with any YLE Cambridge materials. I had three in my coursebook, too.

Procedures

  • We started with going over the vocabulary and phrases, checking understanding, drilling a bit, asking extension questions (for example: When Miss Anka says ‘Oh, we have a big test today!’, what can you say?’ (‘It’s not fair!) etc. Some of these phrases were completely new, some of them we had learnt already. I tried to include both because 15 new items would be too much. I tried to also include not only single words but phrases that feature (or might feature) in the story and that were important for it.
  • We started with the title of the story. I wrote it on the board and made sure that all the elements were clear. I tried to encourage the kids to guess what the story might be about, a story of this title and a story with all these words and phrases. This part was done in both langauges, L1 and L2.
  • In the meantime, I prepared a visual representation of all the words on the board, with 15 numbers and a symbol for each phrase or word. We went through them before the next step and a few more times during the entire storytelling lesson. I have a double English and having these on the board was a perfect solution for a quick revision activity after the break.
  • The next step was the pictures. I showed them one by one, on different slides of the powerpoint and we answered two questions. While we were looking at the slides, one by one, the kids were asked to look and answer the same question: Can you see our new words?, encouraging the kids to call out the words and phrases that might be associated with the visuals. When we finished, I repeated the question from the previous stage: What do you think the story is about?
  • The next step was reading the story. This is the story from our coursebook but since the majority of my students are still not quite able to read a longer text all by themselves, I read it out loud, adding voices, emotions and intonation. With one of the groups, we did this in the circle on the carpet, with the other we sat at the tables and the kids were looking again at the pictures at the screen. In the past I also experimented with kids following the text in their own books. At this point, I like to experiment and mix and match with this stage of the process, for the sake of variety and to find out what is most effective with developing readers.
  • At the end, we had a quick round of the general comprehension questions. We used a set of questions that are quite generic and can be repeated with any and all the stories in the world: Why did X do that? Why did the X say that? (here we can go back to some of the phrases from the set introduced / revised in the beginning), Was X clever / silly / funny / happy / sad? Why is the story called: XXX? Did you like it? Why? Who is your favourite character?
  • We went back to our tables to do the proper comprehension task and the reading / writing task. I put together a summary of the story in seven sentences which the students had to reorder and a simple writing task, expressing opinion and personalisation. You can find the task here.
  • To finish, we looked again at the words – symbols that were still on the board. I asked the kids to take turns to retell the story using these words, asking the same question: ‘Why was this in the story?’. The kids were coming up to the board, making a sentence about a story and erase the word/phrase, until we ran out of them.

Why we like it

  • The main aim of the story was the development of the literacy skills and to get the kids better prepared for dealing with a longer text. As I mentioned before, my students (the majority of them) are not ready yet to be given a text of that length (around 3 pages) to ‘just read’, hence all the adaptations. The short text that was our comprehension task was something that everyone could deal with so this is when my kids got to work individually on their reading skills.
  • My other aim was the development of the speaking skills and we did a lot of that, especially with the final activity and with the prediction tasks. The kids still used some L1 as they simply don’t have all the vocabulary and structures to express their ideas, especially when they start fantasising what the story could be about but they produced a lot of L2, talking about emotions and qualities and making simple sentences in the past simple.
  • There weren’t many opportunities to turn this particular story into a real experience but we tried. The sound of the coins is an important part of it so I took out my wallet to shake it and to make some noise (‘I can hear it’) and when the story talked about different smells of food, I also encouraged the kids to come up with different ideas for their favourite smells. In one of the groups, the kids also got involved into a debate about the silly things that we shouldn’t pay at school, like the water or the smile of the teacher etc, which gave me an idea that this could be a fun and interesting way of taking the story moral out of the story and into the real life. Next time:-)
  • I am especially happy with the set of words (and the title of this post) that created a lovely framework for the whole lesson and gave us lots of opportunity to produce the language, before, while and after the story itself. We are definitely going to use that one again.

Happy teaching!

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.

Materials May: Dreamcatchers! Our first Native American Art lesson

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This lesson has been on my mind for a loooooong time. Perhaps, on some level, the whole theme for the month’s theme was somehow fueled by the fact that I wanted to make some dreamcatchers.

The most challenging part in the lesson planning here was figuring out the logistics and the techniques and their adaptation for the use in the young learners Art class. There are the professional level videos, there are the adaptations with the use of paper plates or wooden sticks. There is also this one, that I found just now, just for inspiration for you all. The problem was that they did not match what I already had in my head: I needed a simple solution for the frame and I needed a simple weave that my kids would be able to deal with. From the very start I excluded the option of using any metal frames, I wanted our dreamcatchers to be as natural and organic as possible.

To sort out this problem and to get inspired, I simply went for a walk to see what my neighbourhood can offer, a real naturalist wondering along the river. And I found a solution thanks to the birch tree spinney (a word I learnt today:)) that I have here. It turns out that birch twigs are strong enough and flexible enough after lying for a few days on the ground and can be used for dreamcatchers. Mother Nature helped out! NB I only collected those twigs that were lying on the ground. No tree was harmed during the making of this art.

The artists

The lesson itself started with the presentation of the art piece that I made at home. We talked about its literal meaning which I explained with clip art and we talked about its origin as the artefacts produced by the members of different tribes in the USA and Canada. We talked a bit about the symbolism, just a little bit (my kids are quite young so we can focus only on the simple concepts but if you have more time, you can find a lot of material here) and we had two guest artists.

Our first guest was Marisa Dube, an Algonquin and Mohawk, an artist from Ontario, who specialises in making beautiful dreamcatchers in the traditional way. The other artist is Janet Echelman that you may know from her Ted Talk, who created a huge Dream Catcher in 2017 in California. I do recommend watching the video with the dreamcatcher in action!

The language

As with all the lessons in May, the language input is minimal and limited to the materials we use in class on the day. This week it was the following set: twigs, beads, feathers, ribbons, string, PVA glue, glitter markers and shells. This set can be adapted, depending on what is available. We went through the cards and through the contents of my bag and started to appear on the table.

The art

Making a dreamcatcher involves a detailed plan for the pre-, while- and post-production stages. Here is how we did it

Pre-production

  • I went for a walk and brought enough twigs for all my kids. It was absolutely necessary to check and to confirm that they were flexible enough to be formed into circles.
  • I created the circles (aka the frames) by bending them into circles and tying them with twine. I also wound a piece of twine around each frame because I knew that we would not have enough time to do that in class although it is an easy task and my kids would be able to complete it all by themselves.
  • I also decided to wash the twigs, just in case, I washed them with the cold water and hang them on the balcony to dry. We are in the summer, a streak of beautiful sunny days and that was easy to do. Plus, an unexpected olfactory bonus came out of it, the circles started to give out the smell, a mix of twine and twigs, very pleasant. The kids commented on that in class.

While-production

  • I gave out the frames and the kids could choose the first material they wanted to use, the ribbons and or the twine. Initially, I wanted to give out long piece of each but that didn’t work out very well, it turned out to be to difficult to managed. I should have thought of that (!!!) but we were able to adapt on the spot. I showed the kids how the cobweb can be made more easily by simply tying a piece of string (or ribbon) across the frame, tying it down on both ends to the frame and cutting off the ends. This way the kids are in charge, they can use three or five ribbons, making their cobweb as simple or as complex as they choose. My youngest pre-schoolers needed some help with tying, especially in the beginning so that is definitely something to thing about. Next time I am doing it with the pre-school group, I am going to include just a warm-up stage, tying ribbons around pencils or sticks, just to practise.
  • The second step was attaching the hanging strings which called the tails and the feathers. The students picked up two of three of each and tied them at the bottom of the dreamcatcher.
  • The third step was the decoration of the dreamcatcher. I decided to simply glue the beads and the shells with the PVA. I tested the method: it is enough to put a large blob of the glue on the frame covered with the twine or on the ribbons in the cobweb and to leave it to dry for a few hours. The glue will hold the shells and beads and it will become transparent.
  • Then, as the final touch, the dreamcatchers can be decorated with the glitter markers and carefully transferred to the window sill for drying.
Mine

Why we liked it

  • As all the classes and creations in May, this was a lovely journey of discovery, as regards the technique, the materials and the Native American culture, too. Some of the students were a bit withdrawn because of the seemingly high level of complexity of the task but we went quickly from ‘I can’t do it!’ to ‘Look, miss Anka!’. I am not going to lie, this is the greatest outcome ever!
  • It was amazing to observe, again, how different students interpreted the task and personalised their dreamcatchers. We all had the same set materials but some students decided to make the cobweb thicker, some others went just for two strings. Some used the twine, some opted for the colourful ribbons. Some prefered the shells, the others really liked the beads. Some used only the organic materials, some couldn’t help but add some glitter. One of my students decided to tie a ribbon, too and it looked great so she added some more, too! Some of my kids aslo found a way of weaving the shells into the twine on the frame and that looks really pretty, too!
  • All of the dreamcatchers were left on the window sill to dry and this time I had no difficulty convincing kids to agree to part with their creations. Perhaps it was due to the fact that it was our third Materials May lesson and we have already done it before. However, as soon as we arrived at the school on Tuesday morning, after or even before the first lesson, they kept coming to enquire if they were ready to be taken away. And they were really, really happy with the final product. One of my little ones said, to himself or to the class, ‘Finally I will stop getting the nightmares!’
  • There are many ways of making this task a lot more challenging and the more tempting of them is the option of the beads heddled onto the twine or the string which would make the cobweb really pretty. I managed to do it with mine but it was not easy and I didn’t have a thinner twine. If the kids are old enough, they can also try weaving the cobweb in a more conventional dreamcatcher way. The older kids could also potentially use a more reliable glue or perhaps a glue gun. I didn’t want to bring those into the classroom but that is an option that will help you speed up the whole process.
  • Admittedly, the activity involved some preparation on the part of the teacher, some more than usual and I understand that not everyone will have enough energy and time to get involved in that. However, it was all SO worth it! Everyone was fully involved, they personalised their work and they considered it important. And their dreamcatchers just make me go ‘Awnn!’ Just have a look yourself!

Happy teaching!

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.

Don’t eat the materials! Salty dough creations

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The language and the artist…

…were completely given up on in this particular lesson. I was considering looking for someone who created something that we would be creating but I quickly realised that the process will be the more important part of the lesson and, again, because of the materials and of the many stages, we will need time. I just wanted to make things out of the salty dough.

The art

While I was preparing for the lesson, I considered different scenarios, also the one in which we make our little things and leave them to dry for a week and decorating them during the following lesson. There are microwaves at the school but I did not want to use them. I wanted to keep everything as simple as possible and after experimenting at home at the weekend and testing the drying and colouring and I had a solution. I also tried to paint my dough while still wet and that went well, too.

I made the dough at the school, just before the lesson. I didn’t have any bowls there but I used one of the big plastic boxes and even though though it did get stuck to the box and dried up a bit, I washed it easily after the lesson. There are many recipes out there but I used this one here.

I prepared the working stations for my kids (a double spread of the newspaper scotched to the table) and got changed into our aprons.

I showed the children the dough, I explained the ingredients I used and I repeated my basic health and safety drill that is the title of this post. I showed them the tools that we had at our disposal (cookie cutters of random shapes and two small bottles to be used as rolling pins) and paintbrushes that were to be used in lieu of the little knives to shape up our creations.

I also showed the children the photos of different things that I made at home while trialling and testing: a letter A, a snail made out of one piece of rolled string of dough, a flower made out of blobs etc. I wanted the kids to get at least a vague idea of the opportunities that the dough presented.

On the board I wrote out the main stages of the lesson and they went as follows: 1. Look (at the model), 2. Make, 3. Paint, 4. Transfer to the window sill, 5. Dry. I wanted to make sure we are all on the same page and that we all finish in time.

I told the kids that since we are experimenting with a brand new material and technique, everyone can make whatever they want. ‘Anything?’, they asked, incredulously. ‘Anything! Go on, experiment and have a go!’ And they did!

The outcomes

It is possible to go through the whole process in 45 minutes, from instructions, through creation to painting and cleaning. Some of the students did finish early but we made sure everyone waited for everyone else to finish before moving on to the following stage.

The paint was dry within minutes but the cookies (that’s what the kids started to call them) were still to fragile to be transported so they were left on the window sill until the following day, when we packed them into plastic zip lock bags.

Once the creations were ready, we transfered them onto A5 pieces of cardboard, for painting, drying and safe travelling later on.

For colouring we used acrylic paints, with a pearl shine and that made them look even prettier. I was really proud of all my students because we took all the necessary precautions and there were no splatters or spatters. Our clothes, tables and chairs were safe.

The kids’ creations simply blow my mind. As usual, my amazing artists looked, thought and then went on creating in their own style. Most of them are simple cookies, cut out with a cookie cutter and painted. Some are decorative pieces, like the three hearts made for mum. One of my students thought of making a necklace and she even made a whole for the ribbon. Some students decided to create 3-D figures of their favourite things, some of them very elaborate. And of course they snatched them even before I could take a photo…

Guess, we are definitely doing this again! I am not sure when but we definitely are! Maybe they will be Christmas decorations, maybe little pumpkins for Halloween, maybe Easter egs! The salty dough will be back!

Even more things that can be done with salt dough (updated 18 August 2024)

I happen to have a 1-1 lesson with one of my students and, knowing that he loves making and creating, I decided to spend this time with craft and salty dough. Somehow, this was a very creative lesson as we could make, try and experiment and the ideas were bouncing off, back and forth. We have tried:

  • using shells and beads as decoration
  • applying beads onto an already painted surface (good idea!)
  • applying beads and shells, then painting with acrylic paint and wiping the surface gently with a wet tissue (good idea!)
  • constructing a piggy bank on a frame of a glass jar. Not sure what I can say about it, the shaping went well, but the piggy bank is still drying. The success of this one will be determined later)

Happy teaching!

Drying in the sun…

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.

Materials May and Mandalas!

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Mandala, Mandala!

I was looking for the inspration for our final month of Art. I did not start this year with a curriculum for all nine months, although probably, that would have been the recommended and adult course of action. Instead, I spent all these months just getting a theme for September, October, November…

Then came May and I needed something different, something interesting and something that starts with the letter M, just like this month.

Sunflower Mandala

The artists

This was an important part of the lesson to give the kids a chance to understand what a mandala is and many different techniques there are to create it. I focused on the simplest and the most basic and straighforward meaning of a mandala representing the Earth.

We looked at three different artists who are famous for their mandalas and the materials they used because I also wanted to have a representation of a variety of tools. That is why we looked at Jamie Locke who carves her mandalas, Damien Hirst who composes his out of butterflies (I still cannot get over the fact that these are real butterflies) and Stephen Meakin who painted his.

Rabbit ‘Mandala’

The language

Only after we looked at the artists, did we go through the language for the day, namely all of the materials to be used in class and, as usual, we used the wordwall cards. The cards and the vocabulary have been consistent with what I found at home and in my local supermarket and consistent with all the materials that I wanted to use. That is why have here beautifully green mungo beans and orange lentils.

I am aware of the fact that these are not the most commonly used words, especially by beginners but I did not want to extend the langauge slot because making a mandala takes time and we have only 45 minutes at our disposal.

Goose Mandala

The art

Mandalas are beyond beautiful and, esentially, very easy to make, albeit time-consuming. As regards materials, you only need a lot of PVA kids glue (I tried to use the regular glue stick but it is not that effective), cardboard (as the regular paper will not be able to keep up with the large amount of glue) and the seeds of your choice.

Cat Mandala

As usual, we prepared the working stations on kids’ separate desks and all of the materials were placed in boxes and in bags on the table at the front of the classroom. I also had a few separated containters (deep lids from plastic boxes). The students were told to come up, choose their material, one at a time, and either take the chosen box to their table or to take some of the material into a separate lid to move them around the room. We put on our aprons and I gave our small paintbrushes in order to move the pieces around to avoid touching the glue, as much as possible. I also gave a long, serious and boring speech in both languages about not eating anything on the table. ‘This is not food, these are materials right now. We don’t eat the materials’ could be the summary.

One missing pasta piece Mandala

The actual making of the mandala is super easy and, apart from showing the children the one I made at home, I also started another one in the classroom. There are three easy steps: attaching the paper to the table with painter’s scotch, squeezing out a large blob of glue and smearing it in a circle and starting the mandala from the centre, going out and around. If necessary, another layer of glue might be added as it dries out and another layer might be added at the end of the of the process, especially for the big bits, such as the pasta pieces. The PVA glue dries beautifully and it becomes transparent, without destroying the picture.

We left ours to dry on the window sill and on the following day, I put them up in the polly pockets and kids took them home.

Why we loved it?

  • Just like the tiny pictures, this activity does wonders for developing focus and concentration. Everyone stayed focused, everyone stayed silent and they were just working beautifully.
  • It is also a lovely task to develop cooperation skills because even though we had a selection of materials and boxes, the kids still had to wait, to share, to negotiate and I am very happy to say it went well.
  • The task involves a lot of self-control as, despite the fact that all of these were hard, raw and not very tasty grains, some of my students were still asking for the permission to eat them, just to try. One of the boys even left the room because he knew he wouldn’t be able to resist but then he came back and worked well, only talking about eating our materials. I am trying to say that I was happy that I waited with such a task until the end of the year, when we had already our routines and rules developed and in place. I would not recommend doing it in September or until the group is ready for it.
  • The kids loved the work, too and, as you can see in the photos, the majority of them went for a traditional mandala, some decided to create chaos which is also beautifully represented in the world. Some of my Super Artistic Stars went for their signature items such as the rabbit and the goose or the cat which Alex, laboriously, constructed out of the buckwheat pieces. We had a few flowers, too.
  • This was one of the rare cases when I did not plan on displaying the art on the wall and all kids took their pieces home. I was worried that on the wall, unsupervised, the pieces might be picked up by some of the students and consumed. I really didn’t want to risk that and we do not have closed cases in our school in which the mandalas could be safely displayed. Plus, of course, everyone wanted to take their creations home, as soon as possible.
  • I was thinking of the ESL / EFL classes in which this kind of craft could be used and here are some of the ideas (although I feel obliged to mention that I have not used them in class myself, not in that format): a lesson on the natural world, a space lesson craft, with everyone creating their own planet, a lesson on big numbers in which we could count all the pieces used and, in a Science lesson – on grains and seeds.
The realistic representation of the world in a mandala

Happy teaching!

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.

Who are you, dear reader?

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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.

It is completely anonymous, I am not collecting any data and there are no obligatory questions. I would just like to know who you are, how you have found my blog and why you are reading my posts. Apart from satisfying my curiosity, it will also help me understand which articles and themes are the most interesting or popular for my audience. 

You can find it here.

Thank you so much! 

Happy teaching!

Tiny pictures. Alternative April #4

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‘Anka with fireworks’, my name card by one of my artists

Let’s go alternative in April!

We did! In every possible way.

The size

This was the final lesson in our beautiful and exciting series of the Alternative April series. I really wanted to experiment with the size of the paper. Initially, I wanted us to paint something really big and then something really small in order to really experience the difference first hand. However, based on how the lesson with the older kids was going (in one word: too slow), I changed that for the lesson with the younger kids and opted for the A7 only. We were working well but the creative process, the decisions and the composition, takes time and I didn’t want to rush us and in the second lesson I decided to keep things simple: just the little picture.

The materials

Initially, I had the wild idea of letting the kids choose the medium that they want to work with. It is not a bad idea but, I will be honest, the preparations for its implementation need to be more detailed and organised in a slightly different way to what I did. Next time I will and next time will be better.

In the end, my older students went for the simplest and the most basic, pencils and black markers, and with my younger group I chose for all of us and we worked with watercolours.

The Zebra Heart. Print.

The artist of the day…

didn’t come. The first reason for that was that I did not want to choose one and I felt conflicted about it. On the one hand, I really wanted to stick to the framework that I created for our course and we had always had at least one Master to inspire us. On the other hand, the topic that I chose for the lesson, namely ‘Spring’, is such an open-ended and all-embracing topic, that looking for the one was a task doomed to a failure. Plus, I knew that the format would be enough of a challenge and I wanted to give the children the comfort of working with it. I was worried that I would be limiting them too much, with the artist, the format, the topic and the resource. I decided against it. We sang the song, said hello, brainstormed all the associations with the word ‘spring’ and looked very briefly at a selection of paintings showing spring, without singling anyone out.

And then sat down to work.

How it all went

I know that I sound like a broken record when I say it but I will do it again: This was one of my favourite lessons ever and the reason for that is that, again, we set off on an amazing, 45-minute creative journey.

  • We all had to be very careful with choosing the topic for our work. The A7 format is a very small one and you have to take into account how small certain elements are and how much effort it would take to execute them.
  • All kids had three pieces of the A7 paper, attached to the table with the painter’s scotch (necessary!) so they could experiment with different approaches and they really did. The first pictures were usually the most cautious ones, the easiest ones and the least experimentative. However, since there were more pieces available, I could see how much braver and more confident they became in their following steps. Even today, while looking at the pictures, I can tell the order in which they were painted by particular kids. And it is amazing. For example, the triptych in red by Egorka, who started with a scene from Mars, all in red, then moved on to a superhero’s portrait and finished with what he called ‘a zebra heart’, in black and red that ended up being a print. Why? Because he noticed that the paper towels we had on the tables had an interesting pattern and he decided to experiment. Precious.
  • Three of my students painted only one picture but it is because they decided to make it more detailed and, naturally, these required more time, effort and attention. The other children went for a triptych and, one way or another, these three were connected by a common theme.
  • One of those three is the first in the world case of the Snail Art in which the artist traces the slime trail left on paper by her pet snail. Which, of course, was her own idea. No snails were harm in the production of this piece.
  • It turned out that this kind of art is a perfect exercise for improving focus and concentration. It worked like magic. For that reason it might be an interesting activity to improve in the general English classes, for example. I can easily picture it in our ESL / EFL courses, especially that the topic can be easily adapted to match the curriculum and it does not eat up a large part of your lesson. And if you don’t want to get into the whole watercolour mess, the same can be done with markers or coloured pencils.
  • For the time ever, I had not painted my picture before the lesson to show the kids. I wanted to experience the change of focus myself and I told them about it. This was also something that we did for the first time ever.
  • Having three pieces of paper came in handy with one more thing. As soon as I announced the topic of our lesson, the same question was asked, almost immediately. ‘Can we paint something we want?’ I mean, I always say yes in the end and inside of me there is one happy teacher celebrating the independence and the artistic freedom that my little kids want to exercise. But we did negotiate a tiny little bit, too and, in the end, they agreed that since we have three bits of paper, a lot can be done. Something that the teacher suggests, something that we really, really want to do…

It is beyond fascinating how much impact the A7 format had on our art, composition and work. Five stars, highly recommended. I hope you enjoy visiting our little gallery in this post.

The sun
The sky
The snail letters
The Snail Art

Happy teaching!

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.

Setting up the routine. Eight months into the course

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Starting the lesson

This is the part of the lesson that is still the same: hello, how do you feel today, have we got any new students. It is great to see that they are more in charge of it right now and they are able to answer more fully, without my consecutive questions. If I forget (and that happens), they remind me to bring it back. Right now, it is more common for the kids to ask if we are going to include some other of their favourite elements or games and my stronger writers ask for the permission to put the lesson plan on the board. That is just sweet and it makes my heart melt to see that I can just dictate a very simple plan and they are able to write it down.

Songs

In April we started the lesson with one of two songs.

It was either the absolutel hit from Super Simple Song, The Seasons Song. The kids still really like it and, right now, they are really good at singing. We can properly sing for the pleasure of it.

We still continue singing our month song but in April it has completely turned into ‘I am going to sing about how I feel today’ and we had a few amazing days when it turned into proper comments on the weather (‘What is this? Where is the sun?’ on the rainy days) or an expression of our wishes and hopes (‘Tomorrow I am sleeping, All day’ one day before the May holidays or ‘Where is the summer?’ since we are a few weeks before the end of the academic year). This has been the absolute hit of this academic year!

Rules and classroom language

It is obvious that, on the one hand, the rules are in place and, finally, we almost sit through the lesson, without wandering aimlessly (that was one of our objective in January!) but it is also obvious that the kids are already very tired with the pace and the length and April has not been very easy. The overall attention span has shortened and we have dealt with more issues and outbursts of my kinds.

While planning the lesson, I am more careful with putting the activities in order and with ensuring that the serious tasks that require more of their attention are in the first half of the lesson. It is also more common now to put all the games at the end of the plan and with a question mark. We only play them if we manage to go through everything else. I also caught myself announcing that ‘we are going to do a task’, referring from calling it a game, to signal that we are not doing it ‘just for fun’. Danny Go, our hero from the previous few months had to go, too, because he stirred the kids too much and it was very difficult to bring them back to do some real exercises.

At the same time, I also introduced a new tool for the fast finishers, the ‘I have done everything’ book, with additional tasks from different areas (Maths, logic, drawing, English). The students who have finished their obligatory task can take their booklet and continue working on their tasks. We have had only one week of that so it is too early to evaluate it at this point. We’ll see how it all goes.

Story

April was a bit shorted, due to the term break and my trip, but we still managed to squeeze in a few stories. We read the second part of Marvin, ‘Marvin Wanted More’ by Joseph Theobald and it was cool to read it as it is, with only one or two verbs changed. We also learnt the phrase ‘Just a little bit more!’ and the kids recited it during the reading, when Marvin was getting hungry, which is, basically, every other page.

We also had a fantastic lesson with ‘Wacky Wednesday‘ by Dr Seuss and, last week, with ‘I can read with my eyes shut‘, which we used in a shared reading activity.

Socialising

If anyone dared to think that our eight months in the classroom might potentially mean that everyone is now everyone’s friends, they would be seriously mistaken.

Yes, we get on better with each other than we used to and it is much easier to sort out the issues that come up, admittedly. However, we still have a few issues that bother me a lot. In one of the groups I had to announce that we stop playing games because they are not ready to play. I have one student who is accutely allergic to any competitive activities and recently it turned out that even when we play together, to collect points for the group, the kids start judging each other based on how many points they bring to the kitty. And if someone brings fewer, here you are, the group is ready to troll…

I decided to put the games on hold and I annouced it, officially, but I have a cunning plan. In the time that we have left until the end of the year, we are going to work hard on building a team. Basically you can address me as ‘coach’ for now…I have a few ideas ready and I will look for more. The post will be written, eventually.

Creativity

April would get a strong ‘To Standard’ for the creative element in our lessons:

  • our patchwork project, a part of the lesson devoted to patterns and shapes, not very generative in terms of langauge but, I will be honest, I really wanted to include something like that in our regular ESL classes
  • our amazing dinosaur project that was divided into three lessons and consisted of drawing a dinosaur, filling in a fact file for it and interviewing a friend about it
  • a mini-project in our Wacky Wednesday lesson. The kids had to write only three sentences of their choice about their Wacky Wednesday and draw pictures to accompany them, so simple and so precious. We had a lot of fun.
  • April was also the month of our story (based on Flyers visuals) that we turned into a real book. I loved the fact that they enjoyed writing it and then reading it, too. We are definitely going to do it again.
An excerpt from the story
‘I ate pasta upside down’ (Wacky Wednesday)
Pure brilliance, from the point of view of illustration

Teacher

It has been a very tiring month, although it was a shorter one. I was tired (and busy with the non-school tasks) and the kids were also very tired (and already looking forward to the summer, the last bit of the marathon, before you see the finishing line and find the last scraps to speed up and cross the line in style).

But the good things happened, too. We have done huge progress in Maths and in reading. The kids are really creative and now, I can say, we read. We have had a few amazing Art classes. But I am like my students, I am looking forward to the end of the academic year.

Please make sure you have a look at our development since September!

Happy teaching!

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.

When Picasso came to school. Alternative April #3

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The language

This was to be our final lesson in the topic of body parts and, once more, after singing the hello and going over ‘How do you feel today?’, we went for our spinner game. I was really worried that we would not have enough time for anything else as I wanted not only introduce a new artist but also a new tool.

The artist

This was the second time we invited Pablo Picasso to our lesson. And the kids remembered! They were a little bit surprised because they met him as a one-line artist with the amazing animals (post here) and, at least some of them, a little bit taken aback by the sheer contrast between the two. I showed them a few portraits and we highlighted the main pointers of cubism (which we also talked about before). We also tried to find all the figures (shapes) in the portraits.

The art

This was a day when we would be experimenting with a new took – oil pastels and that is why I decided to demonstrated some of the basic blending techniques. You can find the ideas in the videos here and here.

Afterwards I demonstrated the double portrait that I made while getting ready for the lesson and we talked about its main features (shapes and colours). I also showed them the simplest way for achieving the Picasso effect by drawing one more face: a shape for the face, divided into halves, smile (ideally misshapen, mismatching halves) and shapes for eyes, nose and hair.The next step went according to the plan one of my students wrote on the board once: ‘3. Miss Anka Paint, 4. We paint’. We started to work.

  • The kids chose different ways of working with the oil pastels. Some combined them with pencil, some with markers and for some they were just a crayons replacement. But we also had a few properly experimenting with the new tool.
  • Some of my students refused to see the world through Picasso’s eyes. They really didn’t like his approach and asked if it is possible to draw their friends the way they want. It was more common in the older group, the younger kids just went for it.
  • Some of the students also asked if they can draw ‘something they choose’, not faces and I also said yes. Obviously, Kolya had his own idea for the interpretation of the topic and for cubism and I am happy I did not object. The house of spades, hearts, dimonds and cards is just beautiful. ‘One house in the city’, as he called it.
  • Some of them loved it, though, and the best piece of evidence is that they snatched the paintings as soon as possible, to take them home. I barely managed to take my photographs.
  • We also had one character sitting for a portrait, my new portrait and a few other precious creations.
  • The Star Girl that you can see below is a joint effort between me and one of my youngest student who decided to help me with the colour. I decided to save it here not only because I am happy with my design but mostly because it shows how the kid’s creativity develops as they go through the task. I drew the face and started to colour it, in the most boring of ways but soon I was joined by my student who took over and decisively so. It was fascinating to see how many different ways of colouring, blending, shading and working with oil pastels he came up with during that task. The final product – below.
  • Watching the kids work was a real pleasure. One of my students was working on something hard that, from afar, looked like her trying to create one big, colourful, many-layered blob of pastel that some, less patient, might label as ‘trying to destroy all my pastels in five minutes’ but the final product, the girl with a horse, proved me wrong. Experimentation was just experimentation, and one of the many steps towards beauty.

Happy teaching!

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.