Anka Zapart

Behind the scenes. The emotional workload of a primary school teacher.

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Our beautiful ‘patchwork’, all 20 pieces together (one was immediately stashed in the bag to be taken home)

Last Thursday

Five lessons on a regular Thursday, English, a double Maths with 1B and a double ESL with 1A, a nice, short day, with the cherry on the cake being the fact that for me it is the last day of the week. Rounding up, in a way.

What did I do at work last Thursday? Here is the list:

  • supported a student and helped him deal with distress related to his inability to deal with a task in a subject that he normally excells at. He got upset, abandoned the task but then he calmed down and he decided to catch up and to finish the task, sacrificing his break and a part of the following lesson but he did complete the task. I told him I was proud of him for not giving up.
  • went through another refusal to deal with the task with another student. We talked about students making decisions and teachers respecting those decisions but also about the fact that if it refers to a test, the teacher will have to grade the test as it is. The student thought about it and decided to take part after all.
  • listened to two students who had a disagreement and helped to deal with anger and tears
  • created opportunities for the students to develop their social skills by sharing resources, waiting for their turn to receive them and to collect them and to learn how to respect the other students’ work, everyone’s right to work in silence and in peace
  • gave the students an opportunity to express themselves through art (see the photo above) and to be proud of their work
  • created opportunities to develop cognitive skills and to see the world through shapes and patterns
  • help to learn to deal with failure during the artistic activity by showing how to solve problems with water, paints, splashes and other artistic disasters
  • cheered on the growth and developement by listening to at least four stories about the milk teeth falling out, shaking, getting lost and found
  • took part in rejoicing the fact that the holidays at the dacha, at the seaside and at gran’s are coming
  • welcomed a child coming back after a long absence (The best entry ever, by the way. No hellos but instead ‘I think I have lost my shoes’) and heard all the stories from the past two weeks.
  • cheered, sympathised and laughed at everything that three Pikachus did over the previous 24 hours
  • gave a chance for the students to lead the lesson
  • witnessed two serious meltdowns that were handled by the children’s personal tutors.
  • taken care of the fast finishers and started a new procedure of ‘I Have Done Everything Book’

A bit much, no? But wait, I haven’t told you yet ANYTHING about the actual learning that we did that day. English and ESL: it was shapes and patterns, in Maths – division using the bus stop method. And it was not even any special day, just a regular Thursday.

Sigh.

The patchwork did it!

I do sigh a lot, actually. I have no idea what it looks like to the outsiders and the passers-by, but, indeed, it is one of the easiest way of letting at least some of the pressure out of the system. Thursday was no different, I was sighing a lot, especially because of the patchwork.

The kids had left already, the classroom was back to normal, I was just organising the finished pictures on the window sill to dry them in the sun and talking to my T.A. I looked at the pictures, the patterns wonderfully chosen, and the colours to match, the paintings looking just amazing separately and together, as a set, too. I thought that they were beautiful and that they are going to make a beautiful photograph and that I am proud of my kids. And then I realised that nobody, looking at the photograph, here on the blog, on the social media or in the parents’ chat, nobody will be able to tell how much effort went into it, how much drama accompanied it and how much it actually took, this photograph. We will file it under ‘pretty’ (where it does belong!) and we will never talk about the emotional cost of this whole adventure, this whole day.

Absolutely the same can be said about any other handout, activity, test, progress made, painting, lesson and sometimes even a sentence. Guess what, dear reader, I have seen it once and I cannot unsee it!

I started to read.

A photo from 10 Incredible Scenes In Pirates Of The Caribbean Movies Fans Still Love (screenrant.com) Clip here. This is how I see myself in the classroom.

The emotional burden of the everday teacher’s life

It turns out that teachers are the professional group among the lowest scorers as regards health and well-being (studies by Johnson et al.). We are in good company, of course, together with ambulance workers, social services, customer services and prison and police officers.

On the one hand, there is a tendency to highlight the levels of stress related to the number of years of experience, drawing attention to the fact that newly qualified teachers are at an especially high risk of falling prey to burnout (Linqvist et al.) which is easy to understand as we all, including the human behind the words here, remember the dread and the stress that came together with taking the first step in a completely uncharted territory of the school on our first official contract.

However, according to the study among the Lithuanian teachers, both primary and other specialists, the levels of stress and the issues with mental or physical health were not related to the years of experiences, the location of the school, the marital status or the length of employment at one school. Still, despite a relatively high motivation to work (‘enthusiasm was above average’) and the low levels of indolence, every third teacher ‘showed signs of of high psychological distress’ and 12% were assessed as being at risk of depression (Emeljanovas et al.).

The reasons? Well, there are many (Stefanou et al.) But, to be honest, I would like to leave all of them behind, apart from one. Away goes the personal well-being and health, motivation and classroom effectiveness. Off the list come also social behaviour, learning and performance or the particular school and how it is functioning. Or the students’ motivation and well-being. In the same vein, those ‘rapid social and technological changes and constant monitoring of society’ (Emeljanovas et al) or the parents’ and students’ expectations which have changed in the 21st century are of no interest to me at the moment.

Not because they are not important, quite the contrary. It is all very interesting and very relevant but there almost seems to be too many factors which have an impact and which the teachers are affected by on daily basis. The number and the volume of the issues might lead to a realisation that it is a hopeless task because, indeed, how can you deal simultaneously with all the requirements of the everyday teaching reality and with the 21st century outside of your window? I won’t.

The Absinthe Drinker, Edouard Manet (1875 / 76) Attention: NOT because of the alcohol in front of her, but because of the emptiness in her heart)))

The lucky ones?

Because, let’s imagine a couple of teachers that are just ‘lucky’, for the lack of a better word. They work in a private institution so their working conditions are better than average. They are experienced so they have already developed an immunity towards the pressure from the system, the regular assessment and the need to develop professionally. Over the years, they have also learnt how to work with paretns and to manage the children in class. They work in a small school, with the helpful admin staff and the kids are in year 1 so there is not so much checking, testing and reporting, although there is some. What is more, these teachers, they teach with and out of passion. They even like their students. All 21 one of them. The children are just a group of kids. They are all amazing, no one suffers from any neglect at home, some of them have some special education needs but it is not anything that cannot be dealt with. These teachers are lucky, the conditions are almost ideal.

Does it mean, then, that these teachers are not affected by the emotional challenges of the everyday life? Of course not! At the end of a Thursday, like the one described above, they look like some of those characters featured in the illustrations I chose for this post. Sitting in the teachers’ room, recovering, as if, gathering the energy to get up and to put the jacket on and to go home. On some days, walking home, thinking of all the other potential professions out there, of becoming a plumber, a librarian, a chef or a pensioner…

That is the reality and, as they say, ‘there is tired and there is teacher tired‘. It is not sadness, it is not depression, it is not burnout, it is not disillusionment, it is not apathy. Only the unbelievable, unmeasurable, undescribable, infinite exhaustion. And not because you have spent the day ploughing the field or hand-digging foundations for a house but because you have spent 5 or 7 academic hours educating, surrounded by tonnes of emotions coming at you from 21 different sources simultaneously and trying to deal with all of them.

tired teacher clipart – Clip Art Library (clipart-library.com)

Please tell me that there is a way out!

Yes, there is and no, there isn’t.

Children are and will be children and dreaming of an ideal lesson, 100% of the time, day in, day out, with everyone listening, following instructions and not getting distracted, not getting into trouble with classmates, and, generally, being ‘little angels’ (or the students that we know from our teachers’ books), that is simply not going to happen. You plan your lesson and then you go into the classroom and life happens.

The good thing is that we learn how to deal with disasters (and ‘disasters’) and with our emotional response to them. The good thing is that, eventually, we get a bit better at it. You can read about it in an earlier post here: The end of the world or Suriviving bad lessons with YL.

The good thing is also that we have lots and lots to look back on, to do the maths and to label the day as ‘good’ and that, frequently, we come home with a joyful ‘Guess what happened at school?’. There are the patchworks that we created and the photos of them that we will share and we will be happy and proud of. And maybe it is the lingering memory of these patchworks that will make us get up the following day and set off to school, one more time, erasing the not-so-good memories of the previous day, in order to try again, to make the children know Math, English or Science and to help them grow and get better and get confident.

The joys and challenges of teaching kids, you know. Which, by the way, and hilariously enough, was the title of one of the first training sessions that I have ever given. The joys and challenges. The patchwork.

tired runner – Clip Art Library (clipart-library.com)

Bibliography

Emeljanovas, A., Sabaliauskas, S., Mežienė, B., Istomina, N. (2023), The relationships between teachers’ emotional health and stress coping, Frontiers in Psychology, Vol. 14, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1276431

Johnson, S., Cooper, C., Cartwright, S., Donald, I., Taylor, P. & Millet, C. (2005), The experience of work‐related stress across occupation, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 178-187. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683940510579803.

Kariou, A., Koutsimani, P., Montgomery, A. & Lainidi, O. (2021), Emotional Labor and Burnout among Teachers: A Systematic Review, Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18(23), 12760, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182312760

Lindqvist, H., Weurlander, M., Wernerson, A., & Thornberg, R. (2023). The emotional journey of the beginning teacher: Phases and coping strategies. Research Papers in Education, 38(4), 615–635. https://doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2022.2065518

Stephanou, G. & Oikonomou, A. (2018), Teacher Emotions in Primary and Secondary Education: Effects of Self-Efficacy and Collective-Efficay, and Problem-Solving Appraisal as Moderating Mechanism’, Psychology, 9 (4), https://doi.org/10.4236/psych.2018.94053

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 dot that went for a walk’ and Shantell Martin. Art Explorers

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‘Sleepy House’

The language

We continue the topic of body parts. It might not be the first topic that comes to mind when you think about the alternative art or our artist of the week but I body vocabulary is exactly what we need now. This is why we continue practising body parts in songs and in our favourite game with the body action verbs that I described before here. All in all, the language was not our main focus in this lesson and only one of the sub-plots. But it will come in handy in the following month when we are going to concentrate on the human body in art.

‘Oooooo’ (A confused one)

The artist

I have decided that this month will be our Alternative April. I would like to take the Monochrome March a little bit further and after experimenting with the colour, we are going to play with the formats and approaches and this was our first lesson in the series.

Shantell Martin is the artist that I have found only recently because she popped up on my social media but it feels like I have known her for ages. I might have. After all, her prints and patterns are everywhere and it is quite likely that I saw her on t-shirts or walls. Now I got to put a name and a face to it.

I was very curious how my students would react to her and they did not disappoint. They were curious, they looked at all the works with interest trying to interpret them and to find the words (a bonus task for reading in English!) and they really liked the fact that she is so young and that she is still alive and active. I think it is a signal for me to try to include more contemporary artists that we can connect with on one more level.

We looked at a variety of her works and talked about them a little bit, about these that we liked or really liked. We looked at different formats and modes she creates in and about her many interests that have an impact on the visual art.

However, our lessons last week had one more guest who made a cameo appearance and that was Paul Klee since he was the author of one of my favourite art quotes, namely, ‘A line is a dot that went for a walk’. I brought this up, together with the Bird and the Cat (that we re-created as a stained glass and that still makes our windows prettier). I also put a on display a lot of different types of lines as a source of inspiration.

‘A cat’

The art

Last week we worked on the A4 paper because I wanted to make sure that children have enough time to fill in the entire page. We also got a new tool – a black permanent marker, with two ends, a thick and a thin one for better results. The children were told to choose their own subject, their own types of lines and that they could combine words and lines, too.

As usual, I also showed the children how I experimented with Shantell’s style as I brought three small pieces of mine. Afterwards, we got down to work.

I know that it is easy for my readers to perhaps get an idea that I get excited for no reason or that I make everything look picture perfect for every post. I don’t. I get excited because my kids are so responsive and every lesson is a hit. It is not for everyone in the same way, it is not for everyone to the same extent but I sew and I reap.

The most interesting thing is that the basic materials did not hinder my students’ creativity. We only had the black pen and the white paper but everyone got very creative and some of my students managed to create a few different pieces. We worked on ours, moved around the room a bit to look at what other students created and once something was ready, we would give it a title. You can see the amazing pieces all around the post here. The lesson took place about a while ago but only now could I take photos of everything. I am revisiting this lesson after three weeks, I am looking at their pieces and, again, I am amazed and I am proud.

Shantell’s lesson was one of those days when I ‘lose’ most of the artwork. Not because I am forgetful or clumsy but because my students behave like real artists and they find it hard to part with their precious creations. It is easy to spot when it is about to happen because they carry them around everywhere and then, when I ask ‘Can I put it on display?’, the answer is short and simple: ‘No!’. On a good day I get to photograph what they have created and I am head over heels that I can do that, at least.

What I like about this particular artist and activity is that it could be easily adapted to any of the topics in a regular EFL kids lessons and now I have a lot of evidence to prove that from my students since they created their pieces on the topic of emotions, places in the city, fairy tales, animals and transport. And the materials are very easy to get)))

Here are some pieces created by my students:

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.

‘A beautiful mess’ – the Very Young Learner teacher’s novice year

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Once upon a time there were 52 teachers who agreed to talk to me about their novice year in the very young learners classroom. An M.A. thesis came out of it and an article in the March / April issue of the Modern English Teacher (vol. 33 (2) came out.

It is a weird one and a special one. A weird one because it is the only VYL article in the issue devoted whole and wholeheartedly to the topic of A.I. in education. Could you be any more ‘niche’?

At the same time, it is a very special article because it is about teaching, teacher training and pre-schoolers, or, in other words, my whole professional life in three pages. Fortunately / unfortunately, the article itself is available only to the subscribers but it is still a topic that I am really passionate about so I will be writing more about it.

Until then)

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.

Things we did! Kids and the Past Simple.

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The context at hand

If you have read this (relatively new) series before, you know that this year I am teaching in a slightly different context and that, beginning September, I said goodbye to the traditional EFL curriculum and the CEFR. On some days, it really does make my head spin, for example when I catch myself suddenly in the lesson on the prefixes im- and un- (but we really need ‘It’s impossible!’) or teaching the infinitive of purpose (but, it is a lovely and generative structure and the kids love using it and making silly sentences with it). On some other days, I gasp and I am in awe at my kids producing the language.

This was exactly the case with the Past Simple. I just wanted my kids to have it at their disposal, even if only for understanding. The Past Simple accounts for only (‘only’) 20% of the everyday use but it features heavily in our coursebook and in many of the stories we read or watch and, with time, there will be even more of it. So we started.

Wacky Wednesday Project

Presentation

First and foremost, I needed a proper context, something that definitely did belong in the past and something that we would want to talk about. My first attempt was the New Year’s break but somehow, when we got back, there was too much to share and too much to focus on. I decided to try again after a random weekend and then reinforced it right after the winter term break.

The presentation was very simple. I chose ten basic and most frequently used verbs, both regular and irregular such as: I went, I ate, I drank, I played, I rode, I listened, I watched, I liked, I played, I got. I prepared a very simple poster, in colour, with the pairs of verbs and we just tried to make some sentences to describe our weekend. The clarification was rididulously basic ‘I drink coffee’ – we do it everyday and ‘I drank coffee yesterday, on Sunday’. I also added an example in Russian, to show that we do the same in their first language, we change the verb form to signal that something has happened. We read the verbs, drilled a little bit and that’s it. I decided not to burden the kids with the differentiation between the regular or irregular verbs.

Since then, during the first lesson of the week, we have started to use these to talk about our Saturday and Sunday as we do until this day. I write a set of verbs on the board, usually up to 7, and everyone has to choose at least 4 to talk about the things they did at the weekend. About two or three weeks ago to all these ‘I went, I ate, I drank, I liked’, I added ‘I didn’t’ to broaden the scope for the kids. This way we get a chance to share the stories of our weekends and in the appropriate verb forms. Some of my students choose only the required four but some start their stories with ‘Can I talk about everything?’ and yes, of course, they can!

It was only this week that we started the topic ‘properly’. I added more verbs to the list and we started practising in a more focused way. See below for the activities that we have done so far.

Our story based on the Flyers materials

Practice

  • Matching the verbs forms using the wordwall game
  • Reading the crazy sentences on wordwall. It is fun to give the correct answer but we are also having lots of fun with reading all the incorrect versions, with the easier version (choosing the correct verb) and the more challenging one (choosing between the present simple and past simple).
  • Mr Milk and his day. We use Mr Milk and all his friends, Mr Banana, Mr Apple, Miss Umbrella, Mr Juice and many more, to tell simple stories. Children take turns to make simple sentences with the verb forms that I show and this is how we tell the whole story. In the end, we decide if it was a good day or a bad day. I have made cards, double-sided, with the basic form and a symbol to help the kids remember the meaning and the past tense form on the back but the electronic cards can be used, too.
  • The idea of Mr Milk was also used in the boardgame that I put together. Every student could talk about Mr Milk or they could choose their own character. We played the game and talked about their days using the verbs on the board.
  • Tell me about yesterday, a simple dice game. The kids played in pairs, they had to roll the dice, choose one of the two verbs (I wanted include as many as possible, hence the double set) and make a sentence, crazy or not crazy, and address their partner, for example ‘I ate a pizza. And you?’ and compare their days this way, If there is time, the kids can change partners once or twice and to continue the game.
  • A song ‘Oh what a week‘, from Superminds / Quickminds 3 by CUP. We looked at the pictures and described the actions, we listend to the song for fun and afterwards, we listen again to number the pictures and we found all the past verb forms in the lyrics, to practise reading and to facilitate the singing / reading in the future. We have been singing the song since and, in a few days, we will also write our own version.
  • Storytelling #1, based on the Flyers materials. I have used the Charlie story before and I have written about it here but this time Charlie was just a warmer for us. I pointed at the pictures on the screen and gave the kids sentence starters with the verbs for them to complete.
  • Storytelling #2, based on another set of Flyers materials. We looked at the pictures and prepared a list of words that we can see in the pictures. Kids were brainstoriming the ideas and I was writing them down on the board, in groups: people, places, emotions, objects and actions. Every word got its own number for the future reference. When kids need a word and ask for it, for example ‘Miss Anka, where is ‘students’?’, I can simply reply ‘It’s number 4’ and everything gets much easier. I printed the materials (see above), cut them up, stapled them together in booklets and gave them out, one per student. They we got down to writing our own versions of the story.
  • Storytelling #3 and the amazing Wacky Wednesday by Dr Seuss. It was a perfect choice for our classes because it includes some past tense, my kids love the idea of ‘wacky’ (or ‘crazy’) days, stories and ideas and we could actually do it on a Thursday which was a nice coincidence. We read the story because we have it in our library, I was reading and the kids were pointing at the wacky things in the pictures and we also tried to talk about these. The story is available also in a video format. In the end, we made notes in our notebooks about own own Wacky Wednesdays, writing only about three things: I saw, I went to, I ate.
  • What did you do at the weekend? This is how we start our everyday Monday lessons. I write on the board a few verbs in the past tense (I went to, I ate, I drank, I bought, I played, I saw, I rode, I watched, I made, I didn’t) and each child has to choose four things to tell us about their weekend, at least 4. We also added ‘Me, too!’ to react to whatever the kids are retelling and to involve the rest of the class. Our most recent addition is one question. I initially planned it as my question to the person who is talking but the kids suggested taking it further so right now I ask one question to the speaker AND the speaker asks me one question, too.

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. Seven months into the course

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Starting the lesson

This is the part of the lesson that is always the same: we say hello, we talk about how we are and we introduce the new students aka all the new toys that the kids have brought to school that day. It is a lot of fun to see how they are getting better at it and how much smoother it is now, compared to what it used to be a few months ago.

Songs

Our song writing at the beginning of the lesson is getting better and better. We started with the official versions of the song, ‘March, March’, but it went on for only a week or two and then it took a new direction. Nowadays, we sing two versions of it. The first one could be labelled as ‘my favourite month’ and some kids sing a verse about Christmas and Santa coming (presents, presents!) or about their favourite month. The second one is just a long and musical answer to a question ‘How do you feel today?’ and everyone is becoming more and more creative. This is definitely one of my favourite parts of the lesson these days and we usually have six or seven variations. And the language that is coming out of it! I am over the moon!

Another song that we started to sing in March is another hit from Super Simple Song, The Seasons Song. It is not a very new song, it was published a year ago but I have just found it while I was looking for something about spring. I love it. The lyrics are great and not so easy and the music is uplifting, a perfect song for the morning. We have been singing it for about a week now but soon I would like us to write our own versions of the song. I am hoping there will be different things that we can sing and love about the spring, not only the flowers…

Rules and classroom language

I have come up across an interesting problem related to rules and classroom management and I am now in the middle of considering all the implications and the steps I will have to take to sort it out.

I have realised that for some of my students our interactive lessons, so different to their ‘typical’ national curriculum classes and the approach of their national curriculum teachers have given an idea that the English lessons are not serious and that, for example, they don’t need to think about the rules that much or that they can simply op out of the activities as they would opt out of a game…I am not sure what it means yet but I know that I need to do something and introduce some changes. More on that later.

Story

We did a lot of storytelling in March. We were practising jobs and that is why we watched an episode of Steve and Maggie and turned it into a role-play. We also read and listened to our first story in verse from our coursebook, Lenny, Jenny and the Jumperoo. The story was quite long but the kids were really involved and with all the illustrations and proper staging, we made it into a good lesson.

And, after the success of the Wocket in the Pocket (which we also read again in a shared reading session), I decided that we are ready for the Green Eggs and Ham. We read it together, properly and it was a lot of fun. Our copy is a collection of five or six Dr Seuss’ stories and once my kids saw the other ones, they immediately made a plan for the next few weeks and the order in which we will read them all. I think we can say that Dr Seuss will be a frequent guest in our lessons!

Socialising

We kept working on our class friendships. We have done a lot of pairwork (surveys with different partners), we have played bamboozle, ‘Tell me’ and Wordwall Quiz, as one big team, collecting the points for our class. We have done a few ball games and we have even tried some Maths multiplication boardgames. The kids also had a chance to cooperate with each other during the treasure hunt activities as they could choose to work in pairs or small teams.

Creativity

Since our February was not the most creative on months, I tried to make up for it in March:

  • we wrote a lot of songs and this way we produced a lot of langauge
  • we read a poem and we wrote our first poem in English
  • one of the topics in March was ‘Inventions’ and we created our own inventions
  • we had a great lesson about Alfonso Pomodoro, a ghost and we used his interview with Miss Viola as a model for our own interviews with characters and we role-played these later.
  • we acted out our versions of the Steve and Maggie conversation from the video

Teacher

It has been a good month. We did our third milestones test in Maths and English and it was just great to see that so many of my students got excellent results. Although, all of them worked hard and I am proud of every single one of them! It is really a pleasure to look at how they work and get better and I even had to write a whole post about it!

A few months ago we started our dear diary project and some of the kids still continue writing and I get so much pleasure from reading them and replying. Especially when they give the notebook to me, then pester me to read it straight away and keep asking whether I have already replied or not and then they get their answer, read it as soon as possible and try to reply within the same day. We ARE communicating!

We have just started division in Maths and we are about to start unit 6 on Dinosaurs in English! Exciting!

Also, I bumped into Santa and managed to get out of him a pile of handwriting erasable notebooks and this is why I could give my kids the most amazing present that, within minutes, they started to use to write, in English and in Russian, to draw, to create stories, to take notes, to calculate Maths…

Happy teaching!

Five ways of encouraging kids to get involved in a task, Maths and more

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So, apart from being a teacher of English, a teacher of Art, a teacher of Science (occasionally), I am also (drum roll) a teacher of Maths, year 1 of primary (or Key Stage 3).

I am aware that perhaps not too many of my readers have Maths on their daily timetable but I decided to share these ideas nonetheless. It is because they are all rooted in the different ways of encouraging children to get involved in the activities that are challenging, tiresome and not always easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.

For myself I simply wanted to leave a note and a record of the things we do, for future reference. On the other hand, I know that all of these activities have a lot of potential for the regular and the beloved ESL, for grammar and vocabulary practice or reading.

Treasure Hunt is a task that I have used many times over the years. It takes some time to prepare and to set it up, especially the first time, but once you do it and once everyone figures out the rules and procedures, it is a great task that my students have always loved and asked for if we stopped doing it for a while. The main idea of the task is that we go around the school, look for all the tasks hidden there and we solve them. Once all of them are completed, everyone returns to the classroom to check the answers. In the past, we used to collect new words, solve crossword puzzles with clues around the school. We used to look for answers to the quiz or instructions how to colour the picture. This year, we use it mostly for Maths, solving different addition, subtraction and multiplication tasks.

Usually, we go out as the whole class but this kind of a treasure hunt can be easily turned into a running dictation, with kids working in pair, one of them running, one – taking notes of the answers. This works especially well with really big groups.

As many as you can: most of my kids are huge fans of Maths and they approach the tasks with mountains of motivation. To be honest, I don’t really understand it, since my brain does not really feel happy around numbers and prefers words, languages and visual arts. But, I can almost risk saying it, my kids’ enthusiasm is infectious, so, in fact, I like teaching Maths.

‘As many as you can’ is one more task type that we do in class. It is super simple, it involves an A4 page of exercises that the kids work on individually. There is only specific rule and that is: everyone is allowed to do as many as they want or can.

I love this task because for the kids, it is an opportunity to approach a task without a lot of pressure and it works very well with a mixed ability group and for me it is an opportunity to see how well each and individual student feels about a particular topic. True, sometimes, the external factors get into the way and the number of exercises is affected by the kids’ mood or the levels of tiredness but, overall, it is a good indicator of how well everyone has learnt and how well they have assimilated the particular topic.

Oh, Petya: Petya is one of our invisible students and having him works very well in ‘find the mistakes and correct them’ tasks which we usually do at the end of the unit. I have already written about him before and you can find the post here.

Jigsaw puzzle is another idea that I have been using in our Maths tasks to encourage the children to go through the task from the beginning until the end. It is very easy to prepare because you basically need a page with the Maths tasks and another colouring picture (in the theme of the month, like Halloween or Easter). The colouring picture is cut up into pieces, into a number that corresponds to the number of tasks and they are put into separate envelopes. As soon as the kids complete one of the tasks, they can come up to the board, open the relevant envelope and take out one jigsaw puzzle. I also like to put the correct answer on the envelope, to give the kids a chance to also check their answers. Once all the exercises are complete, the kids put the jigsaw puzzles into a picture and we glue these into out notebooks. The pictures can be coloured in the end, as an option.

Password, password! is a variation of the previous task – we collect tokens for every exercise completed, only in this case, these are letters that, together, a part of a password. Kids work on their tasks, invidually but they take turns to come to the board to solve a task and to uncover one of the letters. This task works wonders for bonding and building the class community. Just like the colouring page, the password can be adapted in any way that fits the theme of the month, the number of the exercises or the number the kids in the class.

One of the first passwords that we did this year was: ‘We love Maths and we are fantastic!‘ I wrote it on the board, with the numbers for each letter and I used hyphens to break the sentence into words. But it can be anything!

Well, is it something that you could use in your lessons? Please let me know!

Happy teaching!

Yves Klein. Take two. Printing and roller work.

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The man who can’t see the sun

Somehow, in this academic year, in our Art Explorers adventure, the days are filled with some ‘firsts’. Now and then, and more frequently that I would expect it to happen, we bump into something that we have never done before and something that we are trying for the first time and that we are experimenting with. I love it!

This time round, we experienced a mini-series of the same artist over two consecutive lessons. It is not that Monsieur Yves is such an inspiring artist that we simply had to give him a double Art slot. I mean, he is amazing and I am so happy that I have discovered him for myself and for my students but, surely, there have been many Great Artists that, theoretically, at least, should have been granted with that privilege, Malevich, Goncharova, Warhol or Picasso…A simple coincidence, that’s all it was. I got the amazing set of rollers and stamps but only in time for my older group, the younger kids on Mondays missed their chance. Since we had so much fun with the rollers, I simply decided to let everyone help! Then and only then, did it turn out later that Yves Klein himself loved using different tools…What a coincidence!

The Power of four elements

The language

The language stayed the same and we had a lot of time with the spinner and the verbs (you can read about them here) and, to be perfectly honest, the langauge input was kept short on purpose.

The artist

We just got back to the previous class and looked at some of his paintings again and I told the students that, apart from using the beautiful blue and painting with different body parts, Yves also used a variety of different rollers, stamps and other tools and that it is exactly what we would do.

Colourful frame

The art

The room was set up exactly the way we did last week, with the round table in the centre of the U-set of desks and it was basically our palette (have been covered in paper and painter scotched over before). I showed the students all of the tools and how they can be used. Because it was the last lesson in the series, I was also able to look back at the works created before. My special focus was this one, created by one of my older students because it combines pencil drawing, a variety of prints and a great roller work.

After that, we just got down to work and, in one line, it was just amazing.

Kids really enjoyed working with a new tool and experimenting with everything they had to offer. It was a good idea to cover the palette table with paper because it was the first place to try out rollers and stamps. This is also were they were mixing the colours to get new shades and colours. They were very careful and conscious while choosing the tools and combining them with the paints. We were talking about the process, a little bit in English and mostly in L1 and thanks to that I could see how their ideas were taking shape. That was precious. Or so I thought. Until the artists started to come up with the titles for their work. They did all of that in Russian and I helped them translate but hey, look at them, they are amazing…What is more, they were not created instantly. The kids really did put some work into creating them. Some students made a decision and then, upon more consideration, they changed their mind and came up with even a better, more suitable option. I was speechless and I continue to be. Why? Just look at the photos!

A worrying house

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #78 Making our own songs with kids.

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A paintbrush, that took us all by surprise with how beautifully it caught and preserved the paint. We all kept staring at it for a few minutes, in admiration.

I have already written a lot about things to do with songs. Here you can find a post about the steps to take to properly un-sing a song and to make the language your spoken language and another one on creating your own songs for the use in the YL classroom.

Today, I would like to share with you a project that we have been a part of for the past two months and that I am hoping will continue until the end of the academic year: our own month song.

Ingredients

  • a song and a melody that will be used as a model, in my case it was January Song from Sing Play Create.
  • a group of kids and a teacher to manage
  • optionally: an audio of the melody, ours was Frere Jacques, it was easy to find.

Procedures

  • First, a story: Our lessons in December, with my year 1 kids, started with different Christmas songs as we had already abandoned the regular Hello songs somewhere in December. When January arrived, I wanted to devote a part of the lesson to a chat about things that we do in that month. And to introduce that slot, I was looking for a song. I found it and quite easily and it was perfect – short, call and response style and with a relatively simple melody. We sang this song throughout the entire month. Then, February came and I started to look for a song that we could sing. I did not find anything that would work for us, something easy and short, without too many cultural references that are not at this point relevant. I didn’t find anything that I could use. I decided we are going to create our own.
  • In the first lesson of February, I explained to my students the song situation and encouraged them to think about our own song. They made a real effort and we ended up with a song in 1 a and a slightly different song in 1b. I wrote the songs on the board and we photographed the board. Every day, at the beginning of the first lesson, I would take out my phone and start singing for the kids to repeat. Some of the phrases were familiar to kids, the others I helped to translate.
  • We repeated the procedure in March and ended up with two verses in both groups that we sang for a week.
  • The next step was of course the kids’ versions. I did not prepare them for that in any way and on one of the days, I simply asked: Does anyone have an idea for a new song? And they did. Right now we do it every lesson and there are always some kids who are willing to share their ideas.

Why we love it

  • The song is a perfect choice for creative singing (and speaking). It has got a simple melody which we already know very well. The song follows the pattern of call – response so whatever idea the leader comes up with, the group responds, by simply repeating the line.
  • The lines are short, easy to create and to repeat even for beginner children. It is an advantage, too that the verses of the song follow two patters: either a simple phrase or a short sentence so pretty much anything can be used. Some of the verses we created were like that: ‘March, March’ (only two words repeated), ‘Make snowmen’ (an imperative), ‘Birds and bees are flying’ (present continuous), ‘Flowers grow’ (present simple), ‘We are very tired’ (personalised sentences with the verb to be).
  • Some of my kids have an idea but they don’t have the language and that works, too. They sing the first line, in Russian, and I respond with the equivalent in English. It also helps with some verses that are not appropriate but are, at the same time, a result of my students experimenting with the language. We have had a few cases of a line like that appearing as a call and me replying with ‘La la la’ or with ‘Sasha is not singing’, to signal that some things are not be accepted.
  • Kids love this part of the lesson and, on a typical day, we have about 4 or 5 verses, sometimes more, sometimes fewer. Some of the kids sing the verses, some prefer to say them already and it all works.
  • I am just overjoyed because they are producing the langauge and in this previous week, we have seen an interesting new trend or even two. Some kids (following my example) started to create songs about how they feel on the day (‘March, March. Sunny day. I am very happy. But I want to sleep’) which is their extended and musical answer to ‘How do you feel today?’. Some children sang a song about their favourite month (usually related to their birthday). We had also a few crazy versions of snow in July and another Christmas in the summer. One way or another – lots and lots of language creativity.
  • Another thing that makes me really happy is that this creative activity appeals not only to my stronger students but also to some of my struggling students and, in general, is great for mixed ability groups. It is easy to create your song, for example by changing one or two words in the verses that your teacher or friend sang. That’s easy to do. Plus, all students are creative, even my beginner beginners. They have an idea and they want to share and since some of the ideas are shared every day, they stay. My student Sasha came up with the idea of a sick rainbow two weeks ago and now he remembers himself and encourages us to sing ‘The rainbow is sick’. We do.
  • Last but not least, this is our little tradition, our routine, something that we do as a community. And that makes it precious, too!

I am quite curious what is going to happen to this project in April and in May. It is already good and exciting and worthy of sharing but who knows what else is there for us…I will definitely be writing about it in the future!

Happy teaching!

Guess what happened at work? Or the things that YL teachers live for.

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A suggestion from a student that we should add a ‘Danny Go!’ song to our lesson, written by my student, in his first year of learning English.

Time to admit it, we are a strange breed!

First of all, our work stories are not really glamorous. There are no celebrities in them, no events that make the news, no interesting places and no brand names. Speaking from experience here, in comparison with the copywriters, marketing experts, nurses and doctors, engineers and accountants in my life who also come back home and share theirs. What teachers bring from school are the tales of behaviour issues, funny quotes, developmental stories, getting things right and getting things wrong.

And then even as teachers…a while ago, I met a friend whom I hadn’t seen for a while and we were catching up on life and work and all things related. I shared my adventures and my recent and relatively short-lived (thank heavens) period of revisiting adult EFL. My friend was at the same time in awe and taken aback. ‘In awe’ happened because this year added a nice few pretty-looking lines to my resume as the weight that would come with the names of international banks and IT companies or with the noble and serious sectors of the high levels, Business or Financial English. ‘Taken aback’ came about as a result of my attitude, a tired ‘Yeah, whatever’ that turned into bored or openly dismissive as the conversation went on. Apparently, I should have been very excited and proud.

It is not that I did not enjoy these lessons or that I did not do a good job or that I was not grateful for the enthusiasm with which my students came to class. I did and very much so (you can read it about here) but that was nothing special, just the everyday.

Take baking, for example. If you bake and if you have been baking for some time, a batch of cookies or a batch of brownie is not a holiday, it is a must. It doesn’t mean that you will eat delicious cookies every single time, things go wrong, of course, but more often than not, if you take out your flour, soda, sugar and chocolate out, you can expect that at the end of the road, there will be good cookies. You have this experience, nothing to celebrate and nothing to write home about.

Same with teaching. After all these years, putting together a good lesson for an exam class or for a C1 group is kind of a must, not a special event. And yes, the respectable clients add a layer of fine veneer to the whole experience or, if we are to go on with the baking metaphor, a layer of icing but that’s it. And, really, students are just students and everyone deserves a good lesson, a top-notch businessman, an bank CEO or a five-year old boy.

That is why there is no special pride or excitement. It is a job well done. Still, it is only a job.

Teaching kids is not only a job.

It is also a job but it is not only that. It cannot be only a job when you are not only teaching your subject, whatever it is, but you are also taking part in bringing up the little human and helping them to understand the world, to learn how to function in it and how to interact with the rest of it that is not you. It cannot be ‘only a job’ when you are surrounded by the stories of these lives, the joys and the dramas and when whatever you are planning to do in class might be affected by everything that happened out of the lesson time and that simply because the little people cannot yet disassociate. It is not only a job when you get to sing and jump to the songs or to get your own hands dirty practising for the art classes.

The things that make me gasp, the things that make me get excited.

  • My kids doing a pair-work activity: it can be a very simple activity, just a ‘guess my flashcard’ game that involves nothing but reciting all the words from the set, until you get the right now. All the exciting elements, like asking a full question, taking notes of the answers or repeating the activity with a new partner, they come later. But to see them work on their own, keeping the conversation going and moving from point A to point B of the activity, this is precious. Introducing it is a process, it does not just happen, it does not happen overnight and introducing it takes time, a few lessons, weeks or months, depending on the child’s age. But it is possible and it is beautiful. When it finally happens, it is yours and can be used forever and ever. Here you can find a post about my experiment and a controlled and conscious way of introducing pairwork with my pre-school group. A successful one, too!
  • My kids creating their own songs and producing the language because of a song: I realised (and not such a long time ago) that I introduce some songs only because they contain a pretty chunk of the language, hoping that soon (or even sooner), these structures will become a part of what we can say. A good example here can be ‘What’s your favourite colour?’ by Super Simple Song. It is my favourite colour song, not because it is the easiest (that would be just ‘I can sing a rainbow‘, because that is, mostly, just a list of the words, ideal for a beginner group) but because it includes a very good question ‘What’s your favourite?’ and a very good answer ‘I like’ which, when mastered, can be used with any topic. I love singing and my kids love singing (not everyone loves the same songs, of course) and I say that right now, six months into the course, singing and creating our songs based on what we have sung already is one of our favourite activities. Right now, we have a habit of creating a song for the month and many version of it and we also love creating our own versions of all the other songs we sing. Here you can find a post from four years ago about un-singing the song. We still do it!
  • My kids beginning to do their task truly independently: What I mean by that is the shift and the huge stepping stone from doing a task, in the coursebook, workbook or any handout, step by step, led by the teacher, not copying the teacher’s answers but taking the exercise or the task in small bites, moving on together as a group of individuals, waiting for everyone to a situation when the teacher sets the task and everyone does it at their own pace and in their own way, choosing for example parts of the exercise that they deal with. It is always a big day for me and it is a sign that kids are becoming more independent learners. The expert is right next to them but they don’t need the support that much. Why? Because their zone of proximal development has expanded a little bit! Hooray!
  • My kids making decisions: I cannot tell you how many times, in this academic year, I have used the phrase: ‘It is your decision’ in response to anything that my students did, said or asked, as regards their English, Maths or Art lessons or any actions in class or during the breaks. I actually started to wonder if they know the phrase or if they can produce it as I always use English and Russian when we talk about it…It is necessary to include opportunities to make decisions but it is also necessary to develop the awareness of the fact that some things belong in the category ‘we do it, I cannot opt out’, such as tests. It is an interesting process and I am getting a lot of joy out of it. And pride.
  • My kids improving their literacy skills: The literacy skills and their development are probably the greatest challenge of the first year of English in primary but at the same time, they are the source of the greatest joy, passion, hype, reward and happiness. Firstly, because it is a long-term process and you can enjoy bits and pieces of it throughout the entire year, every single lesson and in many different variations: blending and segmenting, writing your own name in English, checking out our alphabet poster for reference, shared reading, looking at the materials and reading things themselves, just before they saw them, not because we were actually doing it, applying the phonemic awareness that they already have, choosing to write anything in English, especially when not induced by the lesson and the teacher and so on and so forth…Or, because they are able to, they proceed with the task independently (see point 3).

The life outside of the classroom

You can easily imagine that all these stories would not be enjoyed as much by anyone who is not a teacher. I am visualising me coming back home, meeting friends or getting in touch with my brother and sharing the story from this week:

‘Guess what happened today in class? Sasha wanted us to sing ‘Danny Go!’ in class and he asked to add it to the lesson plan. And he wrote it himself, almost 100% correctly! Look at the photo! (see: above). He only started to learn English with us in September! And now he writes all two words and I only help him letters, he writes them from memory!’

I think it is fair to say that the response would be, most likely, a polite smile or a nod, or, if the people are used to these kind of stories, maybe even a funny meme. Only a fellow YL teacher would appreciate it more. Or the readers on the blog, perhaps. It is all good. These are the stories that I bring from work.

What about you? What are the things that make you happy in the classroom? Please share in the comments!

Happy teaching!

Yves Klein and we don’t want one colour!

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The language

Bearing in mind the artist and his approach to painting, I decided to choose the body as the focus for this lesson (and probably for the few lessons to come, too, although this still needs to be confirmed). For that reason, we have introduced and revised the body parts using the wordwall cards and then we played one of my favourite movement games: Shake your nose! It can be played with a dice and a list of six verbs or with an online spinner. The teacher needs to introduce and demonstrate the verbs. Afterwards, they spin the wheel, read the verb and choose the body part to perform the action. Naturally, the kids take over as soon as they are ready and ask the whole class to perform the silly actions: shake your nose, clap your feet, move your mouth and what not. Of course, everyone’s favourite is ‘freeze’:-)

‘Rabbit’

The artist

I have found Yves Klein only recently, while looking for something else entirely, and when I did, I was surprised, taken aback and mesmerized, all at the same time. Mesmerized – because he is just amazing, surprised – because I had never heard of him and taken aback – because Yves could be (or could have been) the inspiration for one of my favourite sci-fi characters from Alistair Reynolds’ Zima Blue. And I did NOT know that…

Anyway, Yves was introduced with this one photograph because it encapsulate everything we need to know about him, his favourite method and his favourite colour, all at once. We looked at a few examples of what Yves Klein created and we also talked about anthropometry but, because of the age of my students, we limited that to ‘painting with different body parts’ and ‘painting with things’. We did not look at any of the performances. That was enough to spark an interest and they kept asking questions, trying to imagine what the process would look like.

The kids got really interested in the blue rectangle and started to compare it with Malevich’s black square (I taught them well). Sasha, who wildly fights the idea of copying (which I am trying to convince her to think of as ‘inspiration’) asked: ‘Who was first, this Klein or Malevich?’. ‘Malevich’, I said. She rolled her eyes and commented ‘Plagiarism!’…

10 Things to Know about Yves Klein – Artsper Magazine
10 Things to Know about Yves Klein – Artsper Magazine

The art

Initially, the task looked very simple: try to become Yves, for one lesson and to prepare a monochrome picture, using only hands and fingers but all that started to change in the classroom, because I decided to read the room and adjust.

The classroom set-up needed a small adjustment in order to faciliate work. Our tables stand in one big U, with a lot of room in the centre. I brought an IKEA kids table, covered it with paper and decided that that would be our pallete, with four sections for the colours and for more room for mixing the colours. The kids were told to move withing the U, going from the round table to their work stations. This worked very well. We could use one set of paints, everyone was on the move and since the table was in the centre, the kids pretty much avoided bumping into each other and invading each other’s space. We had tissues on the ready but they were also allowed to go out to the nearby bathroom to wash the hands when necessary. We used the aprons to protect the clothes.

‘Different colours’

The younger kids were working only with their hands because it was only later that I bought a set of kiddies sponge rollers and stamps. I brought them to my Wednesday lesson, for the older students and these had a much wider scope of an opportunity to become Yves for a day, who also used a variety of rollers in his work.

One thing that I did not take into consideration (silly teacher!) was the fact that a new material in the classroom will have its own implications. First of all, my students really got excited about trying out what can be done with finger paints and with rollers and stamps. It is perfectly natural, you get a new toy, you want to play with it and see what it can do. Showing a new tool and setting boundaries in the way it is used is just unreasonable! That’s what I learnt last week.

‘Fox’

The other, related, thing is that I found sets of finger paints of only four colours, they had amazing shades. Blue was the most beautiful baby blue, green was more emerald than just simple green and the red one was something between ruby and light brick and they all looked very tempting. When I took the colours, a few students asked the same question, both in the younger and the older group: ‘Do we have to use only one colour?’ and they were so sad about it, that I really did not have the guts in me to go monochrome. I said that monochrome was recommended but that they could use whatever they wanted. The funny thing is that the kids did like the shade of the Klein’s blue and the whole approach to painting but, when it came to their own creations, they still wanted to be able to use all of them.

The lesson was a success (unless you want to consider the abandoning of the monochrome as a distaster, which I don’t). The kids got really involved into their interaction with the new tool and the new technique and it was great to see how they were experimenting and making their decisions as regards the task interpretation.

‘Without a title’

In the younger group, the students decided to ‘simply’ paint using fingers and hands, some used prints trying to compose a painting out of them. Many of my kids focused on experimenting with mixing the colours and interpreting the outcomes. The older students were more decisive regarding the topic of their paintings, once again depicting their favourite theme, a goose, a rabbit and a fox, in a new way. In both groups, many students created more than one picture because once we started, the ideas came flowing (here you will find another post, when we played with the younger group with all the stamps).

I used the finger paints but in a more limited capacity, only to write letters or to use dots, this was the first, fully-fledged lesson and I have to say – I loved the material. Not only does it wash easily, it is is very liquidy and flowing so it can be used in many ways. It is also perfect for printing as it dries very quickly and it can be combined with drawings or stickers and collage within the same lesson. Lots of potential there and we will definitely be coming back.

‘Goose’

There is a little post scriptum to this post here! Don’t forget to check it out!

Happy teaching!