Craft

Five ways of using craft in the pre-primary classroom

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Before the craft.
A set of quilling paper strips

This is the second part of the Craft ABC series. You can find the first part here.

The main activity and the target language practice

This is a craft activity that features in the lesson to provide opportunities for the target langauge practice. As an example I have decided to choose our beloved jellyfish that is the first craft activity that I do with my first-year students, in one of the first weeks of the course. This is the time when we learn and practise colours with flashcards, colourful blocks and realia in general, with simple stories, videos, wordwall games and songs. A craft activity is yet another way of ‘recycling’ the target vocabulary and of giving the students an opportunity to be exposed to it and to use it.

The jellyfish is a super simple craft and even the youngest kids can draw the eyes and the smile on the head (which can be a semi-circle cut out by the teacher or a half of a paper plate) and then to attach the tentacles to the back of it. Kids are really motivated to make their own jellyfish and to drill and call out the colours and to ask for the following one, in a very simple way (‘Blue, please’). As a result, lots and lots of language is produced and everyone leaves the classroom with a creature they made herself. What’s most important, the jellyfish looks good even with the most crooked smile and the most inexpertly glued tentacles. And even if there are only three or four colours used, with the youngest kids.

The follow-up of a story or a song

Craft in this case is an opportunity to reinforce the ideas, concepts, vocabulary and structures introduced in a song or in a story. Or, to put it differently, a story or a song is not introduced only as a starter or a side dish but it becomes the topic for the entire lesson.

The three examples in the photos come from the lessons taught based on the Playway to English 1 by Cambridge University Press. The first one is a flower we made together while retelling the story from unit 7 (The Little Seed which you can also find here) and although we were not able to use all the original story lines, the kids could use the basic ones such as It’s sunny, It’s raining. The little seed is sleeping (at the beginning), The flower is growing (while making the stem) and so on.

The second example is everyone’s favourite Very Hungry Caterpillar which is a storybook we use in year, to accompany either unit 7 (Weather / Spring) or unit 9 (Food). You can find more information on this version of the caterpillar here.

Last, but definitely not least, is a simple craft that was a follow-up of the amazing Super Simple Song called ‘Are you hungry?‘ and it can be used either with the topic of fruit (Playway to English 1, unit 3) as it goes nicely with the theme of the song of monsters sharing fruit with their hungry friends or, in a wider context, with food in general (Playway to English, unit 9). The craft activity becomes the more palpable and 2-D version of a song and it can be used in a mini-role play, sung or spoken, depending on what the kids are ready for.

Props preparation

This type of a craft activity does not have a lot of potential as regards maximising production although the kids are quite likely to use some functional language, the staples of craft (Are you ready? Let’s sit down, Blue, please etc). This type of a craft activity is also quite short, compared with the ones mentioned so far but that is exactly the point. The craft activity is only a prelude. Everything important is to happen later with the finished product used as a tool.

The best example here will be our magic wand. It is simple and easy to make and can be used as a part of a shapes lesson (though, really, there is only one shape involved). The abracadabra TPR activity (Abracadabra, 123, you are…) is a game we play from the very beginning of the course. When the kids are ready to take over, we make a wand for each other and use it in a game and at this point, the kids get to lead the game for real, waving their own, freshly-produced wands and we all mime whatever there is to mime. The langauge is produced and lots of it (Abracadabra, 123, you are…swimming, dancing, flying…OR you are a cat, a happy cat, a hungry dinosaur…) but it is not directly related to the making of the wand.

A part of a Science, Maths or Art lesson

Craft can be also a part of a CLIL lesson or a Maths, Science or Art lesson, depending on whether we are dealing with the EFL or the ESL or bilingual programmes. In this case, the craft activity will create an opportunity for the students to put into practice or to reinforce the real knowledge or skills they have acquired in class, making it more practical, kinesthetic and hands-on.

Below, three examples of such craft activities.

The first one is a Maths lesson in which we were learning about and practising measuring. Apart from working with the rulers and measuring tapes and checking how long our cars, teddy bears, desks, noses and fingers were, the kids also got a simple handout with a section of a certain length and it was their task to measure the strips of paper with rulers, cut of the appropriate piece and glue it underneath.

The second one is one of the lessons devoted to animal habitats which we studied in our Science class. Apart from categorising animals and talking about the habitat, we also did a craft activity in which we created the habitat (here the polar region made of a sheet of blue paper, waves drawn, ice made of cotton pats and the animals glued on). After a series of lessons we had a set of habitats.

The third piece here is one of the activities we made as part of the Kids in the Avangard. In this lesson Paul Klee was our artist of the day and we created our own version of his Cat and Bird.

The non-linguistic aims

Sometimes craft activities have a non-linguistic main aims. Because of their obvious relevance to kids’ lives and the excitement that they generate, they can be used to help kids develop as humans and this can be the reason for their inclusion in a language lesson.

The first activity here is one of my favourite craft activities ever. It can be used in many different thematic lessons but its main advantage is that because, due to its design, it requires a detailed micro-staging and, on the one hand, it can help kids work on their ability to focus and to follow teacher’s instructions in order to be able to turn their circles into cats, dogs, frogs and bees. On the other hand (and it has worked absolutely every single time), it brings an immense sense of achievement and confidence in kids’ own skills since a random circle can become so many things.

The other activity presented here is an example of a festive craft that finds its place in the classroom as part of the seasonal celebrations. Despite the fact that sometimes this vocabulary will be used in class only in a year, when the holiday comes up again, it connects the lesson to the celebrations at home and in kindergarten and it is the easiest way of bringing these festivities into the EFL classroom.

The final activity, our solar system was a wonderful activity that we all enjoyed and one that helped us produce lots and lots of language. However, believe it or not, that was not the reason why we did it. This was our first real whole class project because the kids got an opportunity to work on something together, sharing resources and sharing the space and we produced one huge poster that nobody would be taking home in the end.

Happy teaching!

Craft is…what the VYL world is all about

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Just one of the shots taken in the middle of a working day, before a craft lesson…

Craft has been present in my classroom life for as long as I can remember. Looking back, I can see all the pieces I made with my superstars in Moscow over the last thirteen years, the robots we constructed at the summer camp in Tuscany in 2009, some 3-D houses we made with my Navarran babies in 2008, or the magazines I put together with my cousin, my first student ever, somewhere in 2000…What’s more, craft has been present in my life since my own primary school. I loved the Art lessons, I loved the Craft lessons. I even loved the Technology classes, although craft then involved: weaving a mini rug, building a birdfeeder and making a chair for a doll.

You could say that the foundations for my future career have been built pretty early and that I have had a lot of opportunities to perfect my fine motor skills and to fall in love with craft (truly, madly, deeply). No wonder that I would try to smuggle it into my lessons.

It was only a week ago, actually, while preparing yet another session for a teacher training course, that I saw craft with a fresh pair of eyes and I saw it for what it really is: the VYL world (or the pre-school world) in a nutshell, everything that is beautiful about it, everything that can be enjoyable about it and, inevitably, everything that can go wrong with it, too.

The simple truth is that: kids love craft

Craft lessons and craft activities are these parts of the lesson when kids can do something for real, not the coursebooks, not the handouts or worksheets, not the time when you need to stay focused but the creative, the beautiful, the fun part. And, one more important factor – something that is different every single time!

If you add to it the variety of materials that are included, the variety of techniques and that, more often than not, you end up with a real product, a book, a house, a puppet or a collage, which you have created yourself and which you are allowed to take home, it is not a surprise that kids love it.

‘Ah, we haven’t done anything for such a long time‘ was something that I heard one of my students mumble to herself when she saw me reach out for the coursebook as soon as we sat down at the tables. As a teacher, I was taken aback. Because we did DO things! We sang songs, we read stories, played with flashcards and we did have good lessons. In my student’s eyes, however, all that meant nothing at all, because, indeed, somehow a long time had passed since the previous craft lesson and that, at least for this one student, was the real thing, the something!

If you want to read more on why kids need craft activities, have a look here.

The simple truth is: many teachers don’t like craft

  • A craft lesson takes a long time to prepare.
  • It is messy, both during the preparation stage (see the photo above) and during the lesson.
  • The teachers might not have a full access to all the resources necessary, even the simple ones so they end up buying these themselves
  • Classroom management is a bit more tricky in the craft lessons, as there are more elements to manage and the kids might get too excited.
  • If not planned properly, craft lessons can turn into a mayhem, with kids not producing the target language or even not completing the task.
  • Craft activites are not very well taken care of in the mainstream coursebooks and in the teachers books and so there is no resource to learn from.
  • If the craft activity has not been chosen properly and if it is too complex for the students or if it is not planned properly, students might struggle with completing it or they might destroy in and in such a case there might be tears of a child in despair or tears of a disappointed child.

Craft is what the VYL world is about

Teaching pre-schoolers, compared with the other age groups, will require more of your time in the preparation stage and it will be more demanding as regards the class time. It might require you to include the things that teachers, as adults, have no interest in and which they will still include because that is what can be beneficial and effective with students of that age. In the same vein, some things will have to be excluded even if teachers love them, also because of the age of the students, they will simply not work.

There is only one thing to be done…

…and that is: careful planning and Carol Read’s MADFOX (Management, Appropriacy, Design, Flexibility, Outcomes, Excitement) which you can read about in the ‘500 Activities for the Primary Classroom‘. It is a wonderful tool that will help prepare for a craft activity in the EFL or ESL lesson, primary and pre-primary. Actually, this framework will work well with any type of an activity or a set of materials, stories, songs and games.

One of my earlier posts (and my first acronym W.O.R.L.D🙂 might also come in handy while choosing a craft activity for the pre-primary EFL /ESL lesson.

The most important thing to remember everything gets better with time. The lesson planning become easier and less time-consuming. The kids know the teacher, the lesson format and their peers better and that is an important factor contributing to the success of the activities and, last but not least, if you decide to reuse a particular type of a craft activity for the second or third time, the students will also be able to deal with it better as they will have done it before.

There is hope))

This post is only the first part of the Craft ABC series. You can find the second part here. Don’t forget to also have a look at all the posts in the craft section on this blog.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #31: Circle IS the best shape aka Frogs Etc

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@ Magdalena

Ingredients

  • Two circles cut out of cardboard (regular photocopying paper is too thin and flimsy), with the two holes for fingers also cut out before the lesson.
  • Glue to glue these together
  • Crayons, pencils or markers to draw the appropriate body parts

Procedures

  • Show the kids the finished product, introduce the frog, chat with the kids
  • Show the kids the smaller circle, show how you decorated it.
  • Give out the pencils / markers.
  • Give out the small circles, decorate it with the kids.
  • Give out the bigger circle, decorate it, if appropriate.
  • Collect the pencils.
  • Show the kids how to glue one on top of the other. For the younger kids, it might be a good idea to draw a small cross on the top of the bigger circle, to signal where the kids should put the glue.
  • Give out the glue sticks. Kids glue their circles together.
  • Glue the additional body parts, when appropriate.
  • Collect the glue sticks.
  • Play
@ Magdalena

Why we like it

  • It is super easy! These frogs here, in the picture, were produced for a child (a huge Frog Fan), rather than with a child, and that is why I went a bit crazy with the eyes but there are the simpler versions of it)
  • These two circles can become many many things: a frog, a bear, a cat, a dog, a monkey, a rabbit or a snowman, with little adaptations.
  • The task does involve a lot of pre-cutting but the rest can be done by the kids during the lesson.
  • Once the toys are ready, they can be used to play, as any other puppets with all the structures that the kids are familiar with and with those that match the topic of the lesson, at the very least, ‘Hello’, ‘My name is’, ‘I like…and you?’ and it is always great when you can maximise production.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs # 30: Circle IS the best shape in the world aka About chicks

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@ Magdalena

It was a typical day in the life of a small scale Mary Poppins. I set out for a shift at the volunteering centre and, as an experienced one, I could not imagine to go unprepared, even if minimally. I thought that, at the very least, we can do some circle magic. I could not take everything but I had a big pocket and so it got filled in with three glue sticks, an envelope full of circles, a small packet of colourful feathers (that was a nice coincidence that I had it). A4 paper and a box of markers did not fit in one hoodie pocket.

When I arrived and started the shift, it became obvious very very quickly that the place is not ready for any craft activities because, apart from one small table and a few little stools and a box of coloured pencils, there was nothing. Or, rather, there was only me and my pocket.

There is some beauty in that, really, when you get to see how your brain starts to get involved in order to think of a solution. Sure, THAT was not about sending a man to the moon or putting together a new recipe, but, still. I was building a grid for our version of hop-scotch and sorting out toys, and the brain was trying to imagine what I can make out of the contents of my pocket. A little chick, that’s what.

Ingredients

  • lots of circles, cut out before the lesson out of colour paper, regular type, cardboard might be too thick. As for the size, this time it is officially: the Size of the Bottom of a Mug, colourful, for the kids to choose from, two pieces per child
  • glue
  • something to draw (markers, pencils, crayons)
  • colourful feathers (I got them in the stationery section of a regular supermarket, you can buy them in any craft activities), but they can be replaced by strips of colorful tissue paper (also those unevenly torn), three per child, if you use the feathers or as many as you want, if you use the strips of the tissue paper

Procedure

  • ideally, for the smaller children especially, it would be a good idea to put a cross on one side of each circle, so that it is absolutely clear on which side children should put the glue
  • each child chooses two circles
  • choose the circle that will be your front, draw the eyes (two small circles in the most basic version), and a beak (a small triangle)
  • take the other circle, cover the cross side with the glue
  • place one of the feathers on the top, for the little ‘fringe’, on top of the glue, so that a part of it is on the cirlce and a part of it stands out of it
  • repeat the same with the other feathers, by putting each of them on two sides, for the wings
  • take the front circle, put it face down, cover the cross side with a lot of glue
  • place it (more or less carefully), on the top of the back circle and the feathers, press
  • use the birdies to play, the kids can use them as puppets, say hello, introduce themselves, ask how they are, and use any other structures that they already know

Why we like it

  • is very, very easy, I have done it with two-year-olds (with a tiny bit of help) and with eight-year-olds
  • there is more potential for decoration (a more complex bird’s face, legs, tail etc)
  • the main focus of this lesson (or activity) can be playing with the chicks as making them will take only a few minutes
  • despite being very easy to produce, this craft has a lovely ‘wow’ moment and it lies in the fact that such simple elements put together can gives a lovely little bird.
  • below, you can also see the ‘proper Easter, made with mum and aunt’ version, with professional wings, made of felt. They look pretty and we made them only because I found this set in a shop. Here, it might be a good idea to let the chicks spend the night in the middle of the book, to make sure that they stick properly (felt is a bit thicker and it will need more encouragement, especially if you are using just the regular glue)

Here are some other circle-based craft ideas

Here are my own Frogs Etc, my snowman, and all the circle ideas.

Here is a lovely bear craft, here a ladybird craft, and here a caterpillar, too and here, a bunch of other activities, probably too complex for the EFL classroom but definitely worth looking at.

Teaching English through Art: Andy Warhol

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Dear reader! I hope you are here because you have been in search of ideas for a lesson on Art and English for primary school children. If so, you are in the right place! I would like to share with you a lesson that I taught a few months ago as a part of my Art Explorers programme. I would like to start with some blowing my own trumpet in an attempt to inspire you and to think ‘I want one of those!‘

Andy Warhol Marilyn Monroe (masterworksfineart.com)

It was a great lesson because…

  • our group of Art Explorers was a mixed-age, a mixed-level and a mixed-ability group, with some pre-A, some A1 and some A2 children and we were all united in art. Everyone was involved, everyone was producing as much as they could and everyone had fun.
  • the kids who took part were the members of five different groups at the school and it was the first time they had a chance to interact with each other, in English.
  • the children had a chance to revise and practise English, to find out about Andy Warhol, to talk about feelings, emotions and associations and to exercise their creativity in the craft task.
  • it worked very well as an introduction to our Art Explorers programme
  • it was relatively low-key as regards the preparation and craft materials as we used the simplest things available: a powerpoint, a handout, a few sets of vocabulary flashcards, a few sets of watercolours, paintbrushes and cups.
  • it lasted 60 minutes but it could easily be adapted to 45 or 90 minutes, depending on the needs of the group and the age of the students.
Andy Warhol – Double Mickey Mouse – Catawiki

The lesson, stage by stage

Stage 1: Introduction

We said hello, introduced ourselves and we had a small ‘get to know each other’. Each pair of students got a pile of flashcards (food, toys, sports, colours, animals etc). The students were supposed to pick out one card and to ask each: Do you like…. There was a model question and answers on the board, together with ‘because’ which the older students were already familiar with in order to encourage more developed answers.

Stage 2: Colours and emotions

We revised the emotions and a set of the basic adjectives was displayed on the board as a point of reference. Afterwards, we revised the colours and I introduced the idea of associations. The key word here (‘associations’) is actually quite similar to its counterpart in the kids’ L1 but I decided to use even a simpler structure ‘Green is a happy colour because…’

The kids were put into pairs, for another speaking activity and they were comparing their own associations related to each of the colours. At this point we did not use the flashcards. Instead, eaach pair got a set of markers and they were asked to discuss all the colours in the set. Afterwards we compared our ideas.

Stage 3: The artist of the day

We moved to the TV room to meet the artist of the day. At this point I was using the powerpoint which you can find in the attachments.

First of all we looked at the photo of Andy and the kids said as much as they could, about his appearance and character. Only later did I introduce him properly, albeit briefly – as artist, from the US, a very creative person.

I showed the kids a few paintings and asked what they thought of them. They were using the simplest structures of ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’ and, in the case of the older and more advanced students, to provide a rationale for their views.

The Campbell soup was especially interesting. First of all, because we compared it to the local brand of ready made food that the kids could relate to and it was a huge surprise that such a usual item can become an artifact. Second of all, this particular painting was how we transitioned into the theme of the day: how the same item, represented in different colours can create different associations.

Stage: The colours and the emotions

We looked at the photograph of Marilyn Monroe and one of the most famous paintings by Andy Warhol and at the similar painting of Mickey Mouse. We worked as a group and we talked about the different emotions related to different versions of Marilyn and Mickey Mouse and how they made us feel. I wanted to keep it open class in order to give the students a chance to hear as many different versions and ideas as possible to show them that the same painting can generate a great variety of emotions.

Stage: Let’s create

I told the kids that we are going to try to express our emotions and that we are going to be like Andy Warhol. I added that to Andy, Marilyn and Mickey were important symbols because he was American and that we would use some other symbols. At this point, the kids were already shouting out the name ‘Chebourashka’:-)

We went back to the other classroom. Everyone got a handout (see below) and a pencil or a marker. First, we all decided what feelings and emotions we wanted to represent and we labelled all the sections of the handout.

Afterwards, I gave out the painting materials and we sat down to work. The kids were given time to paint and I was painting my own and monitoring and chatting to the kids and asking the follow-up questions.

Stage: Tell me about your Chebourashka

The kids worked in pairs and told their partner about their pictures and the emotions they represented and, whenver possible, provided rationale for that. In that particular lesson, we only had enough time to talk to one partner but, in theory, there is a lot more potential and it is more than recommended for the kids to swap pairs and to talk to as many peers as possible.

Stage: Goodbye

We finished the lesson with cleaning up, with a round of stickers and with a song.

@funkysocksanddragons

Materials

Dear Mr Bruner aka Exercises in scaffolding

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Dear Mr Bruner,

I am happy to inform you that, inspired by your article, I have decided to follow your example and to start experimenting in the area of scaffolding…

Oh, how I wish I could write a letter of that kind. Since I first read the article by Bruner, Woods and Ross on the original research and how the term ‘scaffolding’ started to mean what it does to us, teachers and educators, it has become a kind of a life mission to spread the word about it among my teachers and trainees, conference attendees and, of course, the readers of my blog. This is also the area that I choose to invesitage in my first classroom research project as part of my MA programme.

Of course, the most important things keep happening in the classroom, in the everyday when you observe and adapt your instructions, gestures, voice and actions to better suit the young or very young learners as regards demonstration, marking critical features, reduction in degrees of freedom, recruitment, direction maintenance and frustration control (the six orignal features outlined in the article).

This time, the starting point was the lazy teacher…

I started to plan the final lesson with my three pre-school groups that also happened to be our Christmas lesson. And it was out of this tiredness and the madness of the end of the year that made me wake up one day and decide: ‘I am going to repeat the lesson!’

Three lessons in a row, three different levels, three different age groups and the same lesson plan. Well, to a point, of course. We would all study the same vocabulary set and sing the same songs, but the activities would vary, depending on what the children are capable of.

Topic, vocabulary and structure

There were eight words in the set (Santa, a reindeer, a stocking, a Christmas tree, a present, a start, a snowflake, a snowman) and I wanted to combine them with the question that we all had been practising before: ‘What is it?’ ‘It’s a…’.

The level 1 kids (and the youngest group) have got as far recognising the words and pointing at the right flashcards and participating in the ‘What’s missing?’ game although most of the time they would guess the missing word in Russian and they actively produced only some of them in English, such as ‘a star’, ‘a snowman’ and Santa. We also watched the ‘Guess the word video‘ and it was a chance for us to drill the vocabulary in a different way. We also introduced ‘What do you want for Christmas‘ and it was a nice opportunity for us to revise toys which we covered in the previous unit. But only that. In the end of the lesson we also had time for storytelling and we used Rod Campbell ‘My presents’, again as a way of revising the key vocabulary.

With the level 2 kids, we did pretty much the same but the kids were able to remember and to reproduce all eight words really quickly. We played the same game (What’s missing) but they were all actively involved and producing. We watched the video and guessed the words, pretty much just the way the younger group did, although it was interesting that I did not need to encourage them to repeat the words and, as soon as the full picture and the correct answer was revealed, the kids said the word without any cues from me. It seems that due to their age and to the fact that they have been in class for longer, they are much better used to that kind of reaction to the content. We seem to have developed that habit already.

As for the song, we even managed to personalise the song and talk about whether each of the presents featuring in the song are a good idea (or not? ‘Not’, according to some students:-) and we sang a verse for each of the kids:

‘What do you want for Christmas, Christmas, Christmas? What do you want for Christmas? Santa is on his way…’

‘I want a…’

I did not use the storybook with the older children. I had planned it only for the little ones. For the older ones, we had a back-up of an episode of Christmas Peppa, but, in the end, there was no time for that.

The oldest group, level 3 kids, need only a quick revision of all the words and then we could play a variety of games. We did not even play ‘What’s missing?’ as they are too ‘adult’ and this particular game is not challeging for them anymore. Instead, we played a team game, ‘Tell me about it’, in which the players choose a box, open it and say something about the picture hidden in the box. And they collect the points.

We did use the video mentioned above but in this lesson it was not just a simple guessing game, we also managed to talk about whether each round is going to be easy or difficult and then to comment on what it really was. And, of course, the song was also personalised and followed-up by a proper chat. There was also another song, ‘Who took the cookie from the cookie jar?‘, in its life acquatic version (nothing to do with Christmas, but the kids were curious and this is the game we are playing right now). This group are already quite good at personalising songs (aka ‘The original version is good but let’s see what we can do with it and how can we make it better?’) so it was the kids to suggest that we start singing it when we pick up our surprise at the end of the lesson from the reception. If I rememeber correctly, the final version of it (as shaped up by the kids) went along the lines of: ‘Who took the surprise from the surprise jar?‘

I was teaching, having fun and keeping my eyes and ears open and trying to remember what was happening. It was already very interesting but I was really waiting for the most important part, the cherry on the cake.

The cherry on the cake

Surprisingly enough, this time round, it did take a long while to choose the craft activity but finally I settled on the snowman. I found something that I liked among the 25 Easy Snowman Crafts For Kids on countryliving.com. I planned the lesson, spent an hour cutting out the circles, the noses, the hats, the arms and the Christmas trees and orgnising the room. And then we took off.

It so does happen that although my children are divided into groups by the level and by the age, there are exceptions and special cases in all three groups.

The actitivity, the materials, the staging and the instructions were exactly the same in all three groups but the outcomes (visible in the photographs below) and the scaffolding necessary (not visible in the photographs:-) heavily depended on the age of the students.

The youngest students produced these beauties:

This was interesting, especially because this lesson came first and after a very short moment, I realised that, while preparing and planning, I gauged myself for a slightly older audience and I had to adapt on the go, especially for the almost 3 y.o. girl for whom it was the trial lesson and the first 45 minutes in our classroom.

It turned out pretty quickly that it is quite a challenge to glue the ribbon, to turn the circle over and to tie it and that the orange ‘carrot’ nose is actually very small. But we managed, with the pace really, really slow and the teacher keeping an eye and demonstrating everything twice. Plus, yes, the teacher had no other choice but to help with the ribbon.

The age of the students shows most obviously in the way that all the small parts were glued and how the eyes, the smile and the buttons were drawn, with a different level of accuracy and precision. Almost where they should be:-)

And it was because it took longer to produce the snowman that I decided to skip the little sticky arms. They were too thin, too fiddly and too risky. And the snowmen still look pretty without them.

The snowman created by the 5 y.o. hands looks like that

First of all, the five-year-old snowmen did not take as much time to produce and the little fingers were much more agile and ready. As a result, the teacher did not need to help with the ribbons, the noses were handles with much more efficiency and we did have time to add the arms.

It is interesting to see that at this age, the students did observe the teacher (the mentor / the expert) to do exactly what she was doing but they were observing to figure out what had to be done and to interpret it in their own way. Some snowmen were happy but not all. Some had the scarf tied on the neck aka above the arms and the others had it more where their snowman-y waist would be. Some had the buttons and some did not. Some snowman mouths were a string of dots, some were drawn with a line. Some of the Christmas trees were glued on the snowman’s chest (like in the teacher’s model) but then again, some were holding them in their hands (although this obviously involves even a higher level of precision).

The 6 y.o. snowmen look like that:

The older snowmen are even ‘neater’ (in inverted commas here because I adore all of these snowmen, even the ones that look as if they were created by Pablo Picasso) and the evidence of precision and accuracy as well as even a more detailed and a more personalised version, which were the students’ own additions as they were not modelled by the teacher such as the eyebrows, the hat decorations (not featured in the photos) or a bigger number of buttons.

And the oldest of them all, the almost 7 y.o.

This snowman was made by our oldest student, a girl who is actually in school but who is finishing the level with us. As regards the level of English, the development of the literacy skills, she is like the other students in the group, but her motor skills are more developed and for that reason she usually is the fast-finisher. That is not an issue and while she is waiting for the group to finish, she usually continues working on her craft or handout, adding details and decorations.

This time round, she decided that her snowman is going to be a snowgirl, with her and a bow, which was her own original idea.

Reflections of a small scale Jerome Bruner…

This was an absolutely fascinating experience and I would really recommend it to teachers who work with different levels within the same age group, especially within primary and pre-primary where scaffolding seems to be one of the most important factors deciding about the task completion and success.

  • It can be a great source of information, about the students’ skills and abilities…
  • …as well as an opportunity to trial something new, be it a song, a video, a game or a craft activity and to learn more about this type of a task.
  • It is a chance for the teacher to practise and to develp their scaffolding brain…
  • …and a great opportunity for a freer practice in the area of differentiated learning, not only within the group of learners (something that happens in every class) but on the level of different age groups and levels

Like in the original experiment, the design or the choice of the task and the material is crucial but the holiday lessons, not really closely connected to the coursebook curriculum, seem to be a perfect way out.

What else? Not much? Some curiosity on the part of the teacher, some willingness to experiment and some flexibility in order to be able to adapt on the go. Plus, the eyes wide open to notice all the little changes and proceedings.

These two, in the photo below, are my own interpretation of the original craft and a more complex version of it, here in the form of a card, made by an adult (myself). Perhaps this is what I am going to make with my oldest primary group in our Christmas lesson. If we do, I will let you know how it goes. That would be, indeed, a nice follow-up and an extension of our experiments. We’ll see. In the meantime:

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

Happy teaching!

Teaching English Through Art: Why you might want to start

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An introduction to an introduction

Teaching English through has been something that I have been playing with for quite some time now and it started in the most selfish of ways, namely, I simply wanted to bring my favourite things to class. You know, have these beautiful Georgia O’Keeffee’s skyscrapers hanging by the whiteboard or practising prepositions of place not with the description of the classroom but of everyone and everything in one of the Chagall’s villages. My favourite things, nothing else.

I wanted and I did. Only once I started (and once I started to read about it, to research it, to experiment with the younger and the older, and to read even more and to reflect), I realised that there is a lot more to it, for me and for my students.

Somehow, once you start, it is difficult to stop because new ideas and new projects emerge and there is a lot to write about. This is not my first blog post about combining Art and EFL so if you interested, please have a look here (How to see a city through Art), here (How to hear Stravinsky, although the format can be adapted to any piece of music) and here (How to read storybook illustrations, a lesson not for kids) or here (if you are interested in using realistic and not realistic visuals with children).

With this post, I have decided to take a more organised approach to teaching English through Art, going a little back to the basics, to tell you why you might even want to think about it.

A bit about me and my background

My name is Anka, I am a teacher of English as a foreign language but I am also interested in Art. My first degree is in History and as a part of that adventure many years ago I did have a privilege in taking two terms of History of Art with one of the most amazing teachers ever but I still consider myself only ‘a human interested in the visual arts’, not a professional.

First and foremost I am a teacher of a foreign language and the main aim is always teaching them vocabulary and grammar, the four language skills development and, sometimes, exam preparation. However, I do believe, that there is always room for a bit of Art, here and there, smuggled, hidden and used to develop the language skills.

At the moment, I am taking part in three different projects which, to some extent, involve Art Etc.

  • my regular classes at BKC IH Moscow, classes which have a clear focus, a curriculum, a coursebook in which I use Art Etc to supplement what we do, for variation
  • my Art Explorers lessons, a bonus, free-of-charge once a month class for the students of our branch, a project that we are launching only this month
  • Kids in the Avant-Garde, a cooperation between BKC IH Moscow, Fun Art Kids and the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow, which gives the kids a chance to express themselves creatively in a variety of ways.

In the long-run, I would like to share here some ideas and activities which we used in all of these projects, but before we get there, here are some of the reasons why including Art in the EFL lessons is a good idea. Let’s go.

The alphabet book based on the animals from the paintings at the Tretyakov Gallery

Teaching English Through Art: all the reasons why you should at least consider it (in a rather random order)

  • Paintings used in regular EFL lessons as flashcards to introduce or to practise the language are a wonderful tool and a source of variety, to compliment the drawings, cartoons, illustrations and photographs. They will be especially appropriate while teaching animals, clothes, transport, activities, food, the city or the natural world.
  • Using painting also means exposing children to different styles in Art will help develop their visual literacy skills, even without any special lessons on the theory or the artists’ biographies.
  • Teaching English through Art with younger children, preschoolers or primary, usually involves some creative activity. This gives the children an opportunity to interact and to experiment with a variety of artistic materials such as paints, watercolours, crayons, fingerpaints and techqniues, for example collage, prints, scratch art and so on.
  • Kids, of the age, are learning to make decisions, choosing their own composition, lines and colours, not only attempting to become a five or a fourteen-year-old Walhor, Mashkov, Goncharova or Rousseau but personalising it and owning it every step of the way.
  • Since this creative activity is only an add-on in the regular English classes, it might help children discover a talent and interest in the artistic world, something that might not become obvious otherwise.
  • Just like any content-and-language-integrated lessons (CLIL), also the Art lessons give the students an opportunity to use the language to access other subjects and areas of knowledge and, especially in the case of the older learners, to see the real purpose of learning a foreign language
  • Interacting with the world art can be a springboard to discussions which generally generate a lot of language for the students, in relation with their level of English. Since ‘all ideas are good ideas’ (one of the mottos of our classes) and since all interpretations are welcome, students feel free to express themselves and to share what they think.
  • Art lessons especially lend themselves to learning and practising the language of expressing and asking for opinion, agreeing and disagreeing, talking about associations, possibilities and hypothesis.
  • Somehow (and this bit is really beyond me) during the Art lessons students, juniors and teens alike, are more likely to use the beautiful English. All of a sudden they realise that there are other adjectives than ‘beautiful’, ‘nice’ or ‘interesting’ and so the language they produce is of a much higher quality than what they normally during the conversations about the everyday topics.
  • Art can supplement lessons on practically any topic and they will help to ensure that the curriculum and the programme is diverse and engaging.

All of these are simply my reflections based on what I have observed in class. The real research will follow.

If you are interested you can continue reading here:

7 Amazing Benefits of Art for Kids That You Might Not Know Of from the artfulparent.com

Art Techniques For Children nurturestore.co.uk

Teaching English Through Art from Jorge Sette

Art in the classroom, blog from the British Council

English Through Art by Peter Grundy, Hania Bociek, Kevin Parker

Bonus titles: lots and lots of resource books – in the photos accompanying this post.

There is more to come!

Happy Teaching!

Story lesson ideas #1: The Little Seed

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This post is a lesson I taught with a group of 4-year-olds in their first year of studying English, based on the materials from Playway to English 1, 2nd edition by Herbert Puchta and Gunter Gerngross from Cambridge University Press.

It was taken from unit 6 (The Weather) and it is called ‘The Little Seed’.

Story cards ‘The Little Seed’ Playway to English, 2nd ed by H.Puchta and G.Gerngross, CUP

Pre-Story

  1. Vocabulary revision and practice with flashcards, the weather dice, the song, the weather sounds etc. Kids sit in a circle, on little stools.
  2. New vocabulary introduction: a bee, a butterfly, a flower, a seed. We used finger puppets because these three feature in my garden finger puppet set (together with a ladybird and a caterpillar) which I once got as a present (thank you, Cheng <3). I put them on my fingers and we practised saying ‘Hello, bee!’ ‘Hello, butterfly!’ The kids got really excited so we did spend some time, playing with them, trying them on and saying ‘Hello, bee!’ ‘Hello, butterfly!’ These activities were done on the carpet, with kids sitting in a circle. I forgot to bring real seeds so this time, we skipped this stage but I am planning to include them in the follow-up lesson (see below). Of course, the same can be done with regular flashcards or handmade toy butterfly and bee.

While-Story

  1. Just look: I hold the cards and show them to the students, one by one, in silence. Kids just look. Sometimes, I draw the kids’ attention to some of the elements, by pointing at them. Sometimes, I point and say the words or encourage the kids to name things they can see but, really, that is not the priority here. I just want them to take the story in, to build it up in their heads, before we add the language layer to it.
  2. Listen: I play the audio and we listen to the story and look at the pictures. Again, I sometimes point to the key elements in each card. I also use the gestures to reinforce the ideas and concepts and to add another learning channel to the visual and the auditory. In this story we are using the following: hands together, under your cheek with the head slightly tilted (The little seed is sleeping), face up, as if enjoying the sun, with a smile and a happy sigh (It is sunny), hands moving up and down, with the fingers spread and wiggling (It is raining), hands going up and arms stretching high up for (The little seed is growing, growing, growing), pointing with one finger at the picture (Look, it’s a beautiful flower). Some of these gestures have been used so far (the weather), some are new. I don’t pre-teach them, the kids join in when they are ready.
  3. Listen and say: We retell the story together, using the cards. I lead but this time I pause frequently and elicit the words and structures that the students know or, alternatively, I produce the phrase and encourage the kids to repeat.
  4. What do you think? This is the stage for the students to personalise and to express opinion. Usually this is done through a very simple question of ‘Do you like the story?’ or ‘What’s your favourite…?’ In this particular story, we asked ‘Do you like the story?’ ‘Is it a happy story or a sad story?’ ‘Is it a beautiful flower?’
The finished product

Post-Story

  1. Look at my picture: I show the kids the final product and we try to retell the story once again, in its simplified version, this time focusing on the structures that the kids can reproduce: The little seed is sleeping. It is raining. It is sunny. The little seed is growing and growing. Look, it’s a beautiful flower.
  2. Craft: I give out the cards and we create the pictures with kids, while retelling the story. I create another picture, step by step, to model the activity for the kids. This stage took about 10 minutes. I was considering adding the butterfly and the bee but decided that it would take too much time and that is why they do not feature in the picture.
  • ‘The little seed is sleeping’, I give out a small blob of white plasticine, I stick it ‘underground’, ‘Stick and press’
  • ‘It is sunny’, I give out yellow markers. We draw the sun in one corner. We repeat the key phrase as we draw. The kids who have finished drawing can also use the gestures for ‘It is sunny’. I collect the markers.
  • ‘It is raining’, I give out blue markers. We draw the cloud and rain in the other corner. We repeat the key phrase as we draw. We use the gesture for ‘It is raining’. I collect the markers.
  • ‘The little seed is growing, growing and growing’. I give out a piece of green plasticine. We kneed it and roll it to create a string. ‘Let’s roll and make one piece of spaghetti’. We stick it to the picture, as the stem of the flower. ‘Stick and press’.
  • I give out two pieces of green plasticine, we make two blobs and attach them as leaves. ‘One leaf, two leaves’. ‘Stick and press’.
  • ‘Look, it’s a beautiful flower!’ I give out two big pieces of blue and red plasticine. ‘We need three red pieces’ ‘Let’s make the flower’ ‘Stick and press’. ‘We need three blue pieces’ ‘Let’s make the flower’ ‘Stick and press’

3. Let’s tell the story: We show the pictures and go through the story again. The kids are now better able to tell and show the story.

4. Homework: Kids listen to the audio at home with parents, while looking at the pictures in their books. They complete the task in the book by sticking stickers in the gaps.

5. Follow-up: In the following lesson, we are going to retell the story again. I am also planning to start our own classroom garden with some flowers and beans, water them and watch how they grow.

This lesson plan is, of course, one of the many many ways of using this material and teaching this lesson. Enjoy!

Some other materials, potentially interesting.

A little seed by Mabel Watts here

Growing Sunflower Time Lapse here

From a seed to a flower here – a lovely video that I used when I was teaching Maths and Science to pre-schoolers in one of the lessons devoted to plants but it can be used as a follow-up activity in the story lesson.

How to grow a bean plan from Learn English Kids here if you want to start your own class garden.

How plants grow – an interactive game that demonstrates how much water and warmth a plant needs to grow. On the one hand, it is kind of cool and very informative, on the other, however, I could not apply the water and warm fast enough and ended up killing the plant. It made me sad (yeah, really) so, eventually, I decided not to use it in class, either.

A post from Anastasia Bykova, which I found only after my own had been written. If you want to turn this story into a series of lessons, look no further. Lots of ideas for a classroom garden and a proper project – an animation film created with kids which is also available on youtube now. You can find it here. We are going to watch it next Friday.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs# 14 The United Buddy Bears Art Project

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The United Buddy Bears in Sofia AD 2011

Welcome to my favourite art project: The United Buddy Bears. I first met the bears face-to-face (almost because they are 2 meters tall so face-to-face, eye-to-eye is not so easy to do) in Sofia because we all happened to be visiting the city in spring 2011. They were an art project back then already (since 2002 actually) but after our encounter they also became an EFL Art Project.

The United Buddy Bears: Brazil

Ingredients

  • First of all, if you have never heard about the project, start with this article on wikipedia or the bears’ own website.
  • A set of photographs of some of the bears that I use in a quiz. The students are shown the photos and they are asked to look at them and guess the name of the country. Naturally, the set should include the kids motherland.
  • Depending on the age and the level, the follow-up stage might involve describing individual bears, especially the bear representing the students’ country or symbols in general, as well as talking about the bears they like or dislike.
  • The main objective of the project for the younger students (primary) is to draw their version of the bear to represent their country. First, it might be necessary to brainstorm and to introduce the vocabulary and concepts that people normally associate with the children’s country. In case of Russia, it is especially interesting as it creates an opportunity for the students to learn that they already know many of these words, for example balalaika, borscht, matryoshka and they only need to learn how to write them in the Latin alphabet. Then, the students decorate their bears using the template provided by the teacher and, eventually, present their bears to the group.
  • The older students are invited to design a bear that represents them. It can be a bear that will show their hobbies, personality, favourite sports, school subject or a band, or, really, any concept that they consider important. The sky is the limit here. The students present their bears to their friends, ideally in a mingling activity.
  • The templates can be taken from globalperspective.info, clipart-library.com or just teach the kids how to draw it.
  • In the end, all the bears are proudly presented on the walls of the school or the classroom.
  • In both cases, it might be necessary to start drawing and decorating in class, to make sure that everyone is on the task but to set the task for homework, with the presentation scheduled for the following lesson. Some students might need more time to complete their drawings or to prepare their presentation and that might help to solve this problem.
The United Buddy Bears:Poland

Why we like it

  • It works like magic. Or almost. Some of the bears are easy to interpret, some of them require a bit more of background information but this way they can serve as a springboard to learning about different countries. The set of bears used in the quiz can be easily adapted by choosing the more straightforward bears for the younger students.
  • Regardless of which project you choose, the students get a wonderful chance to personalise the content, either because they will be drawing to reflect their own interests and hobbies in the bear or because they will be creating their own version of the Russian bear. It is a very happy coincidence that the Russian bear (or the first Russian bear because later I did find some other versions) is rather ugly. As a result, all my students with whom I have ever done that project, all of them without exceptions, were deeply offended that it is supposed to represent their country and were more than eager to create their own, better and more beautiful bears. The one you can see below is the more beautiful, later version of the bear.
  • It can be adapted to different levels and age groups. I have done it with elementary primary students and with advanced teenagers.
  • It is an opportunity for the students to express themselves, to create and to produce the language.
  • It can be used to supplement the coursebooks and it can be done as a part of the extra-curricular programmes such as summer camps, CLIL etc.
The United Buddy Bears: China

Happy teaching!

The United Buddy Bears: Russia (the beautiful one) from www.buddy-baer.com

Crumbs #12 In my little house: A craft activity for one hundred occasions.

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If I had to choose only one craft activity for all my classes, a proper all-rounder, for the younger and for the older, to serve a hundred purposes – that is the one!

Welcome to my little house!

First of all, I really did try hard, very hard to remember where and when I learnt how to make it and how to use it and who taught me and I can’t. I don’t know. For sure, it was Moscow, definitely my first year here but who and how? No idea. The only thing that I can do now is to say ‘Thank you!’ to this forgotten and now anonymous benefactor. I am, indeed, much obliged. Now, I am sharing.

Instructions

  • Two pieces of paper per student / house. In the samples in the photos I have used A4 but in the classroom, with my kids I tend to use both A3 and A4, depending on the main aim. If we are just glueing things, A4 works just fine. If we draw – A3 is bigger and offers more room for the kids’ drawings.
  • Fold the house. It is pretty easy and you can watch this video here, from Inner Child Fun to see how it is made. Emily is using origami paper but a regular A3 or A4 will work just fine!
  • Important: I normally do it myself, for all my students because even adults (like my trainees) might not be very good at origami-like activities and the house, although it is relatively simple, it does require some precision and if it is not applied, it is not going to look very well, unfortunately. Preschoolers will not be able to fold it and when I once tried with my primary school kids, I immediately began to regret it because some of them took the responsibility of the taks too seriously and were getting very nervous, predicting that they might not be skilled enough to manage the task. They did, in the end, with a lot of encouragement but I think it is just not worth it. We can still teach them how to do it, for them to practise and play at home but if you think of the lesson itself, the timing and the aims – just not worth it.
  • In my case, depending on the aim of the particular house (see below, there are plenty of options), I make one house myself, as a template, hand-drawn or using clip art images, and then I photocopy it to fold for each student. The advantage of it is that you can put in your house whatever you want. The basic design involves only the lines inside the house and the division into rooms, with numbers. That helps during the activities because you can ask your students ‘Go to room number 1’ and this way you make sure that everyone is on the ball and that they don’t glue pictures wherever they should not, for example, on the lines as that would get in the way of the house closing and opening.
  • Also, before the lesson, I glue the houses onto the garden page. This is especially useful in the case of the pre-primary students and in the case of those of my primary kids who have not done the activity before. Being glued on, the house is not as easy (although not impossible) to be dismantled and unfolded and it is just easier to manipulate in class.
  • I start with demonstrating my house, with all the theatre that I can muster. We look at it, we knock at the door, we open it and look inside. This can be done on the carpet or with the kids gathered around you so that everyone can see all the details.
  • I give out the houses and we start with drawing the door and writing the number (ask talking about them) and then drawing the windows (and talking about them). Make sure that all the students are more or less in the same place here. I normally only give out one colour per child (although they can ask for a different colour for the door and a different colour for the windows) or, with the older kids, with a pencil only. They will want their houses to be really pretty so erasing might be necessary and I really don’t want to waste time on colouring, this can be done at home.
  • The main task usually involves glueing things in different rooms, for example pets. For that, I prepare small pictures of all the pets, one set per child, on a tray (or whatever works as a tray) and a poster to put up, for everyone to see all the options. We start with room number 1 and I say, ‘Go to room number 1’. ‘I can see a cat (in my room number 1)’ after which I glue there the small picture of a cat. Then, the kids take turns and make similar sentences choosing their own animal from the set. They only receive a picture to glue after they make their sentences. When everyone is ready with room 1, we show our pictures, we say ‘I’m ready’ and move on to room number 2. And so on.
  • In the end, if there is time, we draw the sun, the tree and the flowers in the garden and we colour the house for homework. Also, if there are any leftover animals, these can be given out to glue at home (although, yes, that involves some more complex logistics, paperclips, small envelopes, not impossible though).
  • In the following lesson, we look at our houses and describe the rooms, the colours etc.
  • Variations: there are many of these. The house can be anything you want it to be. Here are some of my favourite ones:
  • Any set of vocabulary and almost any set of stucture, starting with ‘I can see’ and ‘I’ve got’, with some less obvious ones like the pictures of activities to practise Present Continous (‘I’m jumping in the kitchen’) or even words or word cards with the Past Tense forms which can be used later to tell stories for example ‘A strange Sunday’ (‘My brother slept in the garden’, ‘My dad danced in the kitchen’ etc)
  • Halloween or Christmas house – with the characters and symbols of each holiday
  • International House (accidental) – each room is a country represented by its flag and some symbole, these are drawn or glued, for older children
  • Rooms of the house – template is prepared with some furniture typical of each room, students can place pets in rooms (‘Where is the cat?’ ‘It is in the bedroom’) or family members (‘Where is mum?’ ‘She is in the living room’), add small objects to each room (‘Where is the lamp?’ ‘It is in the kitchen’, it is best to choose things that could be in any room such as lamps, pictures, chairs, rugs) and this version can be also further extented (‘Where is the lamp?’ ‘It is in the kitchen. It is on the cupboard’). The older kids can also draw these, making a regular or a silly house, too.
  • Secret Room – this was a follow-up activity in which I used the template which I drew with one empty box (empty, only because I could not, for the life of me, draw anything resembling a dining room). We did one of the activities mentioned above but the last room was to be drawn at home and it could be anything – a space room, a swimming pool, a library, an ocean zoom, a pirate room…
  • Where are you? – a template with the rooms, pre-prepared, each student gets a set of the leftover stickers or small cards, they put them somewhere in the house, in secret and afterwards they guess where their objects are. It can be used to practise simple prepositions and the rooms (‘Is it in the kitchen?’) or more complex ones (‘Is it in the living room?’ ‘Yes’ ‘Is it on the sofa / behind the chair?’etc)
  • Put your penguin in the living room on the sofa – a template with the rooms, pre-prepared and a set of stickers or small cards. The kids dictate to each other where to glue them, again, it can be used for simple or more complex prepositions, to get the kids ready for the Starters speaking exams. Later on, we compare our houses.

Why we love it

  • It is relatively easy to make and the kids love the fact that it is a real house.
  • It can be used with any vocabulary or structures (or almost)
  • It can be used with pre-schoolers and primary
  • It has to be prepared before the lesson for all the students but it is a good time investment
  • It is at the same time a focused task to be done in class and a homework task. The homework can involve only colouring and decorating it, talking about it in class but a writing task can easily be added for the older students (any template to be printed on the back of the garden, for example the focus can be such structures as there is, I can see, colours and furniture, my favourite room etc
  • It encourages the students to produce the langauge and it is easy to stage since you go from room to room
  • Lots of opportunities for adaptation, even if you repeat it with the same group. Every single time, it will be a different house.

Happy teaching!