Crumbs #42 One-minute essays

November raspberries

Ingredients

  • A set of topics. We have used a set of wordwall cards. You can find them here.
  • A timer, more or less formal and strict, depending on the group.
  • Students divided into pairs.
  • A list of the linking words typical for an essay, more or less extensive, depending on the group

Procedures

  • Teacher presents the framework of the one minute spoken essay and the four stages: introduction, arguments to support one side, arguments to support the other side, conclusion as well as the introductory phrases. The basic set of these included: Nowadays, On the one hand, On the other hand, All in all
  • Teacher models the activity: chosing the topic, expressing opinion following the framework and using the key structures. Students time the teacher and signal when 1 minute is up. Afterwords they react with their opinion.
  • Students go into the breakout rooms and continue in the same way.

Why we like it

  • I used this activity first with my teens, as part of the preparation for the essay writing, the first serious essay ever. I wanted them to practise expressing their opinion in a certain format and I wanted to encourage them to use a variety of appropriate cohesive devices which were introduced in the coursebook. It was a much more extensive list than the one provided here.
  • Later on, I used it also with my adult groups as a an opportunity and a tool to work on shaping the discourse, at this point – without the follow-up of the written essay.
  • The activity is generative as student A has a chance to produce a mini discourse and communicative as student B also has a chance to react and to provide additional arguments to support their partner’s ideas or disagree with them.
  • The main aim of the activity is the development of the speaking skills but the students are also required to listen, in order to be able to contribute their arguments in the follow-up stage. I am hoping that, in the long run, it will lead to students managing their spoken contributions much more effectively.
  • It is a very flexible activity. It can be used as a warmer or as an end-of-class activity. It can be also extended into a proper activity. The length of each discourse can be kept at one minute or it can be extended to two or three minutes. The topics can be varied, as in the set above, or they can be associated with one specific topic and it can be used as an opportunity to generate ideas for the essay that the students will be writing later on.

Here you can find one of similar discourse development tricks.

Happy teaching!

Yayoi Kusama and Pumpkins. Art and English in Primary

Yes, the Halloween was approaching and my English+Art lesson was on the day. Yes, I was just googling random things hoping that if I find something interesting, I will have a Halloween-ish lesson and if I don’t find anything, well, we will go in a different direction. At this point we have done colours, we have done leaves and, ideally, I was hoping to find some cool artist, some pumpkins and some technique that we have not tried before yet. Last year, around that time, we went to Ilya Mashkov as we tried to recreate his still-life with the magnificent cucurbita pepo but it was last year (aka we have done it already) and it was offline (aka it was more manageable)…I needed something different.

Surprisingly, googling ‘pumpkin in art’ can get you when you want to be)

The artist of the day.

Enter Yayoi Kusama. Until last Monday, I had never heard of her. Since last Monday, I have been a great fan. Her art is exploding with colour and with energy and she makes me feel like being a part of the Wonderland, Alice in the real world, easily available, at hand. And she loves dots and dots are circles aka the best shape ever that can be easily used in class (here is an earlier post about that).

We met Yayoi and found out about her favourite things and we looked at some of her paintings in our gallery as is now our habit. We also talked about the paintings we like and don’t like.

Yayoi Kusama and her favourite things
Our gallery in Miro

The language

In this particular lesson I wanted to focus on practising expressing opinion using ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’ and that is exactly what we did. We looked at Yayoi Kusama’s pumpkins and said what we think of them (P.S. We like them!), we looked at a range of creative pumpkins and said what we think of them and we enjoyed the variety in which pumpkins can appear (photos, art, real pumpkins (yes, these were present) and, finally, the Surprise Pumpkin that I have brought. See below)

The craft

The final product here was a compilation or an adaptation of two ideas from the amazing Art for Kids Hub and their pumpkin folding surprise and the most amazing mouse.

  • We looked at all the pumpkins, Kusama’s, the realia, the creative pumpkins
  • I presented the ready made product making sure that the Surprise Pumpkin is a proper surprise (‘Look, this is a pumpkin. But it is also a surprise. Are you ready? 3…2…1….’)
  • We went over the necessary materials with everyone (‘Have you got the paper? Have you got the pencils/markers/crayons?’)
  • I was making one more copy together with the kids. I am drawing on the regular paper, holding it in my hands, on a thick pad. Going step by step, slowly, pausing and waiting for the kids to complete every single step. This is absolutely crucial.
  • We folded the paper, stopping after every stage, showing the page to the camera. There are four essential stages: 1) show the A4 paper 2) fold the paper in half, widthwise 3) press at the crease / fold 4) fold the top flap outwards (show the kids how the edge of the paper touches the crease / fold in the middle 5) press at the crease / fold
  • Draw the pumpkin on the folded paper, that is at the 1/4 flap folded outwards and the 1/2 half at the bottom simultaneously, draw the stem and the leaf as well as three lines for the ribs. Don’t forget to pause at every stop, wait for the kids to complete every step and show you the result.
  • Open the paper and place it flat on the table. Draw the edge of the top half (‘Let’s draw a zigzac’)
  • Draw the edge of the bottom half (‘Let’s draw a zigzac here, too’)
  • Draw the mouse step by step: the oval for the body, two lines for the nose, the ears, the eyes, the whiskers, the tail and the hands.
  • Leave the colouring for after the lesson.
  • Play a bit with the surprise pumpkins that everyone prepared. My students simply recreated the ‘presentation’ that I gave at the beginning of the lesson, of their own accord, just like that.

Some final notes

  • Most of my students deal very well with the folding bit. Only one of us struggled a little bit and we needed mum’s help at the very beginning. It might be a good idea to let the parents know ahead of time and ask them to be at the ready, just in case.
  • As regards the materials, absolutely anything goes: coloured pencils are great, crayons are great, markers work, too. I am at my personal happiest drawing with markers and colouring with crayons or with crayons and markers, for the extra shine and glow.
  • Kids are amazing and they really can recreate the drawings or, rather, they can create their own versions of it. The only thing that is really necessary is the proper staging, going step by step, modelling and pausing, to give everyone time to complete the drawing.
  • It does not matter how big or how small the mouse is. It will all be hidden in the folds of the paper.
  • There are many variations of the craft. You can find some of them online. Below you can see what we have created ad hoc, just because we did everything that we needed and I could extend the lesson a bit. The pumpkin with a cat and the apple with a caterpillar were the result. These are only a few of the options!

Happy teaching!

Levitan and Leaves. Art in Primary

The teacher’s version

I found the photograph first but then it turned out that it is a whole post with a video tutorial, too. Have a look at the Art Projects for Kids! Which, by the way, is a cool website that I will be visiting in the future!

The language

This is the second module of our course and I decided that I need to start introducing some of the natural world vocabulary, in order to be a little bit better prepared to talk about the artists to come. The first introductory set is rather modest and it includes: the sky, the grass, trees, mountains, houses, the river, flowers and leaves. We have also used this module as an opportunity to revise colours and numbers and to introduce the first two adjectives (big and small). Finally, we started to talk about what ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’.

The artist

Our artist of the day who introduced all of that to us was Isaac Illich Levitan, the love of my childhood and my first artist ever. The album of his works is one of the very few books that I remember from my early childhood (apart from the storybooks, of course). It was there, on the shelf and I did spend hours on the carpet, leafing through it, back and forth, making up stories taking place among the birch trees, by the river, in the forests and in some ‘Sokolniki park’ which I found out about long before I set my foot in it. This, by the way, was also one of my first encounters with the foreing languages as the book was in Russian, English, French and German and these were my first exercises in comparative linguistics. At the age of 5 and 6.

Leviatan’s was what you might call a cameo appearance because I did not want to overwhelm the kids. We looked at the four seasons, looked for the new words in the paintings (‘Can you see a house?) and talked about the colours. We also started to sing ‘What’s your favourite season?’. Not a lot, but Isaac is definitely coming back, with the arrival of the winter and then the spring and the summer. With him, there will be Vivaldi, which would have been a perfect companion but I simply forgot about his existence. I am already looking forward to our winter-themed lessons.

Levitan in our ‘gallery’

The craft

  • try to make the leaf at home to figure out how complex it might be and how much time we will require, think about the stages
  • use the leaves throughout the lesson ie while revising colours and numbers or practising ‘I like / I don’t like’
  • check that the kids have all the materials necessary: a piece of paper, crayons, watercolours and water
  • draw the outline of the leaf veins, and patterns with crayons. It is ok to use the same colour but the final product is more interesting if different colours are used. I was considering introducing different patterns to make it more structured but, in the end, decided not to. We will introduce them on some other occasion, with Kandinsky, for example. If possible, I would use special paper for watercolours but in the online world it is not quite possible. Regular photocopying paper works well, too.
  • colour the leaf with the watercolours. It might be a good idea to start with the brighter colours and, for the sake of staging, ‘dictate’ which colour to use, leaving the kids a decision which section of the leaf to colour. The lines drawn with crayons will not be covered by the paint and they will be still visible and it is not really necessary to be too careful with painting. Not staying within the lines or even letting the colours seep or even leak into each other create a much more interesting effect. I haven’t really encouraged my kids to create a very ‘messy-on-purpose’ picture (not yet, anyway) but I am very reckless with how I use my paints, to show the kids that it’s ok.
  • finish with showing the leaves, call out the colours, talk about whose leaves we like.
  • I have cut out my leaves to be able to use them more easily and I was planning on telling the parents that the kids can do it after the lesson, when the paints dry completely. If I still had my classroom, I would put them up on the window.

Happy teaching!

Joan Miró and elephants. Art and English in primary

Here is our Elmer

I went into this lesson on my toes, slowly, cautiously, almost unwillingly. On the one hand, I was curious, as with all the Art project. On the other hand, I was just not so convinced. On the one hand, there was a new group of kids, I did not know their levels and we were supposed to try doing online what we did face-to-face before. On the other hand, I started to look for all the Miró animals and, randomly, I typed in ‘Miró and a toucan’ and found just that. And it made me burst into laughter, just because it there was an occasion when Joan Miró held a hornbill (aka almost a toucan). I knew I would do it all anyway, even if only to find out whether I can, but I was a bit anxious.

Our Gallery in Miro

The Before

  • Introduction of colours, a variety of songs, wordwall games and Miro games
  • Working on building the routine and getting used to the online format
  • Introduce the artist of the day and his arts. We focused only on the animals and on the colours. We ‘visited’ our MiroBoard Gallery and we tried to guess the animals and match Miro with photographs
  • We started to sing ‘Walking in the Jungle
  • And, finally, we tell and listen to ‘Elmer’ for the first time (I have actually only used the video, muted, and I told the story myself. We also included some gestures to involve the kids).

It is necessary to add that this year, due to the fact that we meet online with my Art Explorers, our classes have a slightly different format and we work on two-lesson basis. In lesson A we introduce the vocabulary and the artist, in lesson B: we revise and focus on craft and creation. The activities mentioned above were also executed over a period of two lessons.

The photo of the materials sent before the lesson

The While

  • Get all the materials ready (a glue stick, a marker, a piece of white A4 paper, some coloured paper or pieces of colourful pages of newspapers and journals), send the list to parents ahead of time
  • Check that everyone has everything (‘Show me your paper’, ‘Show me your glue’ etc)
  • Show the kids your coloured paper, call out the colours.
  • Ask the kids to show you theirs, call out the colours.
  • Show the kids how you tear off a strip of each colour, show them a ready bunch. Wait for them to get theirs ready.
  • Draw the elephant step by step. Start with the body, then the legs, the tail, the head, the trunk and the ear (by the way, the full shape of an ear is here only to help the kids visualise the elephant, a part of it will be covered by the coloured paper). Show each step to the camera and let the kids copy. Ask them to show you the paper after they have finished each step. Put the marker away.
  • Open the glue, spread the glue all over the elephant, evenly, while holding the paper to the camera. Close the glue and put it away.
  • Tear off a piece of one of your colourful stripes, glue it on the elephant, and then a few more. Invite the kids to do the same (‘Now you’). After a while ask them to show you their copies or ask what colour they are using, only to check how they are doing.
  • Continue until the elephant is ready.
  • Take the marker again and draw the eye, a small black circle. This way the creation will be easier perceived as an elephant.
  • Put up your elephant for the kids to see. Ask them to show you theirs.

The After

  • Introduce your elephant and describe it: ‘This is my elephant. He is green, blue, yellow and black’.
  • Ask the kids to do the same.
  • Watch Elmer, the video again, and, as before, pause and re-enact it with your elephants.
  • We finished with singing ‘Walking in the jungle’, with our elephants, too.

Comments

I am really happy with how the activity went. Initially, I was worried that preparing the elephant will be too difficult for my kids (but they all could follow me in drawing the elephant, step-by-step, with pauses and modelling) and that preparing the patchwork will be very time-consuming but the magic happened here, too as the kids quickly realised that they were in charge of managing how big the pieces of our ‘patches’ were. The older ones were more dilligent and more accurate with the smaller pieces whereas the younger ones opted for bigger pieces and we all finished at the same time. The patchwork part took about 5 minutes. Only one of my students needed more time (as she does every time) and for that reason we started to watch the story without her elephant to give her a little bit more time. She was watching while finishing and she introduced her elephant and it worked very well.

Overall, the amount of language produced was not quite on the amazing side but this was only our third lesson of the course and I am happy. Last but definitely not least, my kids were happy and very proud of themselves and their patchwork, Miró elephants. There is definitely more to come.

Happy teaching!

I am easy to prepare and very necessary in the classroom. What am I? A riddle!

Dedicated to Monsieur Alexander (6 y.o.) and Mademoiselle Victoria (3 y.o.) with big thanks for reminding me how important riddles are even if you speak the language very well.

Why? Because you simply must!

  • Riddles are an opportunity to develop focus and listening skills: you are required to listen until the very end as all the elements of the riddle are important and they can help you figure out what the answer is.
  • Riddles help to develop cognitive skills while you are guessing as you are required to put together different pieces of information, to understand, to synthesise and to analyse.
  • Riddles help to develop cognitive skills even more when you are creating your own riddle as you are required to apply and to evaluate the information you providing to make the riddle challenging and achievable at the same time.
  • Riddles are something that we use and enjoy in our L1, from the early childhood and it is only natural that we will try to bring them into our EFL lessons, with kids and with adults.
  • Riddles help develop creativity.
  • Riddles are fun and they create plenty of opportunities for bonding, in a pair or a group.
  • Riddles, in L1, help the kids develop the awareness about how the language works, how the hidden meanings, the homophones, the collocations and this can also be transferred, at least partially, into the EFL or the ESL
  • It is obvious that the context of the EFL and the ESL does not always allow for the riddles and their benefits to be used fully and completely even if only due to the limitations of the language level which, in case of some of the young learners, might be as low as A1. This does not mean that they cannot be used. On the contrary, they can be introduced from early on.
  • Riddles, regardless of the context, are an opportunity for the students to speak and to produce a mini-discourse.
  • In the EFL/ESL classes, it is relatively easy to choose the vocabulary range and the structures for the students, depending on the level and the topic. This range can be easily extended.

How to? Riddles in the EFL classroom

  • The simplest version of the game can be played with preschoolers and we usually start simply with guessing ‘the secret word’ which is the card that the teacher and then the students choose and hold close to their chest and the class are guessing. This version is used to introduce the very idea of the riddles. When the kids have become more familiar with the format, the level of challange can be raised and the production maximised by asking the kids to describe the card they are holding in the simplest of way i.e. with the colour, operating within the colours of the objects on the flashcards used (‘It is green‘ or ‘It is green and red‘). With time, more adjectives can be added (‘It is big’, ‘It is small’), the categories (‘It is a toy’, ‘It is a pet’) or even opinions (‘I like it’, ‘I don’t like it’). There is a post devoted to one of the ways of dealing with riddles with the youngest learners. You can find it here.
  • The primary (or the more advanced pre-primary) students can start adding simple categories in their discourse (‘It’s a toy’, ‘It’s an animal’, ‘It’s in the schoolbag’) and start describing the word using the relevant structures. For example, with food, we use the following four: ‘It is cold’, ‘It is hot’, ‘You eat it’, ‘You drink it’) and these are the structures that the students know and will need anyway and these particular four can be supported by a relevant gesture. The same goes for the animal riddles set: ‘It is big’, ‘It is small’, ‘It can run’, ‘It can fly’, ‘It can swim’. I also like to add ‘I like it’ and ‘I don’t like it’ even though it does not quite provide enough information for the children to guess the object as the class may simply not know what one of us thinks about it, it gives the student making a riddle an opportunity to express opinion and to make it all more personalised. With the youngest students the teacher can assist production in the beginning by asking questions such as ‘Is it hot or cold?’ or ‘Can it swim, fly or run?’. This set of structures can be developed and extended depending on the students’ age and level.
  • As regards the more advanced and older students, the riddles can be made more extensive and more resembling the riddles that the adults and kids play in English as their L1 or the riddles they play with their L1 with the use of simple homonimes or homophones, a wider range of vocabulary or structures or complexity for example by making a list of words not to use when to describe a certain word, describing it with associations (i.e. kids, fun, outside to describe the word ‘playground’), with metaphors (i.e. ‘It is the brain of the computer’ for ‘hard drive’ or ‘It is the opposite of a mountain’ for ‘a cave’) or, even, by a mixture of these (‘Tell me what it is and tell me what it’s not’)
  • As regards the material and the support for the teacher one of the following can be used: flashcards, mini-flashcards, a page from the book with words and words and images, a poster, a set of wordwall cards, a list of words.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #41 Let’s look for pairs! A vocabulary game for kids

All the pairs. Somehow the penguin, the gorilla and the mouse got left out.

Ingredients

  • A set of pictures of animals, flashcards or on Miro. That’s it.

Procedures

  • Revise the vocabulary and ensure that all the cards are displayed at the same time for the kids to be aware of all the options
  • Model by choosing a pair of animals and putting these cards aside and justifying your choice. With my pre-primary kids, I like to use the first person statements (I’ve got 4 legs etc) as this is what we do with the younger kids (to enable the kids to talk about themselves and the animals without having to introduce the additional structures and to keep it coherent with the songs that we use ie Little bird or As quiet as a mouse). I also tend to vocalise the language ie I’ve got 4 legs (for the cat), I’ve got 4 legs (for the elephant).
  • Invite the kids to take turns to make their own pairs and to describe the rationale behind it.
This is what our Miro board looked like before we started

Why we like it

  • An opportunity for the kids to use and to develop the higher order thinking skills in the EFL context
  • The students are in charge of what they want to talk about and what they can talk about. It is appropriate for mixed-ability groups.
  • Little or no preparation as the flashcards are already there, the physical cards in the offline classroom or the set of pictures on Miro which, once prepared, can be doubled easily and used only for that activity.
  • A great variety of structures that can be revised and some opportunity to learn the new ones as the kids might have the ideas that they cannot express in English yet and this game can be the springboard which will help to introduce these. If the teacher speaks the kids’ L1.
  • Lots of opportunities for adaptation and using them with different sets of words such as toys, fruit, food, transport and, naturally, the relevant structures. I like to start this game with animals because of the range of easy structures that even the very young beginner students can use in order to complete task and because of the variety of topics that can be included (the colours, the number of legs, what animals can do, what they eat, where they live etc)
  • The level of challege can also be easily adapted, for example, the set of cards can include only 8 items or the teacher can focus on putting the animals into pairs basen only on the colours or the size which are probably the two most achievable categories, both cognitively and linguistically.
  • This is a neverending activity because the cards and the animals can be grouped and re-grouped over and over again to let the students create new and less obvious links between the items. Conversly, it can be shortend as needs be.
  • As regards the interaction patterns, this activity can be used with groups, with kids working together, at least in the beginning, or in pairs if we have the appropriate number of sets of cards as well as with 1-1 students, both online and offline.
  • There is also some potential for adaptation in the area of materials. The most obvious choice are the flashcards, the mini-flashcards or the Miro board. The teacher can also create a handout with the animals pictures and/or names which the students can colour-code as they are putting them in pairs. This might be a good solution for the kids to work in pairs in the offline classroom.
  • Last but not least, this activity is an opportunity for the kids to develop the listening skills (as they want to find out the justification for their peers’ choices) and the speaking skills (as they want to present their own reasoning, too). I simply love to observe how my students start with the simplest and most obvious connections and how they venture out into more and more creative ones.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #40 A fruit salad

Ingredients

  • Fruit, washed and cut up into manageable chunks. The most basic set includes: apples, bananas, pears, seedless grapes, seedless oranges.
  • A plastic plate for each child, a plastic cup for each child, a plastic spoon and a plastic knife.
  • A set of tissues and a set of wet tissues.
  • Optional: a set of fruit flashcards and the video of the Super Simple Song ‘Are you hungry?’

Procedures

  • Start with presenting the idea of the activity to the parents and agreeing on the list of fruit to be used. It is absolutely crucial that the parents are aware of the procedures and the ingredients and that they approve. In my offline classes, I normally send a message to find out whether the parents approve and then I send a list of specific fruit that I would like to use. I look for seedless oranges and grapes. The list of fruit does not have to be very long. It is going to be a great lesson anyway, even if only the basic fruit are used. Although, of course, the salad will look very appealing if we include more colours and adding some citrus such as orange will be beneficial as regards the flavour, even a little bit of the lemon or orange juice will bring out the flavours of all the fruit and it will blend them nicely. But it is not obligatory. In my online classes, the parents prepare the fruit that the kids really like and it might happen that our sets will vary.
  • Wash the fruit and pre-cut them into pieces and chunks or ask the parents to do the same at home.
  • Plan where (in the school or in the classroom) you are going to set up your salad production station. Ideally, it would be done in a separate room, where everything can be prepared before the lesson and where the students can relocate half-way through the lesson. In the online classroom, the kids can relocate to the kitchen or cut things up on the table in front of the computer. In the classroom or in the kitchen, prepare the working top first: wash the tables, cover them with a plastic tablecloth.
  • Set aside the time for hand-washing. Line the kids up and go to the bathroom, wash the hands, dry the hands and go to the classroom.
  • Give out the tools while pre-teaching the names and while introducing the basic health and safety rules i.e. a plate – it stays on the table, a cup – it is in front of the cup, a knife – be careful. It is a good idea to stage the giving out of tools ie: first the plates and the cups, then the first fruit and the knives, then clean up the plates and give out the teaspoons etc.
  • Take out the first fruit, call out its name. Demonstrate how to cut it up, for example using the following set of instructions: 1) take a piece of apple, ‘Apple, please’ 2) put it on your plate 3) cut it up carefully 4) put the apple into the cup
  • Repeat with the other fruit. Throw away the plates. Give out the spoons.
  • Stir the fruit in the cup carefully.
  • Start eating.
  • Game 1: What’s this?: it is a fun game that involves eating and guessing which fruit we have fished out. Teacher can demonstrate how to play it: take some fruit from the cup, eat it without looking or even with the eyes closed and try to guess what it is. If modelled properly, with the teacher asking question ‘What is it?’ and trying to guess ‘It’s an apple’ etc, the kids will follow and will be playing in the same way.
  • Game 2: Singing and eating: Play the song and pause at every fruit and ask the kids the same question ‘Are you hungry?‘ ‘Oh, look (name the fruit in the salad). Yum, yum, yum’. The only thing to remember here is to make sure that kids finish eating before we play the song again and to continue singing.
  • Clean up, throw away the rubbish, clean the hands with the wet tissues.

Why we like it

  • It is a great and relatively simple way of making the language real and meaningful. We learn about fruit and we do something with the real fruit. With many other topics creating this connection between the classroom and the real world is a bit more complicated, fruit (and food in general) is easy. After a few basic precautions are taken, such as the allergy check, the parents permission, clean hands and a safe working environment.
  • It gives kids a great sense of achievement despite the fact that in the eyes of an adult that might look simplistic. One of my groups called it ‘a cooking lesson‘ and after the first salad, they kept asking for more of those.
  • It is an opportunity to develop social skills (we are taking turns and waiting for everyone to finish), focus (we are cutting fruit slowly and carefully), fine motor skills (we are working with a knife, we are manipulating small pieces of fruit).
  • It is an opportunity to eat in class and that is always fun but it is also something that we do together, as a group and, as such, it can be repeated regularly, although not necessarily with the salad every single time. It can turn into some ‘teatime‘ aka a lesson when we just have a little snack together. That name and the idea is also something that came from one of the groups.
  • It is not an activity for the first lessons with a group
  • If done properly, the lesson can lead to a lot of production. The ‘What’s this game’ was something that just happened in class, just because I really could not recognise one of the piece of fruit in my cup. I fished it out to taste it and I was simply blabbling to myself. The kids were watching and quickly followed suit. Together we turned into a real game and, since then, I played it with all my groups. The other game, based on a song, was something that we played in class for a few lessons, with our set of plastic fruit and it worked very well. The kids liked giving out fruit and pretending to munch on them. Moving onto the real fruit and the salad was a natural next step.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #39 A lazy role-play

Ingredients

  • Any role-play or a dialogue i.e. a transcript of any listening task which is a dialogue (i.e. Movers listening part 2, part 3), any written dialogue (i.e. Movers reading and writing part 3), any functional langauge introduced in a dialogue or a role-play
  • A pencil or a highlighter for each child

Procedures

  • Start with the main aim of the task is, ie listening in case of task 3 of Movers or reading in case of Movers, introduction of the functional language, etc. Go through all of the stages outlined in the teacher’s book or whichever ones you see fit in your teaching context.
  • Give out highlighters or pencils, ask the kids to open the books and look at the text again.
  • Introduce the concept of a banana (or whichever random word you want to use). Explain (and demonstrate!!!) that you will read the text slowly with some bananas in it and that if the students hear the word ‘banana’ they have to highlight or underline one word that comes immediately afterwards. Model with a few words.
  • Read the text with the bananas as the kids listen, follow and underline or highlight. The words chosen to be highlighted are the key words for each specific dialogue and their number depends on the dialogue and on the age and level of the students. With the older students and the more complex texts and language, the students can highlight two or more words that constitute a phrase or a collocation. This can be signalled with a repeated number of bananas ie banana banana for a two-piece phrase or banana banana banana for a three-piece phrase.
  • Ask the students to work in pairs and read the dialogue again and to use their own words and phrases instead of every banana.
  • Afterwards the kids can change roles and read it again or change the partners.
  • If the kids are ready, in the final (and optional) stage of the activity, they can close the book and role play and recreate the dialogue and the converation based on what they remember.

Why we like it

  • It requires no preparation, unless by preparation you mean opening the coursebook and finding the role-play or finding the teacher’s book and making copies of the transcript of any listening activity
  • It offers a great opportunity for the students to practise their speaking skills in an activity that is both controlled (as we have a framework) and free (as there are quite a few options to choose from)
  • It also offers a chance to work on the grammar accuracy and the transformation skills
  • It can be done online or offline
  • It can be done with a variety of levels. The highest level I have used it with was B1 (teens), the lowest level, so far, was A2 (primary).
  • So far, I have only tried it with dialogues but now, writing that post, I started to wonder about the potential of that activity for discourse building and creation. The original text could serve as a potential framework and support for the students to use. I am yet to experiment with that option.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #38 A – Z Game

Ingredients

  • A piece of paper and something to write with
  • All the letters of the alphabet written in one or two columns, with some space to write, next to each letter

Procedures

  • The teacher divides the students into pairs or teams and gives out the paper with the letters of the alphabet or asks the kids to write these down.
  • Step 1: The teacher announces the topic i.e. Clothes and asks the kids write one word (or phrase) for each letter of the alphabet or, more realistically, for as many letters as they can. The teacher gives an example. Ideally, the teacher creates her/his own list in order to have a set of words to model the other stages of the activity.
  • The teacher sets the time limit (i.e. 5 minutes for the younger kids and 3 minutes for the older kids). It might be a good idea to use a song instead and after the song finishes, the activity does, too.
  • The kids work in teams and make a list of the words within the vocabulary set. After the time is up, the teacher stops the game.
  • Step 2: The kids exchange the lists and count the words or phrases which their friends have managed to write within the set time limit. The teacher writes the results for each team on the board.
  • Step 3: The teams read the words on the lists and choose: the most interesting word, the most unusual word, the funniest word, three words you also have, three words you don’t have, any word you don’t understand or remember etc. The teams work in pairs and find out why their partners put these words on the list. If possible, the kids exchange the lists with another team and repeat the procedure once or twice.

Why we like it

  • For the students it is a great opportunity to revise and recycle vocabulary. All the beginner levels aside, even when the main lesson aim is to introduce and to practise new vocabulary, chances are the kids have already learnt, heard, used or seen some of the words. After all, the vocabulary sets are repeated and extended from level to level, not to mention that most kids have more than one source of English in their lives: the state school, the language school, a private teacher, brothers, sisters, parents, videos on youtube, cartoons, stories, computer games online…This game is one of the easy ways of revising all this vocabulary to prepare for ‘something new’
  • For all the reasons mentioned above, it is an absolute necessity for the teacher to find out how much the kids already know as regards a certain area in order to do a very focused (if a very contained) needs’ analysis and to adjust the volume, the level and the intensity of the new material presentation later in the lesson
  • It is very easy and requires no preparation whatsoever.
  • It helps to improve the students’ self-confidence because it gives them an opportunity to see how much they know already.
  • It can be used with any set of vocabulary, either thematic (i.e. clothes, food, animals) or content-related (i.e. the words necessary to describe a picture, the words used in a certain text or a listening task, a video)
  • The final task can be easily adapted i.e. choose 5 words to describe yourself, choose 5 words to use in a story or in a dialogue, choose 5 and describe them for your partners to guess, use a dictionary to find the words or structures for the missing letters, compare the lists with your friends to find the words or the structures for the missing letters, use the words to describe a photograph, use the words to talk about your day today etc.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #37 We are going to the beach! A summer lesson for pre-schoolers

Ingredients and procedures

  • Few. Depending on what you can find at home
  • The lesson plan with all the ideas can be found here

Why we like it

  • Little preparation, only a few items of realia
  • A great lesson for the summer months
  • Works well with big groups
  • Lots of movement, the whole lesson is based on gesture
  • Lots of potential for production, especially if this lesson could be developed into a series of lessons
  • A fun lesson, we really went to the beach

Here you can read a bit more about the background of this lesson: How do you know that you are an experienced teacher...

And here: Big Thanks to Ola for letting me scavenge her house in search of realia aka resources)