Language production

All you need is…a picture. Vol. 2

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This is still one of the top 5 among the most popular posts on this blog. But it was written about a year and a half ago. It looks like the high time for part 2. Here it is.

There is only one picture…

A to Z picture: teacher writes the alphabet on the board, students work in pairs or in teams, they talk about the picture by naming the word or words beginning with each letter of the alpahbet. Younger (or lower level) kids can use only single words, older students (or higher levels) can produce relevant sentences. Thank you, Polina Smirnova, for this activity.

Dice points: kids work in pairs. They describe the elements of the picture (ie one person, animal, element of their choice or assigned by their partner (Tell me about this…). They use the structures and vocabulary that they are familiar with, depending on the level. After each round, they roll the dice to find out how many points they get. They take a note of the points and add them up at the end of the game.

I spy with my little eye: teacher demonstrates the game by describing one of the elements of the picture ‘I spy with my little eye something big and red’. It works even with the youngest children as they are not even required to name the item in the picture, they only need to point at it. When the kids are ready, they take turns to describe something to the rest of the group or to their partner. The language can be made more complex by focusing on prepositions, adding more adjectives or details. It is a great speaking and listening activity.

Yes or No? Teacher makes sentences about the picture, children listen to check if these are correct. If they are, they confirm ‘Yes’ or ‘Yes, that’s true’. If they are not, they say ‘No’ or ‘No, it is not true’ and they correct the sentence. Afterwards, they can take turns and talk about the picture for the group or their team to listen. Again, this is one of the activities that I use with my pre-schoolers and it is lovely to see how they move on from one-word utterances (correcting only the key item) to full sentences. The complexity of these sentences or their number can be adjusted to the level and age of the students.

Travelling sentences: It is a version of the Yes or No activity. The teacher displays the picture for all the students to see and gives out small cards, one per student. Each student writes a true or false sentence about the picture, the teacher can support this with providing sentence starters. When the kids are ready, the sentences start travelling, with each student passing their sentence to the student on the left or on the right. They read the sentence on the card, say if it is true or false (and correct it) and the game goes on. This stage can be done in pairs or in groups of three.

Travelling questions: the teacher prepares a set of questions about a picture. These can be reused in many different lessons so it might be a good idea to laminate them. Students work in pairs or in groups of three. Each pair picks out one of the questions, they look at the picture, read out a question and answer it. The teacher monitors and when the time is up, the students exchange the questions by passing their question to the group on the left and they continue the game. The set of questions might include: Where are the people? What are they doing? What clothes are they wearing? How are they feeling? What’s the weather like? Can you see any animals? Do you like this picture? What’s your favourite thing about this picture? What’s your least favourite thing about this picture? Is there anything strange about this picture? If it happens, that the question is not relevant to a specific illustration, this particular question can be left out or the teacher can introduce a way for the students to get out of the situation, for example: ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I don’t know. Maybe…’

Picture boardgame: It is a version of the Travelling Questions and it was created based on the same principle: there is a set of topics, themes and items that are involved in most of the illustrations that kids can talk about. The board, such as this one here (created with toolsforeducators.com) can be reused with pretty much any visual. The students play in pairs, move their checkers on the board and describe the picture according to the suggestions from the board.

Draw the picture: this is an activity that I used to use a lot with the first years of primary in order to practise reading and, obviously, with students who like drawing. We use a set of specifically prepared cards on worwall, like this one here. We get the pencils and the paper ready and I set the first card ready (‘We are in the park’). Afterwards, we read the cards, one by one, in any order (if something does not match, I skip the card to get back to it later), the students take turns to read the sentence and we all draw a picture according to these instructions. At the end, we compare our pictures and talk about some potential differences. It is a good activity to practise simple words, prepositions, colours and verbs.

Half the picture: Students work in pairs. Each pair receives only a half (or rather a part of the picture, depending on the particular photograph or illustration). First, they describe together what they can see and, as the second step, they try to guess and predict what can be seen in the part which they cannot see. Ideally, all the kids should be working with the same visual and then, in the feedback stage, the class share and compare their ideas before the teacher reveals the missing part of the picture. The materials can be easily created by cropping visuals but it is even easier with the electronic resources when a part of the photograph (or parts) can be easily covered and uncovered on the screen.

There are two pictures (or more)

Compare these two: students compare two pictures, they talk about the similarities and differences, very much like in the PET exam or like in the FCE exam, if there is a follow-up question, only without the time limits and without any B1 or B2+ language expectations as this activity can be done also with A2 or even A1 students.

Compare the two boardgame: there is a selection of pictures from the same topic ie school, sport, hobbies. They are numbered and displayed on the screen or on the page. Students play the boardgame and whenever it is their turn, they choose two of the pictures and compare them briefly. The pictures can be used many times in different combinations and students speak for about a minute.

Choose two to compare: students are given a set of picturse, for example 4. They are asked to choose any two to compare them and to explain why they have chosen these two pictures. The most interesting part of this activity is the follow up question which can be one or more of the following: Which one is your favourite? Which one is your least favourite? Which one is the happiest / saddest / funniest / most challenging / most unpleasant / strangest? Is there a picture that nobody has chosen to discuss? Why do you think you’ve never chosen this one?

Tell me about this picture: this game requires a set of pictures whose theme and level of complexity can be easily adjusted to the age and level of students. We normally use the wordwall which we play on the big screen. The kids play in teams and they take turns to open one of the boxes. They take a minute to talk about the picture they find there and they get the number of points for that. The teacher keeps track of that and announces the winner in the end. This game can be played with the lower level kids, like this one here, with pre-primary students on the topic of animals (here we play the group vs the teacher), with the level 1 primary school students on the topic of rooms, the level 5 primary school students on the topic of souvenirs (What is it? Who would like this present?) or even with B1 teenagers on the topic of travelling (What’s this place? What can be easy or difficult about travelling to this place?)

Two versions: this one is a bit more complex in terms of preparation as it involves some searching and researching. The idea behind this picture is to compare and contrast two interpretations of the same topic. Our photographs usually focus on the photographs and it would be the teacher’s job to find the other matching (or ‘matching’) item for example a painting, a sketch, a cartoon, a poster, an advertisement, a wordcloud and so on. The students discuss the visuals, compare them and choose the visual which they prefer and which better illustrates the idea.

Happy teaching!

For the love of…the adjective

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Our basic set of adjectives

Once upon a time…

This is how I daydream it: my primary kids go on to take their Starters (this is an old daydream, this year they will be taking Flyers), they are describing the pictures or telling the story. The examiner asks ‘How is this boy?’ and my kids answer ‘He is confused.’ and the examiner cannot believe her/his ears but she/he is, actually, impressed.

‘Confused’ is one of the many adjectives that my primary kids have learnt thanks to the sheep game that we’ve been playing for a few years now. We started with the normal adjectives, happy, sad, angry, sleepy but the kids noticed that I’ve been hiding some cards and they got curious. And because they were curious, they started to ask questions. Since the cards were wonderfully happy and funny, and since, together with some clarification from me, they did illustrated the concept very well (after all, they were created for children), we started using the ‘confused’ card (and with them ‘chatty’, ‘in love’, ‘crazy’).

That, in hindsight, was an excellent idea because this turned out to be a very useful words because I happen to be confused and my kids happen to be confused, too. Not to mention all the characters from all the stories. ‘Confused’ might be from the B1/B2 shelf, but, we found it very very useful, at the age of seven, in something that was the pre-A1 level.

‘OK’, ‘ill’, ‘in love’, ‘creative’

The coursebook and the curriculum

A disclaimer first: my comments in this section are based only on a very un-thorough looking through the coursebooks for pre-schoolers, only a quick glance at the contents page and the units. I acknowledge that fact that I might have missed something and that a proper research might be necessary and, for that reason, I will refrain from quoting any titles here. However, having flipped through five recently published coursebooks for pre-primary learners, I did not find much as regards adjectives, apart from colours (all), some of the weather words (depending on the title) and some random happy, sad and hungry (also depending on the title). With one honourable exception that introduces quite a few emotions as well as some other opposites, either through stories or through CLIL projects. Overall, however – not good at all.

I also had a look at the primary books and here the situation is admittedly better because all of the modern publications tend to align their content with the YLE Cambridge wordlist and that, in turn, means about 50 adjectives on the pre-A1 level, including colours and possessive adjectives.

As it happens, my school is now getting ready for the YLE mock exams and I am putting together a set of materials for our teachers and kids and that made me look at the said wordlist with a great more deal of scrutiny. Starters kids (pre-A1) are supposed to know about 50 adjectives, Movers kids (A1) – additional 50 adjectives and Flyers kids (A2) – 70 more adjectives on top of that. I am aware of the fact that these lists were not created on a whim, quite the contrary – they are a result of a large-scale research and the effort of a huge team of people. But there are all these questions there, too. Why do the pre-A1 kids need to know the adjectives such as ‘double’ or ‘correct’ and ‘right’ (as correct) and ‘its’ (also an adjective) and some other ones, although not adjectives (‘coconut’, ‘pineapple’, ‘flat’ and ‘apartment’ or ‘lime’)? Why would these be more important, useful and appropriate for primary school children than ‘hot’, ‘cold’, ‘easy’, ‘difficult’ or ‘loud’ and ‘quiet’, which are only introduced at the A1 level?

I do not have the answers but I have been introducing them (or some of them) much earlier than that. And effectively so. If you are interested why and how, please continue reading.

‘crazy’

Emotions and feelings

‘Sasha, how do feel today?‘ is one of the questions that we ask in every lesson. Why? Well, I guess, first and foremost it is for socialising. This is the question that we ask when we meet someone, just to make a conversation, at least with adults.

Since our students are children, however, there is a lot more to that. Children are growing, developing their social skills and learning about a variety of emotions available and, even more importantly, learning how to deal with these emotions and learning how to recognise these emotions in others. That is why giving them tools to do that, in their L1 and, naturally, in their L2, is absolutely crucial.

Ideally, all the Sashas in the world would walk into the classroom being happy, totally over the moon, brimming with joy and ready to conquer the world with us in the next 45 minutes. But it is not possible for every Sasha to be happy every day and, as a teacher, I want to know how they really are and during the hello circle I am, literally, all ears because if Sasha is sad or sleepy or hungry, or, sometimes, angry, I would like to know that. Not only to show empathy but also to look at the lesson and what I have prepared for today from the group’s and the individuals’ point of view. Maybe a bunch of sleepy children will not be able to deal very well with the story? Maybe it will be necessary to keep an eye on Sasha and accept that today she might not be able to focus as well as usually because she is feeling a bit under the weather. Maybe it is a good idea to start with this silly game of ours (although I did promise myself to ‘never ever’) because it might distract and cheer up this little human who walks in and announces ‘I am very, very, very angry.’

Having this range of emotions vocabulary is also very handy when it comes to behaviour management, even if in the simplest of terms.

Situation type #1: an unpleasant situation: someone draws on someone else’s paper, someone takes someone else’s toy /book / marker without asking, someone jumps the queue, no casualties, only a lot of unhappiness in the room and one person is on the verge of tears. ‘Look. Sasha is very sad now‘. Naturally, it might not be the case of ‘one size only’, one solution for all occasions but it is a good start.

Situation type #2: a 5 y.o. confrontation: both parties did have a disagreement, both parties are not very happy and, definitely, way too upset to just get over it and get involved in the lesson activities. ‘Sasha, are you angry?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘It’s ok.’ Again, some cases are more complex than that, but in many situations the very fact of calling the spade a spade and showing that it is natural to feel angry (and, by default, giving the human some time out to accept and recover) is the best solution. It applies also to all the negative emtions, as long as no comes to any harm.

To be perfectly honest, sometimes (only sometimes!) it feels like this brief and contained reaction, limited by the fact that extreme language grading is necessary, is the best solution. Anything to avoid a long lecture from the adult on ‘The negative impact and the long-term consequences of….’ that children sometimes receive from their teachers, baby-sitters, nannies, parents, grandparents…

‘ill’

Riddles

This is, by far, one of our favourite games: making riddles. The game is introduced in its simplest from, with a set of flashcards and with the students guessing the secret word which the teacher or one of the children keep close to their chest. That’s just the beginning, however, once the kids are comfortable and familiar with the format, a set of simple adjectives are added, first the colours (based on the visuals in the flashcards) and big / small. Then, depending on the topic, we introduce and play with the relevant adjectives, for example fast / slow / big / small / loud / quiet while talking about transport, big / small / friendly / dangerous while talking about animals, hot and cold while talking about food and big / small / soft / hard / light / heavy while talking about the everyday objects and so on.

The kids can either use the adjectives of their choice and affirmative sentences (It’s big, it is yellow) or they can react to teacher’s or kids’ questions (Is it big or small?).

A variation of this activity is also I spy with my little eye adopted (and limited) to the set of vocabulary that the students are familiar with, played with a set of flashcards or a poster.

Expressing opinion…

…or, rather, justifying your opinion, something that can become a part of pretty much every unit and every set of words. Not only does it create an opportunity to personalise the vocabulary by dividing it into the things we like and the things we don’t like but also to give more detail and to build a small discourse (I like it. It is beautiful) or even first complex sentences (I like it because it is beautiful).

Naturally, that will require a different set of adjectives but beautiful, ugly, easy difficult, interesting and boring to be the concepts that preschool children understand, even though the flashards and visuals will be based on some symbols.

Storytelling

Our storytelling has reached some new amazing levels since we started working extensively on adjectives, both with primary and pre-primary students. You can read more about in an earlier post on the Storytelling Campaign here and here.

‘confused’

In my classroom

In this academic year, I am working with three pre-school groups, level 1, level 2 and level 3 and I am happy to say that even my youngest level 1 students are familiar with the set of 12 different adjectives that you can see in the first photograph plus a few more that we have learnt through songs. Level 2 group have got the basic set, quantifiers ‘very’ and ‘a little’ and a few more adjectives lined up. Level 3 group have got a nice set to describe food, transport and animals (including ‘scary‘) and they have already started working on extanding that range.

The photographs that were chosen to illustrate this post all come from the set that I have created for my pre-school group.

I have decided to use paper plates because they are durable, easy to stock and they have a shape of a circle aka they are a face. In the classroom, we put them in neat rows on the carpet, in the middle of the circle, to support production. My younger students like to pick up those that are relevant and hide behind them, showing how they really feel. This makes this part of the lesson a bit more kinesthetic.

I have drawn all of them myself but before making the decision on how to represent each adjective, I like to look at different emoticons to get inspired and to find something that meets two criteria a) I can draw it and b) my students will be able to associate it with a specific concept.

In some cases, the symbol was pretty easy for students to decode (for example: an owl = clever), in some others, I had to follow up with a brief clarification (for example: lightbulbs = ideas = creative). After the first lesson, I decided to upgrade the ill flashcard by adding a real tissue for the poor sneezing person.

There is another thing that I am considering at the moment. With my preschool students we start with the adjectives that help us describe how we feel and it must have been out of sheer linguistic greed that I decided to add those adjectives that describe personal characteristics rather than emotions such as ‘strong’, ‘beautiful’ or ‘clever’. Although, to be honest, we adults know very well that there are days when we feel particularly beautiful or not and the kids responded well to it. At the moment, I am considering different ways of organising all the adjectives that we already know and building up on that, in each category.

Basically, the best is yet to come.

Where to find the adjectives?

Happy teaching!

The diary of a desperate teacher: young kids and ‘advanced’ grammar: 5 activities

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The background: a group of 7-8-9-year-olds, who have been learning English for a number of years (some of them even for 5+ years), in the EFL context, currently in the A2 level and supposed to deal with the grammar structures that are quite advanced for their age and the current level of cognitive development. Plus an experienced teacher, ready for a challenge.

The challenge: practice activities that do focus on the target language but in the context appropriate for YL (sadly, quite a few of those that we have in our coursebook are just junior or even adult practice activities with kiddies characters’ names, we use them but there is very little joy, our last resort).

How to use this post: read the description of the types of activities and then look at the handouts we did use in class, with my A2 kids while in the unit on the zero conditional.

Type #1: Something is wrong here

This is usually the first practice activity with a new structure as this type of an exercise does not require any real knowledge of the grammar structure. Its main aim is the extended exposure to the structure that is our target language. The students are to read the sentences and find the problems and sort them out. These are usually the logical inconsistencies and they can be corrected in many different ways. It is an open ended activity. According to my kids, some of the sentences contain no issues as, apparently, ‘If you run in the hallway, the teacher runs with you’ is exactly what happens in their school. LOL.

This activity can be follwed up with a quick memory game in which the kids word in pairs and try to recreate the original sentences with only some hints from their partner. For example, student A calls out ‘ice-cream, the sun’ and student B tries to produce the full sentence.

Type #2: Find a mistake

This type of an activity is a good idea because it helps the kids develop the linguistic awareness in the very limited area of the chosen and practised grammar structure. We have found those very useful since the kids are slowly becoming aware of the structure and they are slowly being introduced to looking at grammar in a more adult way.

The handout is basically a set of sentences, with some grammar mistakes. In the sample sentences you can see in my handouts, these can be: missing words, additional words, incorrect froms.

The instructions are super simple, the kids work together or individually (depending on how independent your kids are) and underline and correct the mistakes. In this and in the previous activity, my students adore taking colourful markers and play the teacher here, treating these as my tests which they correct and give back to me. With marks that are not necessarily the best one.

Type #3 Your ideas!

This kind of an activity gives the kids even a greater opportunity to produce personalised sentences and to express themselves. It is entirely open-ended especially that the kids also have a chance to choose the sentences which they want to complete. In the handout available, there are ten sentences in total and the students were asked to complete five they like most.

The kids complete the sentences in any way that is true for them. In the follow-up stage, they work in pairs, read their sentences to their partner and explain why. The most important part of is the written sentence with a strong focus on the TL but this is only the springboard to a lot more productive task. If there is time, the students can change partners and to produce a lot more language. Another opportunity is to keep the handouts and ask the kids to complete the remaining five sentences in the following lesson and to repeat the pairwork, with the same or with different partners.

Type #4 Caption this!

This is a slightly more productive task, but still a very open-ended one. The kids are required to create their own captions to the images provided and, of course, the selection of the images and the language used has to be relevant to the topic of the lesson.

It can be set up in (at least) two ways: either at the desks with the students working together and writing the captions which we compare in the feedback session or with the images displayed on separate pieces of A4, with one image per page, which are circulated in the classroom and with the new ideas being added by the students as we go along.

If there are appropriate conditions in the school, the kids can also be invited to walk around the school, look at the visuals and add their ideas to the visuals that they like most. This offers more freedom as it is not a given that they will write something under all of the visuals (unlike in the activity when the cards are circulated when we are sitting) but this set-up requires proper stations (aka any horizontal working space which allows for comfortable writing) as the young kids might struggle with writing on the posters displayed on the walls.

The visuals can be very specific or, like in our handout, they can simply help to narrow down the topic.

Type # 5 Role-play starters

First of all, kids prepare the conversation starters. They can work in pairs or individually and they write one sentence for a specific situation (see the handouts). Ideally this is done in the end of a lesson. The teacher monitors, encourages and suggests. The kids are put in pairs, they read the sentences to each other and choose the funniest ones or the most interesting ones. The teacher collects the handouts.

For the following lesson, the teacher cuts up the sentences and divides them into sets. It does not quite matter if a set has more than one situation of the same type. The idea is that the kids will work with a set of random sentences.

Kids work in pairs. Student A takes out a sentence and reads out the situation. Then they start the role-play in which the sentence should be included. Student B reacts, as appropriate. Then they swap and student B takes out one of the cards and starts a conversation.

And this is, more or less, how we roll, me, basically, throwing things at the walls and see if it sticks. So far it has. Then, onto the next one. Although, of course, we will have to wait and see about the long-term results.

Bonus tasks. A grammar-focused project: How we became scientists

These particular activites are very specific to the particular topic or the target langauge here and they will not be easily transfered into other contexts and topics. However, they were very effective and they did help us practise the target language and for that reason I am including them here.

We have already practised a lot and this handout was set a homework task. I was very open-minded (or almost very reckless) about the mode of completing this tasks. The kids were asked to complete the handout but, because they asked, I also allowed them to complete the questions with mistakes (which we would correct later), in Russian or just to think about these situations. The only thing I had to highlight was for them not to do these experiments at home.

I had to choose the experiements following a few criteria (something we can do in class, something that does not involve any fire or potentially dangerous materials if the kids decided to do them again at home, something that will not involve any langauge or structures that are too advanced for us) and to prepare the materials and the classroom set-up, too, with all the desks in a semi-circle and a table in the middle.

In the following lesson, we went step by step, using the following framework

  • the hypothesis and the ideas from kids, introducing some of the key vocabulary, mostly verbs
  • doing the experiments, highlighting the results, producing the key structure
  • asking additional questions and follow-up questions, letting the kids play, when appropriate ie with spinning the eggs or mixing the water etc.

Some of the experiments have been completed in the same lesson (skittles) and some of them will be completed and finalised in the following lesson (we have used the lemon juice to write and in the following lesson we will see if these letters show after we have ironed them).

Despite the fact that the experiments meant a lot of work for me, I am very happy with the outcomes because we did manage to create an almost perfect context for the target language and the students really did produce a lot of language. I might not do it in every unit but it was definitely worth it.

Happy teaching!

Wordwall: Top 10 Favourite Activities

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Well, well, well, this is officially my post #100 on the blog and I am in the mood for celebrating. That might take the form of sharing some random numbers (8,280 visits and 5,563 visitors over a year and a half (and mind you, I have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER if it is ‘impressive’, ‘not so good at all’ or just ‘why even bring it up?!’) and pondering over the fact that these have been my 5 most popular posts:

a) Colourful semantics in EFL?

b) The Invisible Student and why you might want to have one

c) The first VYL lesson Survival Kit

d) A to Z of homework for very young learners

e) All you need is a picture

Which means that there is some interest in teaching pre-schoolers, using visuals in class and that Pasha, the invisible student, has become a bit more real, overall.

Apart from that, however, I would also like to take this opportunity to share with you my top 10 wordwall activities that I use with my primary and pre-primary students.

Disclaimer: Wordwall is amazing, no doubt about that, but it is still only a resource, a material. Its main aim is to provide opportunities for the students to produce the language. For that reason, in all of the games (for the lack of a better word) described below there will be always a differentiation between the material (the actual tool created with wordwall formats) and the activity (how we use it in class).

Here we go (in no particular order):

  • Are you scared of?

Materials: Random cards, for example ‘Are you scared of…?‘

Activity: Kids take turns to ask everyone the key question using the cue on the card. All the students in the group answer. The same pattern can be used with any question ie Do you like…? Can you…? Have you got…?

Works well with: primary (they can attempt working in pairs and taking turns to ask a question to their partner only) and pre-primary, individual and groups

  • Tell me about

Materials: Open the box, for example Tell me about this picture (seasons #2)

Activity: Kids play in teams, ask for the box to be open, produce a sentence (or sentences about the picture), win the number of points. The game about seasons is a very simple one, for preschoolers, the one such as this one here, about animals, can generate a lot more language, also with preschoolers and, of course, a lot more with primary.

Works well with: primary and pre-primary (with pre-primary we play T vs the whole class), groups and individial (we play T vs the student).

  • What’s this? Stencils

Materials: Flashcards, double-sided, for example Secret animals. What’s this?

Activity: Kids play in teams, team A asks the question ‘What’s this?’, team B tries to answer. Afterwards the teacher flips the card to check. Depending on the vocabulary kids then say whether they like it or not or try to describe, too.

Works well with: pre-primary, individual and groups, it might be a bit under-challenging for the primary students

  • Which one is correct? Spelling

Materials: Flashcards, double-sided, with visuals and correct and incorrect spelling of the word Places in the city or a quiz with a similar idea, for example this one Superminds 5, Read and choose

Activities: Kids read both versions and choose the correct one. With the flashcards the teacher is flipping the cards back and forth, I use it mostly with my 1-1s. With groups the quiz version works better and it can turn into a proper quiz, with the kids writing the answers down.

Works well with: primary, individual and groups

  • Advanced riddles aka Turn your back

Materials: Random cards, for example Transport Revision.

Activities: Kids work in pairs, one student in each pair has to sit with their back to the TV/ interactive whiteboard, the other is looking at the board. T keeps dealing the cards. The student looking at the screen has to describe the word for their partner to guess. After a certain number of rounds they change. The cards usually have the words on them, too, so it works well with mixed ability groups.

Works well with: primary and teens. I have only tried it with groups.

  • Song support

Materials: Match, for example Pete the Cat, Rocking in my school shoes or As quiet as a mouse

Activity: We use the cards or the matching activity to sing the song, slowly, with pauses, to practise and to revise before the actual video / track. The set such as the one for the ‘As quiet as a mouse’ can be used to start creating own versions of the song as kids have only the animals and they can (if they are ready) to come up with their own adjectives.

Works well with: primary and pre-primary, individual and groups.

  • Story / video comprehension check

Materials: Match to accompany Peppa Pig ‘Fruit Day’ or a quiz to accompany Peppa Pig ‘George is ill’

Activities: We normally learn the vocabulary, get ready for watching the video and then watch it. The games described here are used to check comprehension. The quiz is read by the teacher and the kids answer ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ and correct the incorrect sentences (unless I use the same story with primary who can read it themselves). The matching activity is always accompanied by a structure. It can be a simple ‘Apples are for George’ or a more comples ‘George would like apples’.

Works well with: primary and pre-primary, individual or groups.

  • Memory Game

Materials: Match, for example I am going to the supermarket. I am going to buy bread or any other matching activity consisting of two components.

Activities: The game itself is usually set for homework. We check it together, whole class. Afterwards the kids are divided into pairs and they test each other, for example Student A says: I am going to the supermarket’, student B has to recreate the second half of the sentence. To help the kids a bit, I put up some key words (ie places and main verbs) on the board. The kids change after a few rounds.

Works well with: primary, individual or groups

  • Just questions

Materials: Flashcards or random cards, with full questions or prompts.

Activities: Kids work in pairs and the kids interview each other, reading the questions or prompts of the computer / TV / interactive whiteboard. Afterwards they swap.

Works well with: primary and teens, individual and groups

  • Yes / No

Materials: Radom cards or flashcards for example ‘She’s / He’s wearing’

Activities: Kids look at the cards and listen to the teacher describing the pictures. If the sentence is correct, they say ‘Yes’, if there is a mistake, they reply with ‘No!’ and correct the mistake. Later on, there is a lot of potential for the kids to take turns to lead the game. The older students can work in pairs, too, while looking at the screen / the interactive whiteboard / the TV.

Works well with: primary and pre-primary, individual and groups.

If you are looking for inspiration or ready activity, you can find my profile (Azapart) there. I share all of my activities so there is plenty to choose from, especially if you work with Playway to English and Superminds.

Here you will also find Part 2 of this post and even more ideas for using Wordwall games in your YL classes.

Happy teaching!

P.S. A request!

It is very simple.

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

Hence the survey.

Crumbs #21 ‘Write 5 words’ aka a vocabulary game for lazy teachers

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Here is a pumpkin flower: simple and unexpectedly beautiful, just like this game.

Ingredients

  • A piece of paper and something to write with
  • For younger students – somewhere to keep the paper safe and secret i.e. inside a coursebook
  • Imagination
  • The whiteboard to put the target language on

Procedures

  • Kids work individually, keeping their cards secret from their friends but if the game is played for the first time, they can work in pairs, this will be their natural support and the source of creativity because two heads are better than one.
  • Teacher ask the students to write numbers from 1 to 5, in a column. When they are ready, teacher asks the kids to write 5 words, one at number 1, one at number 2, etc. Teacher monitors and prepares her/his own set to use in modelling. It might be also a good idea to write a few examples on the board although these are just for modelling and they will not be used in the real game. The target structures should also be displayed on the board.
  • Teacher demonstrates how to play the game – she / he describes the first word on her / his list for the whole class to guess. It might be necessary to play a few rounds with the whole class, with the teacher leading the game or with one of the strongest students leading the game.
  • The game can be played until all the words are described and guess OR for as long as there is time.
  • Important: It is absolutely necessary to carefully combine the vocabulary and the target structure to make sure that the set is used naturally and that it matches the context, too. Some of the examples of the activities we used below
  • Places in the city (ie bank, post office, school) + I can see…I can hear…I can smell…Where am I?
  • Professions + I am going to work, I am going to do…Who am I?
  • Animals + It is big / small, It can run / fly / swim, It has got…
  • Body parts + I need it / them when I write, swim, play
  • Objects + passive voice ie It is made of…, It is used for…
  • Personal characteristics + Present Simple, 3rd singular, This person always does something, This person never does something

Why we like it

  • The biggest advantage of the game is that it can be adapted to almost any set of vocabulary and any structure.
  • It can be used with the lower-level and the higher-level groups, with the younger and the older students.
  • The game requires no preparation for the teacher and it is SS-generated which means that it is personalised and motivating for the kids to play.
  • It is a perfect controlled practice activity as the kids are using the target langauge and the target vocabulary.
  • It is a guessing game and because of that it is both achievable and challenging.
  • With the younger kids we play the game of 5, with the older ones we usually prepare 10 words.

Happy teaching!

The Storytelling Campaign: Activities

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If you are here, dear read, you have probably already read the first part of this post. If not – here it is.

In this part, I would like to share some practical activities to be used in the VYL and YL lessons to practise adjectives, verbs and Present Continous and to get closer to storytelling, even with the very young or the beginner students.

First steps

Tell me about this picture has quickly become one of our favourite games. We use wordwall Boxes for that. Players take turns to open the box and to describe the picture hidden there. If they complete the task successfully, they get the number of points also hidden in the box. The game can be used to practise both adjectives and Present Continous (or any other language) and the students can be asked to produce one, two or three sentences, depending on their skills and the teacher can keep count of the sentences produced using fingers. The best thing about the game is that the children choose themselves what they want to talk about, much as in the YLE Starters, Flyers and Movers.

Here are some of the sets we have used

  • Animals: I can see a lion. It is big. It is brown. It is beautiful.
  • Present Continous: It is a girl. She is drinking coffee. She is happy.
  • Bedrooms: It is a bedroom. It is big. It is beautiful. I like it.

So far, I have only played it with my 1-1 students (player 1: the student, player 2: the teacher) but I am about to start using it with my groups, too (player 1: the class, player 2: the teacher).

Oups is a game in which students look at the picture (any picture) and listen to the sentences produced by the teacher. When they hear a sentence with a mistake, they should say ‘oups!’ and correct the sentence. In the beginning, they normally react only by producing a single word, replacing the incorrect one but later on, when they get used to it, they can produce full sentences. Even later, it is also possible for the students to lead the game and to produce correct or incorrect sentences for everyone else to listen and to react to.

With the youngest students it is better to limit the range of structures used to something super simple, for example ‘I can see…’, with the older (and more advanced ones), the structures can vary.

This activity can be used in class but it is also a great homework task, as long as you share the picture and record a few sentences and share it with parents.

An example can be found below. The picture was generated using makebeliefscomix.com and the recording can be found here.

makebeliefscomix.com

In my picture…: This is a natural follow-up activity, a little bit more complex and a little bit more challenging. It is based on two pictures that are to be compared. They are not quite the actual YLE Movers or Flyers speaking tasks because these are too detailed and they contain the vocabulary that might be beyond the pre-A student’s level.

What you need is basically two pictures that are connected by the theme i.e. farm, kids in the park, in my bedroom etc and a very simple starter phrase, a proper all-rounder such as ‘I can see’. With 1-1 students, it is very straightforward – one picture for the teacher, the other for the student. With groups, the kids will be working as a group, comparing their picture with the teacher’s. At least in the beginning, before they are ready to work in pairs.

Some examples of pictures that can be used:

These are the pictures I ‘created’ using the tools on the Miro board
www.clipart-library.com and www.clipartpanda.com

The next step will be telling stories using a set of pictures…(Please continue reading:-)

One story, many ideas.

Here is one of the YLE Flyers stories (Flyers TESTS REFERECE), called ‘Charlie and the elephant‘ and some of the ways in which it can be used with pre-school and primary students.

‘Advanced’ preschool students

Step 1: look at the pictures and say what you can see. The kids can use very simple structures, for example ‘I can see…’ or some more complex structures, for example ‘It is a…’, ‘She’s got…’, ‘He’s got…’, ‘She is…’, ‘He is…’.

With 1-1 students, the teacher and the child take turns to describe pictures, with groups we all talk each picture, one by one. It might be a good idea to cover up all the pictures and uncover them progressively, to help the children focus only on one of them at a time.

Step 2: look at the pictures, listen and help me. This is basically an advanced version of Oups, the game I described above, only here a series of pictures is used. Here you can find a recording I created for my students.

Step 3: look at the pictures and help me tell the story, Similar but Different. The teacher first models, telling a story that has a similar framework (a woman, a boy, an animal, some fruit, going away, a show at the end) but which uses different details. Later on, the students tell their own version of the story, with the necessary amount of support from the teacher. The teacher can only start the senteces (‘A woman….’) or create almost an entire sentence with the students filling in only the essential details (‘A boy is eating a….’).

These steps were introduced in three consecutive lessons.

Primary beginner Flyers students

Step 1: Two words: students work in pairs. Each pair gets a copy of the story. Kids look at pictures and together write two things they can see in each of them. The teacher also participates in order to be able to model at each stage of the activity. Students exchange the handouts, in a circle. Each pair gets a new handout and the procedure is repeated: each pair writes two words next to each picture but these have to be two new words. The procedure is repeated until each pair writes their words on every handout.

By that point, each picture is accompanied by a set of words (2 words x the number of pairs). Kids look at the pictures and tell the story using the words they can see. They can be encouraged to cross out the words they have used to make sure that all the words have been used.

Step 2: Two crazy words: we start with retelling the story from the previous lesson, as a class. Then, the teacher shows the students the new handout – the familiar pictures but with two strange words next to each of them. The teacher tells them that these are the words you cannot see in any of the pictures and that now the students will tell the story again but including these words.

It is absolutely necessary to generate some ideas, for the first two pictures, for example. I have added ‘a teacher’ and ‘a monster’ for picture 1 and it went more or less like this: ‘Mmmm, a teacher. Maybe mum is a teacher. Maybe the book is about a teacher. Maybe the book is about a monster. Maybe…’ and I let the kids give some more ideas about these two words.

Afterwards, the students work in pairs, taking turns to retell the story with the new words.

If you are interested and if you would like to see the handouts that we used, you can find them here.

Step 3: Our own story: again, we start with retelling a story, together, as a group. Afterwards the teacher goes through the framework of the story, using a powerpoint presentation, highlightling the main ‘events’ of the story, at the same time eliciting ideas from the class. Then the students are given some silent ‘Thinking Time’ (something that we tried for the very first time and that worked like a dream) during which they prepare their story. Afterwards, they are telling their stories to their partners.

Action stories

One of the tools that will come in handy in and that can be used to accompany the activities mentioned above is the action story or the TPR stories promoted by Herbert Puchta (and Gunther Gerngross) in pretty much all of his coursebooks. They have been included in Playway to English, both editions and in Superminds 1 and 2. I have some vague recollections about the old Join Us series, too. There is a separate publication, Do and Understand: 50 Action Stories for Young Learners which they wrote together and which was published in 1996 (wow!) but which still can be found in libraries and on amazon.co.uk.

The idea behind those is that children, even the youngest ones, can be encouraged to listen to a story and to tell a story, using a multi-channel approach: there is a set of pictures to illustrate the main events and each of these comes with a sentence and a gesture.

Students listen to the story, retell the story using the gestures and, later on, also the sentences and they work with the visuals in the coursebook completing such exercises as listen and order the pictures and, in case of the primary students, read and number the sentences.

More ideas to work with pictures and stories on this blog

Happy teaching!

The Storytelling Campaign

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makebeliefscomix.com

Forgive the grand name, I must have been in the mood for something like that, now I feel like the general Kutuzov himself.

Initially, I was planning to write a post on all the reasons of using stories in class and perhaps I am going to get down to it, eventually but I want to reasearch it properly so bear with me. It will take some time.

If you have not worked with stories much you can have a look at this post here, to look at the basics of using storybooks in the EFL classroom and here at one of the ways of building a lesson around a coursebook story.

Today, however, I would like to tell you about the behind the scenes work – everything that takes place in my VYL and YL classes to ensure that my kids are ready to tell stories.

makebeliefscomix.com

Why bother?

  • To take my students from the receptive skills of storytelling towards the productive storytelling skills and in a more extensive way than just listening to the stories we read and which they help to retell
  • To give them the appropriate tools to enable production (We Want More! (remember?)
  • To unleash their imagination and creativity, step by step, even in pre-school.
makebeliefscomix.com

Step 1: Teaching adjectives

I wouldn’t want to say that the curriculum and the coursebooks we use with VYL or YL do not contain any adjectives at all. Yes, some of them are included but, in my opinion, there is a lot more potential than just the basic ‘happy, sad, angry’ and ‘big and small’. If you think about it, many coursebooks introduce adjectives only when they deal with comparatives and superlatives and, in my humble opionion, even the very young kids understand at least some of the opposites and they can use them to describe things.

For that very reason, the curriculum can be upgraded by adding:

  • more emotions: happy, sad, angry, hungry, thirsty, tired, sleepy, not so good, great, good, OK.
  • more adjectives to describe characters: brave, strong, clever, beautiful, ugly, scared and not scared, fast, slow.
  • adjectives to describe objects and animals: funny, scary, long, short, old, new, clean and dirty.

It is true that it might not always be easy to depict these accurately but we can easily use the children’s growing ability to deal with symbols and all these concepts can be associated and explained with carefully chosen images.

Here you can find some of the vocabulary sets that I use with my pre-school and primary strudents. A very important note: children are not necessarily expected to memorise all of these and to be able to remember both the word and its written form. We stick to the curriculum as regards the tests and assessment but in our classes we use a lot wider vocabulary range than the coursebook suggests.

makebeliefscomix.com

Step 2: Teaching verbs and teaching Present Continous

That is another topic or area which, in my opinion, can significantly contribute to the development of our little students’ storytelling skills but, at the same time, the area that has not really been reflected in the coursebooks. Fair enough, the Present Simple might not be the most essential structure to know. It not introduced explicitly in the pre-school coursebooks (to the best of my knowledge) and in primary it is a structure on the YLE Starters list but in the classroom, this one is introduced in year 2 of primary.

At the same time, this is the structure that can be easily introduced and clarified with gestures, a structure that can be used in the classroom, to clarify instructions or to manage the group and a structure that is very (very, very) useful while describing pictures and, later on, describing pictures which form a story, like in the YLE Movers and Flyers.

As for the content, these are some of the verbs that can be added to the curriculum

  • everyday verbs: get up, eat, drink, brush your teeth, wash your face, get dressed, go to school, go to sleep, play, cook, watch TV, sleep.
  • hobbies and free-time activities: dance, sing, draw, read, write, ride a bike, listen to music, jump, run, swim.
makebeliefscomix.com

Step 3: Teaching the basic linking words

This is probably the most challenging step as it is the most abstract one and cannot be easily represented with flashcards. At the same time, the three basic linking words: and, but and because can be taught in the context.

These are the ideas that I tend to use with my students

  • and: introduced as a follow-up of ‘I like / I don’t like’ to talk about our preferences ie ‘I like apples and bananas and cookies’ and it can be used with quite a few sets of vocabulary such as colours, toys, food, animals, pets, etc.
  • but: introduced through the song ‘What do you like to do‘ by Super Simple Songs
  • because: introduced when we talk about how we feel. We start with a simple ‘I’m good’, ‘I’m happy’ and then we slowly introduce the linking word ‘I’m happy because it is sunny’. The same applies to all the pictures and photographs we discuss.

In all three cases, the introduction starts with the children being exposed to complex sentences linked with three words and getting used to hearing them. Production comes later on, when they are ready.

makebeliefscomix.com

This is the first part of the post.

In part two I am going to share some of the activites we use in class. It’s half-ready)))

Happy teaching!

Children as symbols users and the EFL world.

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‘Symbolic representation – making something stand for something else’*

Symbolic representation, its importance and development in children are a truly fascinating topic and one of the crucial ones to anyone who works with the little children.

Tina Bruce’s definition of symbolic representation has become the title for this paragraph and that means that absolutely anything can become a symbol of something else and being able to read these symbols is an important step in child development.

Symbols are everyone around us. Some of them are universally recognised such as mathematical symbols, musical notation or the letters of the alphabet, some are personal. While growing up, children are learning to differentiate between the symbol and the real object, they learn to recognise, learn and, eventually, to create symbols.

Examples? Imagine a cat, a black beautiful and soft murmuring creature. Now, imagine a flashcard of a cat. Obviously, as adults we have no problems differentiating between these two and understanding that the flashcard, no matter how realistic, is not a cat and that it only represents it. We can even take one step further and look at ‘CAT’ written on the board also understand that it is not the cat itself, only its symbol. Or that when we move one of our hands in the air (with the fingers spread apart and crooked a bit), while saying ‘meow’, we also want it to represent a cat. Although we are not the cat ourselves. One more step would be going in the direction of what the cat or the black cat itself might represent…

It is basically the development of abstract thinking. Why does it matter to us, the teachers of English? Well, there are a few reasons and a few immediate uses in the classroom.

Flashcards…

This is probably the easiest to highlight and, at the same time, the most obvious way in which the symbolic representation and its development influences our daily life in the classroom.

Flashcards are the staple resource of a VYL and YL teacher. We can bring toys into the classroom or plastic fruit to introduce and practice vocabulary with them but it is not possible with all the topics. Sadly, we can never have a real elephant or a real princess in the classroom, sadly, and for that reason we have flashcards. They help us work with the language as they are not only easy (or relatively easy) to obtain but they also help use the language and the variety of channels: visual (as they are colourful and pretty), kinesthetic (because we can manipulate them) and auditory (with the language produced by the teacher and the students).

However, there is the question of what exactly we want from the flashcards. They should be colourful and durable and visually appealing but they should also clearly convey the concept, not to confuse the children. The situation is much better nowadays, the materials that we work with are of a much better quality but you can still find a few ‘gems’ that should have never seen the daylight. I am collecting those and perhaps I am going to share with you my most precious finds (or rather ‘finds’).

It is a fascinating thing to be producing the flashcards to represent a less obvious concepts for example adjectives.

These first two are very straightforward, a frown is easily associated with ‘I’m sad’ or ‘sad’ and thinking of food with ‘I’m hungry’ or ‘hungry’.

The other two were a bit more challenging but I did assume that an owl is considered to be a very wise animal and it is often used in such a way. That is why we have also adopted it in our class. The other was even more challenging but I assumed that kids (or not only kids) often cover their eyes when they are scared and don’t want to look at what frightens them (although they sometimes peek through the fingers nonetheless:-). This is how we have ended up with these two symbols for ‘I’m clever’ and ‘I’m scared’ (or ‘clever’ and ‘scared’).

But things got really interesting and challenging recently. I needed a flashcard for ‘It’s scary’ (or ‘scary’) because we are in the unit of pets and animals and we learn to describe them, including what they like to eat, what they can do and what we think of them.

I already had a flashcards for ‘I’m scared’. For a moment I was considering using an image of a monster but those nice ones were sweet and funny and those that were really scary and illustrating the concept well, they were just too scary, even for me. In the end, I decided to go for a spider (as most kids don’t like them and I hate them so my reaction to them is always very real) but I covered it with a flap. My reasoning was that if something is scary, we don’t really want to look at it. So far it works well. And my kids love to pull off the flap while telling me that it is NOT scary.

Gestures

The gesture is king! By adding gestures while teaching kids vocabulary or structures, we multiply the number of channels through which the kids are operating (visual – with flashcards, auditory – the words spoken and kinesthetic – through gestures) and we help them remember and recall the language with more ease.

It does not really matter if we use gestures (or symbols) that are universally recognised. It is an advantage if we can, of course, but I doubt that any culture has a gesture ready for the vocabulary that you are studying at the moment, for example ‘It is snowing’, ‘it is windy’ or ‘a clown’, ‘a doctor’, ‘a princess’. It does not really matter, though. The English classroom is a sort of a bubble, a mini-universe where its own rules apply. It is almost natural that this world will have its own set of symbols or gestures.

I have already committed a separate post on different ways of using it with preschoolers learning English as a foreign language. You can find it here.

Vocabulary and structure or How to teach grammar to preschoolers

Symbols and their application can be especially useful while teaching grammar to preschoolers. First of all, taking the students out of the one word production world and into the phrase- and the sentence- or perhaps even the discourse-level is a challenge all by itself. Our EFL students have a limited class time (unlike the bilingual or the ESL children) and a limited exposure outside of the classroom. Second of all, pre-schoolers are indeed very young and their cognitive skills and the ability to deal with abstract concepts (such as grammar) are limited. Last but definitely not least, they are pre-literate in English and the structure cannot be just presented to them using the written word. Primary children, who learn grammar but depend heavily on the context (which is an advantage and a source of support), still receive the basic form of the target langauge on the board or in the coursebook for example ‘I like…’ which helps them remember the key structure and which supports production.

For that reason some other solutions have to be found and, at least, for me and my students relying on symbolic representation has been a life saver.

It started with a heart, you could say. I needed a symbol to stand for ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’ and at first I went for something resembling a face of a child that might be saying ‘Yummy’ but when I brought them to school, my students looked and said ‘happy’. Not good at all. The distance between the symbol and the real thing was too long and our new symbol resembled another symbol too closely. This is how we ended up with a heart – a coloured-in heart and a crossed heart to stand for ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’ respectively.

We use them together with the food, pets or colours flashcards and they simply work wonders. Both main components of the sentence are represented here visually, it is easier to remember them, to produce and reproduce them and they can be manipulated physically, too, as each of the students can have their own heart, double-sided. The heart can be put on the flashcard face up or face down depending on how the kids feel about it. It can be also held up, show the other students ‘the right side’.

It is amazing to see how quickly students accept this particular symbol and how effectively they use it. It is even more amazing to witness how they try to adapt it to the situation to make sure that they express their opinion and that this opinion is also reflected in how the symbol is used. In one of my groups we were using it with more complex food items and one of students said that she didn’t know whether she liked steak or not because shed had never tried. After a brief moment of hesitation, she decided to hold the little cardboard heart side-ways (or edge-ways) so that it expresses neither ‘I like’ or ‘I don’t like’.

Another way of applying symbolic representation are the mini-emotion flashcards which we use to describe the feelings of others. These are quite small, small enough to fit on the character or family flashcards and to make it for almost ‘real’ experience when ‘mum’ looks really happy or sleepy or hungry.

These mini-cards can be used in phrases ‘a happy princess’ or in sentences ‘The princess is happy’ and the position of the card will reflect the change in the phrase ie if the card is on the left of the flashcards it reflects the position of both words in the phrase in which the adjective comes first. If the mini-card is on the flashcard (for the purpose of realism and fun) or on the right we produce a full sentence in which the noun comes first, followed by the verb ‘is’ (the only part that needs to be remembered and which can be represented by a gesture) and by the emotion.

Unfortunately, it is not always easy to find a suitable visual symbol for each structure we teach but it does not necessarily have to be a picture, gestures will work equally well. For example for ‘I’m wearing’ I motion my hand from my neck down to point at the clothes and for ‘I can see’ I tap my finger twice on my chest (for ‘I’ and ‘can’) and then point at my eyes ‘(‘see’).

I think it can be safely said that I am (slowly?) adding symbols to my collection. Plus, it is fun to make the ghost scared, for once and this lesson always puts me in a better mood.

And then there are letters, too!

Letters and alphabets or any writing systems are a fascinating set of symbols and, eventually, children get to know them, in their L1 and in English, too. When they are ready. This is an adventure that deserves its own post (or, indeed, a series of posts), soon, especially that when we take the first steps in the world of the written word, it is with a background in another alphabet and another set of symbols, some of which are the same, some of which are different and some of which are false friends because they look the same but they represent different sounds.

Developing literacy skills is as much a challenge as it is fun. Especially that children as young as four and five comment on the fact the English ‘Pp’ looks exactly like the Russian ‘Rr’ and that ‘Ww’ turned upside down turns into ‘Mm’ (well, at least the capital one). Or that ‘Xx’ is a Russian ‘Hh’ or ‘A cross, Anka! It looks like a cross!‘

More on that later.

Kids grow up…

Of course the use of the symbol in the EFL classroom is not limited to pre-school, only later on the symbol is not an essential component (at least in my head) but a pleasant supplement that makes things fun, colourful and a bit easier. Examples? The ghost in the cover photo which we use with my primary kids to stand for the silent letters that started to appear everywhere in our A1 materials or the gestures that we used while learning and practising some basic adverbs of frequence: always (5 fingers – 5 days a week), usually, sometimes and never.

Happy teaching!

*****

If you are interested, make sure you have a look at these:

Symbolic Understanding in Infants and Young Children, a lecture by Dr Judy DeLoache (2013)

Symbolic Understanding in Infants and Young Children, a lecture by Dr Stephanie Carlson (2013)

Tina Bruce (2005) Early Childhood Education, pp 105 – 125

The stages of symbolic development, in a nutshell.

From ‘havoc’ to ‘happiness’. Lesson planning for YL (part 2)

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What can you see in the photograph? Oh how I wish I could hear your thoughts and all your ideas, dear reader!

It does look pretty messy, doesn’t it? This is what I call ‘real life’.

Imagine this, I have just come into the office on the day of the training (which is not quite ready yet, not this one, the week must have been a real hell so although the ideas are there, the presentation itself is NOT, not panicking yet, but the adrenaline levels are already up) and I have just taken ‘everything I need’ out of the bag: books, notes, some copies and A LOT OF FOOD (typical). I am about to start planning. Having looked at what my desk has become, I decide to take a photo of this beautiful mess that soon will (I know it now) turn into a great seminar session.

I have decided to use this photo because it is a pretty accurate visualisation of what happens on some days when I plan my classes and to follow it up with a few words on what happens next and how I get from this havoc to the end-of-the-lesson happiness.

Based on the lesson with my ‘adult’ preschoolers a week ago.

The ‘theory’*)…

Step 1: Make a decision what your main aim is. Try to verbalise it and even write it. It really does wonders for the awareness of what you, as a teacher want from the lesson.

Step 2: Make a decision what your focused task is. ‘Focused task’ is the concept that we use at my school (and have used for at least 15 years) and it refers to the main activity of the lesson in which the students get to produce the language and the activity which is the culmination of the entire lesson. All the activities in the lesson lead to it, to some extent, just like all the roads lead to Rome.

A while ago I realised that this is the approach that I am using in all my lesson planning, for all the age groups, levels, for teaching and for teacher training, too.

Step 3: Consider the materials available (mostly by looking at what the coursebook has to offer) and whether they contribute to your aims and your focused task. If not, you will need to adapt them or design new materials.

Step 4: Think of the activity that is going to be most suitable for your materials. It is like differentiating between a tool and how you are going to use it.

After all, there are plenty things that can be done with a hammer (materials), such as putting in a nail to hang a picture, breaking a window, smashing a walnut open, stirring soup (activities) and so on. Some of them are more or less appropriate, of course. The same applies to the flashcards, boardgames, handouts and what we are going to do with them.

Step 5: Take a moment and go over the activity in order to make decisions about staging. What are going to be your baby steps within the activity? whenever we do something for the first time (regardless of whether it is the first time for me or the students), I like to make an effort to actually write the main stages, even if in a very simple form, a sequence of infinitives.

Step 6: An additional step: a homework task. It might not be always possible or, rather, sometimes it might involve a lot of work as regards material design or adaptation. To put it simply, not every teacher will have enough time or energy every single time, with all the lessons taught in a week but a homework task that is an extension of exactly what happens in the lesson and creates an opportunity to continue practising the same language or structures at home, with parents.

….and the practice. Our lesson last week.

Aim: For the kids to start describing school objects and the objects in the classroom, using full sentences such as ‘It is a blue pencil’, with the focus on colours and some simple adjectives. The kids are 5 and 6 and in the beginning of their third year of EFL.

Focused task: A game in which the kids will be guessing the secret word depicted in the cards, producing full sentences instead of questions as we have done so far. The kids will be saying ‘It is a blue pencil‘, ‘It is a red pencil‘, etc until they produce an accurate description of what is shown in the picture which they cannot see.

Materials: There is nothing in the book that could help to achieve the aim. There is one practice activity but it focuses on reading and the students are only taking their first steps in the world of the early literacy. A decision is made to design the materials. Yay.

The materials are a set of cards, 7×7 cm, with clip art pictures on them, coloured-in by hand. There are three types of cards (a pencil, a schoolbag and a rules) and six variations of each, in six different colours.

The cards must have a specific size for the kids to be able to manipulate them easily. They cannot be too big (the ‘secret’ will be difficult to keep and the regular A5 flashcards might be not comfortable enough for the little hands) and not too small (as they will be too flimsy and are likely to be ‘spilled’). It might be a good idea to keep the cards in an envelope to add one more layer of guarantee that the technical bits don’t get in the way of the successful playing of the game.

There are only three types of cards in order to make it achievable, at least when the game is first introduced. Later on, when the kids feel familiar with the concept of the game, more objects or more colours can be added.

Activity: The activity itself is a simple guessing game of two stages. The teacher chooses one of the cards, keep it secret, say ‘What’s my secret?‘ Stage 1: students guess which of the three objects is depicted on the card. They say ‘It is a ruler’ and so on, until they guess.

Once they do, the teacher confirms and asks the following question ‘What colour is it?‘. Students continue guessing. They produce the sentences such as ‘It’s a blue pencil‘, ‘It’s a green pencil‘, until they guess. To help them remember the full structure, teacher counts the parts of the sentence on her finger.

Staging

  • revise the vocabulary with the regular flashcards
  • show the kids the game cards
  • elicit the full sentences (signal withe the fingers), while flipping through the cards: ‘It is a green schoolbag’, ‘It is a yellow schoolbag’ etc.
  • mix the cards, to choose one and keep it close to the chest
  • say ‘What is it?‘ and peek at the cards, secretly and suggest a possible (wrong) answer.
  • wait for the kids to start guessing.
  • keep showing the fingers and counting parts of the sentence as the students are producing the language, developing the habit of answering in full sentences.
  • confirm when the kids guess the object in the picture, praise the student who guess and all the students
  • say ‘What colour is it?‘, peek at the cards, secretly and suggest a possible (wrong) answer
  • wait for the kids to start guessing.
  • after a round of two, the kids take over – call one of them out and ask them to sit on the teacher’s chair, choose the picture for them (to save time, especially in the first lesson) or let them choose the picture they want to play with but operating the cards yourself. The kids might be able to take over in the first lesson, they might be able to take over only in the following lesson, when the game is played for the second time.
  • encourage the group to make sentences, counting on your fingers, praising the kids, encouraging them to produce full sentences.

Homework

The homework task in this lesson was a simple handout, ‘a sentence maker’ in which the students have to complete the missing parts of the sentences, either by adding the colour (by colouring the box) or the adding the school object (by drawing it). The kids choose their own words. Later on, they ‘read’ their sentences. You can find the basic handout here.

The teacher makes one copy per child and one more to demonstrate the instructions in class. When we did this kind of an activity for the first time, I added the colours myself in line 4 and 5 to make the task straightforward. In the future, they will be given more freedom when they are more familiar with the format and the idea that each part of the sentence is represented by a visual or a symbol.

Did it work? aka ‘Happiness’

You know this moment when you are teaching and you literally want to get up and pat yourself on the shoulder with ‘OMG, you rock’? because you are allowing yourself, simultaneously, to teach and be fully in the lesson but also to be evaluating this lesson as if you had been the observer in the room. And it is actually going on very well?

This was one of these lessons.

The kids loved the guessing game, especially that they were given a chance to lead. The cards and the handout did help me achieve my aims and by the end of the focused task, the kids were producing full sentences, although I had to remind them a lot to use full sentences. It was much better in the second lesson with the same game. The kids were eager to start playing the game and I only had to model once. They were ready to take over and they produced a lot of language.

If you want to read more on the subject, have a look at this post where I share how I approach the everyday lesson planning for preschoolers.

Happy teaching!

*) Inverted commas because it is not a real theory, only a set of daily procedures, verbalised.

Crumbs#16 The Musical Challenge!

by
The first challenge ever (primary, A1)

Today about an activity that requires almost no preparation and is a nice break from the coursebook and from the everyday. Plus – you can draw. Ready? Let’s start the Musical Challenge!

Ingredients

  • A piece of paper, some drawing tool and a few tracks.
  • The choice of the tracks will depend on the teacher but it is good to include a variety of genres, songs or music with different tempo and instruments. I like to pick songs with a long intro and in a language that the students do not speak, not to let them be influenced by the lyrics.
  • Tell the students that you are going to play a short piece of music and they have to draw what they are thinking about when they hear this music. Highlight that all ideas are good ideas. Give the students an opportunity to include words, for example is some concept are difficult to draw.
  • Model, with a sample track.
  • Play about 30 – 60 seconds of a track and give the students up to a minute to finish drawing after the track stops. However, this is a fast-paced activity and its main aim is to provide material for speaking, not the drawing itself. Some students might want to make their drawings too pretty and too detailed and that will take time.
  • Put the students in pairs, let them discuss the songs. If possible, it might be a good idea to play the track they are discussing in the background to create the appropriate atmosphere.
  • Remember to put the questions / structures you want the students to answer / to use on the board. It will help them produce and stay on the ball.
  • Final feeback can include choosing the favourite and least favourite song.

Why we like it

  • It is very easy for the teacher to set up. It is enough to play the audio from the phone or even from youtube, pratically no preparation is necessary. It is possible to prepare a grid with numbers but it is much easier to give out an A4 or an A5 piece of paper that the students are asked to fold into halves until you get eight or six boxes. It works well, too. Because of that, it can easily become your go-to last minute, no-prep activity that can be added to any lesson.
  • It works well with different ages, not only with higher-level students, although, obiously, they will be able to produce more langauge and to discuss their own associations, metaphors, using more advanced language such as modal verbs for deduction. At the same time, even the younger and lower level students can describe their illustrations using simpler structures (I can see, he is wearing, he is happy) and to express their views (I like this song, I don’t like this song because…). The youngest students that I have done this activity with were about eight years old and studying in the A1 level.
  • The teacher has a lot of flexibility, this activity can be stopped whenever it is necessary, after four, five or eight tracks. The activity does not really have an end so it does not matter when it is stopped, for example when the students are not quite interested.
  • It can be further extended into a homework task. The students can be asked to choose a song, prepare their drawing at home and then play the song for everyone in class and either draw or just talk about their associations before presenting their original picture. If the songs are played in other than L1 or English (or if the beginning of the song does not include any text), the discussion can go in the direction of the story that the song is telling, based on the title, the summary or the single quotes.
  • It gives the students a chance to express themselves through drawing. We do a lot of that with the younger students but as we go, higher (level) and older (age), drawing and colours do disappear from our lessons, sadly. It is good to bring these moments back. They students do enjoy these.
  • It is a fascinating opportunity to see how music can be seen by a group of people and how different these associations can be.
  • It is highly personalised and open-ended, all ideas are good ideas
  • As a result, that kind of an activity generates a lot language.

The last time we did it a few week ago, we used the following tracks (we also read a text in our coursebook on music and fashion in the last 70 years, this is how all of the songs appeared here and how I listened to Ed Sheeran for the first time in my life:). Now, have a look at the pictures illustrating this post and have fun guessing which song inspired them. The Joni Mitchell, River

The Rolling Stones, Gimmie Shelter

The Clash, Should I stay or should I go

Ed Sheeran, Perfect

Backstreet Boys, Tell me why

Buddy Holly, Everyday

P.S. My kids loved the Clash and the Stones! Not all is lost)))

Happy teaching!