Primary

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

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

Last Thursday

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

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

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

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

Sigh.

The patchwork did it!

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

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

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

I started to read.

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

The emotional burden of the everday teacher’s life

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

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

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

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

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

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

The lucky ones?

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

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

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

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

Please tell me that there is a way out!

Yes, there is and no, there isn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

Bibliography

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

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

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

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

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

Happy teaching!

Things we did! Kids and the Past Simple.

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The context at hand

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

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

Wacky Wednesday Project

Presentation

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

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

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

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

Our story based on the Flyers materials

Practice

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

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #76 Magic Bag!

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This year’s Magic Bag, Sargent-themed, courtesy of the Tate Gallery in London

Ingredients

  • a pretty bag, ideally cotton, or something that is not transparent. I am joking, of course, that it needs to be pretty, it doesn’t but it is true that it is better if it is appealing visually. I normally use one of my tote bags.
  • a set of interesting objects that are safe to touch that fit in.

Procedures

  • Students sit in a circle, on the chairs or on the carpet, with the teacher in the centre, at a small distance. The teacher revises the vocabulary in question.
  • I like to take out the bag and make a show of it – take it out of a cupboard or a box, show surprise, shake it perhaps if the content allows it, make a face and ask out loud ‘What’s in the bag?’ etc.
  • The teacher starts chanting, for example: ‘Anka’s got a secret, Anka’s got a secret!’ and this is a chant that we use for every student.
  • The teacher demonstrates how she puts the hand into a bag, finds one thing and tries to name it, for example: ‘It’s a lion‘ (topic: animals).
  • Afterwards, the object is taken out to check what it really is. The teacher asks ‘Is it a lion?’ and the kids answer. It can be also used as an opportunity for additional drilling of the key words.
  • The students take turns to play the game.
  • As a follow-up, the kids can do a simple listening activity and help clean up at the same time. The teachers says ‘Sasha, please put the lion in’ etc.

Why we like it?

  • The main reason is a very strong appeal of an activity that is involves motor skills, guessing, an element of mystery and fun. Kids love to put their hand it and try to recognise or to name the objects. It so happens that we use the same bag during the entire year so after the first time, the kids can recognise it and they look forward to it. This week I was walking in the school with my bag (that on that day was ‘just my bag’ and my kids walking past got excited and started to ask if this is what we would do in class on the day).
  • The other main reason is that this activity can be used with a wide range of objects and for a wide range of topics, from those more obvious ones such as school objects, toys or materials to some less obvious such as rooms in the house or comparatives. I have also used it for colours, in one of the first lessons of the course, although, of course, the children did not know many of the objects that we used and we focused only on sorting them out according to their colours.
  • There are plenty of variations of the activity and it can be repeated in a series of lessons. It has not happened yet, over all these years, that I would take out a bag and hear ‘Oh, no, not the Magic Bag again!’ from the audience.
  • As regards the chant, I like to use ‘Anka’s got a secret!’ or a simple question ‘Anka, what’s in the bag?’ which all the kids repeat and which is a great question to know.
  • As regards the procedures, the kids can simply take out one object or try to guess it in their L1, they can describe it with the adjectives that they have (for example pairs of adjectives such as big / small, heavy / light, smooth / rough, soft/ hard or the materials: it is made of plastic etc) for the class to guess. Recently, I have used it also to practise comparisons and every child had to take out two objects, to describe them and then to compare them when they were both out of the bag. If it is appropriate for the objects, the kids can also try to shake them in the bag to check what noise they make. Another option is of course the most tactile version of the game – kids touching the objects with both hands without taking the objects out, through the fabric.
  • The age range of the students can also vary. The youngest kids that I have used it with were 3 – 4 years old, the oldest were my teenagers and they also enjoyed it. The language that we expect the students to produce will depend on their level and age. When we played the game last week with my A1 primary year 1, they were able to produce a set of four sentences in one go because we used it in the final stages of the adjectives unit.
  • Naturally, the objects can be used to introduce the target langauge, to practise or to revise the language, verbally or in writing or even as an introduction to a listening or reading task.
  • As regards the less obvious topics for example verbs or rooms in the house, it is still possible if the objects are used as symbols. ‘A spoon’ can mean ‘to eat’ or ‘the kitchen’, a pair of socks (a new pair!) can symbolise ‘to wear’ or ‘the bedroom’, ‘a tub of toothpaste’ can stand for ‘to brush your teeth’ or ‘the bathroom’ and so on.
  • During the pandemic, I also used the Magic Bag in class, although in the online version the bag was much thinner and I was putting one object at a time and demonstrating it to the camera. I also used to make noises with them, without showing them to the camera i.e. dropping them on the table, squeezing them, tapping on them etc or, as the last hint, showing only a tiny little corner of the object to the camera. It also worked very well! And, in the online world, it was also possible for my students to take part and do the same with things that they had at home.
  • Last but not least, this is a unique opportunity for the teacher to take the most random selection of things to school such as pasta pieces in a bag, a soap, a salt shaker, a spoon, a pair of socks, a tube of toothpaste, seeds in a bag, some flour in a bag, shells, stones, tomatoes, cucumbers, soft toys, an electric torch, a small jar, a pair of earrings, a ribbon, cones…

Happy teaching!

Is it bigger? Is it smaller? Teaching comparatives to young learners

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A new series!

Welcome to the new series on the blog! Teaching grammar to young learners is one of my passions, especially that the students are getting younger and younger and / or the context is changing and you find yourself faced with a challenge of coming up with ideas to engage, to present and to practise with people who are still not really ready to deal with abstract terms and the target language goes beyond the easy-peasy bits of ‘is’ is for one cat and ‘are’ is for many (naturally accompanied by gestures and flashcards).

I have been interested in that area for some time already and I have written about before (please check the other emails in that category) but in the recent months, this has been especially present in my life. This year I am teaching in a school with a bilingual programme, and I am a teacher both of the BNC and of the ESL to a mixed ability group and on a random given Monday I may need to teach past simple or comparatives who students who are not the A1 level yet.

Hence this series. I will simply be sharing ideas that I have created or adapted for my students and, naturally, the activities that have worked well. Let’s get started. Comparatives first!

The context at hand

This year I am teaching two classes of year 1 (and of year 3 of the British National Curriculum) and I am responsible for their BNC year 3 curriculum as well as their ESL classes. Consequently, we have about one million different aims and the two most important among them are the following: developing the kids’ language skills and realising the aims of the BNC. My students are 6 and 7, they are in their year 1 of the state education. They language levels vary from pre-A1 to early A2. In case you are wondering regarding the aims, bilingual education to non-quite-so-bilingual kids is a different planet and I am only at the start of my journey but the main objective is that we are going to be closer to bilingual when we get to our year 4. It is all a process.

The most practical implication for me as a teacher is that we do not follow a linear curriculum, typical of foreign language learning and, that, for example comparatives and, subsequently, superlatives, is our target language in the fifth month of our year 1. As one of the examples. That, in turn, means that I am teaching my very young kids some advanced grammar points and I am trying to do it the best I can. I am hoping that some of these ideas will be useful to my fellow teachers out there.

Ideas for teaching and practising comparative forms

Presentation

  • My students already know a range of adjectives, because we have learnt lots of emotions, adjectives to describe characters and also adjectives to describe objects. My main aim of it was to give the kids a range of vocabulary which we can use in telling stories, retelling stories and describing pictures, all a part of my storytelling campaign. However, it was absolutely necessary to choose a very narrow range for the grammar presentation stage of the lesson and for me it was ‘bigger’ and ‘smaller’, leaving behind, for now, the other short adjectives, the long adjectives, superlatives or the irregular adjectives. For now. As soon as we become familiar with one, we will move onto the other. For example, in one of the exercises, I decided to ‘smuggle’ longer and shorter, just to see how the kids react.
  • We revised all the adjectives and we had a short slot in which we described animals. I was showing some images and asking students ‘Is it big or small?’. All this time these two words were written on the board.
  • Afterwards, I stood right in front of the board and added, in a different colour, -er, to our words, changing them into ‘bigger’ and ‘smaller’ and then I uncovered it, faked surprise and asked ‘What happened here? What’s this?’ and I elicited the letters, asking the kids to read the new words. Afterwards, I demonstrated with these flashcards aiming at showing the difference between ‘big’ and ‘bigger’ and, naturally, ‘small’ and ‘smaller’ using a set of flashcards. It could go along the following lines: ‘Is the tiger big or small?’ ‘It’s big’. ‘Yes, it is. But, look, the elephant is BIGGER’. The same was done for small, with a mouse and a butterfly. I also used gestures to highlight the meaning. With these two adjectives, I tend to move my hand up, gradually for ‘bigger’ and move it closer to the floor or the table, gradually, for ‘smaller’. We repeated the same conversation about some other animals, trying to elicit the structure from the kids.
  • The next step was putting the key sentence on the board by adding flashcards to our words on the floor, creating a sentence made of visuals and words. The great advantage of this activity is the fact that you can adapt and create the sentences by replacing the flashcards and reading the sentences together. That, actually, will be the first controlled practice activity.

Practice

  • Bigger or smaller?, a guessing game: the teacher holds a pile of flashcards with animals, all the cards face de teacher takes out one card and shows it to the kids. Then the teacher asks ‘Bigger or smaller?’ and the kids make their decision, saying out loud ‘Bigger!’, ‘Smaller!’. Afterwards, the teacher takes out a card at random and the class check. Afterwards, the game continues with another card. The main aim of the game is to drill the key words in a simple way and to reinforce the idea. It can also be done with number flashcards or with school objects flashcards.
  • Who is bigger?, a simple movement activity in which the students compare themselves, in pairs, and the class decide who out of the two is bigger. The aim is to produce simple sentences, to personalise the target langauge and to involve the whole group, because, of course, only the students in the classroom are able to tell who, in fact, is different. It might be a good idea to think about the careful pairing of the students, choosing those who get on with each other or are friends to minimise the negative impact of ‘being smaller’. I also like to pair myself up with the kids and to highlight that they are going to grow bigger and bigger and bigger (one more chance to use the target language!). I have also ducked or sat on the floor, as a joke, so that the child could be bigger than me, at least for a moment.
  • Magic Bag, an object description game that we have already used in our classes. This time, however, the kids put their hands into the bag to describe the object they are holding but this time they do it twice. In the end, they have to objects they have to compare using ‘bigger’ and ‘smaller’ or any other adjectives at the later stages of this unit.
  • Who is bigger? Who is smaller?, a simple flashcard games whose main aim was to get the students to produce full sentences with bigger and smaller in a more active way. The game starts with the teacher taking out a card with an animal and letting each student take one, too and to keep it secret for now. The teacher reveals the card and says ‘I am a dog. I am small. Who is bigger? Who is smaller?’. The kids take turns, to reveal their animals and to produce the sentence. At the same time, they get up and take their place on the left of the teacher (if they are smaller) or on the right (if they are a bigger animal). In the end of the round, all the kids stand in line, at the board, lined up, from the smallest to the biggest animal. Since they take turns they can produce all the relevant sentences, i.e. ‘I am bigger than a dog. I am smaller than a tiger’ and so on. We play this game a few rounds. It might be necessary to give out one card per pair of students if the group is big.
  • Draw it!, a reading and drawing activity that I created to give the students a chance to reinforce the idea of the concept behind comparatives and to check understanding. The only thing that is necessary for this game is a piece of paper (or a notebook) and markers and crayons and a handout which you can find here. The paper is printed (only one copy) and cut up, all the cards end up in a bag or in a box. The kids take turns to take one of the cards, they read the sentence, a few times and everyone is drawing a relevant picture. The teacher monitors. The game can be later develop into a more SS-centred activity, as soon as the kids ready. In this adaptation, the key structure is written on the board: _____is bigger than_____ and _______is smaller than ______ and the kids themselves take turn to dicatate a sentence to draw.
  • What is bigger?, a reading and writing activity, also on a higher level in which I wanted to encourage a more creative and a more productive approach to the target language. You can find the handout here. This was the first more advanced activity which we did together, with a whole set of different adjectives at the same time. And the kids were ready! Everyone got their copy of the handout and they were supposed to trace the comparatives and then to create their own sentences with their own choices.
  • Wordwall activities were included in these lessons, too, to give us a chance to practice the target language. Here are some of those that I used: missing words (only bigger and smaller, I had to help read the sentences), let’s compare (either using only the basic bigger and smaller but also to give the kids a chance to use more complex structures, if they are ready, this btw is an activity that I found in the community resources on wordwall and adapted), and a simple set of cards to play ‘Bigger or smaller’ but on the screen.

All of that, on top of whatever you have in your coursebooks. The next steps will be: adding more of the short adjectives and then, eventually, the long adjectives, too. But, as they say, that is a story for another day…

Happy teaching!

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Storytelling for primary. Ideas for the follow-up activities.

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The way that only the freezing winter sunsets can be

Storytelling and storybooks in the primary classroom

Welcome to one more of my obsessions: the story in the classroom, be it a story from the coursebook, a video, a storybook or even a thing that I invent myself, just to sell my ‘product‘. A story is not only the type of an activity that we introduce because of its many benefits or because we want to prepare our students for the YL Cambridge exams but also because the story can be a way and the means of developing the young children’s language skills, reading and writing, speaking and listening but also their grammar and vocabulary.

I have been using stories for ages and I am not exaggerating when I say that this is one of my favourite teaching tools and different storybooks characters, Marvin, Barry, Pete the Cat or Splat the Cat or Peppa, are like my best mates.

‘What’s new?‘, one could ask.

In this academic year (four months so far), I have been involved in teaching the British National Curriculum, KS 3 to my two wonderful groups who are an amazing but mixed bunch, especially when it comes to their actual English skills. One of my main aims is developing my students reading and writing skills, preferably fast (yes, yes, I know, nothing happens fast) while working with a very mixed ability group, ranging from complete beginners to A1+ children. Stories have been one of the many ways of doing and I decided to share a few examples of what we have done, hoping that they can serve as a source of inspiration, for all kinds of classes, EFL or ESL.

The general idea

The way these five stories were used in the primary classroom follow the same pattern

  • pre-book: looking at the cover of the book, reading the title, introducing the main character, asking some questions about it, trying to predict the story, introducing and practising the key vocabulary.
  • while-book: reading / watching the story, sometimes with pauses to check understanding, sometimes to involve the kids through gestures, sometimes through the phrases, if they are used repeatedly.
  • post-book: a variety of activities related to the content of the story or to the grammar or vocabulary of the week in which the story was introduced.

And this is when the post starts to make more sense, I hope, because I am going to share here five different stories and five story-related, follow-up activities that I used in the last few months.

Hen’s pens and Let’s practise vocabulary!

Hen’s pens is a story, one in the series published by Usborne, a lovely resource with the Ted in a red bed, Fat Cat on a mat and Big Pig on a dig. I usually use them a bit later, with slightly more advanced students, in shared reading sessions (and there probably should be a post about that) but this time, I wanted to introduce a longer story, a video story and a rhyming story, specifically to have kids practise noticing rhymes.

In the follow-up of the story, we completed a very simple reading task, in which we put the words into pairs by colour-coding them and then using the chart to practise reading. You will have also notice a colouring page in the handout. This was an additional task for the kids, only for those who like colouring.

Pete the Cat and Let’s speak!

Pete the Cat is very famous in the EFL circles and the story about rocking in the school shoes is an absolute hit. This is my personal way of teaching Present Continuous ever since I have seen the video for the first time and this year, not quite for the first time, I used it also to introduce the school vocabulary, verbs and places.

In our lesson, apart from watching, singing, miming and even re-enacting Pete’s day at school, we also followed up with a speaking activity in which the kids had to create their own sentences in the Present Continuous. They had the main verb forms, mostly taken from the story, accompanied by visuals to support speaking (in most cases, the kids were unable to read yet) and their task was to finish the sentence by drawing something. ‘I am eating…a pizza, an apple, a cookie, a banana’, according to their preferences. Later on we compared our sentences, creating our own day at school. The handout served as preparation for speaking.

Again, those children who were interested, were given a second handout to colour.

Marvin Gets Mad and Let’s practise grammar!

Marvin is, no doubt, one of my favourite characters and he’s been present in my classroom for about fifteen years now (wow!). ‘Marvin Gets Mad’ by Joseph Theobald is a great story for feelings and for learning about controlling emotions but this time round I decided to use it to reinforce the grammar behind the Present Continuous.

In the follow-up task, which was quite a stretch from the plot of the original story but it was exactly what we needed to practise the Present Continuous and to reinforce the idea of the suffix -ing. The kids had to add the suffix to all the sentences and then read them and match them to the pictures of a particular sheep.

Zog and Let’s take some notes!

Zog by Julia Donaldson was a good lesson, too. We focused on revising the body parts but we also did a lot as regards the language practice, as regards the structures we already learnt (‘I can…fly, catch a princess, breathe fire) and a few structures that were used repeatedly in the story (‘What’s the matter?’ ‘I can help you’ ‘Thank you’). While we were going through the story, the children helped me produce all the key language.

After we were done with the story itself, we ‘took notes’ about the story. All the kids got their copy of the handout and we went on through it: tracing the lines, reading the lines and completing them with our ideas. As usual, some of the lines are actually very restricted (‘Zog is a dragon’), some are more open-ended (‘He can…fly, breathe fire, catch a princess, help’), the others – even more. (‘He is…green, big, small, happy, sad, scared’). The final two lines are for tracing and for circling, depending on whether you liked the story or not. This time I included a small picture of Zog for everyone and some kids took time to colour it after they were done with writing.

Ling and her proud memory and Let’s draw!

Ling is a girl from one of the stories in our coursebook, Global English 3, in a series on memories (a sad memory, a happy memory and a proud memory) and I actually loved teaching all three. The story was quite challenging for my kids in terms of the language and I just wanted a general understanding of the main facts. After we talked about the picture and listened to the story, I did a short Yes / No activity regarding the content. This was followed by a note-taking activity, similar to the one we did with Zog, but it was substantially shorter and more limited in terms of creativity. However, this was only because the real star of the lesson was the drawing activity.

The word ‘proud’ was a new concept to us and I really wanted to make it personal, mostly because it has a huge potential and it is a good word to have at your disposal in the classroom. With the help of my T.A. we explained what it means, we gave examples and suggested some ideas for the kids, based on our shared experiences such as preparing for the Christmas show, doing difficult exercises in class and so on. I showed my students my example (below) and I let them draw.

Admittedly, the lesson (or this project) did not involve a huge lot of language production but it was a beautiful moment, nonetheless. And a very necessary one, too! Some children knew straight away what they were proud of, some others needed to take time to come up with an idea. And they did! Even those who started their search with a desperate ‘I don’t know!’.

My example is below and showing it to my class was another special moment and, guess what, they got the idea straight away! Because when we are doing something very, very difficult in Maths and my students keep raising their hands and everyone wants to give the answer, I am very proud (based on real events:-).

Coda

These are just a few ideas of what can be done in class when a story is involved. One of many ideas!

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #75 Paul and his gran. One more way of approaching the story in the YL classroom.

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Ingredients

  • One of the YLE Cambridge visuals, Movers speaking (4 pictures), Flyers writing (3 pictures) or Flyers speaking (5 pictures). In our case, this time it was Paul and his Granmother from Flyers from the sample tests booklet (volume 2 p. 96), tampered with lightly (see below)
  • A handout created to accompany the visuals, you can download it from here

Procedures

  • Prepare the visuals by covering up the numbers on the pictures and making a copy for each student, cutting these up. Make a copy of the writing handout for each student.
  • Introduce the story: without revealing too much, for examply by telling the kids that they are going to meet a boy and read a story about his day.
  • Give out the visuals, cut up, ask the kids to find out the start of the story (aka picture number 1), talk about this picture with the class. The questions to use might include: Who is it? How old is he / she? What is she / he doing?
  • Tell the kids that this is Paul and his gran (we had different interpretations here but we need grandma for the handout) and their day. Ask the kids to reorder the pictures, check and glue them in the correct order in the notebooks. They number the pictures.
  • Create the story: kids look at all the pictures, in order to be able to construct the whole story and the plot. This can be easily turned into a speaking activity: the teacher makes sentences such as: I can see a boy. Kids answer with: Picture 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, etc. Later on, the students take over by making their own sentences. This can be done as a whole class or in pairs. This is also the time to introduce or to check that all the kids have all the key vocabulary. The kids are not telling the story yet, they are only getting ready, thinking about the characters, their actions and feelings.
  • Write the story: the teacher gives out the handwriting handout, the kids glue it in their notebooks, too. The class go together, picture by picture, they read the sentences and think of their own ways of finishing the sentences. They write the words or they ask the teacher to write the words on the board for them to copy. The teacher monitors and makes sure that everyone is going on at the same pace.
  • Read the story: the groups that I did it with were not very big, only 5 or 6 students, so we could all read our stories out loud and applaud. With the bigger groups, it might be a good idea to put the kids into pairs or smaller groups to read to each other and to applaud. Nonetheless, I still wanted to include this element, purely for the reading practice.

Why we like it

  • I am quite happy with that activity since all the materials worked well in the classroom.
  • The kids enjoyed it. Many of the ideas were the same, especially the feelings but there was also some potential for variety in kids’ answers. I accepted everything, for example ‘Parents are angry’ (picture 5) or ‘Paul is scared’ (picture 4). As we always say: ‘All ideas are good ideas’. In that sense it worked very well as ‘the first story we wrote’. I was very proud of them and they were proud of themselves, too.
  • My students are only 6 and 7 and all of them are in year 1 of primary. Their literacy levels vary and this kind of an activity gave them an opportunity to practise a variety of skills, especially their literacy skills, with more focus on reading and writing. There was enough room for creativity and enough support at the same time. Initially, I was considering including the tracing element but then I decided that it would be too much for one lesson, with five pictures and five short texts to write.
  • There is a lot of potential for adaptation: the number of pictures can be adapted, if you choose to use the Movers speaking resources or the Flyers writing resources. The number of sentences for each picture can also be adapted, extended or cut short. If there is time and if the kids are ready, they can add their own, sixth part and even to draw their own picture.
  • I made sure that everyone had the same order of the pictures for the entire story as my kids are quite young and this was the first time we worked with this kind of a materials. Because of that and because of their literacy levels, they are not yet able to work independently on such a task and I decided to keep it more T-centred and T-led this time. However, for more advanced groups (as regards literacy and independent work), there is a lot more potential. They could tell the story in their own way. If needs be, the writing handout, can also be cut up and rearranged, to match the pictures and their order.
  • One thing that I did not do was to allow creativity as regards the title of the story. We did not focus much on it, I only introduce the brief: Paul and his grandma, but there is so much potential here, especially that the kids are also supposed to learn about a structure of the story and that it includes a title. No harm done, we will be repeating this activity and next time we will write our own titles, too!

Before you go, make sure you have a look at all the other storytelling ideas, here and here.

Happy teaching!

Alisa and Petya, my new invisible students.

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Image from www.bullionstar.com

It might be the best way of closing the blogging year, with all these invisible kids. Better than ‘the teacher in distress’, why-has-this-year-been-so-difficult and if-I-stay-in-teaching-it-will-be-because-of-the-kids-and-if-I-leave-it-will-be-because-of-the-adults (after Bored Teachers) that I have been in recently. Let’s try to stay positive, let’s try to give the floor to Alisa, Petya and Pasha instead.

The concept of an invisible student is not a new one…

I have had one in my classroom for a few years now. Long enough to have collected enough material to write a post about, four years ago. Pasha, because that is the name of the first and the original invisible student, has been long enough to have collected his own experiences and now he could write his own resume and tell stories of his adventures in the various classrooms. You can read the original post here. Btw, this is one of top ten most popular posts ever on the blog.

This year has been a fun one also because I started teaching in a new environment and in a new context and a real life Pavel has appeared in one of my groups. It is unavoidable that, after all these years, whenever I say ‘Pasha’, I feel like addressing my invisible student. And I giggle. That also meant that I had to give up on using that concept in that same form in my everyday teaching. It was not an issue because we had other things to worry about. I did not need an invisible student. Then, one day I did and the Invisible Student came back. Two of them, actually.

Enter Petya and Alisa

This year, apart from everything else, I also teach English and Maths according to the British National Curriculum in a bilingual school. I love it but there are also certain challenges that I had not had to deal with before September. One of them is definitely extending the range of ways of encouraging and motivating children to work and to be involved in what we are doing. I have noticed that, apart from the fact of the specific requirements related to the specifics of the subjects (that are different to the regular ESL or EFL), there is also the question of the specific challenges related to teaching Maths in English or to having classes (almost) everyday and having to come up with different approaches four times a week. Which is a higher demand for creativity than in your typical twice-a-week EFL classes. Among others.

Over the last few weeks, I have been teaching some more demanding topics, such as punctuation (English) and subtraction with regrouping and I have been bending over backwards in order to trick my kids into getting excited about these (if we are to perfectly honest here).

During one of the 1-1, me and my brain, brainstorming sessions, I decided to go for ‘play the teacher and find a mistake’. English was first and it was relatively easy to prepare a handout for my kids to trace, to find mistakes and to re-write in the correct from, with all the punctuation marks and capital letters. I set it up, gave out everyone a red marker and asked them to look for things that were ‘not so good’. Everyone got a red marker and we worked beautifully on it.

However, I have two groups at school and when I got to my second lesson with that material, I already knew that it has a certain potential and, feeling inspired, I decided to upgrade it and the lesson started with ‘Listen, there is this boy called Petya. He has a problem…’ Of course, before making copies for everyone, I signed the paper with ‘Petya’. This tiny little adjustment made a huge difference. I was looking at my kids, working dilligently and reacting to the content and I was making mental notes.

Naturally, when, a few weeks later, I decided to use this same approach in my Maths lesson, I knew that there would be a student and how I am going to set it up. Here are a few notes about it, in case anyone wants to use it.

Alisa, the girl who struggles with Maths

  • The first step: to prepare the set of tasks. In our case it was a double-sided handout with sums, addition and subtraction, up to 1000, two- and three-digit numbers, with and without regrouping, as the final task of the unit and the final task of the year. All of these had solutions, as if Alisa had done them, some were correct, some were incorrect, with small and huge mistakes. On the top of the page, there was the student’s name (Alisa) and the room for the teacher’s name, to sign by those who were to check the test.
  • Step two: we could hide it under different, serious-sounding names (‘setting the context‘, ‘involving the students’, ‘generating interest’) and they all apply but what I really did was to tell the kids a story. In one of the groups we even played the monster game (aka ‘hangman’) to guess the title of the story (Alisa’s problem). I told the class a simple story about a girl from year 1 (year 3 in KS3) who is a nice girl and who is trying hard but who still has some problem with Maths. And, most importantly, how we want to help her with checking her test and looking for all the mistakes and, maybe, the things she did well.
  • Step 3: we outline the procedures. On the one hand, these were the three simple steps (‘We check it’, ‘We correct it’, ‘We give a grade’) because I wanted to ensure that they really do go over all the sums and correct them and do the Maths, instead of just ticking and crossing things. Together we also put together a set of symbols to mark with, for example: a tick (V) = it’s OK, a minus (-) = it’s not OK, three exclamation marks (!!!) = very bad and a star = excellent.
  • Step 4: the real work, the hard work: we give out red markers and we get on checking Alisa’s test, individually or in pairs, depending on the personal preferences. The teacher is circulating, monitoring and helping.
  • Step 5: a spontaneous add-on, just because we had a few minutes left: a role-play, in which Alisa’s mum (me) calls the teacher (all kids, in turns) to find out how her daughter is doing. We had smaller groups because some kids had already gone on holiday and we could actually do it with all the kids.

My Oscar-worthy lesson or why I loved having Alisa, the invisible student in my class

A few days have passed since I taught this lesson twice and I have had a chance to reflect and to talk about it with a few colleagues and I think I can safely say that if there was ever a lesson taught category at the Oscars, I would submit our adventures with Alisa and I would definitely hope to win or at least to make it to the list of five nominees. Here is why.

  • The kids were fully involved, every single one of them, my Maths-loving kids and my oh-no-Maths kids, too, the strong learners, those who are just learning and even those who are struggling. Everyone. I was moving among the tables, supervising and helping and eavesdropping on what they were saying to themselves or to their classmates and I was giggling and welling up and beaming, rejoicing their enthusiasm and patting myself on the shoulder for the idea.
  • The reason for that was the story that I told and the context that was this way created. It was not just a handout, just a piece of paper with a set of tasks on that miss Anka brought but a real adventure that everyone was taking part in, with a real girl that we were helping, with red markers and the power that comes with it, with the responsibility the kids were taking for marking Alisa’s efforts and for assessing how well she did.
  • The activity involved the whole child, all the students as humans and as learners, as people who were given a serious task and serious responsibilities and who were also taken into the set-up, for example through accepting their ideas as regards the set of symbols for marking or the grades that they had to make a decision about and, in the follow-up activity, the fact that they were given a chance to be the teacher, during the whole activity and during the follow-up role-play.
  • The exercise was a very effective tool to get my students to do Maths. They zipped through the addition sums (which was not surprising) but they also worked very well with the more challenging problems i.e. subtraction, especially subtraction with regrouping. High five to me for mixing the tasks, addition and subtraction, with and without regrouping. There were different levels of difficulty and the more challenging tasks were beautifully smuggled with the easy-peasy ones.
  • It worked very well as an assessment tool for my kids’ Maths skills. After all, in order to be able to check something, you need to have enough knowledge and skills, and not on the basic, superficial level. Especially that the task included a mix of correct and incorrect tasks that they had to read, check and correct. And they all did! I was so proud of them (and of myself) especially that when they were commenting, they did say things (in their L1), such as ‘Oh, no, Alisa, how could you not notice that!’ or ‘But, no, Alisa, it is easy!’ or ‘No, why did you do this?’. I am not sure if they were aware of how their skills have developed and I think I will have to include this element of noticing own progress as part of the lesson in these kind of lessons. However, even without it, this element, my little kids have learnt. They have learnt. I was touched.
  • In the days after the lessons, I could not decide (and still can’t) what was more touching or inspiring, the skills that were proved to have developed or the fact that during the entire lesson, my kids showed a huge potential for empathy and understanding for Alisa’s problems with Maths. They were not only dealing with the task to help her but I loved eavesdropping on how they were reacting to it. There were plenty of comments along the lines of ‘Oh, but look, she tried to do it, here and here’ or ‘Oh, she almost got it right!’, trying to find something positive in her test. On the other hand, they were just so genuinely happy when they found a sum that was solved correctly. Here and there, now and again I heard cheering and ‘Miss Anka! She did it! from different corners of the room. They were like real teachers celebrating their students’ achievements.
  • And one more thing that made me just laugh out loud was how the kids were grading the overall Alisa’s effort, beautifully out of sync with her actual progress and the number of tasks complete. Some of them were overly optimistic and appreciative, the others overly critical. I just let it be. For now.
  • And the role-plays, that made me laugh, too. We have not done any phone conversations language so it was just jumping in at the deep end and using the language that we know. But I loved it, as I could see how my students tried to communicate in a new situation, wtih limited resources (communication strategies, hello!) although, all in all, our poor Alice is in trouble. In 99% of cases, her parents will have to come to school to talk to the teacher. Which just shows that that is, in my students’ world, the worst that can possibly happen.

I don’t know why but I have a feeling that both, Alisa and Petya will be back in our Maths lessons and in our English lessons…

Happy teaching! Happy New Year!

More than drilling, more than flashcards. Teaching vocabulary to young learners.

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It’s been six months now (and four courses) since we introduced the individual consultations to our YL and VYL course and a lot of good has come out of it already for the course, for the trainees and my blog. This post today will be dedicated to one of the course participants, Valentina, who came to the meeting with one question only, namely: ‘I am bored with teaching vocabulary through flashcards and drilling’. This was when I realised that we never really talked about the variety in that area. Hence this post.

Back to the basics…

…or our gurus. For anyone who is not familiar, I would recommend getting hold of Carol Read’s chapter on teaching vocabulary and grammar and all the basic concepts as well as her post in the series of the ABC of Teaching Children in which she highligts the need for the crystal clear meaning, the context as well as opportunites for memorising and for practice.

Carol also offers a lot of ideas for the classroom (as promised) and if you are looking for more, please have a look at the bilbliography where I have left some more interesting links, for inspiration and from two different areas, the teachers of EFL/ESL and just children learning new words. Many of them are quite recent publications so have a look! There is lots and lots to read.

For that reason, also, this post here will focus not on practice activities but on ways of introducing vocabulary to primary and pre-school students, more than just flashcards.

Electronic flashcards

‘Electronic flashcards’ is an umbrella term for a great variety of resources that can be used in the YL classroom. I will try to include here at least the few basic ones

  • Wordwall (wordwall.net), with all its growing number of templates and options. You need to join the community but the membership is free and it gives you access to everything that any member ever created and made public. You can, for example, get access to the whole library that I have created (Azapart). The ability to create resources is only available to the members with subscription but it is cheap and definitely worth it. My favourite resources here to introduce vocabulary include stencil flashcards, cropped images, simple word cards and flashcards or flashcards with the audio.
  • Simple video flashcards of which there are plenty available on youtube, such as offered by Maple Leaf Learning. There are also such products as EFL Kids Videos that present not only vocabulary but also vocabulary + structures.
  • Videos that not only present the new vocabulary but that also offer an option of a game, for example places in the city from Smile and Learn where you get a presentation and a guessing game, ‘What is it?’ games from Fun Kids English or drawing – guessing games from Games4ESL.

Sounds

This might be a more obvious resource when it comes to some topics, such as animals, pets, farm or jungle but it is definitely a lot more potential here. Sounds can be also used to introduce the vocabulary of transportation, places in the city, instruments, Present Continuous or everyday activities and objects, a day in sounds or even weather.

It needs to be mentioned that these materials were not created as educational materials with a specific aim to match the content of one coursebook or another and they are not used to replace the official published materials. They only help to introduce the topic and the idea in an interesting way, with at least some of the items that we are required to cover according to the curriculum.

Gestures

I am a huge fun of using gestures in the classroom. The gesture is king after all! For a good few years now, whenever we introduce new vocabulary we add gestures to it, to help clarify the meaning but also to give the children one more channel that might help them remember and recall the meaning of these new words. This kind of miming can be upgraded to include a lot more speaking (see: a post here) and the children can be involved and invited to come up with their own gestures for certain phrases and express themselves in that way, too! It is not only for the youngest of the youngest. Once we introduced, even my 8 – 10 A2 year-olds loved working with this form of expression.

Realia

Like in the case of sounds, realia would be something that naturally springs to mind when we talk about teaching school objects, food or classroom vocabulary and, perhaps, if you have any access to any friendly children who are willing to share their collection, perhaps also to teach toys, transport or even animals. The other topics seem to be impossible. Or do they?

I think my realia creativity had a chance to skyrocket during the pandemic while we were all stuck at home and with a very limited access to all those beautiful things that we would normally use. A blessing in disguise?

My solution is relatively un-revolutionary and is based on using symbols, items that we agree stand for our chosen concepts. Here are some examples:

  • rooms in the house: a spoon = the kitchen, a pair of socks = the bedroom, a remote = the living room, a key = the hall, a toothbrush = the bathroom
  • weather: gloves = it is snowing, sunglasses = it is sunny, a cap = it is warm, a kite = it is windy, an umbrella = it is raining, a scarf = it is cold
  • school subjects: a tshirt = PE, a mouse = IT, paints = Art, counting sticks = Maths, dictionary = English, a book = Russian, a magnet (from abroad) = Geography, a paper crown or a photo of a king = History etc
  • party aka characters: a star = a sheriff, a crown = a prince / a princess, a red nose = a clown, a witch’s hat = a witch, a flower = a gardener, a plastic stetoscope = a doctor etc
  • seasons: just lots of things, clothes and accessories which we use in winter, spring, autumn and summer
  • family: accessories that different memebers of the family might have, a car = a brother, a doll – a sister, a newspaper = daddy, wool = grandma etc.
  • body: accessories and objects which we use with different body parts: glasses: a nose and ears and eyes, socks = feet and toes, a spoon = a hand and fingers. The confusion might be even beneficial here because we will be repeating the words a number of times.
  • free time and verbs: different objects and accessories that we use, for example: a pen = to write, a ball = to play, a spoon = to eat etc.

Song

In a majority (almost certain here) of our coursebooks songs are introduced as a means of practising and revising vocabulary and grammar but this does not have to always be the case, not when we are in charge.

Since I discovered the existance of the amazing Pete the Cat who is rocking in his school shoes, I have not taught the places in the school (and Present Continuous) in a different way. The song is beautiful, fun and very catchy and the video illustrates the idea of both the vocabulary and the tense in such an obvious way that I am not even looking for any alternatives. We start with the song, we enjoy the music, the video and Pete and only later, we move on to flashcards, drilling and all the other practice activities.

Here are some more examples of songs that can be used in the same way

E pronto? E pronto!

Story

Whatever we do with songs, it can be done with a story. A video, a storybook or storycards can be the starting point in a vocabulary lesson. Here are my favourite storybooks to teach vocabulary:

  • ‘Elmer’ by David McKee to teach jungle animals
  • ‘Marvin Gets Angry’ by Joseph Theobald to teach emotions
  • ‘Cat’s Colours’ by Airlie Anderson to each colours
  • ‘A Very Hungry Caterpillar’ by Eric Carle to teach food
  • ‘Zob’ by Julia Donaldson to teach helth problems

To name just a few. Introducing them will give you a ready made context and it will be a pleasure for the kids to get back to the story over a series of lessons and to be more and more involved in reading and retelling the story. That is a brand new level of the sense of achievement and of the meaningful lessons.

Posters

Admittedly, in the past, a few years ago or in the previous editions of the coursebooks, posters were a more frequent quest. They are not as common today although different schools produce their own posters and so do publishing houses, although not necessarily in connection with a particular title. For that reason, I will extend the definition of poster to ‘any large size visual with a variety of elements’ in order to be able to include any silly pictures, clip art creations to be found on google (really!) or the picture wordlists as these absolute beauties available on the CUP website for Starters, Movers and Flyers exam preparation (but not exclusive to these).

I am a huge fan of using visuals in the classroom and I am proud to say that I have come up with a plethora of ideas for language practice. You can find them in two posts: All you need is…a picture. They can be displayed on screens or interactive whiteboards or even printed and laminated.

As regards vocabulary introduction, however, here are some ideas:

  • labelling the items in the picture together with the kids
  • covering some parts of the pictures with the post-it notes, to elicit from kids (It is a city. What can we see here?) and then to uncover the picture step by step while introducing the equivalents of the words the kids provide, in English
  • covering some parts of the picture with the post-it notes, to uncover them step by step while clarifying the meaning of the words and including elements of drilling
  • covering some parts of the picture with the post-it notes, to play ‘What’s missing?’ (although this slowly moves towards controlled practice / drilling)
  • pointing at two objects in the picture and calling out a name for the kids to recognise. Here, the teacher can use hands (Left! Right!) or, if it is too confusing, two markers of different colours (Blue! Red!), a fun exercise for the auditory practice and word recognition.

Coda

All of the activities mentioned above can be used during the practice stage and they are not to replace flashcards and drilling but to supplement or replace them and to introduce a bit of variety and a breath of fresh air, for the students and for the kids.

The choice will depend on the age and level of the students and, naturally, on the specific set of vocabulary.

Happy teaching!

Bibliography

Carol Read (2007), 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom, Macmillan

Carol Read (2011), ABC of Teaching Children, V is for Vocabulary here.

How to teach vocabulary: 5 fun and easy ideas (2020) from Begin Learning.

17 ways for kids to learn new vocabulary (2020) from Imagination Soup.

Kids and vocabulary (2011?) from British Council, Teaching English.

How to teach vocabulary. Twinkl’s super seven-step guide (2023) from Twinkl.

6 Science-based tips for teaching your kids vocabulary…the fun way (2022) from Maya Smart.

5 fun ideas to make vocabulary jump out of the page for young learners (2021) from CUP.

30 meaningful vocabulary activities for every grade (2023) from We Are Teachers.

Crumbs #71 Refraction aka Catching up on Physics in the YL classes

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Ingredients

  • A glass of water, if you have a big group, the bigger the glass the better.
  • A set of visuals (I prepared my own based on what I found googling refraction), you can see them in the photographs. I used an A4 piece of paper, folded in half as I wanted it be able to stand on its own on the table.
Through the glass and On their own

Procedures

  • Before the Science / Lab lesson, we started the day with the poem dedicated to colour blue, modelled on the poems from the Little Learning Corner, we looked for the blue items around us and we had a whole section of the lesson devoted to adjectives, describing and guessing the objects in our Magic Bag. All of which were blue, of course. In the Art lesson, the kids also made a beautiful craft with the bottle caps.
  • In the beginning of the Science lesson we talked about water and the clever ocean animals. We watched some cool videos about the clever octopus, the flying birds and the orca.
  • Afterwards I presented the three experiments. The first one was the experiement with the cold and hot water (aka Melting the Skittles aka Checking How Skittles Are Made of Sugar and Food Colouring). More of it in an older post here. The there was the Surprise Experiement (check it out here) and the Illusion Experiment aka refraction.
  • We went into our Lab (the dining room) where I prepared all the ingredients and tools.
  • I showed the kids the glass of water and the first picture with the arrows. We talked about the direction of the arrows and we demonstrated and practised ‘left’ and ‘right’. Afterwards I showed the picture through the glass of water and, of course, the arrows changed the direction, almost magically. We learned the term ‘refraction’.
  • Afterwards we proceeded with the other two pictures.

Why we like it

  • Just like the previous crumbs post, devoted to red, fire and volcanoes, this one is about the experiments we did as part of our Autumn Camp. The second day was devoted to the colour blue and water. This was one of the experiements we did.
  • It is a super simple experiment, in its simplest forms it involves only a glass of water and a piece of paper with two arrows.
  • Again, it was fun. For me, because I could realise that I never ever heard about it in my Physics classes in high school and it felt good to be catching up on my primary or secondary education. For the kids, because it looked like magic)
  • It helped to make this whole experiment kinesthetic by showing the direction of the arrows with our arms, by naming the colours of the clouds or by holding the side of the card where the blue cloud was with my hand and checking how the cloud moved to the other side or by showing the direction of the stripes, on the paper and as seen through the water.
  • It was also a lot of fun to experiment with the distance between the glass and the paper to find the best angle.
  • As with the other experiment (Crumbs #70), this one also can be used with a variety of topics and lessons: water-themed classes, blue-themed classes, black and white and optical illusions lessons or, simply, Physics that, can, actually, be fun! Basically, you can make it as scientific or as magical as you want!
  • We did not have time for that but this lesson also has some potential for creating our own drawings that can be used in the experiments to give the kids an opportunity to be creative and to experiment with different designs. It is also possible to dip the pictures in water and see how they change. See the links here and here, here (experiment at 2’04) and here (really cool ideas!) Next time!

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #70 The many uses of a volcano!

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Ingredients

  • A bottle, plastic or glass, we have used the small ones.
  • Vinegar (a few spoons, I did not measure), baking soda (again, did not measure) and a few drops of the washing up liquid for the foam
  • Different websites usually advise using food colouring for the beautiful lava but I didn’t have any so I just used a few drops of the regular guache paint
  • A big plastic box or a tub (if you are doing it inside)
  • A few pieces of A4, an old plastic bag and a piece of scotch for the outside of the volcano
  • Someone to help you film or photograph because it happens very fast
  • Anything accompanying elements: I have used a short cool video about volcanoes for kids, my personal photos from Kamchatka and an episode of Peppa in which Peppa (hooray) is making a volcano at school (hooray hooray)

Procedures

  • For us, this time, this was a part of the Autumn Camp with every day dedicated to one colour. Monday was ‘red’ and before the got to the Science / CLIL part of the day, the kids had a chance: to talk about all the things red, they wrote their own poems modelled on the poems I found here which were perfect for our pre-school and year 1 kids (and here are the more complex ones, for the older kids). They also had a proper Art class in which they made very simple but amazing collages of a volcano.
  • By the time we got to the Science slot, the topic was already familiar to them. We looked at the video, we watched my photos from the trip to Kamchatka, including the volcanoes and the black sand on the beach and we watched Peppa. During the entire lesson, I wanted to draw their attention to some of the elements / words related to volcanoes especially: magma, lava, gases, temperature.
  • I also introduced all the ingredients and I explained that we will try to create the gas and the lava.
  • Afterwards every child prepared an A4 piece of paper by colouring it with black and brown crayons and then by crumpling it. Afterwards we relocated to our Lab (aka the dinning room).
  • I divided the group into three teams and each team prepared their own volcano: a bottle, wrapped in a plastic bag (for volume), scotched around, then the A4 pieces of paper, wrapped around and scotched over. Even if in the clumsiest of ways. While the kids were preparing the mountains I prepared three jars of water with the colouring (aka paint).
  • I showed the kids all the ingredients and I demonstrated the experiement the first time, trying to encourage the kids to help me name the ingredients. Afterwards, we repeated it with the other volcanoes.

Why we like it

  • Well, simply, it was a lot of fun, especially in connection with all the other things that the kids did on the day.
  • It is a very simple project, with minimal resources (although, yes, I am aware of the fact that vinegar or soda is not something that is normally available at school). All class is involved, everyone is putting their shoulder to the wheel and it is feasible even with the youngest kids as everyone can colour a piece of paper and crumple it. I had the help of my TA with building of the volcano so that’s why we could do it with three volcanoes simultaneously but they can be dealt with one at a time or all the kids can build only one big volcano, together.
  • We have three different volcanoes with three different colours but I have also found the version of three bottles scotched together with a tri-colour lava…
  • If you have an opportunity to do the experiement outside, you can build a mountain around the bottle using sand or snow but our camp falls in the middle of a very rainy autumn week so we had to do it inside. I have to admit, though, I liked it even more as we turned it into a team project and it worked really well.
  • This same experiement can be used with the older students and they can benefit even more from the vocabulary input or learning about the whole process in a Science lesson. Essentially, by mixing vinegar and baking soda, we are producing some CO2 which is one of the gases produced during the volcano eruption, too. There is also some potential of including it in a regular EFL course. Superminds 5 by CUP has a whole unit devoted to volcanoes and the history of Pompeii.

Happy teaching!