Primary

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!

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 #67 A puzzle! Or about spicing up a task for primary

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Ingredients

  • A task that you need the kids to complete, the one that can be divided into parts, for example a grammar revision page that consists of exercises, a reading comprehension task or, as was in our case, a set of addition of two digit numbers with carry over which my kids love but which is still a bit of a challenge. I wanted something to motivate them and to reward them for their hard work.
  • A colouring picture, a copy for each child, cut up into pieces, one piece part for each part of the task.
  • A pencil, a glue stick, a paper where the puzzles will be glued in the end and perhaps markers for colouring.
  • A set of envelopes, one per each piece of the puzzle, labelled in the same way as the parts of the task and magnets to put them up on the board.

Procedures

  • Depending on the task, you need to prepare the kids for it. In our case, we revised the numbers and number bonds with the wordwall cards and we also watched a short video on adding two-digit numbers.
  • I showed the kids the handout and the letters and the corresponding envelopes on the board, each of which contained one piece of the puzzle picture. I demonstrated how after they have completed one part of the task, they are allowed to come up to the board and to take the corresponding envelope and one piece of the puzzle from it. Because of the nature of the task, we had obvious answers and I wrote them inside, too, for the kids to have something to check their answers.
  • We ran a quick session of instruction check questions such as: Can we run? (No!), Can we take the envelope to our desk? (No!), Can we take two pieces from the envelope? (No!). I accompanied these with gestures, too.
  • The we got down to work and I focused on monitoring and helping out when necessary.
  • As soon as someone was ready with all eight pieces, I started to give out the gluesticks for them to glue their pictures in the notebooks.

Why we like it

  • It was a perfect way of spicing up a very serious and complicated Maths task and of rewarding the kids for completing it.
  • The kids were very curious about the picture and it helped us make it seasonal and special. To be honest, a lot of our Maths in October has been given them Halloween label. We have counted many pumpkins, lollipops, candy, spiders, witch’s hats, cobwebs and cats. This was one more lesson in the series. Plus, it is also how we are preparing for the actual holiday next week and how are practising the vocabulary.
  • The task can be easily adapted to different tasks or subjects and, naturally, the theme of the colouring picture, can also be easily changed to match the topic of the lesson.
  • We had 8 pieces of the puzzle but this number can be extended or limited, depending on the kids and their age.
  • The task is also very good for developing fine motor skills (re-organising the puzzle pieces) and cognitive skills (putting the pieces together).
  • It was also a great activity to give the kids work individually on the same task, with turn taking, respecting the other participants, not revealing the answer and playing by the rules of the game. They could almost do it and the most challenging part turned out to be the fact that all the kids went through the task in the same order so the evelope A was in high demand, then the envelope B etc. This is something to think about in the future. I am also considering putting up different envelopes (or stations) around the classroom, on different tables or shelves.
  • The kids got really involved and they really liked the task. Some of them already asked if we are going to do it again. And yes, we will. Either in Maths or in one of the other subjects.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #62 Secret words. Learning to read

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@Cambridge University Press

Ingredients

  • A text written for the lower levels learners, pre-A – A1 level, preferably accompanied by some visuals. The one pictured above which was the inspiration for this kind of an activity was taken from Super Grammar 2 by Emma Szlachta, CUP, p. 38
  • A set of blue cards to cover some of the key words in the coursebook. It is much easier to manage if the text is displayed on the screen. The SECRET cards can be easily adjusted and moved around during the lesson.

Procedures

  • In the first stage, the kids look at the illustrations and describe them. If you are looking for the ideas how to use with illustrations in the EFL classroom, make sure you check out these posts, here and here. There are lots and lots of ideas. This stage will give the kids an opportunity to produce some language and also to get ready for the reading.
  • Kids read the text in silence, individually and, afterwards, in pairs, trying to guess what words are hidden under the cards. At this point all ideas are good ideas but the teacher should point out that there are some hints in the illustrations.
  • The class read out loud together, led by the teacher or the students, and each pair proposes their ideas. The teacher is revealing the real words. It is not a competitive activity so no points are awarded.
  • The following stage is the reading comprehension task, such as the one in the coursebook.
  • The follow-up productive task can be a text interpretation: the teacher covers all the secret words again. Kids work in pairs, they read a text (one text per child). In step A: they try to remember what the original words are, in step B: the kids read the text again with their own ideas for all the secret words.

Why we liked it

  • The activity is easy to prepare, especially with the use of the electronic devices.
  • The activity can be used with practically any text and it is easy to adjust the level of development by limiting or extending the number of words, by focusing on some specific words ie only colours, only verbs or only a specific grammar word ie a structure or a part of speech, depending on the level of the students.
  • This is one of the ways of breaking up the text and making it more manageable for the early readers.
  • It is also a way of making it more interesting as it changes the reading task into something resembling a guessing game.
  • It can be made productive and generative by the illustrations-based activities or by the creative reading (the final stage) which can also lead to a writing task ie describing your own room or your own dream room.

Happy teaching!

A balancing act. Non-competitive EFL games for kids

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It happened way too many times…

Here is a situation that I witnessed many times during an observed lesson with young learners: a teacher and a group of kids start playing a game, for example riddles. The teacher models, then the kids take over. One student sits in front of everyone, chooses a card for the other students to guess or to identify. Kids start shouting out words, one of them gets it and the teacher takes the flashcard and hands it over to the student who shouted the correct word. The game goes on and it takes about three rounds more for one of the students to get offended / upset / angry / sad about not winning. More often or not, someone starts crying. Oups.

It is not only about losing, although, to be honest, this is a serious problem, too. Here, however, the ‘failure‘ of some kids is clearly visualised with a flashcard. Frequently, it is also very unfair because it is the faster and louder kids that get the point and these are not necessarily the kids who really know the answer. Also, there is another dilemma in a situation when two students shout out the correct answer at exactly the same point. Will the teacher tear the card into halves? No, of course not. Sigh.

That issue, frequent as it was, was always addressed during the feedback session and I am pretty sure every session on games for VYL and YL included the commandment compressed down to ‘Don’t use flashcards as reward points’. This was the bread and butter of a trainer / VYL ados.

My real shock to the system was an invitation to volunteer at Sheredar, our rehabilitation camp for children who went through serious diseases a few years back. I had a chance to go there a few times and teaching kids was an amazing experience. However, before I went, our contact and coordinator, Ksenia, said: ‘They will be one big mixed ability group but you can choose any topic you want. Actually, do whatever, just don’t play any competitive games. These kids have fought enough’. It took me about a minute to understand that I have no games to play. All my favourite activities, those that I frequently used in my lessons, with kids, juniors and teens, all of those favourite ones were competitive. ALL OF THEM.

Should kids even be playing competitive games?

I have been looking for sources on competition in the EFL classroom and I have found…nothing. I started to look around for any texts on kids and competition and it turns out that getting engaged in competitive activities such as sports, for example, can be very beneficial for children.

  • competitive activities can be motivating and encourage kids to improve their skills
  • playing and losing and winning helps children to learn how to deal with competition and with the fear of losing
  • they are also an opportunity to learn how to deal with pressure and how to win and how to lose
  • they are good for building self-confidence
  • they teach kids about the existence of the rules that need to be obeyed
  • they can help form friendships and relationships, with peers and adults
  • and, also, even if they are sports, they can lead to improving academic performance in children

Although, of course, they can also have some drawbacks, such as too much pressure, negative feelings in children and for their self-esteem.

On the whole, competition is a good thing, although it is not a given that all the children take to it naturally. Some of them might struggle, which is natural, bearing in mind that not all the adults have learnt to deal with it successfully, and they should be given help and support.

EFL and competition

As regards our EFL classes, especially those with the younger learners, primary and pre-primary, it would be just reasonable not to abandon all the competitive games althogether but to keep an eye on the balance and on avoiding a situation when all the games and activities that comprise a lesson have promote competition. Apart from competition, there are the other beautiful C-words such as: cooperation, colaboration, cognitive skills development that can and should be the foundations for our classroom life.

Not to mention that everything that we do in our lessons, namely learning a language, is against the very idea of competition. All the kids learn for themselves and although they have the same linguistic aims, their overall results or results in certain areas of language learning do not depend on the results of the other participants. What is more, their progress is measured against their previous results and achievement, although, admittedly, the situation is slightly different when it comes to learning a langauge in the context of a state school where kids’ progress is graded at every step of the way.

Things to consider

The most important thing to remember seems to be the fact that we, as teachers, should not take things for granted and assume that all the kids in our group like competition and competitive activities and that all of them are equally prepared to win and lose with grace.

The other factor to take into consideration is the age of the students. The younger the students, the less likely it is that they have already had a chance to participate in those kind of activities and acquire these skills and that they have enough life experience to be mature about it. It is a combination of their age, cognitive and social development as well as life circumstances such as having a chance to attend kindergarten, playing at home with parents and relatives, having older siblings and so on.

Equally important is the bond between the students. A group of children starting to learn together in September is a completely from the same group in January or even in October, especially in the context of after school groups or afternoon language schools where children might land in a group of complete strangers with whom the only thing they have in common is the age and the level of English, not the family ties, the address or the school. The more they get to know each other, the more they bond, the easier it will be for the teacher to set up activities, including competitive games, and for the kids to handle ‘failure‘. After all, it is easier to lose and get over it when you play with friends.

What it comes down to in real life, with real children, is keeping an eye on the kids, checking how they react to different stimuli and then introducing some competitive games, carefully, step by step. However, with my youngest students, this non-competitive period may span over the entire length of the pre-school EFL. With the most recent group, we started to play only half-way through our third year together and even then it was the whole group vs the teacher (who always lost).

Every little helps

Here are some of the tricks and techniques that a teacher can use in the classroom while introducing competitive games or taming of the competitive games we often include in our lessons (tired and tested):

  • Playing the familiar games such as riddles or pelmanism in a less competitive way. First of all, we do not award points for the boardrush OR we award points to both teams for competing the task, not only to the team who is faster (especially that with boardrush at least it is sometimes very tricky to establish who really was the first one to touch the board). Points here can be pluses or hearts on the board or flashcards given out to the winner in a particular round. Instead, we finish the round, the praise everyone and we simply move on. The game itself (the fun of participating, the language produced or used) is the reward itself.
  • We do not determine the order of participation based on the successful participation, for example in riddles, when the student who guesses the word is the next one to play. Instead, all students take turns, one by one to make a riddle for the whole class, regardless of how good they are at guessing.
  • Playing ‘Simon Says’ without excluding the losers by asking them to sit down after they make a mistake, especially that a growing number of non-participating students is very bad for the overall classroom and behaviour management. Or, in the same way, playing the Treasure Hunt without establishing who the winner is. We all look for clues around the classroom or the school, we all participate for ten minutes and in the end all check our answers, without counting the points or the number of the elements or stages completed.
  • With pelmanism, instead of playing 1-1, with kids uncovering two cards at a time, the whole group can do it in pairs, with two kids always participating, ideally in different combinations. As soon as a pair is found, the teacher and the kids cheer for everyone, and the cards are put aside or given back to the teacher.
  • Play the game in the format of the teacher vs the whole group, to create the support for the individual child. If they win or if they lose, they will do it together, with all their friends, nobody will be singled out. Ideally, in such a situation, the teacher loses and has a chance to model the mature behaviour and how ‘a failure’ can be handled, but, of course, bending the rules in order to ensure that might not always be easy to do. If you are looking for ideas, I would recommend pelmanism. It is very easy to get distracted and to forget (or ‘to forget’) where the other card from the pair is located.
  • Any game can be played in teams, a team vs a team, instead of individuals competing with each other. This way, again, the support, the safety net or the safety blanket is created. Enjoying the victory or handing the loss is easier with your team. Even if there is one child who does not handle ‘the failure’ very well, there will be other children in this situation, too. They will serve as role models.
  • Having the teacher participate, as one of the teams, can also help soften the blow of the defeat. Again, the teacher will be the one to model the langauge use, the game rules application and the player’s behaviour, too.
  • If possible, talk to the parents whose children struggle with controlling their emotions while losing the game. If nothing else, it would be great to find out whether there have been any factors that could have played a part, whether the child reacts this way in other situations and to simply inform them what happened in class. Perhaps parents will be willing to discuss this topic at home, to reinforce what the teacher does at school and, perhaps, to also play games at home, to help the child tame that beast.
  • In one of the posts (see bibliography), I found another great tip. What is necessary is a quick game that can be played a few times, in a quick succession, in the same lesson. Some of these will be won, some will be lost, but the quick pace and the repetition will make either of the results, the victory or the defeat, not so relevant anymore and easier to deal with and to even forget.
  • Another approach that I have been using in some of my summer camp groups was the Points Poster that we used throughout the entire camp. It was very simple, only an A3 piece of paper, with the team’s name, displayed on the wall. Every time we played a competitive game, there were points, for example two or three stickers for the winners, a star for everyone else. All the kids took very well to it because winning the stickers was great but the joy lasted a brief moment only and very quickly the stickers won today would quickly get lost among all the other stickers won on all the other days. The defeat, on the other hand, was perhaps not the most pleasant thing in the world but it didn’t matter much because the students knew that they would be another game on the same or on the following day. What is more, because I was using some leftover stickers, of all kinds, sometimes it was more fun to choose one huge sticker for your team rather then three little ones…
  • Finishing each game with the teacher and the kids thanking each other for the game, with a simple handshake and ‘Good game‘, just like all the football or volleyball players do at the end of the match.
  • Any activity that can work towards bonding and building a community is also welcome
  • If there is the students who struggle with dealing with their own emotions while playing games, I have so far tried two things. One of them was pairing this student up with myself, in 1-1 games, in order to be better able to model, to monitor and to help the child control their emotions during the game. I have also experimented with pairing up with this child in the games that we played in teams because, again, losing (or winning) in one team with the teacher was easier to deal with.

Non-competitive EFL games

First, an anecdote. The heading of this paragraph is what I put into my google. Would you like to guess what the amazing Uncle Google came up with? Nothing.

‘Fun games’ – yes, ‘no prep games’ – yes, ‘exciting games’ – yes, sure. There was one post from the British Council (see bibliography) but not many of them are appropriate for kids and not many are actual games. And one article about an activity that still has winners and losers…Nada, nada, nada.

Here are some suggestions from the non-competitive games that I have played

  • Musical flashcards: a simple movement game, an adaptation of the musical chairs game, only without any kids dropping out. The teacher puts out all the relevant flashcards on the floor, kids move around with some music playing. When it stops, every child picks up a card and makes a sentence for example: I like bananas (topic: food), I haven’t got a cat (topic: food), I am wearing a blue t-shirt (topic: clothes) etc. Afterwards, the flashcards go back onto the floor, the teacher puts the music on for another round of the game.
  • All the logical games such as Find the difference (for example those that we have in the YLE Movers and Flyers) or Odd one out (for example YLE Movers) that can be easily adapted to any topic. A similar activity will be also based on the silly picture scenes that I described in an earlier post here.
  • I Spy: a variation of the game with a set of visuals such as a poster or an illustration from the coursebook. Kids work together as a group (in the early stages) or in pairs, they describe something in the picture, with the relevant sentences, depending on the age and level (I spy with my little eye something. It is big, it is green. It is next to the cat. etc). The student or the students who listen find the relevant object. This game is not competitive because there are no winners / losers and the game goes on until the child / children guess. As the game proceeds, the kids can offer more information and support to help their partner, for example the first letter / sound, the gestures etc.
  • Riddles: the same principle and procedure as above but it can be played with flashcards or a set of word cards or a set of words prepared by the kids.
  • Back to the board: it is a very popular game that can easily be played in a non-competitive way and this way it can go help build and develop a sense of community and give the whole group a chance to work together. One of the students sits on a chair in the centre, facing the group. The teacher writes a word or a simple sentence on the board and signals how many words it includes. The group work together to help the one student guess and recreate the word on the board. With the lower level kids, flashcards can be used instead of words although using simple sentences works wonders for the students to learn and to work better with the grammar, the sentence structure and, progressively, with the meta language.
  • Monster game aka Hangman aka Let’s save the little human: I love playing Monster Game with the lower levels because it helps the students work with literacy, spelling and blending and we always play it as a whole group with all the students contributing and working together to guess the letters and the words and to help the little human who is slowly losing parts of the ladder, the boat or the hotair balloon. To make the game less cruel, the element of getting points can be added (i.e. when the kids guess a part of the word or when they guess the most common letter or when they get all the vowels etc) and with my summer camp group the game finished with the kids drawing some food for the hungry monster because they developed empathy for someone hungry, even though it was a monster.
  • Telephone: this game is a variation of something known as ‘Whispers’, with the whole group sitting together and passing a word or a simple phrase, from the end to the beginning of the chain. This is not a very generative game or a very communicative one but it helps the kids work together towards one goal and it is easy enough even for the youngest kids.
  • Stations in the classroom: this is not really an activity but a format of completing tasks with kids. The teacher sets up a few stations in the classrom, for example in the four corners of the room. Kids move from one station to the other and complete the task such as unscrambling words, completing a simple handout, matching words and pictures, playing a round of pelmanims and many more. Kids complete a few tasks during the lesson and their job is done when they complete a full circle but they do not compete with everyone else in the group. It is up to the teacher to decide when then task is done and they can move on and in this way, even the ‘weaker’ students can play and participate without any pressure from the group.
  • Community building games: on of the 30 Creative Team Building Activities. I haven’t tried these yet but these definitely caught my eye: Cross the Line (22), Paper Chain Race (30), Shrinking Classroom (18), Building a tower (6 and 10). Or 22 Fun Team Building Games and Activities for Kids. Here I really liked: Forehead Dots (4), Some of them have the ‘choose the best / fastest team’ element which works to some extent as it helps the kids to bond within their team but I would still skip this element altogether.
  • Last but not least, among the things that has been on my wishlist of the things to try out in the classroom is the parachute and all the parachute games. Some ideas can be found here.

Coda

But, perhaps, the situation is a little bit better than it seems. While working on this post, I asked my audience on the social media about their opinion and I was very happy to find that those who responded use a mix of competitive and non-competitive games. At the same time, the teachers admitted that they have to deal with the competition-related stress in the EFL classroom, although not all the time and ‘some games, some days, some kids’ was the most popular answer.

What about you, dear reader? Do you play any non-competitive games with your YL students?

If you are interested in the topic (and a subscribed reader of the Modern English teacher), I do recommend reading my article from Nov – Dec 2024 that is the continuation of that post. You can find it here.

Happy teaching!

Bibliography

Teaching children to lose gracefully so they can lose with dignity as adults (oregonstate.edu)

Pros and Cons of Competition Among Kids and Teens (verywellfamily.com)

The pros and cons of competition | BabyCenter

How To Teach Children To Cope With Losing | Casa de Corazón (casaearlylearning.com)

6 Tips for Teaching Children How to Lose — Better Kids

australiansportscamps.com.au/blog/benefits-children-playing-competitive-sports/#:~:text=Competition Can Improve your Child%27s,high school and tertiary studies.

Six collaborative games for competitive English language classrooms | British Council

ETF 57/3 pg14-23 (ed.gov)

Problems with Games in ESL/EFL Classrooms (and Solutions) – BINGOBONGO (bingobongokids.com)

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.

Why you DON’T want to mix age groups and levels. Adventures of a teacher

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Sigh.

This was my first reaction to the context I had a chance to teach in last week. To be honest, I am still sighing because an experience like that does not wear off too easily. Yes, it was not a positive experience.

Now, even being just dead inside and very very angry (not a contradiction) at the time it was taking place, I was still a devoted teacher and, even more importantly from the point of view of this post, I was a trainer, reflecting and assessing. So here we are. For you, what not to do and why.

What happened

Last week I had a chance to teach an extremely mixed ability group. I am an experienced teacher and an experienced trainer and, over the years, I have had an opportunity to work in a variety of contexts with different students and mixed ability groups in all shapes and forms and types of a mixture. Last Wednesday I reached a new level.

There were nine kids in the classroom. Three of them – real beginners who should be learning colours and their first hellos. Seven of them – pre-literate students who would require an alternative set of materials. Two kids – of a higher than ‘just pre-A1’ who should be in a more advanced group. One child, aged 5 (according to the information from the admin) and aged 4 (according to what he told me) – a pre-schooler who should not be spending in the classroom more than 30 minutes. Three kids, aged 10 – who should be in a completely different group where they are given a task on a higher cognitive level of challenge than just a picture to colour. And yet, there we were, myself and all nine kids (all of them called Sasha, traditionally), in the same classroom, for 4 academic hours of a lesson.

We all survived. Here are some notes from this memorable day.

The youngest Sasha…

  • The youngest Sasha was completely out of place. He did not understand what we were doing and the only reason why he even stayed in the classroom was that his older sister was present and involved. He was trying to join in, though, and the result of it was a little boy babbling in some kind of a newspeak, that was neither pidgin, nor Sasha’s L1 and not any langauge known to mankind. Albeit, to be honest, it to someone who did not know English, it might have sounded like English, from afar. My heart was literally aching at his efforts.
  • The youngest Sasha had no idea of the way you interact in the classroom. On countless of occasions, he would get up, come to the board, pick up markers to draw on the board (since the classroom was not baby-proof, I did not expect a pre-schooler), to try to nick a few post-it notes. He did not understand why he did not get a set of mini-cards (and some kids did, the leaders of all the small teams) and when he got a small heart for the other activity, he did not want to give it back. Because why would he? At one point, I felt like being on the playground and ‘fighting’ over toys.
  • It was beyond the little Sasha’s understanding why we would even dictate the colours for each other to use in a colouring dictation. ‘But I want to colour it blue and green!’, he said, already on the verge of tears and, later on, naturally, he was thoroughly confused that his picture was different from the teacher’s, his sister’s, all the other kids’ and he kept asking if he did a good job and if he completed the task well.

The Sashas in the middle…

  • Generally, these Sashas were under control. After all, they are the kids who have spent the longest period of time in the classroom and they are the kids who have had a chance to experience and to benefit from the routine of the previous two weeks. High five to the teacher who made an effort to build this routine. It was worth it. These are also the children who constitue the biggest group and the activities were generally designed for them and graded to their linguistic, cognitive and social skills. They did participate, they did produce, they did work well in pairs and, unknowingly, they were the kids that the teacher was looking at and sighing with relief. ‘Not all is lost’, thought the teacher. ‘I have not run in vain’, thought the teacher, quoting her favourite quote from the Bible, albeit a very un-religious one.
  • But, still, the atmosphere of the lesson, chaotic and messy, unravelling and tense (my bad, I know that) also took its toll even on them. My amazing twins were on the edge and, at one point, a heated debate broke out because one of them wanted to play a simple gussing game (as intented and as they were instructed to) whereas the other wanted some hints and suggestions (because that is how we played in the previous weeks). ‘Why aren’t you miming? Why aren’t you telling me if it is big or small and if you like it?’, he was asking. They ended up getting upset with each other and breaking up for a minute. The other pair, Sasha girls were sleepy and tired and on the verge of tears and even though they did play, they also spent a moment discussing whether they should just divide the cards into two piles or take them from the same pile and how much time is necessary to make a decision which word you want to use to talk about (Answer: not too much, the sooner, the better).
  • The day is quite long and the kids like to ask how much time is left. We have established a routine that when they want to know, they should ask (‘What time is it?’) and the teacher checks the watch and writes how many minutes are left until the nearest break. I don’t quite like it but they are quite young, they cannot tell the time using the clock and, still, they need something to understand and to manage the lesson time. We have drilled the question, it is always on the board and, although it is slightly annoying to hear the same question over and over again, it gives me an idea of how involved the group are. The more frequent the questions, the more ‘trouble’ we are in. Unsurprisingly, in that particular lesson, this question was popping up again and again and again.

The oldest Sashas…

  • The oldest Sashas finished the task way too quickly for teacher’s liking and we all had to wrap up a bit faster, although, indeed, they got convinced into taking part in some kind of an extension and it did buy the rest of us some time.
  • The oldest Sashas, because there were more than one, spent the lesson being on the brink of getting involved in some alternative, mostly illicit activities. In the end, they did not, with an experienced teacher present, but, oh Lord, there was so much potential for it. If there had been only one older Sasha, they would have been more easily contained. With two or three, at times, they could bounce their exciting ideas off each other, fueling the behaviour that were not quite welcome.
  • It was almost a miracle that the older Sashas enjoy colouring and that they got midly interested in completing the task. They were most engaged than I would have expected from children of their age. I can safely say that, yes, I did get away with it.
  • In an ideal world, these Sashas would be getting a much closer monitoring from the teacher to ensure that they are using the same material but producing a lot more langauge than the average student. Unfortunately, with the kind of mix that I actually had to deal with, it was not possible. Apart from the storybird activity that involved a 1-1 interaction with the teacher, closely supervised. Overall, the teacher was not happy at all.
  • I have also noticed that one of my older Sashas has got a very strong inclination for bullying. Nothing happened but I do not like the vibe and the way he behaves around the younger children (aka all the other children in the group). He is naturally a leader without any skill to be one and he has absolutely no one to look up to and to be inspired by. He would benefit more from being in a group of older children in order to develop his social skills and to learn from the other kids.

If I could think of a metaphor for that day…

A sweater that is fraying uncontrollably, at three different ends.

Washing the windows in a flat ont the top floor, in a blocks of flats. Standing on the chair and reaching out to this little piece in the corner, thinking that this may all end up in a very, very bad place.

A flooded kitchen, with you trying to make decisions quickly and to save something, to wipe the floor and not to let the flood spread to the neighbours below you.

A three-course dinner for ten, prepared by one relatively skilled chef, on one hob, with a pot and a pan.

A herd of cows that your grandma asked you to bring back from the pasture, walking them on the main village road, with all the tractors and all the combine harvester coming back from the fields and using the same road AND all the neighbours and villagers standing by the fences of their houses, watching the god-damn show because a city teenager trying to manage a task she had no preparation or knowledge of. Speaking from experience, in case you are wondering.

Any of the experiences that you spend hating every second of and yet you go on and you survive. Exhausted. And then you just sigh and vent in a post on your blog.

Coda

There is not much to say here apart from this one thing: all these kids should not be learning English together. There are too many factors that come into the picture that make it an almost impossible task for the teacher. It is true that English language groups are rarely homogenous and it is especially true in case of young learners groups and, especially especially, in case of primary school students. Teachers are simply obliged to deal with that issue on daily basis. Managing a group of kids who are on the same level of English but who are of different ages – it is possible. Managing a group of kids who are of the same age but have different levels of English – it is manageable. However, this kind of a mix, different age groups, different levels of English, different levels of literacy skills, cognitive skills and social skills development with such a number of kids is simply not a good idea. If you have a choice, please, DO NOT DO IT.

Happy teaching!

5 times when a piece of paper made a difference (in the EFL classroom)

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The EFL classroom, just like the Mary Poppins’ bag, is full of the little pieces that to other people might be just random junk but to the teachers of young learners, they are the true gems and the amazing, life-saving fireworks. This post today includes only 5 of them, something old, something blue, something borrowed, something blue or, in the EFL words, something for production, something for games, something for classroom management…Because sharing is caring.

One: paper hearts

You need: a set of small colourful cardboard cards, which stand for ‘I like’ (the colour side) and ‘I don’t like’ (the side with a small cross).

You will need these to encourage the kids to start expressing opinions. The hearts are used as a symbolic representation of the structure when it is introduced, they are used in all the handouts, even with the youngest kids, but they really start working when the students can physically hold them and use them to react to express opinions by showing the appropriate side of the heart, depending on their opinion. First come the gestures and the symbols, then the language itself and then the hearts become unnecessary because the kids are ready to just talk about the things they like and those that they don’t. It works amazingly well with small groups and it works even better with the bigger groups because all the kids can talk at the same time and the teacher gets the immediate group feedback with all the hearts up into the air.

Two: Little random word cards

You need: a set of regular small cards with the key vocabulary from the unit. They can be handwritten or printed. For the younger kids these are replaced with a set of mini-flashcards, with the images and the text or only the images.

You can: use them in a variety of games to practise vocabulary such as: riddles (make a definition to guess the word), questions (ask a question with the word for your partner to answer), similar or different (taking two words at a time to look for similarities between them), categories (with students grouping the words in any way they want), random stories (telling stories with the words taken out of the pile in a random order) or testing each other (to check the meaning or spelling of certain words) or pelmanism if there are two sets of words per group or pair. Anything for more vocabulary practice and use.

Three: Faces

You need: a set of cardboard circles with emoticons for them. The disposable paper plates work amazingly well here, too.

You can use them during the hello circle to help the kids answer the question ‘How are you today?’ as they are allowed to manipulate the cards while talking to the teacher. We also use them all the time while telling stories to help illustrate all the emotions involved and while working with any visuals that accompany listening or reading activities in the coursebook. The emotion flashcards can also come in handy with different behaviour issues. Knowing the words such as ‘angry’, ‘sad’ or ‘ill’ can really come in handy in many class situations.

Four: Stars

You need: a set of cardboard stars, cut out of regular or, if you are really fancy, out of some colourful cardboard paper, and some blutack or magnets. In a super upgraded version these cardboard stars can have a piece of magnetic sheet glued to them (aka this is how we recycle the merch magnets given out at out local pizza place, cut them up and glue them to things we want to use on the board).

Why? These have become my go-to, clutching-at-straws solution to motivate my kids to speak more English in class at the point when my sweet primary kids grew up and became more talkative and they were more likely to choose their first language to chat away. The stars, given out demonstratively with an excited ‘Oh, what beautiful English!’ worked in two ways. On the one hand, they made them focused on using the target language, on the other hand, somehow, magically almost, it got them to use the target langaguage from the higher shelf. Once they got into the habit of communicating mostly in English, we could stop using the stars in every lesson.

Five: Names Cards

You need: a set of small cardboard rectangles, with each of the students’ names on them, one per card, possibly laminated, to make them year-long-lasting.

You can: use them for any pairwork or group forming activity without getting personal. The cards can be kept in a box or a bag and drawn out by the teacher to organise the kids in a fun way. Even more so, the students can be involved in the draft. This way the grouping and pairing will be the most impersonal, the most random and the most genuine ever. It might also make it easier for the students to accept the outcome, even if they end up working with the classmates whom they might not like very much. After all, it will be due to luck, good or bad, not due to some very arbitrary decision of the teacher.

Happy teaching!

Wordwall activities Vol. 2

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This is the second part of the post first published in November 2021 with my Top 10 Favourite Wordwall activities. Don’t forget to check it out here! Lots of ideas there!

  • One or many?

Materials: A set of cards, specifically prepared for this game. This is the one we were using in our Christmas lessons.

Activities: You can read more about it in one of the earlier posts.

Works well with: pre-primary, online and offline, individuals and groups

  • Song follow-up exercises

Materials: As part of our Christmas lessons, we were practising the basic prepositions and singing Santa, Where are you? from Super Simple Songs. The following set of cards was used in a follow-up activity.

Activities: Teacher sings or asks the question ‘Santa, Santa, where are you?’, with every card. The kids answer, either chorally or individually, taking turns. There is also an option of extending it further, by adding how Santa is feeling or what exactly he is doing.

Works well with: pre-primary, online and offline, individual and groups

  • Story follow-up exercises

Materials: This particular set of cards was used as a follow-up activity to a video lesson with Peppa Pig in which George catches a cold. It is a great episode to practise the weather words, the emotions and some present continuous, if the kids are familiar with it. I have used the ‘rank the order’ template, with very simple sentences to describe the actions of the story. Here you can find the final version and another one with ‘answers’.

Activities: In lesson 1, the kids watch the video with the pauses, and the teacher encourages them to produce simple sentences about the story. In lesson 2, the student watch the video again and try to retell it by choosing the order of the pictures and describing them. If the kids are not ready, the teacher can support them by choosing the pictures and giving the students all the sentence starters.

Works well with: pre-primary and primary, online and offline, probably easier with individual students or with students taking turns, in a group.

  • Early reading exercises

Materials: A variety of cards for different activities. The first one was used as a part of the Christmas lessons with my ‘advanced’ pre-primary. The other two, Yes or No and Usborne rhymes were used as part of a series of lessons with Usborne’s Ted in a Red Bed and Fox on a Box.

Activities: In the first activity, the teacher is introducing the kids to the written form of the words. The teacher reads the first sound or the first syllable and asks the kids to continue. Afterwards, the card is flipped. The other two activiites use the target language and the rhymes from the two Usborne stories. The kids are encouraged to see the sentences themselves and say whether they match the illustrations (Yes or No). The other activity is a revision game for the main rhymes from both stories.

Works well with: primary and some of the older pre-primary students who are learning to read.

  • Draw it!

Materials: This particular set here was used as a follow up of the Usborne Phonics Story mentioned above, Ted in a Red Bed. We were also practising furniture and colours.

Activities: The students need a piece of paper, A4 or A5 and a set of pencils or markers. The teacher demonstrates the cards on the screen, starting from the first one (START: I can see a room, which unfortunately is not always the first one in the deck, I set it up before the lesson and then we go through all the cards anyway, to check that we have included everything). The kids take turns to read the simple sentences and to draw elements of their room. In the online lessons, it is a good idea to ask them to show the card to the camera after each step. It is a great activity that encourages the kids to read and to create. It can be made more complex for those of the students who know prepositions (The lamp is on the table). The same kind of a game was used to practise the school vocabulary, toys and colours (starting with a shelf), things in the park etc. The activity can be stopped whenever necessary, after 5 or 8 cards, depending on how focused and interested the kids are.

Works well with: primary, online or offline, I have only done it with individual students but I suppose that it could be adapted to the needs of a group of primary kids, too. I would start with cutting down on the number of pictures, during the first few games.

  • Teaching English through Art

Materials: I have found wordwall extremely useful in creating materials for my Art Explorers lessons. They can be simple flashards that use traditional photographs and paintings to introduce a new set of vocabulary for example Animals in Art. It is also easy to find beautiful materials such as these Pumpkins which we use to express opinion.

Activities: Pumpkins are displayed on the screen, one by one, with the teacher or one of the students asking ‘Do you like this pumpkin?’ and the group answering. It is also possible to include some other elements ie the colours, the basic adjectives, the numbers to encourage kids to produce even more language. I would like to encourage everyone to use paintings to introduce and practise vocabulary even if you are not teaching English through Art. And not only paintings! There is such a beautiful variety of visuals that can be used – photographs, drawings, clip art, paintings, symbols and so on. This will help develop symbolic representation and the general visual intelligence. And it is fun!

Works well with: pre-primary and primary, both online and offline, individual students and groups.

  • Pairs

Materials: We used this set in the unit devoted to weather, with the aim to extend it beyond the single words or even simple sentences, for example to talk about the things we do when it is sunny, when it is raining etc.

Activities:

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

Only 7 new entries here but worry not! I am still working, I am still creating and I will be adding things here. I am sure. Until then!

Happy teaching!

DIY peer observations aka Where to find videos to observe YL teachers in action

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This is part II of the series, devoted to lessons with Young Learners aka Kids aka younger primary classes aka children aged 7 – 9 years old.

First part of the series, DIY observations with pre-schoolers, can be found here.

A few tips from the trainer

  • Choose the focus for the observation: classroom management, behaviour, staging, storytellings, songs, chants, literacy, working with big groups, students’ production, spontaneous production, interaction patterns, routine, variety, gestures, classroom management, timing and many many more.
  • Think of yourself as an observer, look for the strong points and the areas to improve. There is always something!
  • Be a kind observer! Remember that no matter what you are watching, the teacher WAS on tenterhooks because the lesson was filmed and that the whole filming adventure might have affected the teacher’s and the kids’ behaviour.
  • But don’t forget about your standards. I would not want to imply that all of these are great lessons that would get Above Standard if the lesson was assessed. They are not. In some cases, I have highlighted some of the strong points that got me especially interested. Everything else is up to you.
  • More than anything else, please remember that whatever was filmed, it is only a part of a lesson and we have no chance of finding out what happened before and after.
  • Think about your particular context (your institution, your group, your classroom, your country and your culture), would this activity and this approach work? Why? Why not? Can it be adapted?
  • If possible, watch the video again, after some time has passed or after you have had a chance to use some of the activities or approaches in practice. Are your impressions the same?
  • If possible, watch it with some other teachers, too! It is fun to find out what others think about it and sometimes we learn more from people that we disagree with!
  • I have tried to include a variety of contexts and countries of origin and I am hoping to be adding to this list when I find some more videos.

The videos

  1. A lesson from a Polish primary school in Gosciejow, year I, 24 minutes, about 20 kids. It looks like a typical lesson for year 1 beginners. It includes hello, revision, some movement, new vocabulary presentation and practice, and a focused task. The teacher provided a lot of exposure and controlled practice of the target language in this lesson.
  2. A lesson from a Polish school in Dabrowka, year II (recorded in September at the start of the academic year), 34 minutes. It looks like a typical lesson with that group, with their own routine. About 20 kids. It seems to be an open lesson, there are some parents in the classroom. There is some evidence of the class routine (hello, table time, movement, storytelling).
  3. A lesson from a Polish school in Tarnowo, year III (presumably), 34 minutes, about 20 kids. It is a revision lesson, with some favourite activities that the kids are already familiar with which can be used with different sets of vocabulary.
  4. A year 1 lesson from Almaty, Kazakhstan, 15 kids, 27 minutes. The lesson includes the following stages: Hello song, new vocabulary introduction and practice, reading and writing, , a video story, coursebook work, evaluation, feedback and the theatre based on the story, the final song. The video finishes with the commentary from the teacher, very interesting but in Russian only. According to the teacher, the main aim was to reinforce the new vocabulary, skills development and teaching values (work and play).
  5. A year 1 lesson from Nanjing, China, 36 minutes, over 20 kids. It is great to see how the teacher is using the gestures to praise, to instruct, to model, to teach vocabulary and grammar. He is also trying to introduce the vocabulary and immediately do something with it, although I am not quite sure if it is the kids’ very first lesson. The teacher is using some Chinese, alongside gestures and the presentation to clarify the concepts and ideas and the class rules. The lesson includes the following stages: hello, rules, warm up, alphabet, song, new vocabulary and structure, practice, goodbye. The video includes some subtitles to help clarify what is going on in class.
  6. A year 1 lesson from Kaluga, Russia, 38 minutes, about 10 students. The stages of the lesson: hello, introducing the lesson topic, pronunciation practice, hello role play (pairwork!),r revision, song, new vocabulary presentation and practice (vocabulary and vocabulary used with structures), a video, practice, song, literacy, literacy craft, writing, stickers and goodbye. It is great to see that the teacher always prepares the kids for the activity (ie the kids revise and drill the numbers before the song). I also found it interesting to see how much L1 is used by the teacher and what the purpose of it is, for example a short poem / riddle to help the kids remember the words in English. The teacher also explained a lot in Russian, presumably to help the kids feel more comfortable with the activities ie the pronunciation practice.
  7. A year 2 from Moscow, Russia, 41 minutes, 5 students. It is some kind of an open lesson. The stages of the lesson in the video: the lesson plan, tongue twisters, reading (cartoon), vocabulary revision, movement, literacy, riddles, homework. It is good to see that the teacher encourages using the vocabulary and structures and that they try different interaction patterns (whole class, individual, whole class vs one student).
  8. A year 1 lesson from Vietnam, only 20 minutes, about 20 kids in the room. It is a shortened version of the lesson (colour and fruit), but we can still observe the main stages: hello, hello song, new vocabulary introduction, practice and literacy, song, new vocabulary part 2, practice games, song. The group is quite big but the kids are using boards + chalk and they put up for the teacher to see their answers. It is also good to see that the teacher is using the new words individually and in sentences and that the abstract topic such as colours has been combined with something more real as fruit.

Happy teaching!

Edgar Degas and Ballerinas. Teaching English through Art in Primary.

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Sonia’s ballerina

The artist of the day

Edgar Degas is a perfect example of a love – hate relationship with Art. I adore his ballerinas, the beauty caught in a frame, the purposeful randomness of different set-up that make it often look like the candid camera photos, caught in the act, almost random, immortalised forever. But, at the same time, Edgar is the artist that I would never want to meet in person or talk to because of his beliefs and views.

But, it so happened that we are still doing body parts with my kids and I have only girls in the group and I really wanted to make ballerinas and so, reluctantly though it was, I chose Degas to be the artist of the day.

As usual, we introduced him by name, by country and by his favourite thing (ballerinas!!!). We looked at the paintings and talking about the colours and the actions and then, we made our own ballerinas.

Our gallery with Degas

The language

  • We are still practising expressing opinion using ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’, we include it in every lesson and at this point we are (almost) at the point when the kids talk spontaneously about the different things we are looking at
  • We are still practising describing monsters using the sentences such as ‘my monster has got two eyes’ as well as ‘my monster is green and yellow’, ‘my monster is happy’ and ‘I like it / I don’t like it’. Apart from the regular revision and drilling, we used the monsters from one of the wordwall sets, such as this one here. I was simply over the moon to see that at this point (and it was our lesson #3 with this topic), the kids were just producing a sequence of two or three sentences. It needs to be mentioned that we still sing the song about the teddy bear and it helps us to produce, too as the key structure ‘my teddy bear has got one nose’ can be easily transformed into a sentence about the monsters or ballerinas and that definitely helped, too.
Teacher’s ballerina

The craft

  • The final version of the craft is a combination of two ballerinas that I have found online, one of them from Kidspot, the other from Creative Child. Since my students are still very young and our lessons are online, I needed something that we would all be able to do without my direct assitance
  • As usual, I sent the information to parents with the list of all the necessary items: two sheets of white paper, safety scissors, glue and markers or crayons.
  • In class, we checked that everyone had all the materials (‘Have you got the paper? Show me, please’ etc).
  • I showed the students what we are going to need: a rectangle (for the body), a circle (for the head) and a square (for the skirt).
  • We prepared our shapes together: I showed the students how to cut off the rectangle (the shorter side of an A4 piece of paper, approximately 4 cm wide) and I waited for them to cut off theirs. I cut out a circle for the head and I cut of a square, too. We put the scissors away.
  • I did not give the students (or the parents) any details regarding the dimensions of all the shapes because, in a way, it does not really matter and we could manage with the wider or thinner rectangles or the smaller squares or circles. Whatever was too big, got trimmed later on. However, I knew that my girls would be able to handle that. With some of my other students or with much younger children, I would consider asking parents to cut out the shapes for us, before the lesson.
  • We proceeded to making the ballerina and here are the exact instructions. As usual, I was making my own doll and demonstrating, waiting for all the girls to catch up on with us.
  • Step 1: take the rectangle, fold it into half, lengthways (‘It’s a book’, said one of my kids, and a book it was, although it had a slightly weird size) and we spread some glue inside of it, to glue both sides together, in order to make it thicker.
  • Step 2: draw the lines at the bottom and the top of of the rectangle, to make the cutting a bit easier and to ensure that the kids don’t cut it into halves.
  • Step 3: cut along the line at the bottom of the rectangle, say ‘My ballerina has got two legs’
  • Step 4: cut along the line at the top of the rectangle, fold them to the sides, say ‘My ballerina has got two arms’
  • Step 5: glue the circle on, draw the eyes, the nose, the hair, we were drawing and talking about it ‘My ballerina has got…’
  • Step 6: fold the square into a triangle and cut the patterns, in a way in which we make paper snowflakes. Decorate the skirt with markers.
  • Step 7: cut off the top of the square/triangle in order to be able to put the skirt on. Put it on the doll and glue it at the top (and at the back) in order to make sure that it does not fall off.
  • Step 8: add all the other details: draw the hands, shoes, top of the dress etc.
  • Initially, I had the idea of practising some Present Continous with our ballerinas but in this particular lesson we only managed to start using it and the kids were not ready. Instead, we introduced them and sang the goodbye song together.
Marta’s ballerina

Some final notes

  • As I have mentioned before, the ballerina does not require any careful or detailed actions and even a messy cutting or measuring do not get in the way of finishing the task, if the kids are old enough. The most challenging part was the skirt as it involves preparing the snowflake and cutting off the tip in order to put the skirt on but once the kids were shown the final product (a circle with a slit), they were able to find their own solutions. Some of the skirts were not circles, some of them were not the most regular squares, some of them had not the prettiest slits but they could all be put on and, when, decorated, they all just look beautiful.
  • With the younger students, I would ask the parents to prepare the shapes and to cut the slit for the skirt, too.
  • I have also seen ballerinas that are even easier to make as the snowflake skirt could just be replaced with tissue paper or strips of paper glued on, or, if you have them, cupcake paper liners folded in half. This would also make this craft easier to make.
  • I loved the fact that when I first introduced my ballerina, the kids were slightly taken aback (and, fair enough, it is not the most graceful thing in the world, my ballerina) but as we proceeded through the craft, they grew fonder and fonder of their creations. They came up with many ideas of personalising them and of adding more detail ie a separate piece of paper for the hair. Not to mention that their dolls are simply amazing.
  • Another beautiful that happend during this lesson was the fact that the girls remembered the acrobats that we did in a Chagal and Circus lesson in December 2021. An eternity ago and yet, they did remember!

Vicky’s ballerina

Happy teaching!