Dedicated to Monsieur Alexander (6 y.o.) and Mademoiselle Victoria (3 y.o.) with big thanks for reminding me how important riddles are even if you speak the languagevery well.
Why? Because you simply must!
Riddles are an opportunity to develop focus and listening skills: you are required to listen until the very end as all the elements of the riddle are important and they can help you figure out what the answer is.
Riddles help to develop cognitive skills while you are guessing as you are required to put together different pieces of information, to understand, to synthesise and to analyse.
Riddles help to develop cognitive skills even more when you are creating your own riddle as you are required to apply and to evaluate the information you providing to make the riddle challenging and achievable at the same time.
Riddles are something that we use and enjoy in our L1, from the early childhoodand it is only natural that we will try to bring them into our EFL lessons, with kids and with adults.
Riddles help develop creativity.
Riddles are fun and they create plenty of opportunities for bonding, in a pair or a group.
Riddles, in L1, help the kids develop the awareness about how the language works, how the hidden meanings, the homophones, the collocations and this can also be transferred, at least partially, into the EFL or the ESL
It is obvious that the context of the EFL and the ESL does not always allow for the riddles and their benefits to be used fully and completely even if only due to the limitations of the language level which, in case of some of the young learners, might be as low as A1. This does not mean that they cannot be used. On the contrary, they can be introduced from early on.
Riddles, regardless of the context, are an opportunity for the students to speak and to produce a mini-discourse.
In the EFL/ESL classes, it is relatively easy to choose the vocabulary range and the structures for the students, depending on the level and the topic. This range can be easily extended.
How to? Riddles in the EFL classroom
The simplest version of the game can be played with preschoolers and we usually start simply with guessing ‘the secret word’ which is the card that the teacher and then the students choose and hold close to their chest and the class are guessing. This version is used to introduce the very idea of the riddles. When the kids have become more familiar with the format, the level of challange can be raised and the production maximised by asking the kids to describe the card they are holding in the simplest of way i.e. with the colour, operating within the colours of the objects on the flashcards used (‘It is green‘ or ‘It is green and red‘). With time, more adjectives can be added (‘It is big’, ‘It is small’), the categories (‘It is a toy’, ‘It is a pet’) or even opinions (‘I like it’, ‘I don’t like it’). There is a post devoted to one of the ways of dealing with riddles with the youngest learners. You can find it here.
The primary (or the more advanced pre-primary) students can start adding simple categories in their discourse (‘It’s a toy’, ‘It’s an animal’, ‘It’s in the schoolbag’) and start describing the word using the relevant structures. For example, with food, we use the following four: ‘It is cold’, ‘It is hot’, ‘You eat it’, ‘You drink it’) and these are the structures that the students know and will need anyway and these particular four can be supported by a relevant gesture. The same goes for the animal riddles set: ‘It is big’, ‘It is small’, ‘It can run’, ‘It can fly’, ‘It can swim’. I also like to add ‘I like it’ and ‘I don’t like it’ even though it does not quite provide enough information for the children to guess the object as the class may simply not know what one of us thinks about it, it gives the student making a riddle an opportunity to express opinion and to make it all more personalised. With the youngest students the teacher can assist production in the beginning by asking questions such as ‘Is it hot or cold?’ or ‘Can it swim, fly or run?’. This set of structures can be developed and extended depending on the students’ age and level.
As regards the more advanced and older students, the riddles can be made more extensive and more resembling the riddles that the adults and kids play in English as their L1 or the riddles they play with their L1 with the use of simple homonimes or homophones, a wider range of vocabulary or structures or complexity for example by making a list of words not to use when to describe a certain word, describing it with associations (i.e. kids, fun, outside to describe the word ‘playground’), with metaphors (i.e. ‘It is the brain of the computer’ for ‘hard drive’ or ‘It is the opposite of a mountain’ for ‘a cave’) or, even, by a mixture of these (‘Tell me what it is and tell me what it’s not’)
As regards the material and the support for the teacher one of the following can be used: flashcards, mini-flashcards, a page from the book with words and words and images, a poster, a set of wordwall cards, a list of words.
All the pairs. Somehow the penguin, the gorilla and the mouse got left out.
Ingredients
A set of pictures of animals, flashcards or on Miro. That’s it.
Procedures
Revise the vocabulary and ensure that all the cards are displayed at the same time for the kids to be aware of all the options
Model by choosing a pair of animals and putting these cards aside and justifying your choice. With my pre-primary kids, I like to use the first person statements (I’ve got 4 legs etc) as this is what we do with the younger kids (to enable the kids to talk about themselves and the animals without having to introduce the additional structures and to keep it coherent with the songs that we use ie Little bird or As quiet as a mouse). I also tend to vocalise the language ie I’ve got 4 legs (for the cat), I’ve got 4 legs (for the elephant).
Invite the kids to take turns to make their own pairs and to describe the rationale behind it.
This is what our Miro board looked like before we started
Why we like it
An opportunity for the kids to use and to develop the higher order thinking skills in the EFL context
The students are in charge of what they want to talk about and what they can talk about. It is appropriate for mixed-ability groups.
Little or no preparation as the flashcards are already there, the physical cards in the offline classroom or the set of pictures on Miro which, once prepared, can be doubled easily and used only for that activity.
A great variety of structures that can be revised and some opportunity to learn the new ones as the kids might have the ideas that they cannot express in English yet and this game can be the springboard which will help to introduce these. If the teacher speaks the kids’ L1.
Lots of opportunities for adaptation and using them with different sets of words such as toys, fruit, food, transport and, naturally, the relevant structures. I like to start this game with animals because of the range of easy structures that even the very young beginner students can use in order to complete task and because of the variety of topics that can be included (the colours, the number of legs, what animals can do, what they eat, where they live etc)
The level of challege can also be easily adapted, for example, the set of cards can include only 8 items or the teacher can focus on putting the animals into pairs basen only on the colours or the size which are probably the two most achievable categories, both cognitively and linguistically.
This is a neverending activity because the cards and the animals can be grouped and re-grouped over and over again to let the students create new and less obvious links between the items. Conversly, it can be shortend as needs be.
As regards the interaction patterns, this activity can be used with groups, with kids working together, at least in the beginning, or in pairs if we have the appropriate number of sets of cards as well as with 1-1 students, both online and offline.
There is also some potential for adaptation in the area of materials. The most obvious choice are the flashcards, the mini-flashcards or the Miro board. The teacher can also create a handout with the animals pictures and/or names which the students can colour-code as they are putting them in pairs. This might be a good solution for the kids to work in pairs in the offline classroom.
Last but not least, this activity is an opportunity for the kids to develop the listening skills (as they want to find out the justification for their peers’ choices) and the speaking skills (as they want to present their own reasoning, too). I simply love to observe how my students start with the simplest and most obvious connections and how they venture out into more and more creative ones.
Any role-play or a dialogue i.e. a transcript of any listening task which is a dialogue (i.e. Movers listening part 2, part 3), any written dialogue (i.e. Movers reading and writing part 3), any functional langauge introduced in a dialogue or a role-play
A pencil or a highlighter for each child
Procedures
Start with the main aim of the task is, ie listening in case of task 3 of Movers or reading in case of Movers, introduction of the functional language, etc. Go through all of the stages outlined in the teacher’s book or whichever ones you see fit in your teaching context.
Give out highlighters or pencils, ask the kids to open the books and look at the text again.
Introduce the concept of a banana (or whichever random word you want to use). Explain (and demonstrate!!!) that you will read the text slowly with some bananas in it and that if the students hear the word ‘banana’ they have to highlight or underline one word that comes immediately afterwards. Model with a few words.
Read the text with the bananas as the kids listen, follow and underline or highlight. The words chosen to be highlighted are the key words for each specific dialogue and their number depends on the dialogue and on the age and level of the students. With the older students and the more complex texts and language, the students can highlight two or more words that constitute a phrase or a collocation. This can be signalled with a repeated number of bananas ie banana banana for a two-piece phrase or banana banana banana for a three-piece phrase.
Ask the students to work in pairs and read the dialogue again and to use their own words and phrases instead of every banana.
Afterwards the kids can change roles and read it again or change the partners.
If the kids are ready, in the final (and optional) stage of the activity, they can close the book and role play and recreate the dialogue and the converation based on what they remember.
Why we like it
It requires no preparation, unless by preparation you mean opening the coursebook and finding the role-play or finding the teacher’s book and making copies of the transcript of any listening activity
It offers a great opportunity for the students to practise their speaking skills in an activity that is both controlled (as we have a framework) and free (as there are quite a few options to choose from)
It also offers a chance to work on the grammar accuracy and the transformation skills
It can be done online or offline
It can be done with a variety of levels. The highest level I have used it with was B1 (teens), the lowest level, so far, was A2 (primary).
So far, I have only tried it with dialogues but now, writing that post, I started to wonder about the potential of that activity for discourse building and creation. The original text could serve as a potential framework and support for the students to use. I am yet to experiment with that option.
All the letters of the alphabet written in one or two columns, with some space to write, next to each letter
Procedures
The teacher divides the students into pairs or teams and gives out the paper with the letters of the alphabet or asks the kids to write these down.
Step 1: The teacher announces the topic i.e. Clothes and asks the kids write one word (or phrase) for each letter of the alphabet or, more realistically, for as many letters as they can. The teacher gives an example. Ideally, the teacher creates her/his own list in order to have a set of words to model the other stages of the activity.
The teacher sets the time limit (i.e. 5 minutes for the younger kids and 3 minutes for the older kids). It might be a good idea to use a song instead and after the song finishes, the activity does, too.
The kids work in teams and make a list of the words within the vocabulary set. After the time is up, the teacher stops the game.
Step 2: The kids exchange the lists and count the words or phrases which their friends have managed to write within the set time limit. The teacher writes the results for each team on the board.
Step 3: The teams read the words on the lists and choose: the most interesting word, the most unusual word, the funniest word, three words you also have, three words you don’t have, any word you don’t understand or remember etc. The teams work in pairs and find out why their partners put these words on the list. If possible, the kids exchange the lists with another team and repeat the procedure once or twice.
Why we like it
For the students it is a great opportunity to revise and recycle vocabulary. All the beginner levels aside, even when the main lesson aim is to introduce and to practise new vocabulary, chances are the kids have already learnt, heard, used or seen some of the words. After all, the vocabulary sets are repeated and extended from level to level, not to mention that most kids have more than one source of English in their lives: the state school, the language school, a private teacher, brothers, sisters, parents, videos on youtube, cartoons, stories, computer games online…This game is one of the easy ways of revising all this vocabulary to prepare for ‘something new’
For all the reasons mentioned above, it is an absolute necessity for the teacher to find out how much the kids already know as regards a certain area in order to do a very focused (if a very contained) needs’ analysis and to adjust the volume, the level and the intensity of the new material presentation later in the lesson
It is very easy and requires no preparation whatsoever.
It helps to improve the students’ self-confidence because it gives them an opportunity to see how much they know already.
It can be used with any set of vocabulary, either thematic (i.e. clothes, food, animals) or content-related (i.e. the words necessary to describe a picture, the words used in a certain text or a listening task, a video)
The final task can be easily adapted i.e. choose 5 words to describe yourself, choose 5 words to use in a story or in a dialogue, choose 5 and describe them for your partners to guess, use a dictionary to find the words or structures for the missing letters, compare the lists with your friends to find the words or the structures for the missing letters, use the words to describe a photograph, use the words to talk about your day today etc.
Context: it is a new place, a new group of kids. In lieu of an induction, one line only and it goes: ‘You will be in room 5, miss Anka. Don’t forget to fill in the electronic register after the lesson.’
Lesson aims
It is all very simple: this particular lesson happens to give the kids a chance to meet the teacher and to give the teacher an opportunity to see the kids in their natural habitat. Since there will be quite a few new things for the children to deal with such as the class, the teacher, the first lesson in a foreign language, the coursebook, the classroom, the songs, games and the content, it might be best to keep the expectations on a reasonable level. It is a lot more important to focus on the child, on the student and on the routine, rather than on some ambitious linguistic aims. After all, there is going to be a whole year for the latter.
Before the lesson
In a perfect world, it would be possible for the teacher to see the classroom before the lesson, to take stock of the environment and all it can offer and to plan building the routine around the actual classroom. Is there any area without too many pieces of furniture which can be used for the movement games or for the start or the ending of the lesson? Is it possible to move the furniture to create a circle or are the desks to heavy for that and you will have to sit in rows as they do in their regular classes?
In a perfect world, it would also be possible to get the register of all the kids to figure out how many we are to expect and, last but not least, to talk to their class teacher to get to know them a bit before the lesson or, in a super-perfect-ideal-over-the-rainbow world to find out what they did in the previous academic year (if we are talking about year II and year III kids).
Alas. More often than not this is not going to be possible so I will base this lesson on the worst-case scenario: there is no chance to see the classroom, there is nobody who knows anything about the kids or the English they might or might not have had.
This is the worst-case scenario but it is not the end of the world, surely.
The overall structure of all these lessons will be the same but I will include some ideas for the year 1 and year 2/3 kids which might have had some English.
Entering the room
If the lesson takes place in a new classroom which you are entering together, line the kids up in front of the room. If they are entering with you or if they are already in the room, come in, say hello and do the roll call. It will help you remember their names and associate them with the place where they are sitting. It might be a good idea to write them all up on the board, in the order in which the kids are sitting. However, if there are more than eight or ten, this will take forever and will be counterproductive.
The official start of the lesson
It is great if this part of the lesson is marked in a special way.
You can:
ask the kids to close their eyes (please demo), count from 10 to 1 (or from 5 to 1) and say ‘Open your eyes’ and say and wave Hello to everyone.
ask the kids to stand up and do a bit of gymnastics (stand up, shake your arms, clap your hands, march (on the spot), dance, touch your hand, tummy, back, shake your friends’ hand, say hello), with the teacher demonstrating and participating, too.
clap once and ask the kids to clap once, clap twice and ask the kids to clap twice, clap three times and ask the kids to clap three time, say: Hello, kids say: Hello.
Whisper: Hello, have the kids repeat, then have them repeat: Hello Anka. Repeat a few times and then officially reply: hello everyone. Repeat with all the kids in the room:
Hello Piotrek (point at Piotrek) Hello everyone (says Piotrek)
Even if you don’t know or can’t remember the kids’ names, the students will help you. These types of activities are great because they mark the start of the real lesson and of communicating in English, they involve everyone in an easy way (clapping, touching, saying Hello) and there are a bit out of the ordinary hence fun.
Hello song
I would say it is a definite must, even in the very first lesson. First and foremost, it is something that the whole class can participate in, even if they don’t speak too much English because there will be gestures, rhythm and music involved. Second of all, it is great to start building the routine from the very first lesson and a routine or the lesson framework for primary school children must involve a song.
If possible, take your students to a safe corner (at the back or in the front of the room), go there yourself and call your students, one by one, to join you. Use their names. As soon as they get there, use one of the punctuation marks to signal the start of a new activity. It can be clapping, counting from 10 to 1 or just asking the kids (‘Are you ready?’ ‘Yes, we are’). This will help the kids navigate around the lesson and to get ready and to focus for whatever is to come next and it is especially useful in the beginng of the course. As the course progresses, it can be used less and less frequently because the kids develop the habit of tuning in.
Show the gestures for the song and go through a few dry runs, with you modelling and the kids repeating, in the correct order and in a random order. One of my greatest hits is Hello Song from Super Simple Songs. It is fast and cheerful and it includes 6 different, easy to mime emotions (if you need ideas for the gestures, have a look at the song video). There is an easier song, also by Super Simple Songs, Hello Hello, Can you clap your hands? This one includes some few verbs that will get the kids moving (clap, stomp, turn around).
After the presentation and the mini-rehersal, we listen to the song and try to take part as much as possible. It doesn’t matter if all your kids are not one amazingly coordinated choir. After all, it is the first time they hear the song. Things will get better in lesson 2, 3 and 15.
Both songs are accompanied by videos, of course, but I tend to skip those in the first few lessons, focusing instead on audio only, not to overload the kids as there are too many things in the first lesson anyway. Afterwards, we clap to thank each other and we sit down. Again, the teacher calls our students, one by one (or in twos in really big groups) to invite them to sit. This might take some time if the group is really big but it is the time well-invested (building the routine!) and it helps to avoid the chaos and the noise. As soon as the kids get back to their seats, use your punctuation mark again.
If there is no space that can be used as the dancefloor, these can be done while sitting or standing by the table, although then I would use the first song, the emotions can be easily demonstrated with everyone sitting at their tables.
New material: Class I
These kids will be brand new, straight out of the box, with no English whatsoever, although, of course, you might get a few that attended some classes in pre-school. For that reason, revision as the next stage of the lesson will not really work as there is nothing to revise.
In such a case there are a few options to go for
start introducing the colours because, more likely than not, this is going to be the first topic / unit in the coursebook. Another advantage is that even without any specific realia the kids will have plenty of colours on them and there will be plenty in the classroom and these can be used in a variety of games. There is no need to prepare any special flashcards either and a set of markers, coloured pencils, blocks or even pieces of coloured paper can be used instead.
rather than colours, go for pets of jungle animals for the first lesson. It will be necessary to prepare the cards here (or any kind of visuals) but the obvious advantage is the fact that animals are likeable, fun and at least some of the names will be familiar to kids and/or recognisable (cat, giraffe, zebra, lion) and the animals create lots of opportunities for a variety of resources: animals produce sounds (and can be used in a guessing game), animals move in a certain way (and can be mimed), animals have specific shapes and colours (and can be recognized in game ‘through the keyhole’).
Another good topic for the first lesson is school objects. The objects themselves are not as cute and fun as the jungle animals but these are definitely the things that we are going to be using in every lesson and that makes them worth investing in. Not to mention that they are already in the classroom and that each student will have a set and they can be used in a simple call out activity ‘show me your pencil’ etc. They can be also used for miming (with a bit of imagination) and for some guessing games, too. Most of them are small enough to be put in a Magic Bag and used for guessing. And through the keyhole can be used, too, with realia or with flashcards.
Regardless of which topic is chosen, one of more of the following activities can be used:
Introduction and drilling using a variety of voices (saying it with emotions, different volumes of pitch, pace etc)
Creating simple chants by organizing the cards on the floor / board and saying them in a rhythmical way ie
‘Yellow, yellow, blue. Yellow, yellow, blue. Red and green, red and green. Yellow, yellow, blue.’
‘Pencil, book and ruler. Pencil, book and ruler. School, pen, schoolbag, pen. Pencil, book and ruler.’
The cards can be put up around the room and with the teacher (or the kids) calling out single words, the group have to listen and to point at the tiger, zebra, lion and monkey.
Riddles: the simplest version of it is the teacher miming the words for the kids to guess or playing the audio for the kids to guess or drawing a part of the picture on the board for the kids to guess.
What’s my secret word? Kids, chorally in the first lesson, guess which word the teacher is holding. After a few rounds the kids can take over.
In the same way, a simple memory game can be played, too, either with the realia (ie markers or books of different colours) or with the flashcards displayed on the board or on the floor. Kids close their eyes, the teacher removes or covers one of the items, kids open their eyes and guess. It might happen that at least some of them will be answering in their L1 at this point and it is ok. Please praise them and provide the word in the target language.
Bearing in mind that this will be the kids’ first language lesson ever, five new words seems like a very good number for the first lesson.
New material: Class II and III
Essentially, all the activities mentioned above can be simply used with the older kids, too. Any of the topics will be a revision for kids and if the youngest of them can deal with that, so can the older ones. It might also be an interesting activity for the teacher to evaluate the abilities and skills of the kids against each other as, most likely, the year III kids will be able to participate more freely and in a bigger number of games mentioned above and with a bigger number of key words.
If the teacher is more adventurous it would be a good idea to involve the kids in an activity that will help them show off as regards the vocabulary (or structures) they have learnt so far and those that they remember. This can be done in the form of the alphabet game.
There are practically no resources necessary, apart from the alphabet, as a poster and small cards any picture scene, either a paper poster or one of the beautiful illustrations in the YLE Starters Picture Wordlist which can be displayed on the electronic whiteboard or printed and displayed on the noticeboard.
The teacher demonstrates by choosing one of the letters of the alphabet and calls out all the words in the picture begining with that letter. The kids join in, too.
The game can be played in teams, with the class divided into smaller groups, with each team working on one of the letters. It would be good to avoid scoring the kids as some of the letters are more friendly or generative and it would simply be unfair. It is also not necessary to introduce a lot of competition in the very first lesson. The teams can be awarded a point for completing the task, regardless of how many words they produce or remember. It might be also a good idea to remove all the unfriendly and rare letters from the set (ie x, v, w, y).
One more advantage of this game, especially for the first lesson, is that it can be played for as many rounds as there is time for. It can be stopped at any time.
Music and movement
Depending on the classroom, this stage of the lesson can be done in the back of the room or at the desks. Again, the kids are called out, and they join the teacher, one by one. Again, the punctuation mark is used to mark the start of a new stage.
It can take a form of a gym break (see above) or it can be another song. One of my favourites for the first lessons is ‘Head and shoulders’ or ‘Open Shut Them’, both for the same reason: they involve lots and lots of movement and are easy to mime and all the kids can be involved in taking part. As in the case of the first song, gestures go first, then the music and the song itself, also without any video.
Table time
Ideally, this element would be included in the lesson, too. In my primary groups I like to give them a chance to produce something, with class I or II to check whether they can write their names and in case of class I – how well they hold the pencil.
At the same time, it has to be something simple and perhaps the simple handprints aka autumnleaves might be a good choice here. This kind of an activity will only involve minimal resources (paper, pencils, crayons or coloured pencils), it does not take a long time and it can be made more or less complex ie only the handprint, the stem and the veins or the leaf, the veins and the colouring, the name written by the teacher, for class I students or the kids decorating their leaves in the way they choose and writing their own name. The leaves in class I can simply be displayed on the noticeboard at the end of the lesson, the older kids from class II and III can also be encouraged to describe their leaves and to compare (ie Sasha: My leaf is green) with the other kids raising hands if theirs are, too. The older kids’ leaves end up on the noticeboard (or the door or the wall), too.
There is one great activity perfect for this age and level that we used to on every first day of the summer camp: a folder, homemade and highly personalised. In class, the kids would get an A3 piece of paper and they would decorate it following teacher’s instructions (first write your name in big letters, draw your favourite fruit, draw your favourite drink, draw your favourite sport etc). After the lesson, the teacher would add another piece of A3 and staple each of these into an envelope. We used to keep those in class, on the shelf or on the window-sill and everything we produced during the sessions would be nicely collected in these folders at the end of each day. This activity takes a bit more time and might not be appropriate for all the context but it can also be used in its basic form: a personalised name poster.
At the end of the stage, the kids help up with cleaning up by putting away their pencils, crayons and handing the posters to the teacher. The teacher uses the punctuation mark again.
Goodbye
Since the kids will be still at their tables, it might be best to say goodbye just there. The teacher says ‘Thank you everyone’ and to all the kids individually. If the group is very big, it might be a good idea to do it super fast and in twos (Thank you, Masha and Sasha) but it is a nice touch and going over all the kids’ names, once more, really helps to remember them better)
I personally like to include a goodbye song also with primary, at least in the beginning of a new course to help create a framework for the lesson, for example Bye, bye, goodbye or See you later, alligator but later on, with the limited lesson time, we replace it the final game.
As regards homework, it might be a good idea to skip it during the first lesson. This element of the everyday routine can also be added later.
Instead of a coda
The list of the activities and the format of the lesson will depend on its length. If the lesson lasts 60 minutes, the teacher can use two, three or even four flashcards games and extend the leaf making. If the lesson is only 40 minutes’ long, it is better to focus on fewer activities, without rushing the kids. It might be a good idea to skip ‘the paper’ altogether, with no coursebook but also with no handouts or crafts, focusing on building the routine and interacting with kids in the target language. In that case, the leaf or the poster activity would be done in the lesson 2 of the course.
The same applies to stories, videos or online games. They are great resources and can be introduced later on in the course. The first lesson will be made of many new things anyway and it is better not to overload the children and to save some surprises for later.
As for the rules and the rewards’ charts, these are of course very important with a group of primary school kids but this also can wait until a bit later than the very first lesson. The lesson plan might be introduced from the lesson 2 as well.
There is one more element of the first class with primary that has not been included here but only because it is a very important one, it deserves its own post and this element are the parents. Regardless of whether we like it or not, the parents of our younger students will be in the classroom with us and it would be necessary to acknowledge their presence. A face-to-face meeting would be ideal but a note or a message in the electronic register or in the Whatsapp group will do to get you started. The parents might be coming from different background and have a different previous English learning experience, as students or as parents. That is why it is absolutely necessary to let them know how you are going to work with your students and their kids. More of that soon!
Here you can find some tried and tested activities for primary school kids (although perhaps not necessarily all of them for the very first lesson!)
If you are also about to start teaching your pre-primary, you will find some ideas here.
Since we are going through the quieter period of the year, there is more time for looking back and for reflection and this is how the idea for this mini-series of post came from. Just because we started to use those and each of these phrases or words was like a key that opened many, many doors in our communication and not only.
The one thing to teach your kids is ‘because‘…
…and the whole thing can* start in primary, and maybe even in pre-school. It is a powerful world that invites the kids to build a simple discourse and to go beyond one sentence or simple sentence production, even in the most everyday situations.
We start with extentending the answer to ‘How do you feel today?‘ which is a part of our class routine and the question which I ask and which the kids ask in every single lesson. As soon as they have a good number of adjectives to use in response (you can read about it here), I try to encourage them to elaborate on their answers, both modeling (I’m happy because it is sunny) and by inviting them to continue. ‘I’m happy.‘ ‘Because...’
Of course, the sentences the kids produce are quite simple, very simple, in fact, and sometimes partially in their L1 but with time, they are becoming more familiar with it and they are improving and, as a result, are able to say more and more and more. In English. Not to mention that as we go through the course, there are more and more situations in which we need because, for example to explain why we like Friday and not Monday, why we didn’t do the homework, why the kids in the pictures look happy or sad or why they did something in the story.
The same can be done with pre-schoolers, with certain adjustments to their age and the number of years that they have been studying. Thinking about my groups in the previous academic year, with the level 1 and the level 2 groups I was more focused on the full sentence production and it was too early to introduce any linkers. The level 3 children, however, were ready the unit ‘I’m scared’ (Playway to English, CUP) was a perfect opportunity to talk about the things we are scared of and to explain why. Or, more frequently, the things we are not scared of. ‘I am not scared of spiders. I like spiders because they are beautiful.’ and so on.
I often tell my students (especially those new ones, and yes, also the adult ones recently) that I will always want to know ‘Why?’ and that even if I forget to ask, they should always imagine this word written all across my forehead and answer it anyway. To help the kids in the everyday lesson and to make it easier on myself, I used the idea I got from Herbert Puchta, only mine was not any error correction technique and it stayed displayed proudly on the wall for a good few years. In the beginning, I really had to do a lot of pointing and waving at the word, later, the habit was developed and the kids (yes, as early as in year 1 of primary!) started to use the word without any reminders whatsoever. They were producing the language and lots of it!
My two favourite because-related moments from the classroom have been those:
when we talk about things, someone is telling us how they are and I, somehow, forget to ask ‘Why?‘ or I am just too slow with it, there is always a voice (or two or three) taking over and kindly suggesting ‘Because…‘, with this perfect rise in the intonation, the voice trailing off in an invitation to continue. I wonder where they got that from!
when we talk about pictures or we retell the story or we describe something that happened at school on the day and, by accident, I want to take over and move on and, in response, I get my own because back, in an interjection, and again, with the intonation perfectly matching the purpose (‘I have NOT finished yet‘) and I am thinking to myself: ‘Oh dear, I cannot shut them up!’ which is, by far, my favourite teacher’s complaint.
*) ‘Can’ or ‘must’?:-))
The one thing to teach your kids is…’I think’.
Initially, I wanted to have a pretty post, ‘one phrase per age group’ but I realised that I simply cannot NOT mention ‘I think’ and the impact it had on my primary school students.
Unlike the previous item, here I cannot even remember how it came about and how I first introduced it. It has always been in the air. I know that I use it a lot to slow the kids down and to signal to them not to rush through tasks (i.e. ‘Think and write’) or to encourage them when they are struggling (i.e. ‘Think about it’ when I know that they do know it and it is only necessary to rack through their brains). We had used it a lot in different stories (‘Elmer was thinking and thinking and then he had an idea!’) and a while ago we also introduced ‘Thinking time’ as an official preparation stage for projects and role-plays. Thinking has been with us, only it is not quite clear for how long.
For the reason, when we got to practise expressing the opinion in winter last year (around the middle of A1 / Movers), I did not even bother to check the meaning of it and the question ‘What do you think about it?’ and the answer ‘I think it is interesting / boring / exciting etc’, the adjectives were the main aim and the focus. For me, at least.
What my students took out of this lesson for the rest of the course (and life!) was the little ‘I think’, which is essentially only an introduction and which is slightly unnecessary even. An opinion can surely be expressed without it. ‘Maths is easy‘ expresses the same view as ‘I think Maths is easy.’ Or so one would think.
I noticed, in the lesson in which we used it consciously for the first time and in the lessons afterwards, last year and this year, that my students began to start adding ‘I think‘ everywhere. ‘I think it is beautiful’, ‘I think it is easy‘, ‘I think he is sad‘, ‘I think it is a cat’ ‘And I think it is a dog‘ and so on. ‘I think’ gave them an opportunity to personalise the message, to signal the autonomy of that message (since by making it subjective you kind of accept that other people will have or may have a different view) and, I suppose, by doing so, it made the message more adult and more serious. And they simply and visibly adored it. Maybe because they were only 7 or 8 or 9 at the time.
As I said, I don’t quite remember the start of that adventure and I am not quite sure when the good time to introduce really is. What I know, though, is that the next time I am starting the group, ‘I think’ will be on the list of things to think about.
The one thing to teach your teens is…’What do you think about it?’
There are many phrases that were shortlisted for this paragraph because of the difference they made to the way my teens interacted with the world in the English lesson, ‘I agree‘ and ‘I don’tagree‘ or ‘On the one hand…on the other hand‘ among them but the real deal-breaker was ‘What do you think about?‘
This phrase, especially with a special stress on ‘you’ (‘What do you think about it?’) has become the wonderful phrase that helped my teens really get engaged and communicate in a really interactive way, not only expressing their opinion, agreeing and disagreeing but also to boomerang the conversation properly by involving the other participant or participants. I mean, truth be told, I know that they did it mostly to avoid making too much effort and producing extensively and this line has become a fantastic and polite tool which they used to dodge the ball. Of course, they produced, too but I just had a lot of fun observing how by trying to be super clever they were involved in a conversation that would give them some high marks during the speaking part of the FCE exam.
The one thing to teach your adults is…’it depends‘.
Especially if your adults are shy, not naturally very talkative and a messy A2 level. Especially if they have already experienced some failures and disappoinment while learning Engllish and when they current progress is closely related to the promotion at work. Or the lack of. Especially if, due to all the factors mentioned above, they reply with single words (the teacher sighs) or when they just say, in their L1: ‘I don’t know what to say’ (the teacher sighs again).
‘It depends’ came to us by accident. It was not a part of any text, a listening task or a functional language phrases lesson. It was a part of the emergent lesson but because I take notes of that and send these back to the students, it stayed with us. And what joy!
I can say with all the confidence that my students, in this one (1) group have wholeheartedly adopted the phrase and made it theirs. First of all, it is this gold key that opens the discourse. You cannot just answer with ‘It depends’ and stop there. You have to continue and explain at least the two different ways at looking at the issue. Especially if your teacher is raising her eyebrows and nodding encouragingly. What’s more, I have noticed that they like using it consciously as a natural time-bying tool that gives them the benefit of a few precious seconds to come up with an idea and a way of formulating it in English. Oh, what a find, this phrase!
The one thing to teach your teachers to use and to remember about is…’but’
This one is here as a joke only. I don’t need to teach my teachers any English, of course, but, as a trainer, this is the one word that I would like them to remember to use whenever they consider the theory of child development and the methodology of working with young learners. Or even while going through the teacher’s book and adapting the activities. This little but powerful word is everything you need to be equipped with to ensure that they always keep thinking of all the exceptions to all the rules and that the most important point of reference are the people in the classroom, not some non-existent ideal students or typical five-year-olds and all the other YL cliches.
Me and one of my best friends, Roman B. No old dogs in this photo. Only the amazing ones (The photo: courtesy of Yulia. The doggo: courtesy of Jill)
Back to the future
It just happened: a dedicated YL teacher (and a teacher who spent the last ten years doing her best to stay away from teaching adults (minus the trainees!) all of a sudden found herself in the classroom with some serious corportate clinets and their Business English, General English, English for Finance and Banking, A2 – C1. Full time.
It has to be said out loud: that was not a direction that this teacher dreamed of or the developement that the teacher planned or solicited but, at the same time, there is absolutely no need to wring hands or shed tears over such a giggle of the Fate. After all, the teacher is an experienced one, with an oh-dear number of years in the classroom (and different types of classrooms, everywhere) so the teacher will be just fine. After all, teaching is teachings, the students are great, the fun is being had. All the details are here just to set the context.
The old dog aka the adult classroom through a YL teacher
This particular started with a most random thing. I don’t even remember what we were doing and with whom, but, suddenly, I caught myself thinking ‘Blin, even my kids can do THAT‘. There was no anger in it or desperation, only curiosity and bemusement. I started to analyse the details and bits and pieces of this THAT and the reasons for that. It started with a sigh but it got interesting very quickly.
Here is a new post and an attempt at looking at the adult EFL learners through the eyes spoilt by her young students.
One. Inhibitions
This is something that is almost non-existant in the YL classroom. Minus all these cases in which the kid have had a negative first experience with English, at school, with the tutors or parents or when they are naturally introvert and shy and they simply need more time to settle in the group and to feel comfortable enough to talk. Most commonly, the kids enter the room, eyes wide-open, ready to discover and to enjoy the world of the English language.
Then, there are adults, a completely different picture. Naturally, there are quite a few factors that can contribute such as a lower level, a long break in learning or using the language, some negative previous learning experience or studying in one group with colleagues from the same company or being a low-level speaker of English when you are already a top manager.
The result? Silence in the classroom.
I guess that is the silence that is the time they need to think about their answer, to choose the words, to gather the courage to let them out and, naturally, they get it. They do have the right to the freedom of silence. For me, the teacher, it is also an interesting exercise in patience. I realised that I have been spoilt with hands shooting up into the air and the opinions voiced almost instantly. Here, I am getting used to breathing more and waiting for the students to be ready.
I am beginning to think that building up the students’ confidence suddenly gets the priority among the lesson and the course aims as regards the adult learners of English. Everything else, the vocabulary, the structures and the skills development will follow. Hopefully.
Two. Teacher-oriented communication
On the one hand, the YL classes are definitely more teacher-centred than the adult classes. That is, to some extent, fully justified. Students, especially the younger ones, are in need of the teacher and the adult as the lesson leader. But only to some extent. I strongly believe that this should be one of the main aims of the course to create the conditions in which the students will be learning to interact with the teacher BUT also giving them a chance to learn to interact with each other. After all, whatever happens in the classroom is only a warm-up, only the preparation, only the training before the real life interaction. In which, most likely, the teacher is not going to take part. For that reason, the students should be given the tools and opportunities to talk to each other, to lead the activities, to take part in pair-work. There is no need to wait with it until they turn ten or fifteen. Some elements of that can be introduced even much earlier and pair-work is feasible in pre-school.
Somehow, it is not a given with the older students. Adults, either because they are more inhibited or because they see it as a sign of respect towards the teacher, they hold back, they wait, for the teacher to call their name out or for the teacher to at least signal that it is their turn to speak. I have realised that sometimes I have to specifically highlight that I am stepping out of the conversation, that the students, in pairs or as a whole group, have to take responsiblity for the interaction and that I will not be encouraging, keeping it up and, of course, leading it. We have been studying together for about three months now and I can already see some improvement in that area. Hooray to that!
Three. Communication strategies
Communication strategies is one of my true professional passions and that is why it was chosen for my first research within the MA programme. Inspired by Haenni Hoti, Heinzman and Mueller (2003) (or, rather ‘taken aback by the comments of’) that claimed that young learners use a very limited range of communication strategies, basically limiting those to translation and code-switching (aka using a combination of L1 and L2), based on the gut feeling from the classroom, I decided to check it out. And, to prove them wrong. Hopefully.
Although my research was a very small scale and low-key and by a beginner researcher, I found out enough evidence to get me even more interested in the topic. My little students proved to be already effective communicators who work hard and who have a good range of different techniques to get the message across such as all-purpose words, approximation, direct appeal for help, indirect appeal for help, self-repair, other-repair and mime. The range was much wider. Translation and code-switching were used, too, and they were the most frequent ones, however, they were not the only ones.
Then, there are the adults and guess what, these adults, ‘Come as you are’, before I get to work on them, they know only one communication strategy and that is ‘translation’. falling back into their L1, straightaway, whenever something is unclear, unknown and uncertain. I am not even sure why it is assumed that the learners (let alone the young ones) will use these strategies of their accord. I haven’t researched that properly, yet, but perhaps it has got nothing to do with the age of the student or, rather, not only with the age of the student, and more with the learning experience and the opportunities to be acquainted with and to develop these strategies.
The adult students (my adult students) struggled in that area and if they didn’t know, they would immediately switch to L1 and they would expect an answer. Working around that by delaying the translation, encouraging them to try something else or, also, providing both, the L2 only and the translation was quite a challenge and I know that some of them were surprised that I don’t just provide the required service aka translation, that I am trying something else. They had it written all over the face. I can’t say my job is done here, far from it but we are working on it. And it is a bit better now.
Four. Sharing ideas
Teacher beliefs are a slippery topic and most of the time we don’t even think about them. It was only last year (and somewhere by the end of it) when I realised why I am a teacher and what I want from my lessons.
Everything happened thanks to one Sasha who joined our group and who, despite the eight months spent with the rest of the team, in a very welcoming and friendly environment, despite the fact that she got on with everyone, Sasha still would keep quiet in class unless I asked her a question and unless I called out her name. I had never even thought about it and only then did I understand that I want to create such an atmosphere in the lesson in which my students feel free to talk because they have something to share with the rest of the group, not because they have to, not because the teacher made them, not because the teacher asked the question or because the teacher is testing them. They talk because they have something to say. And I want them to feel that they can. This is something that we have been working on from the very beginning.
It was one more thing that was ‘not so obvious’ for my adult students. They stalled. They do, still, sometimes. Again, it might be due to a whole range of factors, the natural shyness, the lack of confidence, the level of English, the relations in the workplace, if they come from the same company, or even the natural politeness. It is not a given that everyone will be speaking during the lesson time because speaking and developing the communicative skills is the reason why we come to class.
Five. All ideas are good ideas.
That is a sad fact: adulthood and reality kills creativity and imagination. Long gone are the days of fairy tales and fantasy travels with Frodo or magical battles with Harry. Well, in most cases. For that reason, if the question is about playing football and the student does not play football, the rest, dramatically, is silence…With kids silence never ever happens, and that is especially amazing, because, more often than not, we do things that have nothing or very little to do with the real life. All these menus for the monster cafe, all these school trips around the world, or to the moon or, our life as pirates…Silence is a rare event. Thank heavens.
This post is not to be read as a huge, one thousand word, complaint about my adult students. It is certainly not. I am doing a good job, I like them and we are making progress. I am just positively amazed that with my young learners, we have done SO MUCH (and to be honest, so much we have done by accident, unwillingly, joyfully, just for laughs) to enable the kids and to ensure that they are effective communicators.
I would like to think that my kids are not in danger of being scared to scared, inhibited, with a strong affective factor. This ship has sailed.
This line, so frequently used in my kids classes, started to appear in my adult classes.
See this is basically what happens when you send a YL teacher into the adult classroom. There is a lot of dedication, professionalism and lots of good lessons are happening. But the teacher has a one track mind and everything is somehow YL-related:-)
Bibliography
A. Haenni Hoti, S. Heinzmann and S. Mueller (2003), I can help you? Assessing speaking skills and interaction strategies of young learners, In: M. Nikolov (ed), The Age Factor and and Early Language Learning, De Grutyer.
The list below is the result of brainstorming I decided to include in the session devoted to working with coursebooks, as part of the Teaching YL Course I ran recently. We were trying hard to stay away from the word ‘realistic’. The whole activity was more like writing a letter to Santa and asking for a unicorn, knowing that, most likely, it is not going to happen, but…
A perfect coursebook for primary school children learning English includes (in an alphabetical order):
a set of simple boardgames that could be used with a variety of activities
cartoons series, to support the early literacy development
characters: a combination of real children communicating and fantasy heroes
Content and Language Integrated Learning activities
flashcards
games ideas and suggestions
agrammar book to support grammar practise
a presentation kit for teachers
an appropriate level of challenge throughout the each unit, each level and the entire course and ideas how to manipulate it for the more or less talented children
a literacy skills development curriculum, thorough and detailed
mini-flashcards, photocopiable
mixed ability groups ideas and suggestions
an online component
activities that help to set up pair-work
posters
preparation for Cambridge YLE
project ideas and suggestions
songs
stickers activities
stories
a student book
a teacher’s book
a variety of visuals: photographs, drawings, paintings
a video course for teachers
a workbook
It struck me that nobody mentioned testing or assessment. Either we don’t see it as a part of the coursebook and one of the course components or, perhaps, we just don’t care that much about testing
Then, of course, I went online, to have a look at what the major publishers have on offer and I found some nice surprises such as lots of time and effort invested in creating the online components but also some more traditional ones such as posters or home booklets (kind of graded, coursebook-related magazines for kids), wordcards or professional development programme, to name just a few.
I will take it as a good sign. Here is to even better coursebooks and to publishers listening to teacher.
Happy teaching!
P.S. Anything else to add to the list? What do you think?
Any drilling activity, any Q&A game, practice or drill, any Finish the sentence activity
Online or offline
Resources as usual: wordwall games, flashcards, posters, puppets, miro
Procedures
I will describe the procedures for one of the games that we played in the messy choir manner with the use of the wordwall flashcards. It was done with a group of level 3 pre-schoolers and we used it to supplement Playway 3 (Puchta, Gerngross, CUP) materials.
The kids were sitting on the carpet looking at the screen. The teacher showed the cards and asked ‘Are you scared of lions?’ and the kids would answer ‘I’m scared’ or ‘I’m not scared’. They would behave precisely like a messy choir – kind of doing the same thing but totally (and purposefully) out of sync. The main aim here is not harmony or timing but production.
The teacher was participating, too, to model and to encourage production.
Later on, in the following lessons, the individual students were asked to lead the game and ask the questions. Everyone was answering.
The key element here is the slow (but not too slow) pace, without rushing through, giving the kids the ample time to make a decision, to be ready to speak and to be heard.
The teacher sometimes had to pause and ask the individual students ‘And you, Sasha?’, but it was more necessary during the introductory stages of the whole approach, to signal to the kids that, despite that being a whole class activity, the teacher is listening and paying attention and curious what everyone has to say.
Why we like it
It is especially useful with the pre-school or primary classes, especially those bigger ones. It can be a nice alternative to choral drilling (which can become boring if used constantly) and to 1-1 exchanges (which have to be limited in larger groups as they will be taking a lot of the lesson time and they might have negative implications for classroom management as kids get bored waiting for their turn and they start looking for something to do)
It does take some time for the kids and for the teacher to get used to. The kids take time to realised that despite the fact that they speak all at once everyone will be heard and acknowledge and that it is not necessary to shout or speak loudly or that, indeed, they are allowed to take their time to answer. The teacher needs time to slow it down, too, to wait for everyone to produce the language, to call out those who might not have answered or wait for those who are taking their time. Like with anything, the task requires staging and scaffolding and time.
The shy students still get ‘the protection’ of the group. They are not in the spotlight but at the same time they are not left to their own devices.
It resembles a natural conversation.
It might lead to extended production ie in the activity described above some kids will only say ‘I’m scared’ or ‘I am not scared’, some others (and when ready) might want to expand that and provide a rationale ie ‘I like snakes. They are beautiful’.
I think the main benefit of this approach is that it contributes to the general atmosphere that I want to have in my classroom and that is: we talk when we have something to say, not only when the teacher asks a question.
A beautiful bird from the folk embroidery patterns, traditional in the area of Kashuby (the north of Poland)
Ingredients
A grammar structure, for us it was the Present Perfect sentences with yet and answers with already and yet. If you are interested in the lessons that it was used, you can find out more here. I will present it based on this particular structure, but, naturally, the game can be used with a variety of structures, too.
A group of kids
The whiteboard where to present the pattern and the options, the online whiteboard or just a slide in your presentation.
Procedure
Introduce the structure in anyway you find appropriate. This time I actually used the coursebook materials (Superminds 5, CUP, Puchta and Gerngross) and the idea of the uncle sailor who has visited some countries and who has not visited some other ones, not yet anyway. And it must have been this activity that inspired me to come up with the game)
There is a set of pictures of all the flags in the coursebook and we used these flags in a simple controlled, drill-like activity: the teacher calls out the name of one of the countries, the kids (and the teacher) react by producing true sentences about themselves, based on whether they have visited these countries or not yet. The slide for this activity looked more or less like that:
After a few rounds, the kids take over and call out the countries from the list. After a few more rounds, they are allowed to call out the countries not included in the coursebook as well as any other places, countries, cities and famous places ie Germany, Dubai, Saint Petersburg, the Tretyakov Gallery etc.
In the following lesson, we went one step further. And then more. After we checked the homework, I showed another slide, with four variations of things we have already eated, drunk, seen and the places we have been to that day. The slide looked more or less like that:
First, the teacher models the activity, with each of the versions, for example a banana, coffee, the bathroom, my friend and the students react, producing the relevant sentences. After that, the students take over and lead the activity.
All the other versions which may appear ie written a test are allowed.
Why we like it
The game is an opportunity to practise the target langauge in a controlled way with some (albeit not a lot) freer practice and some personalisation.
It is also an opportunity to drill the structure, to perfect the intonation and the sentence stress. It can be done chorally (the kids produce all the sentences together which is less risky and much safer, especially for the shy students) or taking turns. In real life, the activity was a mixture of both and I simply let it be, although, of course, the teacher can insist on either choral or individual production.
Very little preparation, if any. In the first part of the task, we were able to use the coursebook materials, the visuals (the flags) and the model sentences which were already on the page. The second part required the model sentences on display, at least in the beginning. This was the first time we played this game. I suppose these will be less necessary in the future.
There is a lot of potential for students’ involvement: first of all, they are personalising, sharing some details from their life. But of course, there is more to that – the students are also invited to lead the game and to suggest topics, places, food, things they are interested in. This also helps to make the activity memorable.
We did it as a whole class but it can be done in small groups or teams, too.
I created it for the lesson on the Present Perfect but I believe that it can be used with the other structures, with slight adaptations ie the Present Simple and the adverbs of frequency (T: watch the news, SS: I never watch the news, I always watch the news), the Past Simple structures (T: go to school, SS: I went to school, I didn’t go to school), or the adjectives to express opinions (T: Maths, SS: Maths is easy, Maths is difficult) etc.
My students are kids but I can see a lot of potential for this game with my adult beginners group, too.
The name! Of course I like it because I came up with it but I think it does reflect the principles of the game and it is its brief description: you echo but you adapt, too)
