Primary

Breathe! From the series: One-word advice from a trainer.

by

I am a trainer and an assistant director of studies. I spend a relatively large part of my professional life sitting in the back of classrooms, observing. I love it.

Not that anyone asked (hahaha, here is one clumsy blogger, at your service. After all, one should start with ‘Many of you have been asking me…’ or ‘I’ve received many questions about…’ I DID NOT) but if I were to give one piece of advice to all the YL and VYL teachers (or maybe not only to them), it would be this: BREATHE.

If I were given a chance to use more words, I would say:

‘Breathe! Pause! Calm down! We care about the efficient use of the lesson time but nobody is in a hurry, nobody is rushing to catch a train. There is time. You will be doing a great service to yourself and to your kids. I promise. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat!’

What do I mean? Here are five ideas.

Instructions

Going slow is absolutely crucial while giving instructions.

Not always but frequently enough our primary and pre-primary students will be doing something in class for the first time in their lives, without any metaphors whatsoever. It is quite likely that we, the teachers are the first ones to introduce a boardgame to them, a role-play, a game with a dice, a pair-work activity, a mingle, the game of pelmanism or a project. Our students might behave like they have never done it before because, very often, they really haven’t. Or they haven’t done it in a foreign language to practise vocabulary or grammar. It really IS their first time! Our classroom IS full of Gagarins, Columbuses or Cabrals (or whoever is your favourite First-Timer Metaphor).

That is why the instructions we give have to be not only graded and accompanied by gestures and (ideally) by modelling but also paced. With the teacher taking baby steps, pausing (and breathing) for all the students to catch up. Before anyone is allowed to take the next step forward.

Taking this one breath in-between the sentences will really make a huge difference. Let’s breathe then!

A listening task, as in: any listening task

Listening tasks for young learners are another example how pausing can make the world go round and in the right way, too. This tiny (and, really, the most insignificant) movement of the teacher’s finger pressing PAUSE on the CD player / the telephone / the computer can be the factor that decides about the activity becoming a success or a failure. Something that amazes me every single time I see it in action.

PAUSE and the kids have a chance to hear what they are supposed to hear, circle what they are supposed to circle and get ready for the next bit. PAUSE and the teacher has a real chance to monitor while in-task. PAUSE and if there have been any glitches, now is the time to fix things and to save the rest of the activity.

DON’T and they miss the first example because they are still not quite sure what they are doing. Then they miss the second example because the breaks between the pieces of the recording are too short and there are no numbers or beeps to help their focus. DON’T and, inevitably, they miss the third one, too, because they missed the previous two and everything becomes just a mesh of sounds. DON’T and you have no chance to monitor or to give feedback, Although, really, it is NOT a mini-test that the kids should pass. It is only an opportunity to develop their listening comprehension skills. It is ok to help, to support and to guide. Unless it is a real test.

So maybe it is a good idea, to pause and to breathe?

Questions and answers

Here is a question: Do you know how long is the average ‘wait time’ aka the time that elapses between the moment a teacher asks a question and the moment a student is expected to answer it?

Well, fasten your seatbelts because it is quite likely that what I am about to tell you will be a bit of a shock.

Apparently, we, teachers wait as long as long as 1.5 seconds at maximum and most of the time even less than that. One second and a half. Which means that we don’t really wait at all. Either student A knows that answer that we want to get and they provide it or they don’t (more likely) and we move on to student B or C until we find what we want or we just answer the question ourselves.

Extending that wait time can have a huge impact on students’ learning, engagement and, possibly, also on their confidence because they will be given a chance and time to rise and shine. And don’t worry. By extending here I mean ‘waiting three (3) seconds‘, not the whole eternity. 3 seconds aka one inhale – exhale set. Breathe!

Just look at the picture first

This particular issue is going to make an entry here for one and very specific reason: our coursebooks and all the materials for YL are full of great visual material which, sadly, is not given all the attention it deserves.

The first question that I often I ask my trainees during the post-observation feedback session while discussing visuals, photographs, cartoons and drawings is: Why not spend more time on talking about the picture? There are so many things that you can do with a picture! (If you are not sure what these are, have a look at the earlier posts, here and here).

Once we establish that these do indeed have a lot of potential that needs to be tapped into, the question arises of how to do it. And this is how we get back to breathing.

Whenever students are shown a new picture, one that they have never seen before, they need to be given time to take it in, with its narration and all the details. It is more important for the younger learners, since their cognitive skills are still developing but it can be beneficial for the learners of all age groups and levels. If you are in doubt, just have a look at how visuals are dealt with during the speaking part of different Cambridge exams, from Movers, through PET to CAE, although with the higher levels it is hidden under the lengthy instructions from the interlocutor during which the candidates are allowed to look at the photographs they are to describe.

Step 1: instructions, Step 2: one deep breath while the kids are getting ready. Thinking time is precious and it extends on all the activities, picture-related or not.

Classroom management

Last but not least, the main destroyer of the peaceful flow of a VYL and YL lesson makes an appearance, too – the unwanted behaviour, in all its shapes and sizes.

The option of ‘doing nothing’ is out of the question, it is the teacher’s job to react but perhaps it is worth considering whether the immediate reaction is the best solution. After all, there might be some situations in which everyone would benefit from the teacher taking a deep breath and using this second or two to calm down, to consider the options and to see the situation from the little people’s point of view? Maybe the situation was not that serious? Maybe it was just a silly joke? Maybe just an unfortunate mistake? Maybe the reaction does not need to involve the headmaster, the parents and the armoured infantry? At least in some cases. This tiny little pause might help establish that. The thinking time for the teacher. And then – back to action!

Happy teaching!

Crumbs # 17: New beginnings. Things to do before the lesson.

by

They are growing up. My students are no longer the little babies they were when we said our first ‘Hello!’. Six years is a long time, after all. And because they are changing, the lesson is changing, too. I like to think that, in a way, we are growing together.

An example? For five years and five months my students would wait for me outside of the classroom, in a neat line and we would check the homework and have a little chat, 1-1, with them slowly entering the classroom (more about it here). Well, not anymore. Two months ago we stopped. For good.

Because it turned out that, all of a sudden, the kids like to be in the classroom before the lesson. The choose their seats, take out their books, draw on the board or show each what they do in Maths classes at school. They also like to hide to surprise me (if I happen to leave to get some water or flashcards), walk around to inspect what I prepared for the day or just sit down and read they books.

And because over those six years we have managed to establish what’s OK and what’s not OK in terms of behaviour and because they have grown up and become more mature, I just let them do it and take over the classroom during the break. Plus, let’s be honest, they seem to be enjoying it a lot and I just don’t have the heart to forbid them and to continue to impose lining up.

Instead, I had an idea: how about a before-the-lesson activity for the early comers? It turned to be a very good idea indeed!

Ingredients

  • A whiteboard and a set of markers.
  • An activity that can be prepared on the board before the lesson for the students to work on potentially unsupervised (although in real life it differs, depending on whether I can be in the classroom during the break or not)
  • A set of easy instructions written on the board and an example
  • A longer break before the lesson – not obligatory but highly recommended
  • It might be necessary for the teacher to hint that there is something on the board that needs dealing with, at least when this part of the routine is introduced. It is quite likely that the kids would just not approach the board if there are any notes on it.
  • Ghost letters, focus: pronunciation. Students underline the silent letters in the words written on the board
  • Letter snake, focus: reading / writing. Students divide the chain (or a snake of letters) into words. Each snake can be made as challenging as necessary ie only the words themselves, the words with letters-distractors, the words in a sentence.
  • Letter stories, focus: reading/ writing. Students divide the very long chain (or a snake of letters) into words and sentences. I used a different colour for each line of the story and neat breaks between the lines, too, not to overwhelm the kids. Forgot to take a photo:-(
  • To rhyme or not to rhyme, focus: phonemic awareness. Students put the rhyming words into pairs. Again, colour-coding is supposed to be make is a bit more achievable and visually appealing.
  • Messed-up, focus: vocabulary revision. Students put the halves of words together.
  • Angrams (and Secret Messages): These are just silly anagrams which are a nice task, more necessary for the Starters students but fun for everyone. It can be a set of random words, connected by the topic (or not) or sentences, especially if there is an especially important message that the teacher needs to pass on to the students. The message below appeared on the board before the second lesson with the mock Movers test, in an attempt to praise the kids and to motivate them. It worked!

Why we like it

  • Those who come early can wait for the lesson doing something in English.
  • They provide additional practice and revision in different areas and skills: reading, writing, vocabulary, pronunciation
  • Different kids come early on different days so they get to work in different pairs and teams which seems to strengthen the sense of community in the group
  • It seems to have become ‘fashionable’ to arrive early for class (not that it has even been a problem) but it is obvious that they have already developed the habit of walking in and checking what’s on the board
  • The teacher is applying all her creative powers to come up with more and more pre-lesson activities

Happy teaching!

Bête-noire aka my least favourite conversations.

by

Let me introduce you, dear readers. This is my Bête-Noire, a tiny little bundle of unhappiness.

View Post

Most of the time, it is fast asleep, lying peacefully somewhere in the attics of my heart, covered in dust bunnies. Until, all of a sudden, it is rudely awaken because I find myself in the middle of one of the following conversations…

And that’s not everything. There’s more, lots more. Sometimes there are no (silly) questions but what happens is a rather intensive listening / lip watching event, in order to evaluate my presumably low level of proficiency in English or to detect some serious issues with pronunciation which, potentially at least, could justify the VYL-ness or YL-ness of me.

Why? Who knows.

The funniest thing is that, usually, it is not the parents, the students themselves, the HR or the admin of the schools but our own EFL nation, the fellow teachers, the colleagues who initiate these threads in the conversation. And it is not even the trolling on the social media or remarks whispered behind one’s back, no! More often than not, these are the things that people just throw right into your face…They have just met you, you have just been introduced, they don’t know a single thing about you, apart from ‘Anka, I teach VYL and YL‘ and yet, here we go…

Although, really, it would be very easy to turn the tables and start asking questions such as those ‘What?! You are NOT teaching YL?’ or ‘So you only teach (insert any non-YL area of ELF)? Doesn’t it get extremely boring and repetitive?‘

Only of course, I would not do any such thing. Because it is rude and/or unnecessary…And, no, I do not want everyone to be passionate about teaching children. We all have our own preferences and areas of expertise, things that we like and things that we hate, things that we are amazing at and things we’d rather not do.

Guess what? People choose to teach kids.

It is 2021. Out there, in the big, wide world, there are fully-educated, native speakers or non-native speakers teachers of English, male and female, mums and non-mums, private language school teachers and state school teachers who choose to focus on and to specialise in teaching English to children.

Because it is… more interesting, exciting, creative, inspiring, rewarding, fun…Despite the fact that ‘you can’t really have a conversation with them‘ or despite the fact that ‘you can’t ever teach Present Perfect Continuous Passive‘.

Even as I type these words, I can see a long list of names, my friends, colleagues, mentors, trainees who I have had a chance to meet and to work with, people who are amazing professionals, able to work with any level and any age group but who have found their true calling in working with the youngest of the EFL learners.

Many of them have already build their professional portfolio and, on the way, have grown a thicker skin. Comments and questions, as those quoted above, annoying as they are, will not really cause much damage to the system. ‘Sticks and stones can break my bones...’and all that. These teachers will be able to come unscathed by casually mentioning the years in the classroom, the feedback from their students or parents or maybe also a DELTA, an MA degree, Cambridge exams passed, IELTS bands received, publications, conference presentations and what not. Thus signalling that there are some alternative conversations to be had. With some alternative interlocutors, perhaps.

These experienced teachers I am not concerned about. They are and they will be fine. More than fine, in fact.

What worries me is that somewhere out there, there are novice YL teachers or newly-qualified teachers or, indeed, some would-be teachers, having been exposed to this kind of narrow-mindedness, will get into thinking that an English teacher first of all has to choose only one area of specialism and that a choice between ‘a teacher of English to adults/exams/IELTS/Business’ and ‘a teacher of English to YL’ is also a choice between qualifications, professionalism, respect and the lack of them. Which it is not.

Dear colleagues, dear amazing VYL and YL teachers! Thank you for being in the world! Thank you for your enthusiasm, dedication, ideas, creativity and energy. Thank you for caring.

And don’t forget – you rock!

Happy teaching!

P.S. What a rant, hey?:-) If you want to read some more positive notes on being a VYL teacher, check out this post on the hidden perks of working with the little people.

‘Dear Sasha’ or About journaling with YLs

by
created with Miro

It is the middle of one heavy-duty reading for the theoretical background for my first classroom research. I am already a bit tired because it takes time for a rookie scholar (if we want to use big words, if not – just a humble MA student). The eyes are struggling, the brain is struggling, even the spine is struggling because it’s been quite a few articles on the Zone of Proximal Development since the day broke. And, sadly, not all of them exciting. Alas.

But then, somehow, I opened a piece by H. Nassaji and A.Cummings from a few years back *) and, all of a sudden, I was wide awake and excited!

Why? The article is an account of a small-scale but very interesting research based on the dialogue journals that a primary school teacher set up for one of her young students – a 6-year-old boy from an immigrant family who already spoke English at the point of their arrival in Canada but he still struggled in comparison with his peers at school. The journals were a supplementary homework task and their main aim was an opportunity to develop the child’s literacy skills, catered to his immediate needs. The article is fascinating account of the nature of the Zone of Proximal Development and how it was changing in relation to the child developing langauge skills. Highly recommened!

This is how my researcher’s brain reacted. My teacher’s brain only sighed ‘I WANT ONE OF THOSE!’

And I got one. It’s been three years now and this is one of my favourite teaching projects. This is how we do it.

Ingredients

The main aim of this project is the development of young learners’ literacy skills, reading and writing. I normally start this project with my Starters students (that is the children who have finished the YLE Starters level and are about to start preparing for Movers, or, in other words, are at the start of the A1 level). The reasoning behind that timing is the fact that, most of the time, children can deal with simple tests, write single words or simple sentences within a specific structure (from among those that they are familiar with such as I like, I’ve got, I can) but cannot be considered to be fluent readers or independent writers. Not yet, anyway, but keeping the journal is definitely going to help them become these.

The journals are kept in simple notebooks which I buy for my students. I do not really introduce the idea to the students, apart from a short note, in the kids’ L1, glued into the notebook in which the journal introduces itself. It goes, more or less, like that: Hello! I am your new project – a journal! Please open me, read the notes from Anka and, if you want, write something and bring it back when you are ready! Anka will read it and write something to you!

This time round, since we are all on whatsapp, it was also followed-up by a note to parents which explained in more detail what it is and how I would like to run it.

In each notebook, on the first page, there was the first entry, from me. All of them consisted of only a few lines and said:

Hello student!

How are you? What’s your favourite subject / food / sport / colour / toy?

Write to me!

Anka

Procedures

Everything is super simple and straightforward: I give out notebooks, kids take them home, read, reply and bring them back. Then I take them home, read their notes and reply. Afterwards, I take photos of all the entries to keep the record, to be able to reflect on their progress and to save all the data. After all, travelling notebooks are in a grave danger of getting lost in-between the school and the house.

I do not correct any mistakes in the notebooks themselves, not to discourage the kids and not to destroy their entries with my scribbles. Instead, I focus on the delayed error correction and on the extensive input and additional practice based on the mistakes I spot.

It is very important to highlight that I really do not want the journals to become an additonal homework task. The kids are supposed to take part voluntarily and as frequently as they are ready to. In our everyday lesson procedures, whenever we check our regular homework, I also ask ‘Have you got the addional homework?’. I do not keep track of who brought what and when. There are no marks or points involved.

That means that each child is in charge of the journal and of how involved they want to be, they can write a little or a lot, they can write every week or every two weeks, they can draw or not. And, last but not least, they can opt out of being involved altogether.

Reflection

The journals are an amazing opportunity for the kids to develop literacy skills outside of the classroom. Each entry means additional opportunity to read a bit and to write a bit.

All of the entries are highly personalised and unique. The conversations that started from the same ‘What’s your favourite…?’ have taken different routes and turned into conversations about hobbies, families, books, food, sports and pets. Some of them are accompanied by drawings, some of them turned into scrapbooks that both the teacher and the student contribute to. What is more, although there is some scaffolding (ie the questions asked by the teacher), the students have a lot of freedom as regards the topic, the vocabulary and the structures that they want and will use.

They are perfectly suited to the needs of a mixed ability group. I have students who take time to read and to plan what they want to write and later to produce an entry for two pages. I have students who write only one sentence answer and their own question. I had students in the past from whom, at one point, it was easy to supplement the text with simple drawings in order to limit the number of words that they had to write but I was and I am extremely grateful and excited about any, even the smallest contribution.

Regardless of the volume of the text, it is obvious that the kids also learn from the experience as sometimes they write about the topics that are not included in our course curriculum, such as some unusual hobbies, less common although useful verbs etc, and this makes them look up the words in dictionaries which proves that the project also works towards expanding their vocabulary.

What is more, it has been obvious from the very beginning (with different groups) that the students really do enjoy taking part in this project to the point that at one point it even interrupted our classroom routine. As soon as I would give out the journals back to their owners, the kids would grab them, open them and start reading, completely engrossed in it and not paying attention to what was happening in the classroom. Did it upset me? Of course not! I know the feeling – when the book that you are reading is so interesting and so good that you don’t want to put it away. Only this time, it was not a book but our journal and our conversations. I was happy. But I had play with the routine a little bit – on some days I check the homework at the end of the lesson and on some days, we check the homework in two stages, first the homework for all and the journals at the end of the lesson only, depending on the day.

One more lesson learnt is that Kids Can! I am all for challenging the students and hoovering on the outskirts of the ZPD, stretching it gently and carefully but stretching it nonetheless, but since I started this project I have been surprised, time after time. For me, for a long time the main indicator of the students’ writing skills has been the YLE Cambridge tasks and writing assessment scales. While I still consider these to be relevant and useful, thanks to this experience, I was able to see that children, even at the age of 7 and on the level of A1 are capable of a lot more. If given a chance to produce and if the conditions are perfect.

Sample aka a few quotes

‘I’m happy because big holidays.’

‘My favourite food is pasta. I don’t like pasta’

‘My favourite toy is Lego. I like making cars, houses from Lego. I like teddy bears, too. What’s your hobby?’

‘I like to draw magic animals.’

‘I can cook, a little.’

‘I have got many, many, many toys.’

‘I love sharks because they are big and interesting’.

‘My favourite city is Moscow because Moscow is very good and has a lot of big houses.’

The beginning of a beautiful adventure

As I have mentioned above, I have been journaling for three years now, with groups and with individual students, primary and a bit older, too. It has been so successful that I started to use journals in the other areas of teaching and teacher training. More on that soon!

What about the students who don’t want to take part? Nothing. It is their choice and I have respect it. After all, I am this girl who has kept journals since since she was 13 (yes, there are still a few notebooks in my parents’ house, filled up with words, sketches and memories) but not everyone might like writing. Instead, I will encourage, I will praise and I will be completely over the moon when a journal comes back but that’s it. And I will be happy when they do their regular homework and I will absolutely melt when a five-year-old sister of my student also attempts a letter, inspired by our exchanges.

So, how about a journal for your students?

My youth in journals)

Happy teaching!

*) H. Nassaji and A. Cummings (2000), What’s in a ZPD? A case of a young ESL student and teacher interacting through dialogue journals, Language Teaching Research, 4 (2), p. 95 – 121.

A Brand New Class. Volume 2: Primary

by

September is upon us. It is a joyful month, what with all the new books, freshly sharpened pencils, markers that have not lost 50% of the caps yet, storybooks and flashcards that are still as God intended (in order!) and all the new adventures because ‘The kids are back!!!!’. At the same time, my favourite tune of the month is …Green Day and when they sing ‘Wake me up when September ends…’ Every single year. And this year more than ever.

Until we have all survived yet another autumn rollercoaster, spiced-up by the pandemic-related uncertainty, here is a tiny little something: activities for the first lesson of the course, today something for teenagers: 5 ‘sandwich fillers’ and 5 activities in their own right.

All of them are and have been my favourite start-of-the-course activities but they can be adapted to different topics and used throughout the year.

Most of them require only the basic resources and little preparation.

Some, although admittedly not all, will also work in our online classrooms.

None of them are how-did-you-spend-your-summer-themed because I never do it in my first lessons (and definitely won’t do this year since a) we did spend the summer together studying English and b) other than that we were stuck at home or at the dacha, growing cucumbers and carrots and feeding birds…) but they can be made so, if needs be.

You can find them HERE.

And if you also teach teenagers, you might find these useful, too!

Happy New Academic Year!

Happy teaching!