Teenagers

Crumbs #29 How do you feel today? The alternatives

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From the series: The Beautiful Life

Ingredients

  • None, almost. In some cases, it might be necessary to write some of the ideas on the board, to serve as an inspiration. See procedures

Procedures

  • Students work in pairs. They share their ideas. If there is time, the students can change partners and repeat the activity. To round up, students share some of the information they have found out about.
  • This stage is always present, in each lesson, and it takes about 10 minutes. We keep the same variant for about a month and then we choose a new one.

All the variants (so far)

  • Verbs: the teacher writes on the board all the basic verbs in the past tense: I went to, I saw, I ate, I drank, I talked to…about…, I watched, I played, I bought, I wrote, I didn’t…The kids choose 5 and they build simple sentences about their day, week or weekend. I like to start it with my students even before we officially cover the Past Tense (as soon as they are ready to differentiate between the present / the past form of the verbs) and it really does help the kids to practise and to remember the verb forms.
  • Did you go…: a variation of the activity described above. The teacher puts the question form and the short answers on the board. The kids work in pairs and ask each other questions. The student who provides answers uses ‘I did’ and ‘I didn’t’ but they are also requested to give a brief explanation (because…)
  • Tell me about your day: the teacher writes the name of the activity and a list of topics which can be also elicited from the students. The regular set might include: the weather, the school, the teachers, my best friend, lunch, getting around, marks, tests, pets, brothers and sisters, homework etc. The students work in pairs and they have to choose three topics to talk about. They take turns to share stories about their day and they follow-up each story with a question.
  • The B-words: this one is a slight variation of the above, only here the teacher writes a selection of words starting with a certain letter as the list for the students to choose from and to be inspired by. Some of the words might be completely random but they also encourage the kids to produce the language. Later on, the students can choose the letter of the day and then can also help make the list of the words, too.
  • This is how I felt today: in this variation the teacher puts up the words to describe emotions and feelings. The list can be a simple one (happy, sad, angry, sleepy, hungry, tired, bored) and then it can be extended to include more interesting ones, too (confused, excited, chatty, exhausted). Again, the students choose 3 or 5 of them to describe their day.
  • Superheroes: this time the list on the board is made of names of superheroes, famous people as well as characters from books and films, for example Superman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, Chebourashka, Winnie-the-Pooh, Santa etc. The students are supposed to think of their day from the point of view of these characters and describe it talking about how they felt. ‘I felt like Superman because I got three good marks today’*)
  • The superlatives: the teacher writes on the board a list of superlatives (the best, the worst, the funniest, the tasties, the most difficult, the easiest). The students choose 3 or 5 of them and use them to describe their day, for example: The best thing was that I had only three lessons etc.

Why we like it

  • A stage of that kind is absolutely necessary as the time for the students to settle in
  • This is also when they learn how to communicate without any preparation and outside of any set-up frameworks since each day might be different and each day may involve a different set of verbs and nouns
  • At the same time, it is an opportunity to practice the past tenses or the perfect tenses as for many of the students, many events repeat themselves (going to school, writing tests, having a good day or a bad day etc)
  • It is a fantasic opportunity for the group to bond, to share the great things that happened during the day or to vent about all the disasters that they had to deal with, the tests, the teachers, the piles of homework

To be continued. Soon. We are quite likely to get very bored with what we are doing at the moment…

Happy teaching!

*) My favourite so far! It is amazing how my students come up with their own metaphors and associations, both the teenage group and the kids. Here are a few quotes: ‘I felt like Chebourashka because I was a bit confused’, ‘I feel like Robinson Cruzoe because I am locked up at home now’, ‘I feel like Masha from Masha and Medved because I am a bit crazy today’, ‘I felt like Santa because it was my friend’s birthday and I had a present for him’, ‘I feel like Superman because I did all my homework really fast’…

Crumbs #23 OR 5 ways of using video in class

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These are not all the activities that you can do with a video, these might not be the best activities for your groups. These are just some approaches that we like. Maybe you will find them useful.

Prediction

Procedure: The teacher introduces the topic of the video and gives the students a set of key words that appear in the video. The students discuss why these words might appear in the video and why they might be important. After a whole class feedback, the class watch the video to check whether they predictions were correct. As a follow-up, the students discuss the most (or the least) surprising / unusual / weird facts they have found out about.

Example: We used this video to accompany a reading on extreme adventures and survival in which making a snow cave helped the people survive. We watched a real tutorial on making a snow cave and the key words we started with were: a candle, the letter T, the stick, a saw, the flat ceiling.

Back to the board

Procedure: The teacher divides the group into pairs, one student in each pair sits facing the TV, the other one sits with their back to the screen. the teacher plays the video, students work in pairs and they retell each other what is happening on the screen. Depending on the video, the students can watch the video with the sound on or with the sound muted. After a while, the students change seats and continue watching. Finally, they talk together and answer some questions related to the video. Usually it is a mix of questions, some of which check comprehension and some which help the students see the big picture or express opinion.

Example: We did this kind of an activity while discussing sports and unusual sports. The students watched the muted video on extreme extreme ironing, in two halves, about 60 seconds each and afterwards answered the following questions: What do you think is the name of this sport? How do you think Phil Shaw came up with the idea? What can be easy and difficult about this sport? Would you like to try? Which was the strangest place in which this sport was done? In the end, we watched it together, with the sound on and we compared ideas.

Pause and talk

Procedure: This is a great activity for the videos that consist of short blocks or include a set of examples of a certain item. The teacher writes the key question on the board, usually only one, and plays the video. The students watch a short clip. The teacher pauses the video and students discuss what they have just seen by answering the question. The biggest advantage of this approach is that the teacher is in charge as regards the duration, the activity can be stopped after only three items or the video can be played until the very end. As a follow-up, the students choose their favourite / their least favourite item and justify their choices. As in all of the other activities, there is also an option of the students changing partners and sharing their ideas with someone else in the group.

Example: While discussing food, we watched the video about school lunches around the world, we watched it bit by bit (after each item) and the students had to answer the following question ‘Would you like to try it? Why?’. Actually, this particular lesson included the video because we followed up with a video on American kids trying Russian food and we paused right after the food was introduced and we try to predict if the kids are going to like it or not.

Read my lips

Procedure: It is used with the video with a very clear narrative that can be interpreted without the audio version as the students watch it muted. The teacher can start with the title of the film and ask the students to predict what they think it is about. Afterwards, the students watch the film and try to figure out what is happening, who the characters are, how they are feeling. The teacher can ask them to take notes while they are watching. Afterwards, students compare their notes in pairs or in groups of three. The teacher can also ask them about the main events or to try to connect the clip to the title of the film. Afterwards, the students watch the video again and as a group discuss their guesses. The teacher clarifies the main points, without going into too many details. The final activity is predicting what happens next.

Example: One of my top ten for this kind of an approach is a video like this excerpt from Big Fish, or actually a set of clips from the same film, for example this one here or this one here. In this one case, we did not really talk about the title of the film. After watching the film, the students were discussing what they saw but I also asked them to think about the following questions: Who was the big man? Why did he look scruffy? Why did the boy throw a stone at him? Why did the boy reach out a hand and closed the eyes? Why did they shake hands in the end?

After we finished watching and discussing, we also looked at the quote from the clip ‘You are a big man. You should be in a big city.’ and we talked about what it might mean and whether it is true.

Categorise

Procedure: The students are given a list of all the items that are shown in the video ie some extreme sports, some unusual holiday destinations, exotic animals etc. The students watch the video and they take notes about all the items, ie putting (+) and (-) next to those that they like or grading them from 1 – 5, depending on how interesting they are. After watching the video, they make their own list, organising all the items from the most to the least interesting one or dividing them into categories (like – don’t like, useful – not useful, interesting – boring) and so on. They work in pairs or small teams and compare and explain their decisions.

Example: This video was used in a lesson on technology as it presents the list of 10 Coolest Gadges. Some of the gadgets in the video have unusual names so we started with looking at these, trying to figure out what these might be. We actually divided the video into two and we discussed the first five gadgets and then, after the second half, the other five and then all ten, to round up. The students were choosing the most interesting gadgets that they might want to buy and those that they would not really even consider. In the end, we choose the most and the least popular gadget as a group.

None of the videos I use as examples were graded or created with the EFL /ESL learners so they can be considered authentic materials. I found all of them on youtube while looking for videos that would match the topic we were working on. I did not introduce any vocabulary, focusing rather on listening (or watching) for gist and general understanding, rather than on any specific details. Unless, of course, the students had any questions.

If you want to find out more about using authentic materials, have a look at some of the many resources online such as these post here: how to choose and adapt them, here from the Britsh Council, and here.

I have also found out a few posts on using video in class. If you are interested, you can find them here and here and this one here, although it has a wider scope and does not really focus on videos in the EFL/ESL classroom.

Happy teaching!

Teaching teens. EFL metaphors #1

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Vintage poster – Air France, São Paulo, Brasil – Galerie 1 2 3 (1976)

Metaphors in EFL? What? Why? How?

Using metaphors in teacher training is not a new concept. I found out about it thanks to Thomas S.C. Farrell while doing the research for my MA dissertation two years ago. In his ‘Novice Language Teachers: Insights And Perspectives For the First Year’ published in 2008, he included a great article by Steva Mann (all the details below) devoted to teachers ‘making sense’ of the experiences of their first year in the classroom specifically through metaphors.

I do recommend reading the whole article, of course, but just to give you a taste and to show you why it has been kind of a breakthrough for me, here are a few quotes.

Mann writes ‘Metaphors play an instrumental role in using a familiar image to explore more complex concepts and meanings’ (2008: 11) and they can be ‘consciously employed by individuals for reflective purposes’ (2008:12). A bit further on he also highlights the fact that ‘metaphorical exploration may be particularly useful for first year teachers in attempting to come to terms with the complex nature of teacher knowledge and its relationship with experience’ (2008:12). I found this quote especially interesting although I think it is true about any teacher that becomes a novice in a field (ie an experienced teacher taking the first steps in the area of exam preparation, EAP or early years) or, even more broadly, any teacher learning new things and trying to apply them in practice.

Anyway, I got inspired. First of all, I quickly added the metaphor question to my MA survey and I started to experiment with using the metaphor in my everyday teaching and teacher training, for example a few weeks ago, while running the session on teenagers as part of the IH CYLT course at our school. Here is now we did it.

Teaching teenagers in metaphors

We started with a game of hangman in which the group had to guess one of my own metaphors for what teaching teenagers is like and that is: Growing Cactuses, mainly because it is not as straightforward, pretty and easy as growing violets, tulips or even roses, but it is equally rewarding and fun. If you know how to do it, of course. If you are interested about it or if you are just starting to teach teens, you can read more about it here.

If you are here, it must be either because you already work with teenagers and you already have your own view of the teenage classroom. Or you might be a novice teenagers teacher who is about to enter this classroom and you are preparing, mostly because you have heard ‘things’.

One way or another, you are ready for the exercise that I prepared for the activity that we did with my trainees later in the session. Since all of these metaphors and visuals are open to interpretation (just look at the two different images I have found for ‘writing a novel’) and prone to be influenced by the personal experiences (which is the best thing about the metaphors, admittedly), instead of me just analysing all the metaphors in detail and telling you what to think, first I would like you to read what my trainees have created and answer these questions:

  • Why do you think the teachers expressed their ideas in such a way? What kind of classroom experiences have led to that?
  • Were your experiences the same? Do you agree?

Here are the metaphors, in no particular order. I have decided to combine the words with the images and these come either from my trainees themselves or from the obliging clipart…

Teaching teenagers is…

…writing a novel

…per aspera ad astra aka ‘Through hardships to the stars’

…touching a melting ice-cream

…playing the lead role in every play

…riding a roller-coaster

…breaking stereotypes

…about mood swings

…keeping a heart on your sleeve

…a role-play

…about the strength of materials

…working with/through moods, feelings, hormones

Just a few words…

Just as the visuals do it, the metaphor invites the audience, students, trainees or readers, to personalise the reality and to share opinions and views and, by doing so, it offers a unique opportunity to look at an item in a multitude of ways. The horizon widens straight away.

Some of the interpretations might feel like that your own thoughts expressed by someone else, something that might have been on your mind, although they were never properly verbalised. Sometimes, some of them might be contradictory to all of your beliefs, they are still valuable because they might help you understand the basis for the beliefs we hold.

It is funny that even the same set of metaphors that we put together and mine interpretation of them change, from day to day. During the session, I got really drawn to ‘writing the novel’ and ‘touching the melting ice-cream’, because these two were the most unexpected ones although they did strike a chord with what I think about working with teens. Right now, while I am typing up these words, about three weeks later, I am most drawn to ‘breaking stereotypes’ and to ‘strength of material’, mostly because of the image that popped up, which reminded me that strength is at the same time about being fragile and that is what you find out while teaching teens, that what you see is not always what really and that is a good thing to be taking with you into the classroom. As is remembering that the most important thing is to remember that we teach not some imaginary age group but a very specific Sasha, Kasia, Pedro, Pablo, Idoia, Carolina, Rita and Luis, who might or might not match the list of dos, don’ts, ares and aren’ts, likes and don’t likes of ‘a typical teenage group’.

Instead of a coda

Big thanks to all my trainees: Anna, Nico, Hanif, Olga, Oxana, Padraig, Olga, Padraig, Polina as well as Daniel and Joe, for all the amazing ideas in this session and the permission to use them here.

If you want to read more about teaching ‘the almost adults’, here you can find some bits of theory and of the activities that worked well with my groups.

And if you liked this post and you would like to add your own metaphor to the list, please comment in the box below. We will all have some more food for thought!

The original ‘growing cactuses’ metaphor

This is how this post becomes the first one in a mini-series devoted to metaphors in the classroom. The next one, almost ready, will be devoted to teachers taking their first steps in the VYL world. Coming soon!

P.S. Vintage posters from around the world will be accompanying this series, too because that is my most recent love and a great metaphor for a metaphor…

Happy teaching!

Bibliography

T.S.C. Farrell (ed), 2008, Novice Language Teachers: Insights And Perpectives For the First Year, Equinox Publishing: London.

S. Mann (2008), Teacher’s use of metaphor in making sense of the first year of teaching, In: Farrell (2008), pp. 11 – 28.

Polish Air Lines LOT . Srokowski Jerzy . promotion advertising poster . year 2018 . Poster.pl Gallery (polishpostergallery.com)

Crumbs #22 The Big Story Competition

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When you suddenly notice how the everyday is beautiful. The metro station Universitet

Ingredients

  • A group of teenagers or pre-teens
  • Paper and pen
  • The theme of the story. We are preparing for the Cambridge exams and so we used pictures and the exam format of the story writing in KET (three pictures) and the exam format of the story writing in PET (the opening or the final sentence).

Procedures

  • We start with some warming-up activities and they depend mostly on the coursebook and the curriculum but they all they have one thing in common – they help the kids get ready and get in the mode for the proper writing task.
  • Some of the potential exercises include: talking about the story, generating vocabulary to support the weaker students or less creative students, see the post here (especially Sstep 2: Two crazy words) or the following two
  • One-line stories
  • Make it better: students start with a set of simple sentences and work in pairs or individually, trying to develop it in a few rounds. The students can either work on the same handout using a set of colourful pens (a different colour for each round) or a few copies of the same handout. It can be followed up with a reading session and choosing the most interesting sentences of all but it is not quite necessary to include one more competitive element. The number of rounds can be limited or extended, depending on the age and level of the students.
  • We include ‘The Thinking Time‘ to give the students a chance to imagine their story and make the necessary decisions. These are the questions which they might be asked to consider:
  • Everyone can choose their own pen name, too.
  • I make it more formal by announing that we are going to choose the best story and that I am going to ask my colleagues to help me.
  • The students start writing, the teacher monitors and I help out with vocabulary when necessary.
  • There is not one time slot or the number of words required. We are practising in the exam format but without too many limitations at this point.
  • Afterwards, we type the stories up and share them with our BKC teachers who vote for the one they like best. I don’t correct any mistakes at this point.
  • I prepare diplomas of participation for all the students and one more for the winner and there is a reward (food as this is the one hobby that we all share, me and the students). We have a ceremony that involves a speech from the teacher, applause for everyone and for the winner and eating because they all share the reward. Our winner is the master of ceremonies of the day.
  • The final stage is the error correction. In the original handwritten copies I underline a few mistakes that the kids correct later on. So far, these have been mostly in the area of spelling, tenses or the general style.

Why we like

  • The students get really involved in the writing process and looking at how they write away, it is really difficult to believe that teenagers don’t like writing, that they are not motivated or that they are not creative at all.
  • If carefully scaffolded, it is an activity that all the students can complete and it is very mixed-ability-groups-friendly. Since there is not word limit, everyone writes as much as they can and want. The last time we did it, using the PET format with 100 words as the limit, I received entries of about 70 words but also entries of 400 words.
  • It is an amazing opportunity for the students to express themselves. They can choose the storyline, the genre and the style. This year they produced a horror story, a love story, a post-modernist short story and a diary entry, among others. We have been working together for at least two years (and for about six with some of them) and yet, I was still surprised that they can write like that. Because they can and they are amazing kids although this is not some kind of a writing-obsessed and literature-obsessed group (unlike their teacher) but a bunch of typical teenagers: always tired, always under-slept, who’d always choose ‘no homework’ over ‘homework, please’ and ‘no test’ over ‘test, please’ and so on. And yet.
  • This time round I have decided to include the most beautiful comment that each story got from the readers and, in a way, it started to resemble the categories that we have at different film festivals, although, to be fair, they can be quite random as they are generated by the readers, such as ‘your dreams will come true award’, ‘I can’t believe a child has written it’ or ‘A kind heart’. And my students really liked it and were touched by that.

P.S. I would love to share these stories here but some of my students keep them secret even from their parents. Their stories and their copyrights. So be it.

Happy teaching!

A group = a community. Extra work or a worthwhile time investment?

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‘Like a box of markers…’

If you don’t have a lot of time, I will give you the answer straight away: the latter.

If you are a teacher who thinks that on entering the classroom, you are going to focus only on teaching a foreign language, then I have to warn you – if you proceed, you might put yourself in danger of getting inspired or getting terribly annoyed because I will do my best to convince you that a teacher of English is also a community leader, and not only in case of the Young Learners groups.

The tiger

Where this post started: Story #1

My pre-school museum group, a lesson on Henri Rousseau and tigers coming out of the shadows, the main craft activity: an orange finger paint handprint and a black marker to help make this handprint look like a tiger. Plus the jungle, the way the kids see it.

When I demonstrate, the kids are curious and, at the same time, disbelieving that I would do just that: splash the orange blob, smear it on the page, dip my hand it in and then press it onto a pristine A4 piece of paper. With a smile.

As soon as they confirm that I want them to do exactly THAT, a little voice on my left says ‘I am not gonna do that‘ (‘Я не буду‘) but, simultaneously, there is a little hand, in front of me, reaching out, to get to be the first one to get dirty. We go one by one, ‘In the paint. Up. Press. Up. Clean’ and all the girls, cautiously get involved. The Я-не-буду is the last one to go but when it is finally her turn and when she has to make a decision (because participation is optional and I have already decided that if the finger paints are a no-go, there are crayons as the plan B), she is still thinking but she is also pulling up her sleve and reaching out.

Why? Because by now, she has seen it happen five times (one teacher and four friends, because at this point, they are already friends, although it is only the sixth lesson together) and this gave her the courage she needed and the courage she could not find in herself. ‘In the paint. Up. Press. Up. Clean!’

Kind of Halloween

Where this post started: Story #2

My primary kids, a week when we have a trial student in two lessons. The new student is a perfect example of a square peg in a round hole – younger, quieter, not confirmed level of English yet (sigh) and, of course, not familiar with the kids, the teacher or the routine. Or our silly jokes. He stands out, this boy. I support him, of course, and lead him through the lesson but I also am totally engrossed in observing the group. Because, oh my god, it is a show.

Or maybe it is not a show at all. Or the most boring kind of a show. Because nothing happens, the group just accepts him. If you watch closely enough, you can spot an eyebrow raised, here and there (he really does stand out), but other than that – nothing.

My group, they are just regular kids. I mean, they are amazing, every single one of them but not your typical ‘little angels’. These are creative, very loud, with their own opinions and ideas (which they absolutely MUST share) and, as it turns out, they are also very open-minded. Each of them individually and as a group.

Open-minded to decide, without any negotiations or prompts from the teacher, that this new student (even though he is as if from another story) is there for a reason (although they don’t know it) and since he is, he will be included and taken for ‘one of us’ as much as it is possible. I am proud of them.

Post-test feedback

Where this post started: Story #3

My teens and just a regular lesson but because the other two stories happened in the same week, I am observing these ones, too, with more attention to the group vibe. They are great, too! In a teen way.

Simultaneously, they support each other and they mock each other. They applaud when someone does something special or when someone does ‘something special’, genuine praise and gentle mockery. It is a lovely moment, every single time. They do not forget to roll their eyes every time I ask them to move around and to regroup and sit with someone who is not their bestie but they do it, and they do work together, in any random set-up. They pick up different phrases from each other so now everyone says ‘Вкусняшка‘ (‘Yummy’) in the most sarcastic of ways when I announce a test or a serious task for homework. And they, too, feel comfortable enough to share ideas and stories about a good day at school or about a bad day at school.

A new approach to the final activity: ‘Let’s create’

How to build a group? Or about the effective EFL group leadership.

  • Whether it is a brand new group or ‘an old group’ but with a few new members, make sure you create opportunities for them to mingle and work in different combinations, pairs, teams, mini-groups. This will not only create an opportunity for you to observe how they work with different partners (also good: you can find the optimal set-up) but they will be given a chance to work together and make friends or, at least, break the ice and find out that the other person is cool / normal and / or ‘someone like you’ in one way or another.
  • Think of the class rules. The older students can be involved in creating the class contract, the younger ones get their first set from the teacher since usually their level is too low (unless you want to do it in their L1, which can also be an option). In my classroom (or classrooms), we have had the same set of rules for a few years now, those introduced when the kids were still in the first year of pimary or even in pre-primary: ‘I listen to the teacher’, ‘I sit nicely’, ‘I raise my hand’, ‘Russian is beautiful but I speak English here’, all accompanied by visuals and gestures. Last year, when I primary grew up and became way too talkative, we had to add one more ‘When I speak, people listen. When people speak, I listen’. Again, it is a rule applicable in all the age groups. We only needed to specify that ‘people’ applies to the teacher and the kids (yes, it was all on the first poster, a list of the names of those who match the definition of ‘people’ here:-)
  • Play games. Again, these are great for many different linguistic reasons (language practice, introduction, revision etc) but it is also one of the elements that helps the group gel. First of all, on a large scale, because these games will be a part of our pool of games and they will contribute to creating the traditions of our community (see below). Second of all, because they will give the teams a common goal for a part of a lesson and the battle to win it will be another unifying element
  • Make sure you include something to balance the competitive element. A huge part of the games that we play in class promote competition. While this is good, because it motivates the students to participate and, it helps them learn to win and to lose, it is also good to remember that the kids will need an opportunity to be involved in activities that promote cooperation and collaboration. We don’t always need to split into winners and losers (especially not when pre-schoolers are involved). Some games can be played over a series of lessons, in the same teams, accumulating the points over the entire month. Plus, even if the game is competitive and we have a winner (or winners) and non-winners, the easiest thing to do is to encourage the kids to shake hands and congratulate each other. ‘Good game!’
  • Celebrate. Sure, we are going to have a Halloween Lesson or a Christmas Lesson because these are the part of the culture that we expose our students, too, but again, they will go towards the things we do together. We have the tradition of ‘the food for the brain’ aka something sweet on the test day, ‘the pizza day’ at the end of the academic year and random ‘eating together’ with my youngest students, on random days when fancy takes us, celebrating nothing special. So that takes us to the other point, closely connected with celebrations and that is Food. (Caution: there are a few ground rules here, though: parents pre-approved food, paper plates, tissues and hands washed).
  • Create and cherish the group’s traditions, the official ones like the tests and the follow-up reports, the serious ones like ‘the pizza day’ or the silly and the seemingly insignificant ones, like the first activity of the lesson and the last activity of the lesson, keeping the notebooks, a lesson with parents once in a while, a long-term craft project…It might be easier with the younger kids because we are more used to the idea of a routine framework that we follow from lesson to lesson but it is something that is worth keeping an eye on, developing and celebrating with primary and teenagers.
  • Be fair. It is quite likely that a teacher will have her/his favourite and her / his less favourite students. That’s life but it can never show. Everyone is treated in the same way, with the same level of kindness, with the same amount of individual attention and praise.
  • Be the model of behaviour, not only the model of English because the students pick up on that, without us realising that it is happening. I had my own moment of revelation when I started asking the kids to take turns in being the teacher in the homework check. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t do my homework’, said one of the students. ‘It’s ok. We can do it together now. Exercise 2, number 3? Can you try?’, said the student-teacher on the day. ‘Wow!’, I thought, ‘Where did they get that….Oh.’
  • Let them take over, in some areas at least, from time to time. That will be beneficial for the language production (We want more!:-) but it will also help them become responsible for the lesson as they participate in the decision making process and for the classroom, too. A few years ago I had a pleasure of taking part in a wonderful session by Katherine Bilsborough ‘More Democracy in the Classroom’ which highlighted ten areas in which students can be given the opportunity to have a say and since then I have been incorportating them in my lessons, with all age groups. One day, I will get down to writing a post on that, too.
  • Befriend the parents because they are a very important element of the YL group. ‘Befriend’ here translates as: keep them on the loop, inform, explain, give feedback, ask for feedback, share the aims…
  • Ask for the kids’ opinion, not only about the content of the lesson but also about the lesson, the coursebook, the activities, the test…This will be the valuable feedback that will help you improve the experience for everyone but you will also show the students that their views matter.
  • Breathe! Rome was not built in a day and creating a community will also take time. But it is definitely worth it!
After week 1 of the summer camp

Happy teaching!

Crumbs#16 The Musical Challenge!

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The first challenge ever (primary, A1)

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

Ingredients

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

Why we like it

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

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

The Rolling Stones, Gimmie Shelter

The Clash, Should I stay or should I go

Ed Sheeran, Perfect

Backstreet Boys, Tell me why

Buddy Holly, Everyday

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

Happy teaching!

Crumbs# 14 The United Buddy Bears Art Project

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The United Buddy Bears in Sofia AD 2011

Welcome to my favourite art project: The United Buddy Bears. I first met the bears face-to-face (almost because they are 2 meters tall so face-to-face, eye-to-eye is not so easy to do) in Sofia because we all happened to be visiting the city in spring 2011. They were an art project back then already (since 2002 actually) but after our encounter they also became an EFL Art Project.

The United Buddy Bears: Brazil

Ingredients

  • First of all, if you have never heard about the project, start with this article on wikipedia or the bears’ own website.
  • A set of photographs of some of the bears that I use in a quiz. The students are shown the photos and they are asked to look at them and guess the name of the country. Naturally, the set should include the kids motherland.
  • Depending on the age and the level, the follow-up stage might involve describing individual bears, especially the bear representing the students’ country or symbols in general, as well as talking about the bears they like or dislike.
  • The main objective of the project for the younger students (primary) is to draw their version of the bear to represent their country. First, it might be necessary to brainstorm and to introduce the vocabulary and concepts that people normally associate with the children’s country. In case of Russia, it is especially interesting as it creates an opportunity for the students to learn that they already know many of these words, for example balalaika, borscht, matryoshka and they only need to learn how to write them in the Latin alphabet. Then, the students decorate their bears using the template provided by the teacher and, eventually, present their bears to the group.
  • The older students are invited to design a bear that represents them. It can be a bear that will show their hobbies, personality, favourite sports, school subject or a band, or, really, any concept that they consider important. The sky is the limit here. The students present their bears to their friends, ideally in a mingling activity.
  • The templates can be taken from globalperspective.info, clipart-library.com or just teach the kids how to draw it.
  • In the end, all the bears are proudly presented on the walls of the school or the classroom.
  • In both cases, it might be necessary to start drawing and decorating in class, to make sure that everyone is on the task but to set the task for homework, with the presentation scheduled for the following lesson. Some students might need more time to complete their drawings or to prepare their presentation and that might help to solve this problem.
The United Buddy Bears:Poland

Why we like it

  • It works like magic. Or almost. Some of the bears are easy to interpret, some of them require a bit more of background information but this way they can serve as a springboard to learning about different countries. The set of bears used in the quiz can be easily adapted by choosing the more straightforward bears for the younger students.
  • Regardless of which project you choose, the students get a wonderful chance to personalise the content, either because they will be drawing to reflect their own interests and hobbies in the bear or because they will be creating their own version of the Russian bear. It is a very happy coincidence that the Russian bear (or the first Russian bear because later I did find some other versions) is rather ugly. As a result, all my students with whom I have ever done that project, all of them without exceptions, were deeply offended that it is supposed to represent their country and were more than eager to create their own, better and more beautiful bears. The one you can see below is the more beautiful, later version of the bear.
  • It can be adapted to different levels and age groups. I have done it with elementary primary students and with advanced teenagers.
  • It is an opportunity for the students to express themselves, to create and to produce the language.
  • It can be used to supplement the coursebooks and it can be done as a part of the extra-curricular programmes such as summer camps, CLIL etc.
The United Buddy Bears: China

Happy teaching!

The United Buddy Bears: Russia (the beautiful one) from www.buddy-baer.com

New kids on the block. Teens joining a group mid-year.

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Tuscan Flying Beauties

A post inspired by a reader. Thank you @kids.in.english.

Where the inspiration came from

It was ten years ago. I was standing at the board, looking at my students working on a task,all of them, working hard, involved, a teacher’s dream, and yet…To my right – the bunch that had been in my group for the past two or three years, to my left – the three new students who had just joined us and in the middle – a beautiful wall, invisible but sturdy and getting thicker by the minute. They were not aggressive verbally or otherwise, they did not do anything mean, there was no bullying. They simply decided that they do not like each other. The ‘old’ kids – because they did not want any invaders, they ‘new’ kids – because they did not feel welcome.

I did not like it at all. I was looking at them (yes, a little bit annoyed because we had everything figured out) thinking ‘Not on my shift, people. Na-ah’. Today I would like to share some of the tricks that I applied and have been applying since then in the new-teen-in-the-group scenario.

Ideas for building and re-building a group

  • Change the seating arrangements during the first month or the first six – eight lessons with the new students. The main aim here is to enable everyone in the group to work with everyone else. It has to be initiated (or ‘forced’ if you prefer) by the teacher because the students will be acting as a group and might not have enough courage to break ranks in order to befriend the new students or to venture out and try to join the cool kids. It is a good idea to explain to students why this is done (‘we need to get to know each other’) and give them a specific time limit so that they know when they will be able to go back to sitting with whom they want. Even if, initially, the students do not like the hassle and the uncertainty that it introduces, they have a deadline and they know when things go ‘back to normal’. The burden is easier to bear.
  • Frequently group and regroup the students for activities and use a tool that will be completely arbitrary. These can be for example re-usable cards with the students’ names that are kept in a box or in a bag. Before the activity, the teacher (or even better – one of the students) simply picks out cards randomly and this is how pairs and teams are formed. This way, it is simply fair, impersonal and, every single time, there is a high probability that student A might end up working with their best friend. If they are lucky. Again, the burden is easier to bear. Both of these tactics will also help the teacher establish how the students work in different set-ups. It will be more important in case of the new students
  • It is a good always but especially during those ‘first’ days or weeks to include activities which promote team-work and cooperation, such as smaller or larger scale projects, ideally in every lesson. The students will be already mixed, the new with the old and it is quite likely that they will want to share the responsibility for the task and they will want to complete it. This will be their excuse, the teacher asked them and they are just completing the task, without losing the face since working with the new partner is not their own choice.
  • While cooperation works well, competitive games are even more effective. If the students have their favourite games, they obviously like to play and win. Since they will be put in mixed groups, the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ students together, they will be put in a situation in which they might have to cooperate with ‘a new friend’ to compete against ‘an old friend’. Of course, these two elements, the competitive and the cooperative, should complement each other and balance each other. Some of my favourite games include ‘the game of five’ and ‘stop!’
  • When we start working with a new group, some getting to know each other activities are in order. Here, however, the situation is a bit tricky. If there are three or four new students in the group, then we can easily use some of those. When only one student joins the existing group, it might not work that well. The majority of the group already know each other very well so they will not be motivated in taking part in it. What’s more, it will be rather obvious why it is added to the lesson and the new student might be accidentally put in the spotlight. Not to mention that if a few students join the group, separately, it would mean including these activities in a few lessons in a row and the students might be even less motivated to take part in them.
  • Instead, an activity in which the students can express themselves and share personal information is a much better solution. It can be, for example, ‘Who is X?‘, a task in which students would have to match the names of all the students in the group to a set of sentences (in any structure that is the topic of the lesson). If it is the Present Simple then the sentences describe daily routines ( X never does homework, X always wakes up early on Saturday), if it is the future then the sentences describe future predictions (X will live abroad, X will become famous, X will travel to Spain) etc. During the feedback, students will be mingling and confirming and justifying the sentences about themselves. The task that I really like to use for that is the United Buddy Bears art project but this one is a bit more difficult to add to any lesson in any level at any point when the new student joins the group. But not impossible))

If you have been in a similar situation and you have some great tips and tricks up your sleeve, please share them with the rest of us in the comments box! Thank you!

Happy teaching!

The invisible student and why you might want to have one:-)

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Yes, you did read the title right. The invisible students are among us. I myself have had one for about eight years now. And yes, it has always been Pasha. Almost always, with the exception of one year…

How did it all start?

Well, I have no idea. Hard as it is to imagine now, there was definitely ‘the time before Pasha’ and then, all of a sudden, he became a part of the everyday.

I guess, perhaps, it was one of those days when the kids did something silly, I came in and asked ‘Who did it?’ and no one wanted to own up. I found the answer myself. ‘Ah, I see. It was Pasha, wasn’t it?’ and they just went with it.

That looks plausible but to be honest, I am not quite sure. I don’t remember. But Pasha stayed with us and today I would like to tell you what is great about that.

Why does everyone need a Pasha?

Pasha is extremely helpful when it comes to eliciting new language and providing language models. Every single time you need a semi-personalised sentence, a situation relevant to the students’ lives without, however, involving one of the real people present in the room (as they might be shy, not feeling very comfortable with having their name and person brought up while discussing some of the vocabulary and some of the situations), Pasha is at your service. He is more than happy to help.

Pasha does not mind when you say ‘Pasha failed an exam‘ or ‘If Pasha brings a bad mark, his mum will be angry’ or ‘Pasha got embarrassed because the teacher showed everyone his poem‘…Pasha is the epitome of cool when you discuss his love life, his problems with teachers and his fights with his brother.

Pasha never fights or frowns against any of the partners that you him to work with. Pasha is ok when you pair him up with Alex The Procrastinator. Alex working with Pasha will really have to make an effort and do something, instead of lazying about and pushing the task onto the more laborious student in the pair. You can say, for example, ‘Alex, today you are working with Pasha‘. Pasha will not mind. Funnily enough, Alex will not mind either. What’s more, Pasha is more than ecstatic when one Sasha The Introvert sometimes asks quietly ‘Can I work with Pasha today?‘. And yes, of course she can. This way she will be more motivated to work with the other (real-er) students on the other days.

Pasha is the best thing since the sliced bread on all of those occasions when you really need to be the disciplinarian and you have to make a point and get the message across, again, without referring to any of the students in particular, without pointing fingers and yet, highlighting the main points effectively. Maybe it is because you have forgotten the homework again. Maybe it is because they are cheating in test. Maybe they call each other names, come late or attempt a joke and fail and end up offending someone or almost destroy something…

In which case, you can make a speech like this one: ‘You can tell Pasha that this remote is quite expensive so if he throws it out again and it gets lost or broken, I will be getting in touch with his parents and they will have to pay for that. When you see Pasha, make sure he gets the message, alright?‘ Works wonders:-)

Last but not least, your class is a community, with its unique rules, traditions, habits and silly jokes and Pasha becomes a part of it, too. It is something that we share, something that is our thing.

Naturally, there are also things that Pasha is not and these include the following:

  • the only classroom management resource at the teacher’s disposal
  • the classroom management tool that will help sort out all the problems
  • the trick that will work with all the teachers, age groups and levels

My favourite Pasha moments

Well, there have been many, but here are the three gems.

One. Teens, pre-FCE, I cannot remember the topic but it might have been Past Continues as this always encourages the coursebook authors to write about disasters, accidents, explosions and other dramatic events. I cannot recall what we were doing and why Pasha’s life was in danger but at one point, someone asked ‘What about Pasha?‘ and one of my girls said, ‘He’s lying on the floor, there!‘ pointing at something with her chin. I remember that we burst into laughter but I also remember that at the same time, I took a step back and half of my students instinctively pulled their feet away and hid them under the chairs, as far as possible from the centre of the room where Pasha ‘was‘.

Two. Same group of teens and the invisible student who had been a part for about two years already and the admin bringing in a new student, a boy. When he walked in and introduced himself as ‘Pasha’, we all froze, in ten different ways as we were all digesting the same thought, until, finally, someone just said it out loud: ‘But what about Pasha, then?‘ It took some explaining (poor real Pasha) and our invisible boy got renamed, and he became ‘Styopa’, for a season.

Three. Teachers’ room and a conversation with my colleagues, someone casually bringing up the topic of the invisible students only to find out that Pasha is not the only one out there! Yay!

And I am here, writing this post because…

…this week, in the middle of the lesson, totally unexpectedly, Pasha reappeared and started to cheekily doodle on my zoom screen and my powerpoint. Of course, it was none of my amazing and well-behaved primary superstars. ‘I see. It must Pasha, the invisible student‘, I said and then, after a moment, I added ‘Pasha, can you stop, please?‘

Do you think the kids objected, doubted his presence or asked any questions? No, none of these, nothing at all. Pasha is back.

The hodgepodge – Our favourite vocabulary activities.

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Are you looking for more (and new?) ideas for practising vocabulary with juniors and teens (or adults)? Well, here are some of my favourite ones. Some of them I have come up with myself, some of them I have found in places. If I remember where, I will reference them.

The main idea is that we have a set of vocabulary, words, phrases etc, not necessarily connected by the topic, a situation that is quite common with higher levels when we just go beyond learning about clothes, food, money and sport or for the vocabulary that we work on in relation to the text we are reading or listening to. In Russian, we say сборная солянка or a hodgepodge, of sorts, that is difficult to come up with a context and a meaningful activity. And that is precisely why these activities here were created or adapted to the needs of the EFL classroom.

All ideas are mine but you will see that the inspiration came from a variety of sources. All of them have been tried and tested with my students, although, to be honest, writing about them has led to even more ideas for adaptation and use. Yay to that.

They all start in the same place: on the board, with a list of words. Sometimes we also use the same list on the A4 paper or on separate cards. Sometimes, some additional scrap paper is necessary, too.

Whenever we try a new game, we play with the whole group, for everyone to learn the rules and to feel comfortable. Only later (perhaps only in the following lesson or the next time we play the game) do we move onto the pair work, just to get the students used to the format of the game and the way of thinking of the words and what we can do with them.

You can download them here! And after you have used them, please come back and let me know how it all went.

Happy teaching!