This year’s Magic Bag, Sargent-themed, courtesy of the Tate Gallery in London
Ingredients
a pretty bag, ideally cotton, or something that is not transparent. I am joking, of course, that it needs to be pretty, it doesn’t but it is true that it is better if it is appealing visually. I normally use one of my tote bags.
a set of interesting objects that are safe to touch that fit in.
Procedures
Students sit in a circle, on the chairs or on the carpet, with the teacher in the centre, at a small distance. The teacher revises the vocabulary in question.
I like to take out the bag and make a show of it – take it out of a cupboard or a box, show surprise, shake it perhaps if the content allows it, make a face and ask out loud ‘What’s in the bag?’ etc.
The teacher starts chanting, for example: ‘Anka’s got a secret, Anka’s got a secret!’ and this is a chant that we use for every student.
The teacher demonstrates how she puts the hand into a bag, finds one thing and tries to name it, for example: ‘It’s a lion‘ (topic: animals).
Afterwards, the object is taken out to check what it really is. The teacher asks ‘Is it a lion?’ and the kids answer. It can be also used as an opportunity for additional drilling of the key words.
The students take turns to play the game.
As a follow-up, the kids can do a simple listening activity and help clean up at the same time. The teachers says ‘Sasha, please put the lion in’ etc.
Why we like it?
The main reason is a very strong appeal of an activity that is involves motor skills, guessing, an element of mystery and fun. Kids love to put their hand it and try to recognise or to name the objects. It so happens that we use the same bag during the entire year so after the first time, the kids can recognise it and they look forward to it. This week I was walking in the school with my bag (that on that day was ‘just my bag’ and my kids walking past got excited and started to ask if this is what we would do in class on the day).
The other main reason is that this activity can be used with a wide range of objects and for a wide range of topics, from those more obvious ones such as school objects, toys or materials to some less obvious such as rooms in the house or comparatives. I have also used it for colours, in one of the first lessons of the course, although, of course, the children did not know many of the objects that we used and we focused only on sorting them out according to their colours.
There are plenty of variations of the activity and it can be repeated in a series of lessons. It has not happened yet, over all these years, that I would take out a bag and hear ‘Oh, no, not the Magic Bag again!’ from the audience.
As regards the chant, I like to use ‘Anka’s got a secret!’ or a simple question ‘Anka, what’s in the bag?’ which all the kids repeat and which is a great question to know.
As regards the procedures, the kids can simply take out one object or try to guess it in their L1, they can describe it with the adjectives that they have (for example pairs of adjectives such as big / small, heavy / light, smooth / rough, soft/ hard or the materials: it is made of plastic etc) for the class to guess. Recently, I have used it also to practise comparisons and every child had to take out two objects, to describe them and then to compare them when they were both out of the bag. If it is appropriate for the objects, the kids can also try to shake them in the bag to check what noise they make. Another option is of course the most tactile version of the game – kids touching the objects with both hands without taking the objects out, through the fabric.
The age range of the students can also vary. The youngest kids that I have used it with were 3 – 4 years old, the oldest were my teenagers and they also enjoyed it. The language that we expect the students to produce will depend on their level and age. When we played the game last week with my A1 primary year 1, they were able to produce a set of four sentences in one go because we used it in the final stages of the adjectives unit.
Naturally, the objects can be used to introduce the target langauge, to practise or to revise the language, verbally or in writing or even as an introduction to a listening or reading task.
As regards the less obvioustopics for example verbs or rooms in the house, it is still possible if the objects are used as symbols. ‘A spoon’ can mean ‘to eat’ or ‘the kitchen’, a pair of socks (a new pair!) can symbolise ‘to wear’ or ‘the bedroom’, ‘a tub of toothpaste’ can stand for ‘to brush your teeth’ or ‘the bathroom’ and so on.
During the pandemic, I also used the Magic Bag in class, although in the online version the bag was much thinner and I was putting one object at a time and demonstrating it to the camera. I also used to make noises with them, without showing them to the camera i.e. dropping them on the table, squeezing them, tapping on them etc or, as the last hint, showing only a tiny little corner of the object to the camera. It also worked very well! And, in the online world, it was also possible for my students to take part and do the same with things that they had at home.
Last but not least, this is a unique opportunity for the teacher to take the most random selection of things to school such as pasta pieces in a bag, a soap, a salt shaker, a spoon, a pair of socks, a tube of toothpaste, seeds in a bag, some flour in a bag, shells, stones, tomatoes, cucumbers, soft toys, an electric torch, a small jar, a pair of earrings, a ribbon, cones…
Welcome to the new series on the blog! Teaching grammar to young learners is one of my passions, especially that the students are getting younger and younger and / or the context is changing and you find yourself faced with a challenge of coming up with ideas to engage, to present and to practise with people who are still not really ready to deal with abstract terms and the target language goes beyond the easy-peasy bits of ‘is’ is for one cat and ‘are’ is for many (naturally accompanied by gestures and flashcards).
I have been interested in that area for some time already and I have written about before (please check the other emails in that category) but in the recent months, this has been especially present in my life. This year I am teaching in a school with a bilingual programme, and I am a teacher both of the BNC and of the ESL to a mixed ability group and on a random given Monday I may need to teach past simple or comparatives who students who are not the A1 level yet.
Hence this series. I will simply be sharing ideas that I have created or adapted for my students and, naturally, the activities that have worked well. Let’s get started. Comparatives first!
The context at hand
This year I am teaching two classes of year 1 (and of year 3 of the British National Curriculum) and I am responsible for their BNC year 3 curriculum as well as their ESL classes. Consequently, we have about one million different aims and the two most important among them are the following: developing the kids’ language skills and realising the aims of the BNC. My students are 6 and 7, they are in their year 1 of the state education. They language levels vary from pre-A1 to early A2. In case you are wondering regarding the aims, bilingual education to non-quite-so-bilingual kids is a different planet and I am only at the start of my journey but the main objective is that we are going to be closer to bilingual when we get to our year 4. It is all a process.
The most practical implication for me as a teacher is that we do not follow a linear curriculum, typical of foreign language learning and, that, for example comparatives and, subsequently, superlatives, is our target language in the fifth month of our year 1. As one of the examples. That, in turn, means that I am teaching my very young kids some advanced grammar points and I am trying to do it the best I can. I am hoping that some of these ideas will be useful to my fellow teachers out there.
Ideas for teaching and practising comparative forms
Presentation
My students already know a range of adjectives, because we have learnt lots of emotions, adjectives to describe characters and also adjectives to describe objects. My main aim of it was to give the kids a range of vocabulary which we can use in telling stories, retelling stories and describing pictures, all a part of my storytelling campaign. However, it was absolutely necessary to choose a very narrow range for the grammar presentation stage of the lesson and for me it was ‘bigger’ and ‘smaller’, leaving behind, for now, the other short adjectives, the long adjectives, superlatives or the irregular adjectives. For now. As soon as we become familiar with one, we will move onto the other. For example, in one of the exercises, I decided to ‘smuggle’ longer and shorter, just to see how the kids react.
We revised all the adjectives and we had a short slot in which we described animals. I was showing some images and asking students ‘Is it big or small?’. All this time these two words were written on the board.
Afterwards, I stood right in front of the board and added, in a different colour, -er, to our words, changing them into ‘bigger’ and ‘smaller’ and then I uncovered it, faked surprise and asked ‘What happened here? What’s this?’ and I elicited the letters, asking the kids to read the new words. Afterwards, I demonstrated with these flashcards aiming at showing the difference between ‘big’ and ‘bigger’ and, naturally, ‘small’ and ‘smaller’ using a set of flashcards. It could go along the following lines: ‘Is the tiger big or small?’ ‘It’s big’. ‘Yes, it is. But, look, the elephant is BIGGER’. The same was done for small, with a mouse and a butterfly. I also used gestures to highlight the meaning. With these two adjectives, I tend to move my hand up, gradually for ‘bigger’ and move it closer to the floor or the table, gradually, for ‘smaller’. We repeated the same conversation about some other animals, trying to elicit the structure from the kids.
The next step was putting the key sentence on the board by adding flashcards to our words on the floor, creating a sentence made of visuals and words. The great advantage of this activity is the fact that you can adapt and create the sentences by replacing the flashcards and reading the sentences together. That, actually, will be the first controlled practice activity.
Practice
Bigger or smaller?, a guessing game: the teacher holds a pile of flashcards with animals, all the cards face de teacher takes out one card and shows it to the kids. Then the teacher asks ‘Bigger or smaller?’ and the kids make their decision, saying out loud ‘Bigger!’, ‘Smaller!’. Afterwards, the teacher takes out a card at random and the class check. Afterwards, the game continues with another card. The main aim of the game is to drill the key words in a simple way and to reinforce the idea. It can also be done with number flashcards or with school objects flashcards.
Who is bigger?, a simple movement activity in which the students compare themselves, in pairs, and the class decide who out of the two is bigger. The aim is to produce simple sentences, to personalise the target langauge and to involve the whole group, because, of course, only the students in the classroom are able to tell who, in fact, is different. It might be a good idea to think about the careful pairing of the students, choosing those who get on with each other or are friends to minimise the negative impact of ‘being smaller’. I also like to pair myself up with the kids and to highlight that they are going to grow bigger and bigger and bigger (one more chance to use the target language!). I have also ducked or sat on the floor, as a joke, so that the child could be bigger than me, at least for a moment.
Magic Bag, an object description game that we have already used in our classes. This time, however, the kids put their hands into the bag to describe the object they are holding but this time they do it twice. In the end, they have to objects they have to compare using ‘bigger’ and ‘smaller’ or any other adjectives at the later stages of this unit.
Who is bigger?Who is smaller?, a simple flashcard games whose main aim was to get the students to produce full sentences with bigger and smaller in a more active way. The game starts with the teacher taking out a card with an animal and letting each student take one, too and to keep it secret for now. The teacher reveals the card and says ‘I am a dog. I am small. Who is bigger? Who is smaller?’. The kids take turns, to reveal their animals and to produce the sentence. At the same time, they get up and take their place on the left of the teacher (if they are smaller) or on the right (if they are a bigger animal). In the end of the round, all the kids stand in line, at the board, lined up, from the smallest to the biggest animal. Since they take turns they can produce all the relevant sentences, i.e. ‘I am bigger than a dog. I am smaller than a tiger’ and so on. We play this game a few rounds. It might be necessary to give out one card per pair of students if the group is big.
Draw it!, a reading and drawing activity that I created to give the students a chance to reinforce the idea of the concept behind comparatives and to check understanding. The only thing that is necessary for this game is a piece of paper (or a notebook) and markers and crayons and a handout which you can find here. The paper is printed (only one copy) and cut up, all the cards end up in a bag or in a box. The kids take turns to take one of the cards, they read the sentence, a few times and everyone is drawing a relevant picture. The teacher monitors. The game can be later develop into a more SS-centred activity, as soon as the kids ready. In this adaptation, the key structure is written on the board: _____is bigger than_____ and _______is smaller than ______ and the kids themselves take turn to dicatate a sentence to draw.
What is bigger?, a reading and writing activity, also on a higher level in which I wanted to encourage a more creative and a more productive approach to the target language. You can find the handout here. This was the first more advanced activity which we did together, with a whole set of different adjectives at the same time. And the kids were ready! Everyone got their copy of the handout and they were supposed to trace the comparatives and then to create their own sentences with their own choices.
Wordwall activities were included in these lessons, too, to give us a chance to practice the target language. Here are some of those that I used: missing words (only bigger and smaller, I had to help read the sentences), let’s compare (either using only the basic bigger and smaller but also to give the kids a chance to use more complex structures, if they are ready, this btw is an activity that I found in the community resources on wordwall and adapted), and a simple set of cards to play ‘Bigger or smaller’ but on the screen.
All of that, on top of whatever you have in your coursebooks. The next steps will be: adding more of the short adjectives and then, eventually, the long adjectives, too. But, as they say, that is a story for another day…
It’s been six months now (and four courses) since we introduced the individual consultations to our YL and VYL course and a lot of good has come out of it already for the course, for the trainees and my blog. This post today will be dedicated to one of the course participants, Valentina, who came to the meeting with one question only, namely: ‘I am bored with teaching vocabulary through flashcards and drilling’. This was when I realised that we never really talked about the variety in that area. Hence this post.
Back to the basics…
…or our gurus. For anyone who is not familiar, I would recommend getting hold of Carol Read’s chapter on teaching vocabulary and grammar and all the basic concepts as well as her post in the series of the ABC of Teaching Children in which she highligts the need for the crystal clear meaning, the context as well as opportunites for memorising and for practice.
Carol also offers a lot of ideas for the classroom (as promised) and if you are looking for more, please have a look at the bilbliography where I have left some more interesting links, for inspiration and from two different areas, the teachers of EFL/ESL and just children learning new words. Many of them are quite recent publications so have a look! There is lots and lots to read.
For that reason, also, this post here will focus not on practice activities but on ways of introducing vocabulary to primary and pre-school students, more than just flashcards.
Electronic flashcards
‘Electronic flashcards’ is an umbrella term for a great variety of resources that can be used in the YL classroom. I will try to include here at least the few basic ones
Wordwall (wordwall.net), with all its growing number of templates and options. You need to join the community but the membership is free and it gives you access to everything that any member ever created and made public. You can, for example, get access to the whole library that I have created (Azapart). The ability to create resources is only available to the members with subscription but it is cheap and definitely worth it. My favourite resources here to introduce vocabulary include stencil flashcards, cropped images, simple word cards and flashcards or flashcards with the audio.
Simple video flashcards of which there are plenty available on youtube, such as offered by Maple Leaf Learning. There are also such products as EFL Kids Videos that present not only vocabulary but also vocabulary + structures.
Videos that not only present the new vocabulary but that also offer an option of a game, for example places in the city from Smile and Learn where you get a presentation and a guessing game, ‘What is it?’ games from Fun Kids English or drawing – guessing games from Games4ESL.
It needs to be mentioned that these materials were not created as educational materials with a specific aim to match the content of one coursebook or another and they are not used to replace the official published materials. They only help to introduce the topic and the idea in an interesting way, with at least some of the items that we are required to cover according to the curriculum.
Gestures
I am a huge fun of using gestures in the classroom. The gesture is king after all! For a good few years now, whenever we introduce new vocabulary we add gestures to it, to help clarify the meaning but also to give the children one more channel that might help them remember and recall the meaning of these new words. This kind of miming can be upgraded to include a lot more speaking (see: a post here) and the children can be involved and invited to come up with their own gestures for certain phrases and express themselves in that way, too! It is not only for the youngest of the youngest. Once we introduced, even my 8 – 10 A2 year-olds loved working with this form of expression.
Realia
Like in the case of sounds, realia would be something that naturally springs to mind when we talk about teaching school objects, food or classroom vocabulary and, perhaps, if you have any access to any friendly children who are willing to share their collection, perhaps also to teach toys, transport or even animals. The other topics seem to be impossible. Or do they?
I think my realia creativity had a chance to skyrocket during the pandemic while we were all stuck at home and with a very limited access to all those beautiful things that we would normally use. A blessing in disguise?
My solution is relatively un-revolutionary and is based on using symbols, items that we agree stand for our chosen concepts. Here are some examples:
rooms in the house: a spoon = the kitchen, a pair of socks = the bedroom, a remote = the living room, a key = the hall, a toothbrush = the bathroom
weather: gloves = it is snowing, sunglasses = it is sunny, a cap = it is warm, a kite = it is windy, an umbrella = it is raining, a scarf = it is cold
school subjects: a tshirt = PE, a mouse = IT, paints = Art, counting sticks = Maths, dictionary = English, a book = Russian, a magnet (from abroad) = Geography, a paper crown or a photo of a king = History etc
party aka characters: a star = a sheriff, a crown = a prince / a princess, a red nose = a clown, a witch’s hat = a witch, a flower = a gardener, a plastic stetoscope = a doctor etc
seasons: just lots of things, clothes and accessories which we use in winter, spring, autumn and summer
family: accessories that different memebers of the family might have, a car = a brother, a doll – a sister, a newspaper = daddy, wool = grandma etc.
body: accessories and objects which we use with different body parts: glasses: a nose and ears and eyes, socks = feet and toes, a spoon = a hand and fingers. The confusion might be even beneficial here because we will be repeating the words a number of times.
free time and verbs: different objects and accessories that we use, for example: a pen = to write, a ball = to play, a spoon = to eat etc.
Song
In a majority (almost certain here) of our coursebooks songs are introduced as a means of practising and revising vocabulary and grammar but this does not have to always be the case, not when we are in charge.
Since I discovered the existance of the amazing Pete the Cat who is rocking in his school shoes, I have not taught the places in the school (and Present Continuous) in a different way. The song is beautiful, fun and very catchy and the video illustrates the idea of both the vocabulary and the tense in such an obvious way that I am not even looking for any alternatives. We start with the song, we enjoy the music, the video and Pete and only later, we move on to flashcards, drilling and all the other practice activities.
Here are some more examples of songs that can be used in the same way
Whatever we do with songs, it can be done with a story. A video, a storybook or storycards can be the starting point in a vocabulary lesson. Here are my favourite storybooks to teach vocabulary:
‘Elmer’ by David McKee to teach jungle animals
‘Marvin Gets Angry’ by Joseph Theobald to teach emotions
‘Cat’s Colours’ by Airlie Anderson to each colours
‘A Very Hungry Caterpillar’ by Eric Carle to teach food
‘Zob’ by Julia Donaldson to teach helth problems
To name just a few. Introducing them will give you a ready made context and it will be a pleasure for the kids to get back to the story over a series of lessons and to be more and more involved in reading and retelling the story. That is a brand new level of the sense of achievement and of the meaningful lessons.
Posters
Admittedly, in the past, a few years ago or in the previous editions of the coursebooks, posters were a more frequent quest. They are not as common today although different schools produce their own posters and so do publishing houses, although not necessarily in connection with a particular title. For that reason, I will extend the definition of poster to ‘any large size visual with a variety of elements’ in order to be able to include any silly pictures, clip art creations to be found on google (really!) or the picture wordlists as these absolute beauties available on the CUP website for Starters, Movers and Flyers exam preparation (but not exclusive to these).
I am a huge fan of using visuals in the classroom and I am proud to say that I have come up with a plethora of ideas for language practice. You can find them in two posts: All you need is…a picture. They can be displayed on screens or interactive whiteboards or even printed and laminated.
As regards vocabulary introduction, however, here are some ideas:
labelling the items in the picture together with the kids
covering some parts of the pictures with the post-it notes, to elicit from kids (It is a city. What can we see here?) and then to uncover the picture step by step while introducing the equivalents of the words the kids provide, in English
covering some parts of the picture with the post-it notes, to uncover them step by step while clarifying the meaning of the words and including elements of drilling
covering some parts of the picture with the post-it notes, to play ‘What’s missing?’ (although this slowly moves towards controlled practice / drilling)
pointing at two objects in the picture and calling out a name for the kids to recognise. Here, the teacher can use hands (Left! Right!) or, if it is too confusing, two markers of different colours (Blue! Red!), a fun exercise for the auditory practice and word recognition.
Coda
All of the activities mentioned above can be used during the practice stage and they are not to replace flashcards and drilling but to supplement or replace them and to introduce a bit of variety and a breath of fresh air, for the students and for the kids.
The choice will depend on the age and level of the students and, naturally, on the specific set of vocabulary.
Happy teaching!
Bibliography
Carol Read (2007), 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom, Macmillan
Carol Read (2011), ABC of Teaching Children, V is for Vocabulary here.
How to teach vocabulary: 5 fun and easy ideas (2020) from Begin Learning.
17 ways for kids to learn new vocabulary (2020) from Imagination Soup.
A bottle, plastic or glass, we have used the small ones.
Vinegar (a few spoons, I did not measure), baking soda (again, did not measure) and a few drops of the washing up liquid for the foam
Different websites usually advise using food colouring for the beautiful lava but I didn’t have any so I just used a few drops of the regular guache paint
A big plastic box or a tub (if you are doing it inside)
A few pieces of A4, an old plastic bag and a piece of scotch for the outside of the volcano
Someone to help you film or photograph because it happens very fast
Anything accompanying elements: I have used a short cool video about volcanoes for kids, my personal photos from Kamchatka and an episode of Peppa in which Peppa (hooray) is making a volcano at school (hooray hooray)
Procedures
For us, this time, this was a part of the Autumn Camp with every day dedicated to one colour. Monday was ‘red’ and before the got to the Science / CLIL part of the day, the kids had a chance: to talk about all the things red, they wrote their own poems modelled on the poems I found here which were perfect for our pre-school and year 1 kids (and here are the more complex ones, for the older kids). They also had a proper Art class in which they made very simple but amazing collages of a volcano.
By the time we got to the Science slot, the topic was already familiar to them. We looked at the video, we watched my photos from the trip to Kamchatka, including the volcanoes and the black sand on the beach and we watched Peppa. During the entire lesson, I wanted to draw their attention to some of the elements / words related to volcanoes especially: magma, lava, gases, temperature.
I also introduced all the ingredients and I explained that we will try to create the gas and the lava.
Afterwards every child prepared an A4 piece of paper by colouring it with black and brown crayons and then by crumpling it. Afterwards we relocated to our Lab (aka the dinning room).
I divided the group into three teams and each team prepared their own volcano: a bottle, wrapped in a plastic bag (for volume), scotched around, then the A4 pieces of paper, wrapped around and scotched over. Even if in the clumsiest of ways. While the kids were preparing the mountains I prepared three jars of water with the colouring (aka paint).
I showed the kids all the ingredients and I demonstrated the experiement the first time, trying to encourage the kids to help me name the ingredients. Afterwards, we repeated it with the other volcanoes.
Why we like it
Well, simply, it was a lot of fun, especially in connection with all the other things that the kids did on the day.
It is a very simple project, with minimal resources (although, yes, I am aware of the fact that vinegar or soda is not something that is normally available at school). All class is involved, everyone is putting their shoulder to the wheel and it is feasible even with the youngest kids as everyone can colour a piece of paper and crumple it. I had the help of my TA with building of the volcano so that’s why we could do it with three volcanoes simultaneously but they can be dealt with one at a time or all the kids can build only one big volcano, together.
We have three different volcanoes with three different colours but I have also found the version of three bottles scotched together with a tri-colour lava…
If you have an opportunity to do the experiement outside, you can build a mountain around the bottle using sand or snow but our camp falls in the middle of a very rainy autumn week so we had to do it inside. I have to admit, though, I liked it even more as we turned it into a team project and it worked really well.
This same experiement can be used with the older students and they can benefit even more from the vocabulary input or learning about the whole process in a Science lesson. Essentially, by mixing vinegar and baking soda, we are producing some CO2 which is one of the gases produced during the volcano eruption, too. There is also some potential of including it in a regular EFL course. Superminds 5 by CUP has a whole unit devoted to volcanoes and the history of Pompeii.
We have put together twelve 90-minute sessions. At the moment we run them online because it gives us an opportunity to reach a wider audience.
The 12 sessions include:
Introduction. The VYL student: about the child in the classroom
The VYL teacher: the features of a VYL teacher and approaching the material
Classroom management: all the techniques that can help organise the students and the learning process
Behaviour management: dealing with issues
Coursebooks and material development: how to approach the coursebook and how to design own activities
Flashcards: the basic resource for VYL teachers in the online and in the offline classroom
Craft: including and managing craft activities in the classroom
Music and songs: the settler and the stirrer, all in one
Storytelling: using different stories with preschoolers
Lesson planning: how to plan effectively
Games: why kids need games
Literacy: how to start developing literacy skills in the EFL pre-school group
Each session includes both theoretical and practical, with the basics to help us outline and understand the framework and the connection to the ‘adult’ EFL methodology and a lot of practical solutions for the every day teaching. We have also prepared our reading list, with articles, resource books and videos that can help each participant either prepare for the course or to develop further after the course is finished.
The course finishes with an obligatory assessment task which was designed not as a research assignment but as a written reflection task to give the trainees an opportunity to look back at the whole course experience and to summarise the main take-outs.
The additional course components
At the end of each course we always collect feedback from our participants and this is exactly how we got inspired to add these additional components to further improve our course. From summer 2023, these include:
Lesson planning sessions: this is an additional session, a group lesson planning session in which we work with the material from different coursebooks, usually provided by our participants, preparing together with a tutor for ‘a typical lesson’ with this material. This session focuses on selecting and formulating lesson aims, selecting appropriate activities, adapting the coursebook and selecting supplementary materials
Private consultations with the tutor: this is a session that can be used in any way the trainee chooses, for example lesson planning, questions related to course design, discussing classroom managment, professional development, materials and activities etc.
Optional homework written tasks: there are three tasks, as a follow-up to three of the sessions: lesson planning, storytelling, language production. The trainees that decide to submit any of these tasks receive a written feedback from the trainer.
Who this course is for
This course has been initially designed to support the novice teachers in the area of very young language learners and that is why the sessions cover all of the basic areas that constitute the everyday life on the EFL carpet. However, since many of the experienced teachers started their career in VYL in a way and in a situation that was far from ideal, with no pre-service training, with no support and just learning on the go*), for them this course is an opportunity to boost and to reorganise what they know already and to align with the principles of the communicative methodology and the child development psychology.
Every single time we run this course we have a beautiful mix of participants, some experienced teachers and some VYL novice teachers, teachers working online and teachers working offline, teachers from the EFL, from the bilingual education as well as teachers who are also mums of little kids who want to learn how to start teaching their own children. It is a lovely learning environment and everyone is bringing something that they can share. And, it no surprise, that we got a very positive feedback from all of our participants, the newly qualified and the experienced teachers.
Feedback from our trainees
‘I think all the sessions were very useful because we have found out more about teaching very young learners, in some cases understood the mistakes we did and found some ways to improve it.‘
‘I really enjoyed the lessons. The classes about craft, songs and storytelling were especially helpful. Thank you so much!!’
‘All of them were very useful. I love sessions about craft and storytelling. Big thank you, that was great !!!!’
‘All sessions were useful and contained interesting examples. Although, if I have to name those more useful that others, these will be sons, craft and storytelling, great examples to remember and use in my own practice.’
‘Literacy, craft and storytelling session were the most useful as they had direct and immediate impact on my teaching practice.’
‘I’d like to take this opportunity and thank you for this course. I don’t have experience in teaching VYL, so whole course was highly useful and practice-oriented.’
‘I loved the last three sessions because they were pratical and I could use the ideas and materials on my lessons! I can’t say, that there were any useless sessions, but in the beginning there was some information, that was obvious for me. Anyway, I’m happy that I was able to do this course!’
‘Classroom management (I’ve never though before why VYL classrooms are organised in a different way from the classroom devoted to teaching children of different ages as I don’t remember myself being in the kindergarten and later on my classroom at school were very bare; and I was not taught about VYL classroom design before).’
And a few words from the trainers…
I absolutely love teaching the course. It has become some kind of a joke that I start every session with ‘Oh, today we are doing my favourite session’ but it really is every session.
Every single time it is an amazing journey on which we embark together and I take a lot of pleasure in sharing my ideas and experience and to help the trainees see how they can become better VYL teachers. It does not always involve any new amazing materials, coursebooks and resources but only a change of a mindset and a different way of looking at what we already have at our disposal.
The mix and the variety of backgrounds mentioned above is another reason why I like being a trainer on this course. Regardless of what it is that we discuss and look at instantly gets to be seen and considered from a few different angles, such as a different environment for the early language learning such as a bilingual school, home, an EFL class, different time allownances or formats (online and offline) or even different institutional policies because not all the EFL schools are the same. It’s not just ‘the idea from the tutor’, that is the only truth there is. It is an idea from the tutor that gets automatically reflected in a variety different mirrors and that automatically undergoes an analysis and adaptation. Which we are all learning from.
Happy teaching!
*) I am saying this with a deep conviction, based not only on my conversations with my trainees and my mentees but also based on the results of the reseach that I did for my MA thesis a few years ago and my dissertation got its title ‘Left to their own devices?’ for a reason. I, personally, was one of these teachers, too, when I started my teaching and my VYL teaching many years ago.
The amazing staircase in the tenement house by Max Berg in Wroclaw
Looking for songs
We have lots and lots of sources of amazing songs that can be used in the YL and VYL classroom. The first and the easiest one of them is your coursebook and the main advantage of it is the availability and the close connection to the curriculum. The songs often combine the vocabulary and the structure of the unit and both the teacher and the students have an easy access to it. The songs’ lyrics are in the kids’ coursebooks, they are often built around the characters from the coursebook or the stories in the coursebook. As a teacher, I have been using the songs from Superminds and Playway to English by CUP and Discover with Dex by Macmillan and I am a huge fan to the extent that I would recommend them as a supplementary material to accompany another coursebook, too.
Another amazing resource is youtube and the brilliant channels such as Super Simple Songs, Dream English Kids, Fun Kids English or Mother Goose Club, full of amazing, kids-friendly, visually beautiful productions that can be used in our EFL classes even if the content does not match the curriculum 100% accurately. After all, this can be an opportunity to learn some more vocabulary or structures.
Sometimes, however, it happens that, no matter how hard you try and how long you look here and there, the song or the chant that you really need is nowhere to be found. There is a way out, too, because you can create your own songs! From scratch!
Max Berg Cafe, Wroclaw
Creating your own songs: Starting from the rhythm.
This is more of a jazz chant than a song and I took the general idea from Carolyn Graham. The thing you need is a set of words to practise, divided into groups based on the number of syllables: 1-syllable words (cat, dog, frog, duck), 2-syllable words (hamster, snake, lizard), 3-syllable words (elephant, guinea pig, ladybird) and 4-syllable words (chameleon). You arrange them, in any way you want, following the pattern, for example: 2, 2, 2 – 2, 2, 2 – 2, 2, 2 – 4, 1 OR 3, 3, 1 – 3, 3, 1 – 3, 1 – 3, 1 – 3, 3, 1.
Hamster, lizard, snake
Hamster, lizard, snake
Hamster, lizard, snake
Chameleon, cat!
OR
Elephant, ladybird, cat
Elephant, ladybird, cat
Elephant, cat
Ladybird, cat
Elephant, ladybird, cat.
Practically any rhythm will do, especially if you start clapping your hands and stomping your find and chanting.
A similar technique can also be applied to any repeated sentences. I really like mixing affirmative and negative sentences connected with ‘but’ and ‘and’, for example
I like cats but I don’t like dogs.
I like ducks but I don’t like frogs
I like lizards but I don’t like snakes
What about you? What about you?
Max Berg Cafe, Wroclaw
If you are looking for more ideas of this kind, please check out the book by Carolyn Graham (see below).
Creating your own songs: Starting from the melody
This, by far, is my favourite way of creating the songs I want and the songs I really really need. The only thing that it takes is a melody that the teacher is familiar with and filling it up with the lyrics that match the lesson’s theme and aim.
During the YL course sessions, I was visiting one of the breakout rooms while the trainees were discussing the ways of adapting a certain material and, together, within a couple of minutes, we came up with a simple song that could be sung in the lesson on pets, with to the melody of The London Bridge is falling down. It went more or less like that:
Little dolphins cannot dance, cannot dance, cannot dance.
Little dolphins cannot dance but they can swim!
Naturally, this little verse can be replicated with all the other animals and verbs, according to the vocabulary content of the lesson.
Max Berg Cafe, Wroclaw
Creating your own song: Starting from the language
This one is probably the most challenging one because there is no basis here, like in the previous two. However, at the same time, since you are not bound by the rhythm or the melody, you can put together any text you need. I have used this approach while creating a chant for one of the groups with whom I had a double lesson, with a break in-between. This is the song that I put together to signal the beginning and the end of the break. The melody for this song was completely made up.
Let’s take a break.
Let’s run and play.
Five minutes. Five minutes
Let’s take a break.
Let’s drink some water.
Five minutes. Five minutes.
Let’s take a break.
Let’s go to the toilet.
Five minutes. Five minutes.
In one of the Science lessons for my pre-schoolers we were doing the food chains and I really wanted to make it more interactive and fun and this is how we ended up with a play with an alge, a fish, a squid, a dolphin and a shark. The story was built around all the creatures noticing their predator in the ocean and hiding. While taking turns to sing the song
I am a little, little alge
And I am happy
At the bottom of the ocean
Where I live
Oh, no! Look! What’s that? It’s a fish!
Let’s hide.
In this particular lesson we made the finger puppets for all the characters, practised the song a few times and then we all participated in the game aka the performance. It was definitely a success.
The only trick with writing a song like that would be coming up with the message to convey, verbalising it and sticking to the appropriate number of syllables in each line. As can be seen in the examples above, the verses don’t rhyme and they don’t need to. As for the melody, it can be anything and, once you’ve got it, it is a good idea to record it, for memory, even if only on the smartphone recorder.
Max Berg Cafe, Wroclaw
Here you can find my other posts about using songs in the VYL and YL classroom
Where to start if you have never sung before (here)
The question appeared in one of the groups on the social media and I realised that a) I have something to share here and b) I haven’t got any posts on the movement games for the little people.
One: Abracadabra
Resources: only a magic wand. It can be made at home and producing magic wands is now a real hobby of mine. The easiest version (in the photo below) can be even made with kids, in class. Some shops sell magic wands, too but, really, kids will respond well to a simple pencil if it is accompanied by some ‘Abracadabra’
How to play: We have been using the same line for many years now, with many groups: ‘Abracadabra, 1,2,3. You are….’. The game might be introduced with the first topic that lends itself to miming, for example ‘pets’ or ‘toys’. We start with the simple phrase ‘Abracadabra, 1, 2, 3. You are a cat / a dog / a frog etc’ and I support the language with the visuals namely flashcards displayed on the board and my own examples. The gestures we use for each of the pets, toys, fruit, transport, jungle animals, fairy tale characters, jobs are not universal, they are only our creation for that particular group. Please remember that the ability to represent characters and words through gestures is not a skill that children are born with. They are developing their symbolic representation and they might need the teacher’s support in the beginning of this journey. That is why the teacher’s example is so important.
After the kids have learnt their first adjectives, these can be extended into ‘You are a happy cat’, ‘You are a sad princess’ and so on. Naturally, the game is led by the teacher in the first lessons but later on, the children are invited to lead the game and to cast some spells in the classroom. They start with the very simple and basic combinations but with time they start to be really creative, both with the langauge and with gestures. Think about all these gems from the classroom: ‘a sad pumpkin’, ‘a sleepy cat’, ‘an angry princess’…How would you mime these?
A classroom-made magic wand
Two: Musical flashcards
Resources: only one set of flashcards, I normally use the set from the coursebook, A5 size.
How to play: We stand in a circle and the cards are lying on the floor, in the centre. We move around, in a circle, just walking. The teacher sings a song and my choice is usually ‘Happy Birthday’. As soon as stop singing, everyone stops and picks up one card from the floor. Afterwards we show what we have by using the word in a sentence. The simplest version is ‘It’s a cat’ but the structures can vary and be more closely connected to the vocabulary for example: I like + food, I’ve got + toys, I am wearing + clothes and so on.
After each child produces the sentence, we put the cards back on the floor and continue the game. It works well with all the groups although with my bigger groups, I encourage the kids to speak together, in kind of a messy choir, in order to save time and not to risk any dead moment in the lesson.
This is not a competitive game, no one is sitting down or dropping out, we all play throughout the game. No points are awarded either.
A classroom-made magic wand
Three: Everybody is dancing
Resources: None:-)
How to play: We stand in the circle and the teacher is chanting or singing the phrase (the melody is made up), and everyone is performing the actions. I normally start with the easy verbs i.e. clap, march, walk, eat, drink, dance and swim but we keep adding through the entire year, more complex and more creative verbs so by the end of the first year we have lots of them at our disposal because kids learn all of them just from this simple game.
The teacher is the one to lead the game for quite a long time but the kids can be slowly involved, too by giving them a choice of two verbs, for example ‘Sasha, everyone is singing or dancing?’, Sasha: ‘Dancing’, after which the teacher is singing or chanting what Sasha has chosen. Eventually, the kids are ready to make their own decisions and to produce full sentences. And Present Continuous (because that’s what it is) will come in really handy with storytelling and picture description.
Oh, one important thing: don’t forget to add ‘sleep’, it will work wonders to calm the kids down.
A classroom-made magic wand
Four: Snake!
Resources: a long snake made of paper aka a necessary number of scrap A4 pieces of paper glued or stapled together with a head of a snake drawn on the first one and the tail of the snake drawn on the last one. I actually like to use the A4 sheet cut in half for a thinner snake and I cut out the head and the tail. Perhaps a set of flashcards in the first weeks of playing the game or with younger students.
How to play: The teacher puts the snake on the floor, the kids come to the snake one by one and stand in a line on one side of the snake. The game is intended to practise one particular group of words with some distractors included, distractors here being any other words, not in the category. For example, if the main aim is to practise colours, the basic distractor can be numbers or even kids’ names if that is the beginning of the year and the children do not really know anything else.
The teacher calls out the words, in a random order. If the students hear the target vocabulary, they have to jump over the snake (or to step over if the kids are young and not very good at controlling their gross motor skills) every time they hear the target word i.e. a colour. If they hear one of the distractors, they don’t move. In a way, actually, it is a movement variation of ‘Simon says’ only no one is dropping out.
When we start playing, we line up and I show the kids all the flashcards and we revise all the words. I also tell them that today we play with colours. Later on in the year, when the kids have more vocabulary at their disposal, the teacher can raise the level of challenge and play with two or even three categories.
The game mostly focuses on listening for the target vocabulary and discriminating it from the distractors but it can easily be turned into a productive game with one of the students standing at the head of the snake, facing the group and calling out the words. In the early stages of the unit, when the kids still might struggle with remembering all the new words, it makes sense to let them look at the cards displayed on the board or on the wall or to even hold all the flashcards and to call out the words they want to use.
I created this game for my group in Pamplona in which I had 12 little kids and no room in the classroom apart from the relatively narrow aisle in the middle of the classroom. This is how the snake game was born. We needed something thin to fit in the aisle and I chose a snake because I hate them personally and stepping over a snake is a good move, very conducive to survival. But the kids accepted it and we loved the game.
The snake itself needs to be made but it is easy to store it and to recycle it and if it gets destroyed during the game, it is also easy to fix. Or to be recreated. During one of my training sessions, one of my teachers suggested using a skipping rope and that, of course, is a solution. However, I still prefere the paper because in case of a mishap and a kid tripping over the snake, the paper seems a safe option. If it gets torn, we can fix it, no harm done. A child tripping over a skipping rope, however, might result in a child falling down. Typing that up here I realised that if the classroom has the appropriate floor, the snake can also be drawn on the floor, with chalk for example…
A classroom-made magic wand
Five:I like cats, I don’t like cats
Resources: one set of flashcards, the regular A5 set that normally come with the coursebook and two cards with symbols for I like / I don’t like, for example a heart for ‘I like’ and a crossed heart for ‘I don’t like’
How to play: Before the lesson the teacher puts up the I like / I don’t like symbols on two walls in the classroom, on the opposite ends. In the real life, these two simply stay there for the rest of the year as we use them all the time. The kids get up and stand in the middle of the room, half-way between these two signs. It is good to put there a small stool or a table with all the cards, for example all the toys, pets, colours etc.
The teacher picks out one card, for example ‘green’, calls it out and the students go either left or right, depending on whether they like it or not. The teacher points at one of the group and says: ‘Green!’ and the kids reply ‘I like green’ and ‘I don’t like green’ together with the rest of their group. Afterwards, they come back to the centre (aka the stool) and the game goes on with a different word.
This is another stirrer that gives the kids a chance to move around a bit and to produce the langauge, with the additional support since they have the flashcards to reinforce the meaning of the word and since they produce full sentences with approximately half of the group. The kids can also be invited to lead the game by choosing the words to use.
The game can be used throughout the year with almost any vocabulary and there are a few adaptations possible especially as regards the settting. If the group is big or if the kids are too energetic and too tricky to control, the same game can be played with the kids sitting on the carpet or even on their chairs. Instead of walking to the left and to the right, they can stand up and sit down or clap their hands and stomp their feet or raise one arm or two arms for ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’ respectively. This will make the classroom management a little bit less challenging for the teacher.
A classroom-made magic wand
Bonus activities: My favourite movement activies
Resources: the access to the internet and youtube
How to play: All of these songs here have been created specifically for the purpose of ensuring some movement in the classroom. The main aim here is not the langauge production although they do include some language but, of course, the movement is the star here.
Move by Super Simple Songs – a real hit, nothing more to say.
The Rolly Polly Roll by Super Simple Songs – another hit but only if you have a carpet because kids might actually try to roll or to crawl. You’ve been warned:-)
The Jellyfish Song by Super Simple Songs – I love it and it is quite a challenge to turn yourself into a jellyfish
Head, shoulders, knees and toes – this is the first song we sing in the classroom, mostly because kids can participate without any language production, just by doing what the teacher is doing. I like to sing this one myself, without the audio, in order to be able to control the speed and the activity. There is a version by Super Simple Songs, of course.
Shake your sillies out by Jose Paolo Liwag – I love to use this one with my older students, actually when they can appreciate the need to shake our sillies out and to clap our crazies out…
The Dance Freeze Song by Scratch Garden – the hit of this summer camp. There are some cool verbs and dance movements and we just LOVED to dance! You can also teach your kids the most important verb in the world: FREEZE.
Action Songs for kids by The Singing Walrus – one more fun song, with the basic verbs.
Make a Circle by Super Simple Song – it is a very popular song, I have seen it in many lessons that I observed but, somehow, I have never used it myself a lot.
A classroom-made magic wand
Some things to remember
Before you start any movement games, make sure that the kids are ready. Ideally, these games can be played in the part of the classroom where we have more room, only the carpet, no or fewer pieces of furniture. If that is not possible, please make sure that you create this space, with the kids’ help, possibly, to make sure that it is as safe as possible.
It is also a good idea to introduce some rules related specifically to this movement part of the lesson and these will depend on the classroom and on the group. In my classroom, we used to do all the movement games on the carpet by the window and for that reason our only rule was: We stay on the carpet, to ensure that the kids do not wander around, run around and leave the safe space.
Make sure that you move to this other place of the classroom in an organised manner. In the beginning it might be necessary to call the kids one by one, by the name to avoid a situation in which we have to control a stampede of five-year-olds there and back. With my groups (the maximum number of students in our pre-school groups is eight), we have our chant. I like to go to the carpet first and singing, call all the kids one by one (‘Sasha in the circle, Sasha in the circle’) and to wait, holding hands with all the kids, as they arrive. The child who is just joining is the one to choose the next child (‘Sasha, who’s next?’) and for the last one to join us we all call out loudly (‘Sasha, come here’) so that nobody feels unwelcome. Some kids actually love to be the last ones to join the circle because it is a lot of fun to be called by the whole group.
When the movement game is over, we go to our tables and desks, one by one or in pairs and the teacher is the one to make a decision about the order, at least in the beginning when the kids are still getting used to the new element of the routine.
Bigger groups can use the same pattern, but the kids move in groups of two or three so that the preparation for the activity does not last longer than the game itself.
One of the other things that I always do as the first activity on the carpet is to make a circle, holding hands and run a few rounds of ‘big circle’ (we stretch our circle), ‘small circle’ (we gather in the centre), a few times with these two adjectives and with the other ones, too for variation, for example a low circle (we bend), a high circle (hands up in the air, still holding hands), a wavy circle, a shaky circle and so on. It is an easy, risk-free activity, the kids love it (especially when everyone is present and we can really make a big circle) and, most importantly, after arriving one by one and being individuals, we can do something as a group, something super easy, before we get on to the more creative and productive things.
These games are not only about movement, although this is their reason for being in the classroom and in the lesson. However, as always, the main aim is language production and for that reason the students as the teacher, leading the activity have been included in all of the games presented above.
Can you hear some desperation, dear reader, in the title of this post? Rightly so. I started to write this post after one of the sessions of the summer camp that I took part in. My kids were amazing, of course, clever and eager to learn and, really, we did have a lot of fun. At the same time, looking at how they interact with each other, I could not believe my eyes and my ears. Despite the fact that many of them were already eight and nine, their social skills were on a disastrously low level. Practically anything that involved taking the other humans in the classroom into equation was a huge challenge for way too many of them. I did sigh with desperation, once and twice, and then I rolled up my sleeves and started to introduce pairwork, even though these were not my permanent students.
You may wonder why it shook me so much and why I decided to fix it. One reason is, naturally, my professional obsession with maximising production in kids and, really, I cannot imagine teaching a group of primary school children with the teacher at the centre, all the time. It is a waste of time and a waste of opportunities because kids of that age are capable of working in pairs without constant supervision. And if they do, they automatically produce more language.
However, there is more to it, of course because kids who work in pairs are more independent and more autonomous as learners and they have an opportunity to work with a variety of partners and to make friends and to bond with the group. This, in turns, is a better prognosis for the general classroom and behaviour management because you are less likely to get into trouble and to disrespect someone that you actually like and respect. If only you had a chance to get to know them and to like something about them.
Pairwork, yes or no? YES. One, big, decisive YES.
Where the angels don’t fear to tread. Pair-work in pre-school?
Yes, absolutely yes! I have been introducing pairwork in my pre-school groups first intuitively, simply because I had a very big group of children and we never got to produce any language apart from choral, whole class production and that simply was annoying for me, as the teacher. My students had a lot of potential and I did not want to waste an opportunity. Not quite knowing what to do and how to do it, I started to move towards working in pairs. It worked and by the end of the second year of pre-school, my group was ready and I was able to do what I do with my teens or adults: ‘Together, together, together’ while pointing at pairs of students. By the time we got to primary, this was a natural part of our lessons and some of the children were not even seven at this point. It is possible.
Then, naturally, I decided to do it again, with a new year 1 group, but this time, in a more conscious way, in order to be able to share it with my teachers. We started the course in September, we started to shape the group and the routine and we started to introduce pair-work. I kept my eyes open, I kept our class journal and we did it. It took 13 weeks of a course, with classes that took place only once a week. I presented the results of this research at our BKC Conference in 2020. and you can read more about it in a post here.
How to do it: The choice of the activity
The choice of the activity is one of the most important elements contributing to the success of the whole process. I got a heads-up here only because I have been teaching for many years and I had a chance to bump into one of the older coursebooks for kids which, although it had a few disadvantage and which does not even come close to the level of the currently used coursebooks for children, it did include a few ingenious solutions and, among them, the one I am going to describe below.
The one that featured in every unit of the coursebook was the maze the example of which you can see below. Initially, it was a simple but effective listening game, to practise the target language, especially vocabulary. Kids would listen to a robot dictating the path through the maze, for example: START: red…blue…yellow…brown…grey…etc until one of the exits, A, B or C. The words were separated by a funny sound, something that I would describe as ‘stomping by a robot, marching’ that the kids absolutely LOVED but it also gave them a great advantage of getting enough time to prepare for the following step. In every activity there were about 6 or 7 rounds of the game.
This game can be easily turned into a speaking – listening game and, eventually, into a pairwork.
It starts with the teacher NOT using the audio and dictating the route through the maze, with the kids following it and reaching the final destination. Naturally, the following step is the teacher nominating the students to decide on the following step, one word per child. This stage can go on for as long as it is necessary for the kids to become familiar with the format.
Afterwards, either still in the same unit and with the same maze or in the following unit with the new vocabulary, kids are put into small teams and they lead each other, in teams, through the maze. Eventually, they are put into pairs and they do it with only one partner, with one student speaking and the other student listening and following from the start to the exits.
In order to make it more monitorable, for the teacher and for the students and, also, to make it more achievable, we started to trace the route with coloured pencils or markers, each round with a different colour. This way, the children could always go back in case they got lost and the children can also monitor each other, the student dictating could potentially see where their friends were going.
This way, in a relatively short period of time, the kids got used to the new format, to working together, with only a partial monitoring and support from the teacher. It definitely helped that the vocabulary range in each case was quite limited, namely, only single words, from the obligatory set of words introduced and practised before. The students were not overwhelmed and could focus only on the format of the game. At the same time, however, in the later units of level 2, there were also more complex mazes, for example one in which the kids had to listen to a brief description of an animal for example: it has got stripes, it is big, it can run (zebra). Obviously, that means that the level of challenge can be raised when the children are ready for it.
Julie Ashworth and John Clarke, I Spy 1, SB, p. 23, OUP
It is very easy to recreate the idea using only the black and white clipart visuals and a grid of the required size. Here you see a maze that I created for my preschoolers (rooms).
Below you can see one more type of an activity that features almost in every unit of the coursebook and this one is specifically designed for pairwork for the young students. It was always some kind of a guessing game, with the two spies (the theme of the book, duh:-) trying to guess what the other one is thinking about. I really liked it for the visuals specifically designed for that purpose and the target langauge beautifully displayed on the page to support the students’ production. Using these was a lot of fun and it was effective but I still think that the previous one, the maze, worked better as regards the first steps in working in pairs.
Julie Ashworth and John Clarke, I Spy 1, SB, p. 45, OUP
Contributing factors
There is a whole lot of things that a teacher can do in class in order to facilitate the whole process. They can be implemented throughout the course, little by little, bit by bit.
Seating: make sure that the kids are sitting in a way that faciliates pair-work, in some sort of separation from the other pairs, for example by pairing up the tables and chairs, putting the chairs and kids facing each other.
Resources: these need to be prepared with a lot of care and attention. Apart from the example based on the activity that features in the I Spy coursebooks, described above, the teacher can also use a set of mini-flashcards, as described in my post about pair-work for preschoolers. These cards are used in a game of simple riddles but the cards themselves are small (eight or six or four that fit on an A4 piece of paper) in order for the kids to be able to manipulate them with ease. What is more, a set comprises of an envelope, too that holds all the cards. This way, there is no danger of kids dropping the cards (or if they do, these will fall back into the envelope) and the secret, very necessary in that game, is easily kept throughout the game. Even if the cards are printed on a regular photocopying paper, they are not see-through, being in the envelope.
Roles and turn-taking: Another thing is that the teacher only needs one envelope per pair. This helps a lot with assigning the role. It is crystal clear to the kids who is speaking (the child with the envelope) and who is listening (the child without the envelope). Turn-taking is also more obvious since the kids are literally passing the baton here, the envelope or whatever is the set of materials.
Signals: Introducing the pairwork is a part of the routine and, naturally, it will take some time. To facilitate it, like with the other elements of the class routine in primary and pre-primary, it would be good to include some visual representation of the pairwork, such as gestures or chants, anything that will signal to the students what is about to be the following stage of the lesson. It can be for example a simple flashcard. I love to use a flashcard with a pair of socks for the younger kids and a two pears for the older kids who can get this pronunciation joke but a picture of two kids talking will do, too. Some more modern coursebooks have started to introduce those and that is great). Another solution can be a simple chant, for example ‘Let’s play together! Let’s play in pairs! 3…2…1’. As with all the chants, this will introduce the next stage and it will give the kids a chance to get ready or maybe even to organise themselves. The same applies to the end of the pairwork stage.
Pairing-up: In the early stages, I would recommend a teacher-led pairing up. It is perfectly natural that in a group of children, there will be some students who will be better prepared to work in pairs early and some who will need to more time, even if all the students are of the same age or level. Based on the knowledge of the group and the individual children to end up with the most efficient pairing. This might be necessary to do over a few first lessons, later starting to experiment with some variations. I like to use a set of cards with all the kids’ names and we have a pairwork (or project) draft when we need it. The cards can be taken out of a box or a bag by the teacher or by students, too.
Time: Thil will of course, depend on an activity but choosing an open-ended game, without an obvious grand-finale gives the teacher more freedom and flexibility to finish the game when it is best for the class, rather than having to go until the very end when some of the kids might already be getting tired and bore and when they can start losing their focus. It might be a good idea to set a timer on the phone or to choose a song as a timing tool. It is very necessary to tell the kids how long they will play for.
This is the week of the summer teacher training and may it be the first of many. I love being a trainer for many reasons and one of them is the fact that just as many ideas come are born in the classroom, in the presence of kids, in the same way, many are born in the classroom in the presence of trainees. Being, talking, observing and reflecting and, ta-dam, you find yourself talking and making mental notes for all the posts to add to this blog.
Here is the first post dedicated to my summer trainees from the June 2023 group.
Lesson planning process in three easy steps
Check the coursebook content, choose the lesson aims and the main activity
Plan the whole lesson (in the way you prefer to do it, with taking notes, without taking notes, with colours like I love to do or just on a set of post-it notes, like my teacher-friend Irina likes to do.
Once it is all done and ready, take another look at it and assess it, analysing it from the point of view of variety. If something is missing and/or is in excess, adapt the lesson plan
Here comes the variety…
Settlers and stirrers
This is probably the one that I would recommend starting. First of all, because it is quite straighforward and easy to spot, even for a newly qualified teacher. Young learners accumulate energy fast and they need to be given an opportunity to release it in order to be able to concentrate on those tasks that require focus. If they don’t, they will become distracted and wriggling in their chairs. In such a situation no teaching or learning is taking place.
Second of all, it is a good one to start with because it is just very easy to deal with and to fix, without any major effort. Most of the time, what it takes is to shift stages around the lesson. If a lesson is too active, a stage in which students work on their own on a task can be added. If, on the contrary, the lesson is too calm, too still, too book-bound, all you need is a song or, even better, a few songs, to punctuate the whole lesson and to give it a proper rhythm.
Materials
This one is quite easy to take care of as there will always be the board and the markers, the coursebook and the workbook, all the flashcards and a set of markers or pencils. Throw in a puppet, a soft ball, a few die, perhaps a few storybooks and some magnets and a blob of blutack and your basic set is ready. Then, to make all the dreams come true, I would add a beautiful multifunctional box, some coloured paper, a few pairs of kids scissorss and a few gluesticks, some trinkets to be the checkers, a bag of stickers, painter’s scotch and a homemade magic wand.
The computer and the screen, with the Internet access and the cornucopia of goods available online is already in the classroom.
The only thing is to make combine all the elements in a clever way and make sure that the set changes a bit, from lesson from lesson, and that some occasional pretty pieces such as playdough, watercolours or food.
Learning styles
On the one hand, ‘learning styles’ is one of the terms that features in many (if not all books) on teaching young learners. On the other hand, it is one of the most frequently mocked concepts at many (if not all) conferences, workshops and lectures on teaching English.
But, as I have been telling my trainees over the years, those who say anything about learning styles with the tiniest even traces of derision are, quite likely, the people who have never worked with children. If they had, they would have embraced any movement, action, songs, music, chants, colourful flashcards, realia, blocks and posters, not because they would lend themselves to be neatly labelled as kinesthetic, auditory and visual but because variety of learning channels means less boredom in the YL classroom and, even if only for that one reason, better results.
And it’s not that the song in the classroom is only going to be sung only by those kids who actually like singing. Quite the contrary, the song is there for all of the kids to participate only some will enjoy it more than the others. So will the flashcards, posters and realia or boardgames.
I got to this paragraph in the post and I smiled. And it’s because, as soon as we get to this point in our coversations with teachers or trainees, there is always somebody who raises up a hand to say that ‘Primary school children don’t know to work in pairs’. I smile.
It is true, that on entering a classroom with a bunch of primary school kids, you cannot just assume that you will be able to go ‘Together, together, together. Work in pairs. Here is the handout’ and it will just happen. It will not but it is not because the kids, developmentally, are unable to work in pairs. It is because it is a new environment, a new teacher, a new group of peers, a new classroom and, in our case, a new language.
Pairwork is possible in primary. Pairwork is absolutely necessary in primary and it can be done. It can be done even with much younger students and here you can read about how to go about it. For that reason, and taking full responsibility for my words, I can say that in a lesson with primary students, as a trainer, an observer, a mentor, an educator and an ados, I would expect to see some whole class work, some indivdual work, some teamwork AND some pairwork.
Practical notes
I like to colour-code different areas to better see the balance or the lack of it.
I sometimes use it as a reflection task before teaching the lesson, sometimes it is a post-teaching entertainment.
Most of the time, I use it in my everyday lesson planning, and then I only focus on one or two areas here and that is usually when the lesson plan just ‘doesn’t feel right‘ and I am trying to identify why I am not happy with it.
This is also a technique that I have used in teacher training, with evaluating the lesson plans of my trainees, while preparing an observation report and, naturally, also during the lesson planning sessions of all kinds. Because of that, the main objective would be different, either to identify the weaker areas and to create the connection between the lesson planning process and the lesson itself or while lesson planning to problem shoot and to ensure that the lesson is balanced, at least on paper.
The EFL classroom, just like the Mary Poppins’ bag, is full of the little pieces that to other people might be just random junk but to the teachers of young learners, they are the true gems and the amazing, life-saving fireworks. This post today includes only 5 of them, something old, something blue, something borrowed, something blue or, in the EFL words, something for production, something for games, something for classroom management…Because sharing is caring.
One: paper hearts
You need: a set of small colourful cardboard cards, which stand for ‘I like’ (the colour side) and ‘I don’t like’ (the side with a small cross).
You will need these to encourage the kids to start expressing opinions. The hearts are used as a symbolic representation of the structure when it is introduced, they are used in all the handouts, even with the youngest kids, but they really start working when the students can physically hold them and use them to react to express opinions by showing the appropriate side of the heart, depending on their opinion. First come the gestures and the symbols, then the language itself and then the hearts become unnecessary because the kids are ready to just talk about the things they like and those that they don’t. It works amazingly well with small groups and it works even better with the bigger groups because all the kids can talk at the same time and the teacher gets the immediate group feedback with all the hearts up into the air.
Two: Little random word cards
You need: a set of regular small cards with the key vocabulary from the unit. They can be handwritten or printed. For the younger kids these are replaced with a set of mini-flashcards, with the images and the text or only the images.
You can: use them in a variety of games to practise vocabulary such as: riddles (make a definition to guess the word), questions (ask a question with the word for your partner to answer), similar or different (taking two words at a time to look for similarities between them), categories (with students grouping the words in any way they want), random stories (telling stories with the words taken out of the pile in a random order) or testing each other (to check the meaning or spelling of certain words) or pelmanism if there are two sets of words per group or pair. Anything for more vocabulary practice and use.
Three: Faces
You need: a set of cardboard circles with emoticons for them. The disposable paper plates work amazingly well here, too.
You can use them during the hello circle to help the kids answer the question ‘How are you today?’ as they are allowed to manipulate the cards while talking to the teacher. We also use them all the time while telling stories to help illustrate all the emotions involved and while working with any visuals that accompany listening or reading activities in the coursebook. The emotion flashcards can also come in handy with different behaviour issues. Knowing the words such as ‘angry’, ‘sad’ or ‘ill’ can really come in handy in many class situations.
Four: Stars
You need: a set of cardboard stars, cut out of regular or, if you are really fancy, out of some colourful cardboard paper, and some blutack or magnets. In a super upgraded version these cardboard stars can have a piece of magnetic sheet glued to them (aka this is how we recycle the merch magnets given out at out local pizza place, cut them up and glue them to things we want to use on the board).
Why? These have become my go-to, clutching-at-straws solution to motivate my kids to speak more English in class at the point when my sweet primary kids grew up and became more talkative and they were more likely to choose their first language to chat away. The stars, given out demonstratively with an excited ‘Oh, what beautiful English!’ worked in two ways. On the one hand, they made them focused on using the target language, on the other hand, somehow, magically almost, it got them to use the target langaguage from the higher shelf. Once they got into the habit of communicating mostly in English, we could stop using the stars in every lesson.
Five: Names Cards
You need: a set of small cardboard rectangles, with each of the students’ names on them, one per card, possibly laminated, to make them year-long-lasting.
You can: use them for any pairwork or group forming activity without getting personal. The cards can be kept in a box or a bag and drawn out by the teacher to organise the kids in a fun way. Even more so, the students can be involved in the draft. This way the grouping and pairing will be the most impersonal, the most random and the most genuine ever. It might also make it easier for the students to accept the outcome, even if they end up working with the classmates whom they might not like very much. After all, it will be due to luck, good or bad, not due to some very arbitrary decision of the teacher.
