Very young learners

What an old dog learnt… A YL teacher goes back into the adult classroom

by
Me and one of my best friends, Roman B. No old dogs in this photo. Only the amazing ones (The photo: courtesy of Yulia. The doggo: courtesy of Jill)

Back to the future

It just happened: a dedicated YL teacher (and a teacher who spent the last ten years doing her best to stay away from teaching adults (minus the trainees!) all of a sudden found herself in the classroom with some serious corportate clinets and their Business English, General English, English for Finance and Banking, A2 – C1. Full time.

It has to be said out loud: that was not a direction that this teacher dreamed of or the developement that the teacher planned or solicited but, at the same time, there is absolutely no need to wring hands or shed tears over such a giggle of the Fate. After all, the teacher is an experienced one, with an oh-dear number of years in the classroom (and different types of classrooms, everywhere) so the teacher will be just fine. After all, teaching is teachings, the students are great, the fun is being had. All the details are here just to set the context.

The old dog aka the adult classroom through a YL teacher

This particular started with a most random thing. I don’t even remember what we were doing and with whom, but, suddenly, I caught myself thinking ‘Blin, even my kids can do THAT‘. There was no anger in it or desperation, only curiosity and bemusement. I started to analyse the details and bits and pieces of this THAT and the reasons for that. It started with a sigh but it got interesting very quickly.

Here is a new post and an attempt at looking at the adult EFL learners through the eyes spoilt by her young students.

One. Inhibitions

This is something that is almost non-existant in the YL classroom. Minus all these cases in which the kid have had a negative first experience with English, at school, with the tutors or parents or when they are naturally introvert and shy and they simply need more time to settle in the group and to feel comfortable enough to talk. Most commonly, the kids enter the room, eyes wide-open, ready to discover and to enjoy the world of the English language.

Then, there are adults, a completely different picture. Naturally, there are quite a few factors that can contribute such as a lower level, a long break in learning or using the language, some negative previous learning experience or studying in one group with colleagues from the same company or being a low-level speaker of English when you are already a top manager.

The result? Silence in the classroom.

I guess that is the silence that is the time they need to think about their answer, to choose the words, to gather the courage to let them out and, naturally, they get it. They do have the right to the freedom of silence. For me, the teacher, it is also an interesting exercise in patience. I realised that I have been spoilt with hands shooting up into the air and the opinions voiced almost instantly. Here, I am getting used to breathing more and waiting for the students to be ready.

I am beginning to think that building up the students’ confidence suddenly gets the priority among the lesson and the course aims as regards the adult learners of English. Everything else, the vocabulary, the structures and the skills development will follow. Hopefully.

Two. Teacher-oriented communication

On the one hand, the YL classes are definitely more teacher-centred than the adult classes. That is, to some extent, fully justified. Students, especially the younger ones, are in need of the teacher and the adult as the lesson leader. But only to some extent. I strongly believe that this should be one of the main aims of the course to create the conditions in which the students will be learning to interact with the teacher BUT also giving them a chance to learn to interact with each other. After all, whatever happens in the classroom is only a warm-up, only the preparation, only the training before the real life interaction. In which, most likely, the teacher is not going to take part. For that reason, the students should be given the tools and opportunities to talk to each other, to lead the activities, to take part in pair-work. There is no need to wait with it until they turn ten or fifteen. Some elements of that can be introduced even much earlier and pair-work is feasible in pre-school.

Somehow, it is not a given with the older students. Adults, either because they are more inhibited or because they see it as a sign of respect towards the teacher, they hold back, they wait, for the teacher to call their name out or for the teacher to at least signal that it is their turn to speak. I have realised that sometimes I have to specifically highlight that I am stepping out of the conversation, that the students, in pairs or as a whole group, have to take responsiblity for the interaction and that I will not be encouraging, keeping it up and, of course, leading it. We have been studying together for about three months now and I can already see some improvement in that area. Hooray to that!

Three. Communication strategies

Communication strategies is one of my true professional passions and that is why it was chosen for my first research within the MA programme. Inspired by Haenni Hoti, Heinzman and Mueller (2003) (or, rather ‘taken aback by the comments of’) that claimed that young learners use a very limited range of communication strategies, basically limiting those to translation and code-switching (aka using a combination of L1 and L2), based on the gut feeling from the classroom, I decided to check it out. And, to prove them wrong. Hopefully.

Although my research was a very small scale and low-key and by a beginner researcher, I found out enough evidence to get me even more interested in the topic. My little students proved to be already effective communicators who work hard and who have a good range of different techniques to get the message across such as all-purpose words, approximation, direct appeal for help, indirect appeal for help, self-repair, other-repair and mime. The range was much wider. Translation and code-switching were used, too, and they were the most frequent ones, however, they were not the only ones.

Then, there are the adults and guess what, these adults, ‘Come as you are’, before I get to work on them, they know only one communication strategy and that is ‘translation’. falling back into their L1, straightaway, whenever something is unclear, unknown and uncertain. I am not even sure why it is assumed that the learners (let alone the young ones) will use these strategies of their accord. I haven’t researched that properly, yet, but perhaps it has got nothing to do with the age of the student or, rather, not only with the age of the student, and more with the learning experience and the opportunities to be acquainted with and to develop these strategies.

The adult students (my adult students) struggled in that area and if they didn’t know, they would immediately switch to L1 and they would expect an answer. Working around that by delaying the translation, encouraging them to try something else or, also, providing both, the L2 only and the translation was quite a challenge and I know that some of them were surprised that I don’t just provide the required service aka translation, that I am trying something else. They had it written all over the face. I can’t say my job is done here, far from it but we are working on it. And it is a bit better now.

Four. Sharing ideas

Teacher beliefs are a slippery topic and most of the time we don’t even think about them. It was only last year (and somewhere by the end of it) when I realised why I am a teacher and what I want from my lessons.

Everything happened thanks to one Sasha who joined our group and who, despite the eight months spent with the rest of the team, in a very welcoming and friendly environment, despite the fact that she got on with everyone, Sasha still would keep quiet in class unless I asked her a question and unless I called out her name. I had never even thought about it and only then did I understand that I want to create such an atmosphere in the lesson in which my students feel free to talk because they have something to share with the rest of the group, not because they have to, not because the teacher made them, not because the teacher asked the question or because the teacher is testing them. They talk because they have something to say. And I want them to feel that they can. This is something that we have been working on from the very beginning.

It was one more thing that was ‘not so obvious’ for my adult students. They stalled. They do, still, sometimes. Again, it might be due to a whole range of factors, the natural shyness, the lack of confidence, the level of English, the relations in the workplace, if they come from the same company, or even the natural politeness. It is not a given that everyone will be speaking during the lesson time because speaking and developing the communicative skills is the reason why we come to class.

Five. All ideas are good ideas.

That is a sad fact: adulthood and reality kills creativity and imagination. Long gone are the days of fairy tales and fantasy travels with Frodo or magical battles with Harry. Well, in most cases. For that reason, if the question is about playing football and the student does not play football, the rest, dramatically, is silence…With kids silence never ever happens, and that is especially amazing, because, more often than not, we do things that have nothing or very little to do with the real life. All these menus for the monster cafe, all these school trips around the world, or to the moon or, our life as pirates…Silence is a rare event. Thank heavens.

This post is not to be read as a huge, one thousand word, complaint about my adult students. It is certainly not. I am doing a good job, I like them and we are making progress. I am just positively amazed that with my young learners, we have done SO MUCH (and to be honest, so much we have done by accident, unwillingly, joyfully, just for laughs) to enable the kids and to ensure that they are effective communicators.

I would like to think that my kids are not in danger of being scared to scared, inhibited, with a strong affective factor. This ship has sailed.

This line, so frequently used in my kids classes, started to appear in my adult classes.

See this is basically what happens when you send a YL teacher into the adult classroom. There is a lot of dedication, professionalism and lots of good lessons are happening. But the teacher has a one track mind and everything is somehow YL-related:-)

Bibliography

A. Haenni Hoti, S. Heinzmann and S. Mueller (2003), I can help you? Assessing speaking skills and interaction strategies of young learners, In: M. Nikolov (ed), The Age Factor and and Early Language Learning, De Grutyer.

Happy teaching!

Teaching grammar in pre-school?

by

This article was (and is) a double joy.

First of all, it got published in the Modern English Teacher in May 2022.

Apart from that, there are also these two videos that I would like to share with you

  • My MET Contributor Interview which you can find here
  • And the Pavillon ELT Vlog with Damien aka his take on my ideas which you can find here

Enjoy!

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #31: Circle IS the best shape aka Frogs Etc

by
@ Magdalena

Ingredients

  • Two circles cut out of cardboard (regular photocopying paper is too thin and flimsy), with the two holes for fingers also cut out before the lesson.
  • Glue to glue these together
  • Crayons, pencils or markers to draw the appropriate body parts

Procedures

  • Show the kids the finished product, introduce the frog, chat with the kids
  • Show the kids the smaller circle, show how you decorated it.
  • Give out the pencils / markers.
  • Give out the small circles, decorate it with the kids.
  • Give out the bigger circle, decorate it, if appropriate.
  • Collect the pencils.
  • Show the kids how to glue one on top of the other. For the younger kids, it might be a good idea to draw a small cross on the top of the bigger circle, to signal where the kids should put the glue.
  • Give out the glue sticks. Kids glue their circles together.
  • Glue the additional body parts, when appropriate.
  • Collect the glue sticks.
  • Play
@ Magdalena

Why we like it

  • It is super easy! These frogs here, in the picture, were produced for a child (a huge Frog Fan), rather than with a child, and that is why I went a bit crazy with the eyes but there are the simpler versions of it)
  • These two circles can become many many things: a frog, a bear, a cat, a dog, a monkey, a rabbit or a snowman, with little adaptations.
  • The task does involve a lot of pre-cutting but the rest can be done by the kids during the lesson.
  • Once the toys are ready, they can be used to play, as any other puppets with all the structures that the kids are familiar with and with those that match the topic of the lesson, at the very least, ‘Hello’, ‘My name is’, ‘I like…and you?’ and it is always great when you can maximise production.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #28 Funky envelope

by
Flashcards created with the illustrations from Bystry Maluszek @Zielona Sowa Publishing House

Ingredients

  • a set of flashcards
  • two pieces of cardboard stapled together on three sides
  • shapes cut out on the front page (cut out before stapling)

Procedures

  • hide the flashcards inside
  • show the students only a part of the card on the top, through the cut-outs, ask the kids ‘What is it?’
  • take out the card and proceed with the rest of them
  • hide the flashcards inside
  • show the students only a part of the card on the top, through the cut-outs, ask the kids ‘What is it?’
  • take out the card and proceed with the rest of them

Why we like it

  • this is a variation of the Through the Keyhole activity that I once saw in the I Spy coursebook. However, this original version included an A4 sheet of paper with a keyhole that the teacher needed to cut out and then move the card over the flashcard. I found this tool a very interesting one but, at the same time, a bit awkward to use as the teacher needed two hands to manipulate the cards, there was a chance that the children could still see bits of the card apart from the keyhole bit and the activity involved a lot of picking up and putting down the cards. All in all, too clumsy to handle.
  • to make a funky envelope you need only simple materials (A4 cardboard or simple photocopying A4 paper although it will not be as durable, white, colourful or recycled), a pair of scissors and a stapler or glue. As soon as one envelope gets destroyed, you can easily replace it with a new one.
  • you can have one simple cut-out shape or a selection of different shapes all over the envelope.
  • all the flashcards fit in nicely inside, the teacher can manipulate them more easily. I sometimes turn the envelope over, to change the cards inside and to add to the whole ritual.
  • I normally use when the kids are already familiar with the images on the flashcards not to make the task too challenging, in lesson two or three of the unit. However, there were also cases when I used the envelope to introduce a brand new topic and to raise the level of challenge.

Happy teaching!

‘Please be quiet. I’m trying to teach!’* Ten ideas for classroom management of the big(ger) pre-school groups

by

Congratulations FunkySocks&Dragons! It looks like we have just got the longest blog post title in the history of this blog…

It was inspired by a wonderful song from Dream English Kids, a great tool to teach and to practise the Present Continous and the rooms in the house. If you don’t know it yet, please look it up asap. It is also based on the talk I gave at the TeachyForum in March 2022.

All the ideas that you see below come from my classrooms and represent the tricks and the techniques that I have developed or I have been using with my more numerous pre-school groups. Perhaps it is worth mentioning that I have not really had a chance to work with very very big groups. The biggest number that I have had in the pre-school classroom on permanent basis was 12 and I know that there are colleagues out there who teach more.

As usual, these are the things that have worked for me and I hope that you find some of it useful, too.

#1 Building the routine

This is one of the key words in the the VYL world and today we are lucky to have the access to quite a few different ideas for different classroom routines, either from the coursebooks authors who make an effort to even prepare the classroom routine chants and songs or from the teachers who share their ideas on the social media or their blogs. Lots of sources of inspiration!

But the most important thing as regards the routine for the bigger groups is the time investment. Some of us might be lucky to get only the little angels in their groups, some of us might have to deal with the ‘regular’ children who sometimes behave, who sometimes want to discover the world and to experiemtn, sometimes are up to no good at all…These children (regardless of whether there are three or ten) will need the time to get used to the lesson format, to the teacher and to the rules we want to implement.

When I started or took over those big groups (a situation even more complicated probably, since you have to ‘re-start’ the group), I would go step by step, aiming at getting a perfect hello circle first, just the way I would want it. Then, once this one done, I would work on improving the revision stage. Then and only when I already was at two stages of the lesson under control, I would move to the following one, working at one stage at a time, until I was finally happy with the entire lesson.

Nothing happens overnight. Be patient! Be good to yourself, too, dear teacher!

#2 Adapting the routine

The routine is never for ever and for always. Children get used to the lesson procedures and activities and they might need be in need of something new. Children get bored with what they know and they might be in need of something new. Children grow and develop their social, cognitive, motor and linguistic skills and they might be in need fo something new.

These changes may involve the physical rearrangements of the room (and related to that changes in the routine) or changing the rhythm of the lesson by splitting up the music and movement stage and replacing it with songs used throughout the entire lesson, as punctuation marks or introducing a whole new stage to the lesson in order to be able to secure a short 1-1 chat with all the students in a large group. Which I described here in more detail.

#3 Rewards’ chart

Yes, I would like to recommend using a rewards’ chart, despite the fact that some educators are against the idea. I don’t use it with all my groups, sometimes it is not necessary at all, but with those of the groups and children that need that, for me a rewards’ chart is a temporary solution and a tool of establishing the routine and visualising the kids’ behaviour. As soon as the target audience ie the kids are familiar with the rules and the routines, the chart is slowly abolished.

And yes, I have already written about it in this post here.

#4 Lesson planning aka balance

Lesson planning for a group of pre-schoolers is not necessarily the easiest thing to do. There are quite a few factors that have to be introduced and that have to be introduced in the appropriate ration. Some of these include

  • new material and revised material, vocabulary and structures
  • familiar (aka ‘safe’) and unfamiliar (aka ‘intriguing’) elements in order to ensure that the students are engaged but not bored.
  • skills, mostly listening and speaking but also reading and writing, when appropriate
  • settlers and stirrers
  • a variety of materials or, in other words, not only flashcards.
  • a variety of interaction patterns, not only individual work and not only whole class because all the children waiting for their turn, especially in large group, will find themselves alternative activities if there are too many T-S activities. If, on the other hand, the lesson is based on the whole class activities, the teacher is at risk of losing the contact with the individual students in the group.
  • games and ‘paper’ (aka hard work). Personally, I am of the opinion that one paper per lesson is just what is necessary. One page in the coursebook OR one handout OR one craft. No more. During the covid year when we were studying online, I gave up on paper completely. The children had their coursebooks but we used this material only for homework. The lesson time was devoted to interaction.

#5 Kids’ involvement

There are so many things that children can do in class and so many things that children will love to do in class because they want to be involved and they want to be a part of the classroom routine. This will help to make them more engaged and connected to the English bubble.

Kids can help with handing out and collecting materials and resources, choosing songs, games and songs, choosing the next student to take part, checking the register, cleaning the board, watering the plants etc etc. Even if in the beginning of the course, the kids are only separate individuals who don’t know anyone else and who perhaps do not feel like interacting with anyone else, this will be changing throughout the year. There is a lot that the teacher can do to help speed it up.

A community, be it a community made of three members or ten or twelve, will be much easier to manage than a group of individuals.

#6 Who’s the teacher?

To be honest, in my books, the main reason for inviting children to take part in taking control of the lesson is the fact that is maximising production. It is also one of the steps towards pair-work. However, there are other benefits, too. Children become more responsible for the lesson, they become more independent and they learn how to be in control. That, in itself, will have a positive impact on the classroom management and children’s behaviour. But there is more, too!

In a way, children become the teacher assistants, too, and that means that while they are leading the activity itself, the teacher can devote more (or all) of his or her attention to managing of the group and their behaviour.

#7 Pairwork

It is absolutely possible! Yes, yes, yes! I have done it and not once! I have also done it and kept and eye on how I was doing it in order to share it with my fellow teachers. You can read about it here in more detail. I will only say this: it did help me to deal with big groups and to create opportunities for all of my students to produce the language. With careful staging, with a mixed-ability goup and a mixed-age group it took thirteen lessons, from our first ‘Hello’ ever until the lesson when we played in pairs, in English.

#8 Staging

Staging is a topic that deserves its own post and I will eventually get down to typing it up. In the meantime, only a few words here.

Staging is important. Children being only 3 or 4 or 5 need the external help from the teacher in order to complete the tasks successfully. The first step is the successful choice of an activity.

The second step is how it is going to be done in class, what has to be done before the lesson, how the kids are sitting, what are the main mini-stages, what are going to be the teacher’s instructions and the way of modelling the teacher chooses and so on…It all matters and if it is not taken care of and planned carefull, the activity is likely to end up being a disaster, especially if it is a craft activity and especially if the group is big and the teacher cannot physically help with cutting, colouring, glueing and assembling…

Here you can find some of the tried and tested, teacher-friendly and VYL-friendly craft activities: don’t you just love a circle, a caterpillar and a butterfly, playdough activities.

#9 Songs

Songs are great and there are at least sixty reasons to use a song in the VYL classroom. Here it is important to highlight the huge potential they have as regards building a community, forming the everyday class routine and uniting the kids to balance the tasks they complete individually. And, as an easy stirrer. In that sense, these are especially imporatant and useufl with the bigger groups.

#10 Storytelling

In the same way as the songs are a stirrer easily included in the lesson, stories (storybooks, story boards, videos or stories told) are easy settlers. There are of course many more reasons to use these in class (I have found fifty so far) but, again, from the point of view of a teacher of a big pre-school groups, they also help build a community. They are also a great tool that can be effective with a group of one, three or twelve as all the children can participate in it simultaneously, if the activity is set up properly (some ideas of how it can be done can be found here).

Anything else? Please add your ideas in the comments!

Happy teaching!

Some other posts that you may found useful are here:

  1. When the world begins to fall apart post and teaching under the most unexpected circumstances
  2. About the impact of the classroom on the lesson, VYL-only classroom, adult EFL classroom adapted and teaching in kindergartens.
  3. Before you start working with preschoolers: a word of advice and the VYL starter kit
  4. About scaffolding
  5. The hidden perks of teaching VYL

Teaching English through Art: a palette of ideas for pre-school

by
Hopper

The aim of this post is the following: by the end of the post, the readers will be more familiar with the concept of connecting the EFL with the elements of Art Exploration and the appropriate craft activities.

As a source of potential inspiration for anyone who might want to try it.

The group

The kids for whom this course has been designed were a group of preschoolers, aged 4 – 6, who are and were part of a greater project at MAMM with Fun Art Kids and I was responsible for the English language slot. I taught them from October 2021 until February 2022 and we had lots of creative fun in English. I used to joke that these classes were the reason for me to wake up on Tuesdays.

My students were beginners and for many of them, if not for all, those sixty minutes of English were the only real exposure and the only real lesson and, despite the fact that it is not a lot of time (at all) we made progress that I was really happy with.

The format

The whole idea behind the Kids in the Avangard programme was that children should be given an opportunity to experience art and all the many ways of creative communication, through music, through dance and movement, through theatre, through visual arts and through English. The programme was run in module, each with their own theme (colour, shape, line etc) and within those modules the kids would participate in lessons that were separate entities devoted to an artist, an artistic movement etc. At the same time, kids work on a performance which takes place at the end of the ‘term’.

It was not easy to nest the English classes in that format but it was not possible. The main idea is that the English classes in which we deal with the beginner students (or a mixed ability group), it was impossible to aim for a very content-rich input and some adaptations had to be made for that. What I decided to do is to focus on giving the kids a good basis of English, including the vocabulary and structure from the pre-A level (although not necessarily not synonymous with and not in the order of the ‘typical pre-school curriculum’) and to combine it with the introduction to the world of the world Art and related craft activities. Just like in the case of all the other classes of the programme, our lessons were connected but each of them was a separate module, too.

The format of the lessons followed a typical EFL pre-school lesson with the hello circle, revision, new material introduction, movement and table time and it was supplemented with and built on songs and stories, too.

The palette of ideas

In the chart below you can see the content and the ideas for some of the lessons I ran as part of the course. In many ways it was an experiment, this whole course and, overall, it was a very successful experiment, the kind that makes you shout out ‘I want more of that!”. However, it was an experiement and, naturally, some lessons were more effective than others, and some ideas better than others.

In the chart below, I have decided to include those that I have tried and tested and loved, as those that I can strongly recommend, ready to use almost. All the misshaped ones will be worked on and developed and presented at a later date, when I have improved them a tiny little bit at least. But, in order to be honest and to share the experience as it was, I have also decided to include some of the things I have learnt by making the mistakes I did make. All of those you will find in the final section of this post aka What not to do.

The gallery

Klee
Goncharova

Kandinsky, Malevich, El Lissitzky
van Gogh
Warhol

De Coster
Mashkov
Monet

The not-so-successful side of the experiment

  • The time allowances: either because it is a brand new thing for the kids (aka the entire course) or because it is a new element to the everyday class routine, the students need time to figure things out, to learn how to navigate around it and to make it familiar. Once they do, the whole programme will be a lot more effective and enjoyable. Don’t be upset if it is not an instant success.
  • The high expectations regarding the content and the input: the main aim of this programme is not to provide the kids with any substantial input on the artist’s life and career. Instead, they are supposed to be given an opportunity to be exposed to the world art and to interact with it.
  • Kids will produce the language, however, it is most likely to happen during the English language part of the lesson (introduction of the new vocabulary, practice, language games)
  • Each lesson has three separate objectives (language, Art and craft) and it is perfectly natural that only one of them will be given priority in a lesson and that English and the language production will not always be the main focus. If these classes are taught as a part of the general English course, then it is assumed that they will be balanced with the regular, more productive English lessons. In case of a separate course, this aspect (and potential parents’ expectations) are even easier to manage by outlining the course objectives beforehand.
  • Many craft activities look good on paper but they might not be easy to implement and to manage in a group of pre-schoolers. Trying, trialling and testing (aka making it first at home, before the lesson) is the best way to avoid and to get ready for at least some of the potential problems.
  • Time is on your side. Fnding a strong link between the three elements and preparing a coherent lesson gets easier with time. And more and more enjoyable.
  • There are plenty of things that can be done just with the simple resources such as markers, crayons or watercolours and paper but don’t forget that there is a lot more that can be done! Experimenting is fun!

Why?

If you are still wondering whether to start including art in your EFL lessons, please have a look at this earlier post and here you can find a great website with lots and lots ideas for art activities.

Happy teaching!

A VYL classroom. Part 3: In a kindergarten

by
@vectorpouch @freepic.com

Case C: Off-site classes in kindergartens

The off-site EFL classes, with the teachers arriving to the kindergarten and teaching their lessons there are quite common.

Advantages

  • The environment is by default child-friendly and safe
  • There are carpets, small tables, small tables or chairs boards and posters are hung on the level of the children
  • There are plenty of posters, toys, craft and stationery products that are child-friendly (ie crayons or safety scissors), books
  • Children feel comfortable in the place, they know where to find the toilet, the spare shoe, their shelves
  • Children already know their classmates
  • There will be plenty of people who already know the children from the day activities and it will be a great advantage as the EFL teachers can use them as the source of information or even ideas.

Disadvantages

  • Children are made to study English in a classroom that might be used for some other purposes, they might feel lost or confused when the room that they normally associate with playing will be the classroom in which they need to do some serious ‘studying’
  • There might be too many distractors such as toys
  • There might be some rules, routines and procedures in the institution that will also have to be taken into consideration, it is best to find out what these are and to try to combine them with the rules and procedures of the English lessons
  • Children might struggle with transitioning between the regular kindergarten activities and the English lessons, provisions must be made for that, for example special routines
  • Any kindergarten activities will have an impact on the flow of the English classes. There might be some specific holidays or trips that might influence the timetable or the curriculum but it is also quite likely that all the children might be tired or, on the contrary, excited on some days, due to the course of the day activities. They might also bring in their emotions and even animosities from the kindergarten.

Solutions

Where to look for ideas for the classroom

  • Have a look at the classroom before the lesson and figure out how you can make it fit your aims and ideas, adapt when necessary and talk to the directors or supervisors to find out as much as possible about the institution and their procedures. If you are planning to introduce some changes, first and foremost focus on explaining the rationale for them. They might not be quite clear to people who are not language teachers but when you provide a rationale, they might be willing to take your suggestions into consideration. Involve your supervisor if you have one.
  • Make the necessary decisions regarding the course such as the coursebooks, photocopying, homework and contacting the parents. These are not quite related to the classroom itself but a lot will be influenced here by the procedures and policies of the kindergarten and they might be different for one kindergarten to the other.
  • Decide where you are going to start the lesson. Ideally, it should take place in a circle, on the carpet but there are other options, too: at the door, in a circle standing. Even if it is a classroom with small desks, there will be some space in-between the board and the first rows or at the back, behind the last row.
  • Decide where in the classroom you are going to have the storytelling corner, the movement corner and where you are going to sit to work with the coursebooks or handouts.
  • Build up your routine and stick to it.
  • Remove the distractors if possible or as many of them as possible.
  • Find out which of the kindergarten resources you are allowed to use.
  • Decide where you are going to keep your things and resources such as crayons or markers for the lesson, handouts, flashcards for the lesson. Please use the same place and make sure you establish with the children that they are not allowed to touch anything that is on the table. It might help to keep everything in a box (as it can be easily lifted to keep it away from the children), it is easy to store and it makes cleaning easy. What is more, if you keep all your resources in one container, you gain a lot of flexibility as all your toys are there, in case you need to change your lesson plan. I have had groups with whom I had to keep all my resources in my rucksack, zipped shut in the begining of the course.
  • Talk to the kindergarten’s stuff and ask them to find a place for you to store your resources in-between the lesson. Otherwise you will have to carry all your resources with you all the time.
  • It is a good idea to talk to the kindergarten’s admin to find out whether and where you can put the students’ work on display. There might be some room in the classroom or in the hallway and it is quite likely that the administration will like the idea of assigning a noticeboard for you and the English classes work. They will also benefit from promoting the classes to the parents whom the teacher most likely is not going to meet in person.

Where to find more ideas?

Sandie Mourao and Gail Ellis ,Teaching English to Pre-primary Children, Delta Publishing

Vanessa Reilly and Sheila Ward, Very young learners, OUP

Herbert Puchta and a big group, there is a semi-circle of small chairs but the room is big enough for the kids to be able to stand up and play some movement games without actually moving too much around the room

A realistic preschool classroom, not quite EFL pre-school but real life.

And another one from PreKPages a great channel on youtube where you can find lots and lots of ideas for working with preschoolers.

A lesson and a classroom from WOW English

And a lesson from Japan from a big sports hall.

And another classroom from China.

Here are also the links to the other two posts in this mini-series, both devoted to teaching in language schools, in a classroom that is used only by the VYL students and the classroom that the little people have to share with other classes.

For the love of…the adjective

by
Our basic set of adjectives

Once upon a time…

This is how I daydream it: my primary kids go on to take their Starters (this is an old daydream, this year they will be taking Flyers), they are describing the pictures or telling the story. The examiner asks ‘How is this boy?’ and my kids answer ‘He is confused.’ and the examiner cannot believe her/his ears but she/he is, actually, impressed.

‘Confused’ is one of the many adjectives that my primary kids have learnt thanks to the sheep game that we’ve been playing for a few years now. We started with the normal adjectives, happy, sad, angry, sleepy but the kids noticed that I’ve been hiding some cards and they got curious. And because they were curious, they started to ask questions. Since the cards were wonderfully happy and funny, and since, together with some clarification from me, they did illustrated the concept very well (after all, they were created for children), we started using the ‘confused’ card (and with them ‘chatty’, ‘in love’, ‘crazy’).

That, in hindsight, was an excellent idea because this turned out to be a very useful words because I happen to be confused and my kids happen to be confused, too. Not to mention all the characters from all the stories. ‘Confused’ might be from the B1/B2 shelf, but, we found it very very useful, at the age of seven, in something that was the pre-A1 level.

‘OK’, ‘ill’, ‘in love’, ‘creative’

The coursebook and the curriculum

A disclaimer first: my comments in this section are based only on a very un-thorough looking through the coursebooks for pre-schoolers, only a quick glance at the contents page and the units. I acknowledge that fact that I might have missed something and that a proper research might be necessary and, for that reason, I will refrain from quoting any titles here. However, having flipped through five recently published coursebooks for pre-primary learners, I did not find much as regards adjectives, apart from colours (all), some of the weather words (depending on the title) and some random happy, sad and hungry (also depending on the title). With one honourable exception that introduces quite a few emotions as well as some other opposites, either through stories or through CLIL projects. Overall, however – not good at all.

I also had a look at the primary books and here the situation is admittedly better because all of the modern publications tend to align their content with the YLE Cambridge wordlist and that, in turn, means about 50 adjectives on the pre-A1 level, including colours and possessive adjectives.

As it happens, my school is now getting ready for the YLE mock exams and I am putting together a set of materials for our teachers and kids and that made me look at the said wordlist with a great more deal of scrutiny. Starters kids (pre-A1) are supposed to know about 50 adjectives, Movers kids (A1) – additional 50 adjectives and Flyers kids (A2) – 70 more adjectives on top of that. I am aware of the fact that these lists were not created on a whim, quite the contrary – they are a result of a large-scale research and the effort of a huge team of people. But there are all these questions there, too. Why do the pre-A1 kids need to know the adjectives such as ‘double’ or ‘correct’ and ‘right’ (as correct) and ‘its’ (also an adjective) and some other ones, although not adjectives (‘coconut’, ‘pineapple’, ‘flat’ and ‘apartment’ or ‘lime’)? Why would these be more important, useful and appropriate for primary school children than ‘hot’, ‘cold’, ‘easy’, ‘difficult’ or ‘loud’ and ‘quiet’, which are only introduced at the A1 level?

I do not have the answers but I have been introducing them (or some of them) much earlier than that. And effectively so. If you are interested why and how, please continue reading.

‘crazy’

Emotions and feelings

‘Sasha, how do feel today?‘ is one of the questions that we ask in every lesson. Why? Well, I guess, first and foremost it is for socialising. This is the question that we ask when we meet someone, just to make a conversation, at least with adults.

Since our students are children, however, there is a lot more to that. Children are growing, developing their social skills and learning about a variety of emotions available and, even more importantly, learning how to deal with these emotions and learning how to recognise these emotions in others. That is why giving them tools to do that, in their L1 and, naturally, in their L2, is absolutely crucial.

Ideally, all the Sashas in the world would walk into the classroom being happy, totally over the moon, brimming with joy and ready to conquer the world with us in the next 45 minutes. But it is not possible for every Sasha to be happy every day and, as a teacher, I want to know how they really are and during the hello circle I am, literally, all ears because if Sasha is sad or sleepy or hungry, or, sometimes, angry, I would like to know that. Not only to show empathy but also to look at the lesson and what I have prepared for today from the group’s and the individuals’ point of view. Maybe a bunch of sleepy children will not be able to deal very well with the story? Maybe it will be necessary to keep an eye on Sasha and accept that today she might not be able to focus as well as usually because she is feeling a bit under the weather. Maybe it is a good idea to start with this silly game of ours (although I did promise myself to ‘never ever’) because it might distract and cheer up this little human who walks in and announces ‘I am very, very, very angry.’

Having this range of emotions vocabulary is also very handy when it comes to behaviour management, even if in the simplest of terms.

Situation type #1: an unpleasant situation: someone draws on someone else’s paper, someone takes someone else’s toy /book / marker without asking, someone jumps the queue, no casualties, only a lot of unhappiness in the room and one person is on the verge of tears. ‘Look. Sasha is very sad now‘. Naturally, it might not be the case of ‘one size only’, one solution for all occasions but it is a good start.

Situation type #2: a 5 y.o. confrontation: both parties did have a disagreement, both parties are not very happy and, definitely, way too upset to just get over it and get involved in the lesson activities. ‘Sasha, are you angry?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘It’s ok.’ Again, some cases are more complex than that, but in many situations the very fact of calling the spade a spade and showing that it is natural to feel angry (and, by default, giving the human some time out to accept and recover) is the best solution. It applies also to all the negative emtions, as long as no comes to any harm.

To be perfectly honest, sometimes (only sometimes!) it feels like this brief and contained reaction, limited by the fact that extreme language grading is necessary, is the best solution. Anything to avoid a long lecture from the adult on ‘The negative impact and the long-term consequences of….’ that children sometimes receive from their teachers, baby-sitters, nannies, parents, grandparents…

‘ill’

Riddles

This is, by far, one of our favourite games: making riddles. The game is introduced in its simplest from, with a set of flashcards and with the students guessing the secret word which the teacher or one of the children keep close to their chest. That’s just the beginning, however, once the kids are comfortable and familiar with the format, a set of simple adjectives are added, first the colours (based on the visuals in the flashcards) and big / small. Then, depending on the topic, we introduce and play with the relevant adjectives, for example fast / slow / big / small / loud / quiet while talking about transport, big / small / friendly / dangerous while talking about animals, hot and cold while talking about food and big / small / soft / hard / light / heavy while talking about the everyday objects and so on.

The kids can either use the adjectives of their choice and affirmative sentences (It’s big, it is yellow) or they can react to teacher’s or kids’ questions (Is it big or small?).

A variation of this activity is also I spy with my little eye adopted (and limited) to the set of vocabulary that the students are familiar with, played with a set of flashcards or a poster.

Expressing opinion…

…or, rather, justifying your opinion, something that can become a part of pretty much every unit and every set of words. Not only does it create an opportunity to personalise the vocabulary by dividing it into the things we like and the things we don’t like but also to give more detail and to build a small discourse (I like it. It is beautiful) or even first complex sentences (I like it because it is beautiful).

Naturally, that will require a different set of adjectives but beautiful, ugly, easy difficult, interesting and boring to be the concepts that preschool children understand, even though the flashards and visuals will be based on some symbols.

Storytelling

Our storytelling has reached some new amazing levels since we started working extensively on adjectives, both with primary and pre-primary students. You can read more about in an earlier post on the Storytelling Campaign here and here.

‘confused’

In my classroom

In this academic year, I am working with three pre-school groups, level 1, level 2 and level 3 and I am happy to say that even my youngest level 1 students are familiar with the set of 12 different adjectives that you can see in the first photograph plus a few more that we have learnt through songs. Level 2 group have got the basic set, quantifiers ‘very’ and ‘a little’ and a few more adjectives lined up. Level 3 group have got a nice set to describe food, transport and animals (including ‘scary‘) and they have already started working on extanding that range.

The photographs that were chosen to illustrate this post all come from the set that I have created for my pre-school group.

I have decided to use paper plates because they are durable, easy to stock and they have a shape of a circle aka they are a face. In the classroom, we put them in neat rows on the carpet, in the middle of the circle, to support production. My younger students like to pick up those that are relevant and hide behind them, showing how they really feel. This makes this part of the lesson a bit more kinesthetic.

I have drawn all of them myself but before making the decision on how to represent each adjective, I like to look at different emoticons to get inspired and to find something that meets two criteria a) I can draw it and b) my students will be able to associate it with a specific concept.

In some cases, the symbol was pretty easy for students to decode (for example: an owl = clever), in some others, I had to follow up with a brief clarification (for example: lightbulbs = ideas = creative). After the first lesson, I decided to upgrade the ill flashcard by adding a real tissue for the poor sneezing person.

There is another thing that I am considering at the moment. With my preschool students we start with the adjectives that help us describe how we feel and it must have been out of sheer linguistic greed that I decided to add those adjectives that describe personal characteristics rather than emotions such as ‘strong’, ‘beautiful’ or ‘clever’. Although, to be honest, we adults know very well that there are days when we feel particularly beautiful or not and the kids responded well to it. At the moment, I am considering different ways of organising all the adjectives that we already know and building up on that, in each category.

Basically, the best is yet to come.

Where to find the adjectives?

Happy teaching!

Dear Mr Bruner aka Exercises in scaffolding

by

Dear Mr Bruner,

I am happy to inform you that, inspired by your article, I have decided to follow your example and to start experimenting in the area of scaffolding…

Oh, how I wish I could write a letter of that kind. Since I first read the article by Bruner, Woods and Ross on the original research and how the term ‘scaffolding’ started to mean what it does to us, teachers and educators, it has become a kind of a life mission to spread the word about it among my teachers and trainees, conference attendees and, of course, the readers of my blog. This is also the area that I choose to invesitage in my first classroom research project as part of my MA programme.

Of course, the most important things keep happening in the classroom, in the everyday when you observe and adapt your instructions, gestures, voice and actions to better suit the young or very young learners as regards demonstration, marking critical features, reduction in degrees of freedom, recruitment, direction maintenance and frustration control (the six orignal features outlined in the article).

This time, the starting point was the lazy teacher…

I started to plan the final lesson with my three pre-school groups that also happened to be our Christmas lesson. And it was out of this tiredness and the madness of the end of the year that made me wake up one day and decide: ‘I am going to repeat the lesson!’

Three lessons in a row, three different levels, three different age groups and the same lesson plan. Well, to a point, of course. We would all study the same vocabulary set and sing the same songs, but the activities would vary, depending on what the children are capable of.

Topic, vocabulary and structure

There were eight words in the set (Santa, a reindeer, a stocking, a Christmas tree, a present, a start, a snowflake, a snowman) and I wanted to combine them with the question that we all had been practising before: ‘What is it?’ ‘It’s a…’.

The level 1 kids (and the youngest group) have got as far recognising the words and pointing at the right flashcards and participating in the ‘What’s missing?’ game although most of the time they would guess the missing word in Russian and they actively produced only some of them in English, such as ‘a star’, ‘a snowman’ and Santa. We also watched the ‘Guess the word video‘ and it was a chance for us to drill the vocabulary in a different way. We also introduced ‘What do you want for Christmas‘ and it was a nice opportunity for us to revise toys which we covered in the previous unit. But only that. In the end of the lesson we also had time for storytelling and we used Rod Campbell ‘My presents’, again as a way of revising the key vocabulary.

With the level 2 kids, we did pretty much the same but the kids were able to remember and to reproduce all eight words really quickly. We played the same game (What’s missing) but they were all actively involved and producing. We watched the video and guessed the words, pretty much just the way the younger group did, although it was interesting that I did not need to encourage them to repeat the words and, as soon as the full picture and the correct answer was revealed, the kids said the word without any cues from me. It seems that due to their age and to the fact that they have been in class for longer, they are much better used to that kind of reaction to the content. We seem to have developed that habit already.

As for the song, we even managed to personalise the song and talk about whether each of the presents featuring in the song are a good idea (or not? ‘Not’, according to some students:-) and we sang a verse for each of the kids:

‘What do you want for Christmas, Christmas, Christmas? What do you want for Christmas? Santa is on his way…’

‘I want a…’

I did not use the storybook with the older children. I had planned it only for the little ones. For the older ones, we had a back-up of an episode of Christmas Peppa, but, in the end, there was no time for that.

The oldest group, level 3 kids, need only a quick revision of all the words and then we could play a variety of games. We did not even play ‘What’s missing?’ as they are too ‘adult’ and this particular game is not challeging for them anymore. Instead, we played a team game, ‘Tell me about it’, in which the players choose a box, open it and say something about the picture hidden in the box. And they collect the points.

We did use the video mentioned above but in this lesson it was not just a simple guessing game, we also managed to talk about whether each round is going to be easy or difficult and then to comment on what it really was. And, of course, the song was also personalised and followed-up by a proper chat. There was also another song, ‘Who took the cookie from the cookie jar?‘, in its life acquatic version (nothing to do with Christmas, but the kids were curious and this is the game we are playing right now). This group are already quite good at personalising songs (aka ‘The original version is good but let’s see what we can do with it and how can we make it better?’) so it was the kids to suggest that we start singing it when we pick up our surprise at the end of the lesson from the reception. If I rememeber correctly, the final version of it (as shaped up by the kids) went along the lines of: ‘Who took the surprise from the surprise jar?‘

I was teaching, having fun and keeping my eyes and ears open and trying to remember what was happening. It was already very interesting but I was really waiting for the most important part, the cherry on the cake.

The cherry on the cake

Surprisingly enough, this time round, it did take a long while to choose the craft activity but finally I settled on the snowman. I found something that I liked among the 25 Easy Snowman Crafts For Kids on countryliving.com. I planned the lesson, spent an hour cutting out the circles, the noses, the hats, the arms and the Christmas trees and orgnising the room. And then we took off.

It so does happen that although my children are divided into groups by the level and by the age, there are exceptions and special cases in all three groups.

The actitivity, the materials, the staging and the instructions were exactly the same in all three groups but the outcomes (visible in the photographs below) and the scaffolding necessary (not visible in the photographs:-) heavily depended on the age of the students.

The youngest students produced these beauties:

This was interesting, especially because this lesson came first and after a very short moment, I realised that, while preparing and planning, I gauged myself for a slightly older audience and I had to adapt on the go, especially for the almost 3 y.o. girl for whom it was the trial lesson and the first 45 minutes in our classroom.

It turned out pretty quickly that it is quite a challenge to glue the ribbon, to turn the circle over and to tie it and that the orange ‘carrot’ nose is actually very small. But we managed, with the pace really, really slow and the teacher keeping an eye and demonstrating everything twice. Plus, yes, the teacher had no other choice but to help with the ribbon.

The age of the students shows most obviously in the way that all the small parts were glued and how the eyes, the smile and the buttons were drawn, with a different level of accuracy and precision. Almost where they should be:-)

And it was because it took longer to produce the snowman that I decided to skip the little sticky arms. They were too thin, too fiddly and too risky. And the snowmen still look pretty without them.

The snowman created by the 5 y.o. hands looks like that

First of all, the five-year-old snowmen did not take as much time to produce and the little fingers were much more agile and ready. As a result, the teacher did not need to help with the ribbons, the noses were handles with much more efficiency and we did have time to add the arms.

It is interesting to see that at this age, the students did observe the teacher (the mentor / the expert) to do exactly what she was doing but they were observing to figure out what had to be done and to interpret it in their own way. Some snowmen were happy but not all. Some had the scarf tied on the neck aka above the arms and the others had it more where their snowman-y waist would be. Some had the buttons and some did not. Some snowman mouths were a string of dots, some were drawn with a line. Some of the Christmas trees were glued on the snowman’s chest (like in the teacher’s model) but then again, some were holding them in their hands (although this obviously involves even a higher level of precision).

The 6 y.o. snowmen look like that:

The older snowmen are even ‘neater’ (in inverted commas here because I adore all of these snowmen, even the ones that look as if they were created by Pablo Picasso) and the evidence of precision and accuracy as well as even a more detailed and a more personalised version, which were the students’ own additions as they were not modelled by the teacher such as the eyebrows, the hat decorations (not featured in the photos) or a bigger number of buttons.

And the oldest of them all, the almost 7 y.o.

This snowman was made by our oldest student, a girl who is actually in school but who is finishing the level with us. As regards the level of English, the development of the literacy skills, she is like the other students in the group, but her motor skills are more developed and for that reason she usually is the fast-finisher. That is not an issue and while she is waiting for the group to finish, she usually continues working on her craft or handout, adding details and decorations.

This time round, she decided that her snowman is going to be a snowgirl, with her and a bow, which was her own original idea.

Reflections of a small scale Jerome Bruner…

This was an absolutely fascinating experience and I would really recommend it to teachers who work with different levels within the same age group, especially within primary and pre-primary where scaffolding seems to be one of the most important factors deciding about the task completion and success.

  • It can be a great source of information, about the students’ skills and abilities…
  • …as well as an opportunity to trial something new, be it a song, a video, a game or a craft activity and to learn more about this type of a task.
  • It is a chance for the teacher to practise and to develp their scaffolding brain…
  • …and a great opportunity for a freer practice in the area of differentiated learning, not only within the group of learners (something that happens in every class) but on the level of different age groups and levels

Like in the original experiment, the design or the choice of the task and the material is crucial but the holiday lessons, not really closely connected to the coursebook curriculum, seem to be a perfect way out.

What else? Not much? Some curiosity on the part of the teacher, some willingness to experiment and some flexibility in order to be able to adapt on the go. Plus, the eyes wide open to notice all the little changes and proceedings.

These two, in the photo below, are my own interpretation of the original craft and a more complex version of it, here in the form of a card, made by an adult (myself). Perhaps this is what I am going to make with my oldest primary group in our Christmas lesson. If we do, I will let you know how it goes. That would be, indeed, a nice follow-up and an extension of our experiments. We’ll see. In the meantime:

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

Happy teaching!

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

by
‘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!