#crumbslittleideasfortheclassroom

Ed Emberly and Monsters. Teaching English through Art

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I suppose that, on some level, the idea of including the storybook illustrations and their creators into my English through Art curriculum has always been there and it was just waiting for its turn. The first lesson devoted to that happened somewhere in December 2020 with my juniors and you can read about it here. Including it in the series of lessons with my primary kids was just a matter of time. Ed Emberly (and his bestiary of monsters)* is the first one to have a lesson dedicated to. The first of many, I hope!

The artist

The idea to base the whole lesson on Ed Emberly and his art came from the Big Green Monster storybook which has been my go-to resource in all the body parts / monsters lessons for a very long time now. The kids absolutely love the fact that they can control the monster, make it appear or disappear and this way deal with the fear. I used to have students who would sneak into the storybook room before the lesson and ‘read’ the book on their own or run a reading sessions for their friends who also wandered in, both in English and in Russian.

But then, as I started to look through everything that Ed Emberly produced, it turned out that monsters really were his favourite thing and that he wrote a few books on how to create your own illustrations using finger paints and markers. ‘I want one of those!’ was the brain’s initial reaction.

First of all, we introduced Ed as our artist of the day (name, face, country and his favourite thing) and we talked a bit about the monsters which he drew, including the Big Green. The gallery walk was a very brief one this time but that is because Ed was present throughout the lesson, with the story and the craft. It was probably the most consistent and artist-focused lesson of all of those that I have ever taught on this course.

The language

This part was very simple and very straightforward – as much of the body parts practice as possible. It was the first lesson with this topic and we did a variety of exercises related

  • Introduction, repeating, a bit of drilling (I do less and less of that, as a teacher and I have begun to wonder why. The post will be coming soon).
  • Pointing and moving of the said body parts which could perhaps go under the TPR label
  • Introducing the song ‘My teddy bear’ by Super Simple Songs
  • And a selection of the wordwall games such as matching the human body parts and the animal body parts, pelmanism (only in zoom we write the numbers first on all the cards) and describing monsters using ‘my monster has got…’ and similar structures, also with the use of a set of wordwall cards. This last one is the most generative activity and I have high hopes for her in terms of the amount of the language produced in the long run. Usually it takes a few lessons for the kids to get used to it and to become comfortable and this time round was not an exception. With my current group, the Ed Emberly lesson was chronologically the first one and it was only in the Degas lesson, two weeks later that the kids were ready to produce lots of language.
  • Last but not least, we watched and participated in the storytelling and it was, of course, Ed Emberly’s ‘Go Away Big Green Monster’, this time in the video format, although, ideally, we would have used a storybook only I did not have it at home at the time.

The craft

Originally, Ed Emberly monsters (and other creatures) were done with a combination of two techniques – finger paint prints and drawing with markers. For anyone willing to use this approach, his books are full of ready made ideas. However, finger paints are a tricky resource to use in the classroom, especially if you want to finger print and draw, and I just did not want to bother with the logistics of it in the online world, especially that our group is now located in three different countries. Solutions had to be found.

It does help, I suppose, that I am a lazy teacher and I have noticed that with all the obstacles of the online Art class I am blossomig and I end up with the ideas that I like. This was the case here and that’s what we did:

  • The first step – produce own monsters in order to test and trial and to understand how much time is required and how many monsters can be created during the ten minutes that we hae assigned for the craft activity.
  • Write to the parents, to inform them what resources will be necessary: a sheet of A4 paper, a marker, glue, old newspaper and magazine pages OR coloured paper.
  • Show the kids the finished product and describe all the monsters (colour and body parts). I did it holding the picture in front of the camera but it was not as effective as I would have wanted it it to be. Next time, I will keep the paper on the desk and I will move the camera above it, in order to make sure that the kids see only one monster at a time and that it is clear and big enough.
  • The monsters are super easy to make and the one thing that is necessary is a piece of paper (the more recklessly torn off, the better). It is then glued onto the paper and the body parts are drawn. Then the kids describe their own monster, ideally using full sentences but, since it is the first lesson with the new vocabulary, I accepted simple ‘three eyes’, ‘one nose’, ‘two legs’. The number of the monsters produced in class will depend on the age and the skills of the kids.
  • My students are already quite ‘advanced’ when it comes to craft and after they figured out how to make the monsters, they were on producing more and more of them, focused more on the craft than on the speaking (ouch!). For that reason, when I teach this lesson again, I will want to scaffold even more carefully and introduce the following tricks a) ‘dictate’ the colour for the monster, b) promote production by guessing how many legs their monsters will have, hoping that even if I don’t guess, they will want to correct me and c) introduce a punctuation mark between the monsters ie a proper introduction (My name is Polly. I am a happy monster)
  • I personally adore the fact that the monsters are made from newspapers and that they have the most irregular shapes, the more reckless, the better. However, I noticed that some of my parents were reluctant to the idea of letting the kids work with old newspapers and magazings, preferring the regular and pretty craft paper. I have also noticed that some of my students did not quite like the idea of the torn paper and while I was happily tearing the resources for my monsters, they simply picked up their scissors and started to cut out square, circles and triangles. In the offline classroom, I simply wouldn’t have given out scissors, trying to encourage them to work with a new resource. In the online classroom I could not control it but the monsters turned out pretty anyway.

*) I cannot NOT share this amazing article with the funny and weird collective nouns. Enjoy!

Happy teaching!

Edgar Degas and Ballerinas. Teaching English through Art in Primary.

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Sonia’s ballerina

The artist of the day

Edgar Degas is a perfect example of a love – hate relationship with Art. I adore his ballerinas, the beauty caught in a frame, the purposeful randomness of different set-up that make it often look like the candid camera photos, caught in the act, almost random, immortalised forever. But, at the same time, Edgar is the artist that I would never want to meet in person or talk to because of his beliefs and views.

But, it so happened that we are still doing body parts with my kids and I have only girls in the group and I really wanted to make ballerinas and so, reluctantly though it was, I chose Degas to be the artist of the day.

As usual, we introduced him by name, by country and by his favourite thing (ballerinas!!!). We looked at the paintings and talking about the colours and the actions and then, we made our own ballerinas.

Our gallery with Degas

The language

  • We are still practising expressing opinion using ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’, we include it in every lesson and at this point we are (almost) at the point when the kids talk spontaneously about the different things we are looking at
  • We are still practising describing monsters using the sentences such as ‘my monster has got two eyes’ as well as ‘my monster is green and yellow’, ‘my monster is happy’ and ‘I like it / I don’t like it’. Apart from the regular revision and drilling, we used the monsters from one of the wordwall sets, such as this one here. I was simply over the moon to see that at this point (and it was our lesson #3 with this topic), the kids were just producing a sequence of two or three sentences. It needs to be mentioned that we still sing the song about the teddy bear and it helps us to produce, too as the key structure ‘my teddy bear has got one nose’ can be easily transformed into a sentence about the monsters or ballerinas and that definitely helped, too.
Teacher’s ballerina

The craft

  • The final version of the craft is a combination of two ballerinas that I have found online, one of them from Kidspot, the other from Creative Child. Since my students are still very young and our lessons are online, I needed something that we would all be able to do without my direct assitance
  • As usual, I sent the information to parents with the list of all the necessary items: two sheets of white paper, safety scissors, glue and markers or crayons.
  • In class, we checked that everyone had all the materials (‘Have you got the paper? Show me, please’ etc).
  • I showed the students what we are going to need: a rectangle (for the body), a circle (for the head) and a square (for the skirt).
  • We prepared our shapes together: I showed the students how to cut off the rectangle (the shorter side of an A4 piece of paper, approximately 4 cm wide) and I waited for them to cut off theirs. I cut out a circle for the head and I cut of a square, too. We put the scissors away.
  • I did not give the students (or the parents) any details regarding the dimensions of all the shapes because, in a way, it does not really matter and we could manage with the wider or thinner rectangles or the smaller squares or circles. Whatever was too big, got trimmed later on. However, I knew that my girls would be able to handle that. With some of my other students or with much younger children, I would consider asking parents to cut out the shapes for us, before the lesson.
  • We proceeded to making the ballerina and here are the exact instructions. As usual, I was making my own doll and demonstrating, waiting for all the girls to catch up on with us.
  • Step 1: take the rectangle, fold it into half, lengthways (‘It’s a book’, said one of my kids, and a book it was, although it had a slightly weird size) and we spread some glue inside of it, to glue both sides together, in order to make it thicker.
  • Step 2: draw the lines at the bottom and the top of of the rectangle, to make the cutting a bit easier and to ensure that the kids don’t cut it into halves.
  • Step 3: cut along the line at the bottom of the rectangle, say ‘My ballerina has got two legs’
  • Step 4: cut along the line at the top of the rectangle, fold them to the sides, say ‘My ballerina has got two arms’
  • Step 5: glue the circle on, draw the eyes, the nose, the hair, we were drawing and talking about it ‘My ballerina has got…’
  • Step 6: fold the square into a triangle and cut the patterns, in a way in which we make paper snowflakes. Decorate the skirt with markers.
  • Step 7: cut off the top of the square/triangle in order to be able to put the skirt on. Put it on the doll and glue it at the top (and at the back) in order to make sure that it does not fall off.
  • Step 8: add all the other details: draw the hands, shoes, top of the dress etc.
  • Initially, I had the idea of practising some Present Continous with our ballerinas but in this particular lesson we only managed to start using it and the kids were not ready. Instead, we introduced them and sang the goodbye song together.
Marta’s ballerina

Some final notes

  • As I have mentioned before, the ballerina does not require any careful or detailed actions and even a messy cutting or measuring do not get in the way of finishing the task, if the kids are old enough. The most challenging part was the skirt as it involves preparing the snowflake and cutting off the tip in order to put the skirt on but once the kids were shown the final product (a circle with a slit), they were able to find their own solutions. Some of the skirts were not circles, some of them were not the most regular squares, some of them had not the prettiest slits but they could all be put on and, when, decorated, they all just look beautiful.
  • With the younger students, I would ask the parents to prepare the shapes and to cut the slit for the skirt, too.
  • I have also seen ballerinas that are even easier to make as the snowflake skirt could just be replaced with tissue paper or strips of paper glued on, or, if you have them, cupcake paper liners folded in half. This would also make this craft easier to make.
  • I loved the fact that when I first introduced my ballerina, the kids were slightly taken aback (and, fair enough, it is not the most graceful thing in the world, my ballerina) but as we proceeded through the craft, they grew fonder and fonder of their creations. They came up with many ideas of personalising them and of adding more detail ie a separate piece of paper for the hair. Not to mention that their dolls are simply amazing.
  • Another beautiful that happend during this lesson was the fact that the girls remembered the acrobats that we did in a Chagal and Circus lesson in December 2021. An eternity ago and yet, they did remember!

Vicky’s ballerina

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #43 Tractors and trains. Riddles for VYL

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Ingredients

  • A Miro board or a powerpoint in the editing mode.
  • A beautiful train with carriages or a tractor with trailers, with one animal on each trailer.
  • A set of colourful cards, with a set of riddles following the same framework and the set of structures in each riddle.

Procedures

  • Students take turns to choose the colour of the card.
  • Teacher reads the description of the animal. Kids listen and guess the animal. Teacher uncovers the picture to check the answers.

Why we like it

  • First and foremost, this kind of an activity helps to develop listening skills in very young beginner students and focus as they need the information from all the sentences in order to guess the name of the animal.
  • At the same time, since all the riddles use the same framwork and the same structures, this game is an opportunity to practise all the key structures. The set of these will depend on what the students are familiar with and can be simplified or extended.
  • We use this kind of a game to prepare the students to produce the language, too and after playing the game for a few lessons in this very format, with the teacher reading and the kids guessing, we move on to the following stage with the students producing a set of sentences to describe an animal.
  • Last but not least, with time and with the development of the literacy skills, this kind of an activity can also help develop reading skills.
  • The game is pretty and colourful, made with colourful cards, beautiful visuals from google. The students are usually curious to find out which animals are hidding on the trailers. The format of the presentation can be adapted, too. In the past we played with huge present box (partially inspired by Rod Campbell’s Dear Zoo) and with houses in which the animals were hiding and the miraculously appearing thanks to the funcion of ‘bring to the front’ or ‘move to the back’ on Miro or any powerpoint.
  • It can be used with animals or with any other topic with the appropriate adaptation of the phrases ie toys (It is big. It is red, with the assumption that we refer to the visuals that the students are familiar with) or transport (It is big, it is fast, it is quiet) etc.
  • If you are interested in riddles, please have a look at this post, too, where I write more about riddles for the older and more advanced students.

Happy teaching!

Yayoi Kusama and Pumpkins. Art and English in Primary

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Yes, the Halloween was approaching and my English+Art lesson was on the day. Yes, I was just googling random things hoping that if I find something interesting, I will have a Halloween-ish lesson and if I don’t find anything, well, we will go in a different direction. At this point we have done colours, we have done leaves and, ideally, I was hoping to find some cool artist, some pumpkins and some technique that we have not tried before yet. Last year, around that time, we went to Ilya Mashkov as we tried to recreate his still-life with the magnificent cucurbita pepo but it was last year (aka we have done it already) and it was offline (aka it was more manageable)…I needed something different.

Surprisingly, googling ‘pumpkin in art’ can get you when you want to be)

Yayoi Kusama – jak sztuka może być terapią przy chorobie psychicznej? (magazif.com)

The artist of the day.

Enter Yayoi Kusama. Until last Monday, I had never heard of her. Since last Monday, I have been a great fan. Her art is exploding with colour and with energy and she makes me feel like being a part of the Wonderland, Alice in the real world, easily available, at hand. And she loves dots and dots are circles aka the best shape ever that can be easily used in class (here is an earlier post about that).

We met Yayoi and found out about her favourite things and we looked at some of her paintings in our gallery as is now our habit. We also talked about the paintings we like and don’t like.

Yayoi Kusama and her favourite things
Our gallery in Miro

The language

In this particular lesson I wanted to focus on practising expressing opinion using ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’ and that is exactly what we did. We looked at Yayoi Kusama’s pumpkins and said what we think of them (P.S. We like them!), we looked at a range of creative pumpkins and said what we think of them and we enjoyed the variety in which pumpkins can appear (photos, art, real pumpkins (yes, these were present) and, finally, the Surprise Pumpkin that I have brought. See below)

The craft

The final product here was a compilation or an adaptation of two ideas from the amazing Art for Kids Hub and their pumpkin folding surprise and the most amazing mouse.

  • We looked at all the pumpkins, Kusama’s, the realia, the creative pumpkins
  • I presented the ready made product making sure that the Surprise Pumpkin is a proper surprise (‘Look, this is a pumpkin. But it is also a surprise. Are you ready? 3…2…1….’)
  • We went over the necessary materials with everyone (‘Have you got the paper? Have you got the pencils/markers/crayons?’)
  • I was making one more copy together with the kids. I am drawing on the regular paper, holding it in my hands, on a thick pad. Going step by step, slowly, pausing and waiting for the kids to complete every single step. This is absolutely crucial.
  • We folded the paper, stopping after every stage, showing the page to the camera. There are four essential stages: 1) show the A4 paper 2) fold the paper in half, widthwise 3) press at the crease / fold 4) fold the top flap outwards (show the kids how the edge of the paper touches the crease / fold in the middle 5) press at the crease / fold
  • Draw the pumpkin on the folded paper, that is at the 1/4 flap folded outwards and the 1/2 half at the bottom simultaneously, draw the stem and the leaf as well as three lines for the ribs. Don’t forget to pause at every stop, wait for the kids to complete every step and show you the result.
  • Open the paper and place it flat on the table. Draw the edge of the top half (‘Let’s draw a zigzac’)
  • Draw the edge of the bottom half (‘Let’s draw a zigzac here, too’)
  • Draw the mouse step by step: the oval for the body, two lines for the nose, the ears, the eyes, the whiskers, the tail and the hands.
  • Leave the colouring for after the lesson.
  • Play a bit with the surprise pumpkins that everyone prepared. My students simply recreated the ‘presentation’ that I gave at the beginning of the lesson, of their own accord, just like that.

Some final notes

  • Most of my students deal very well with the folding bit. Only one of us struggled a little bit and we needed mum’s help at the very beginning. It might be a good idea to let the parents know ahead of time and ask them to be at the ready, just in case.
  • As regards the materials, absolutely anything goes: coloured pencils are great, crayons are great, markers work, too. I am at my personal happiest drawing with markers and colouring with crayons or with crayons and markers, for the extra shine and glow.
  • Kids are amazing and they really can recreate the drawings or, rather, they can create their own versions of it. The only thing that is really necessary is the proper staging, going step by step, modelling and pausing, to give everyone time to complete the drawing.
  • It does not matter how big or how small the mouse is. It will all be hidden in the folds of the paper.
  • There are many variations of the craft. You can find some of them online. Below you can see what we have created ad hoc, just because we did everything that we needed and I could extend the lesson a bit. The pumpkin with a cat and the apple with a caterpillar were the result. These are only a few of the options!

Happy teaching!

Levitan and Leaves. Art in Primary

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The teacher’s version

I found the photograph first but then it turned out that it is a whole post with a video tutorial, too. Have a look at the Art Projects for Kids! Which, by the way, is a cool website that I will be visiting in the future!

The language

This is the second module of our course and I decided that I need to start introducing some of the natural world vocabulary, in order to be a little bit better prepared to talk about the artists to come. The first introductory set is rather modest and it includes: the sky, the grass, trees, mountains, houses, the river, flowers and leaves. We have also used this module as an opportunity to revise colours and numbers and to introduce the first two adjectives (big and small). Finally, we started to talk about what ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’.

The artist

Our artist of the day who introduced all of that to us was Isaac Illich Levitan, the love of my childhood and my first artist ever. The album of his works is one of the very few books that I remember from my early childhood (apart from the storybooks, of course). It was there, on the shelf and I did spend hours on the carpet, leafing through it, back and forth, making up stories taking place among the birch trees, by the river, in the forests and in some ‘Sokolniki park’ which I found out about long before I set my foot in it. This, by the way, was also one of my first encounters with the foreing languages as the book was in Russian, English, French and German and these were my first exercises in comparative linguistics. At the age of 5 and 6.

Leviatan’s was what you might call a cameo appearance because I did not want to overwhelm the kids. We looked at the four seasons, looked for the new words in the paintings (‘Can you see a house?) and talked about the colours. We also started to sing ‘What’s your favourite season?’. Not a lot, but Isaac is definitely coming back, with the arrival of the winter and then the spring and the summer. With him, there will be Vivaldi, which would have been a perfect companion but I simply forgot about his existence. I am already looking forward to our winter-themed lessons.

Levitan in our ‘gallery’

The craft

  • try to make the leaf at home to figure out how complex it might be and how much time we will require, think about the stages
  • use the leaves throughout the lesson ie while revising colours and numbers or practising ‘I like / I don’t like’
  • check that the kids have all the materials necessary: a piece of paper, crayons, watercolours and water
  • draw the outline of the leaf veins, and patterns with crayons. It is ok to use the same colour but the final product is more interesting if different colours are used. I was considering introducing different patterns to make it more structured but, in the end, decided not to. We will introduce them on some other occasion, with Kandinsky, for example. If possible, I would use special paper for watercolours but in the online world it is not quite possible. Regular photocopying paper works well, too.
  • colour the leaf with the watercolours. It might be a good idea to start with the brighter colours and, for the sake of staging, ‘dictate’ which colour to use, leaving the kids a decision which section of the leaf to colour. The lines drawn with crayons will not be covered by the paint and they will be still visible and it is not really necessary to be too careful with painting. Not staying within the lines or even letting the colours seep or even leak into each other create a much more interesting effect. I haven’t really encouraged my kids to create a very ‘messy-on-purpose’ picture (not yet, anyway) but I am very reckless with how I use my paints, to show the kids that it’s ok.
  • finish with showing the leaves, call out the colours, talk about whose leaves we like.
  • I have cut out my leaves to be able to use them more easily and I was planning on telling the parents that the kids can do it after the lesson, when the paints dry completely. If I still had my classroom, I would put them up on the window.

Happy teaching!

Material design for beginners: The activity as the source of inspiration

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From the series: Try something new today!

Welcome back to this autumn’s series and, before you go on reading this post, I would like to invite to have a look at the introduction and to the first part, the materials that were designed and came to be only because I found a new resource that I really (really) wanted to use in class.

The episode here is going to focus on the well-known activities that were too good not to be smuggled into the EFL lessons, with kids but also with adults.

Noughts and crosses

This is one of my personal favourites. Admittedly, it is used more frequently in the offline or in my 1-1 or small groups with the online groups and that is due to the way it was adapted, with the option of the points each box, revealed only at the end of the round. We also use noughts and crosses to tell stories and there is a post, too.

MadLibs

MadLibs is a great party game and if you are lucky you can find some ready made ones, appropriate for young learners (or just kids) or related to one specific topic to match the theme of the lesson or the unit. However, pretty much any text can become a MadLib (or a MadLib in reverse) since what you need is a) a text and b) some missing words which we guess and then the world really is your oyster. We use the approach with my exam preparation classes, especially with the tasks such as FCE Listening part 3 in which the exam paper is a ready-made MadLib and which you play to predict the potential answers. We use it also with my Flyers kids as a preparation for the story reading in Reading and Writing part 5. The same idea can be used with any sample writing although here the teacher has to remove some words first and then think of a category for them.

Pelmanism

First and foremost, this is probably my favourite tool to develop the early literacy skills in my primary and pre-primary kids, both online and offline. The main idea: find the two pictures that constitute a pair. With the pre-primary kids, we play to find the two identical card and to call out the word or to produce a full sentence or, similarly, in the flashcard – word card pairs.

The range is much wider and the tool much easier to prepare for the literate students as the pairs may constitute, from the easiest to the most complex: a picture and a picture, a picture and the first letter of the word, a picture and a word, a word in a simple structure and a word in a simple structure, a word in an affirmative structure and a word in a negative structure, a set of questions with various structures and a set of answers and, finally, halves of sentences. See the sample here for ideas.

The activity can be used with the older and the more advanced students and it can be made a lot more generative by asking students, for example, to find the phrasal verb with the definition and the question in which it is used, which they later answer ie take up (start a hobby) and ‘Why do people take up different hobbies? Where do they find the inspiration to do that?’ or a phrasal verb and its definition with the question that they have to create themselves.

In the online classes, the cards on wordwall can be used (we add numbers using the zoom notes or we simply count the cards for the teacher to open) and recently this option has been added to the upgraded bamboozle. This game is also very easy to create on the Miro board or even in a simple powerpoint (in the design mode, without the presentation).

Go fish

This is the most ridiculous case because, up to this day, I really have no idea how to play it. I do remember reading about it, in one of the methodology books, but the instructions were a page long and I gave up after a few lines only. The only recollection that stayed was the following: you have a set of cards, you keep them secret and you have to ask for these cards. Today, we play it as ‘Can I have?’ or, with my younger kids as ‘The Sheep’.

Riddles

If we had a different set of categories, that would definitely be mine ‘something old’ that recently I have had a chance to rediscover with two amazing people and the most recent post on that topic is here.

And there are many, many more and I am going to include the links here, just in case if you are looking for ideas: General Kutuzov, a lazy role-play and our fruit salad.

Now, off to writing the final part of the series: things that started from the most important people in the process: the kids. Soon in cinemas near you!

Happy teaching!

Joan Miró and elephants. Art and English in primary

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Here is our Elmer

I went into this lesson on my toes, slowly, cautiously, almost unwillingly. On the one hand, I was curious, as with all the Art project. On the other hand, I was just not so convinced. On the one hand, there was a new group of kids, I did not know their levels and we were supposed to try doing online what we did face-to-face before. On the other hand, I started to look for all the Miró animals and, randomly, I typed in ‘Miró and a toucan’ and found just that. And it made me burst into laughter, just because it there was an occasion when Joan Miró held a hornbill (aka almost a toucan). I knew I would do it all anyway, even if only to find out whether I can, but I was a bit anxious.

Our Gallery in Miro

The Before

  • Introduction of colours, a variety of songs, wordwall games and Miro games
  • Working on building the routine and getting used to the online format
  • Introduce the artist of the day and his arts. We focused only on the animals and on the colours. We ‘visited’ our MiroBoard Gallery and we tried to guess the animals and match Miro with photographs
  • We started to sing ‘Walking in the Jungle‘
  • And, finally, we tell and listen to ‘Elmer’ for the first time (I have actually only used the video, muted, and I told the story myself. We also included some gestures to involve the kids).

It is necessary to add that this year, due to the fact that we meet online with my Art Explorers, our classes have a slightly different format and we work on two-lesson basis. In lesson A we introduce the vocabulary and the artist, in lesson B: we revise and focus on craft and creation. The activities mentioned above were also executed over a period of two lessons.

The photo of the materials sent before the lesson

The While

  • Get all the materials ready (a glue stick, a marker, a piece of white A4 paper, some coloured paper or pieces of colourful pages of newspapers and journals), send the list to parents ahead of time
  • Check that everyone has everything (‘Show me your paper’, ‘Show me your glue’ etc)
  • Show the kids your coloured paper, call out the colours.
  • Ask the kids to show you theirs, call out the colours.
  • Show the kids how you tear off a strip of each colour, show them a ready bunch. Wait for them to get theirs ready.
  • Draw the elephant step by step. Start with the body, then the legs, the tail, the head, the trunk and the ear (by the way, the full shape of an ear is here only to help the kids visualise the elephant, a part of it will be covered by the coloured paper). Show each step to the camera and let the kids copy. Ask them to show you the paper after they have finished each step. Put the marker away.
  • Open the glue, spread the glue all over the elephant, evenly, while holding the paper to the camera. Close the glue and put it away.
  • Tear off a piece of one of your colourful stripes, glue it on the elephant, and then a few more. Invite the kids to do the same (‘Now you’). After a while ask them to show you their copies or ask what colour they are using, only to check how they are doing.
  • Continue until the elephant is ready.
  • Take the marker again and draw the eye, a small black circle. This way the creation will be easier perceived as an elephant.
  • Put up your elephant for the kids to see. Ask them to show you theirs.
The drawing. In one piece and in the puzzle version

The After

  • Introduce your elephant and describe it: ‘This is my elephant. He is green, blue, yellow and black’.
  • Ask the kids to do the same.
  • Watch Elmer, the video again, and, as before, pause and re-enact it with your elephants.
  • We finished with singing ‘Walking in the jungle’, with our elephants, too.

Comments

I am really happy with how the activity went. Initially, I was worried that preparing the elephant will be too difficult for my kids (but they all could follow me in drawing the elephant, step-by-step, with pauses and modelling) and that preparing the patchwork will be very time-consuming but the magic happened here, too as the kids quickly realised that they were in charge of managing how big the pieces of our ‘patches’ were. The older ones were more dilligent and more accurate with the smaller pieces whereas the younger ones opted for bigger pieces and we all finished at the same time. The patchwork part took about 5 minutes. Only one of my students needed more time (as she does every time) and for that reason we started to watch the story without her elephant to give her a little bit more time. She was watching while finishing and she introduced her elephant and it worked very well.

Overall, the amount of language produced was not quite on the amazing side but this was only our third lesson of the course and I am happy. Last but definitely not least, my kids were happy and very proud of themselves and their patchwork, Miró elephants. There is definitely more to come.

Happy teaching!

I am easy to prepare and very necessary in the classroom. What am I? A riddle!

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Dedicated to Monsieur Alexander (6 y.o.) and Mademoiselle Victoria (3 y.o.) with big thanks for reminding me how important riddles are even if you speak the language very well.

Why? Because you simply must!

  • Riddles are an opportunity to develop focus and listening skills: you are required to listen until the very end as all the elements of the riddle are important and they can help you figure out what the answer is.
  • Riddles help to develop cognitive skills while you are guessing as you are required to put together different pieces of information, to understand, to synthesise and to analyse.
  • Riddles help to develop cognitive skills even more when you are creating your own riddle as you are required to apply and to evaluate the information you providing to make the riddle challenging and achievable at the same time.
  • Riddles are something that we use and enjoy in our L1, from the early childhood and it is only natural that we will try to bring them into our EFL lessons, with kids and with adults.
  • Riddles help develop creativity.
  • Riddles are fun and they create plenty of opportunities for bonding, in a pair or a group.
  • Riddles, in L1, help the kids develop the awareness about how the language works, how the hidden meanings, the homophones, the collocations and this can also be transferred, at least partially, into the EFL or the ESL
  • It is obvious that the context of the EFL and the ESL does not always allow for the riddles and their benefits to be used fully and completely even if only due to the limitations of the language level which, in case of some of the young learners, might be as low as A1. This does not mean that they cannot be used. On the contrary, they can be introduced from early on.
  • Riddles, regardless of the context, are an opportunity for the students to speak and to produce a mini-discourse.
  • In the EFL/ESL classes, it is relatively easy to choose the vocabulary range and the structures for the students, depending on the level and the topic. This range can be easily extended.

How to? Riddles in the EFL classroom

  • The simplest version of the game can be played with preschoolers and we usually start simply with guessing ‘the secret word’ which is the card that the teacher and then the students choose and hold close to their chest and the class are guessing. This version is used to introduce the very idea of the riddles. When the kids have become more familiar with the format, the level of challange can be raised and the production maximised by asking the kids to describe the card they are holding in the simplest of way i.e. with the colour, operating within the colours of the objects on the flashcards used (‘It is green‘ or ‘It is green and red‘). With time, more adjectives can be added (‘It is big’, ‘It is small’), the categories (‘It is a toy’, ‘It is a pet’) or even opinions (‘I like it’, ‘I don’t like it’). There is a post devoted to one of the ways of dealing with riddles with the youngest learners. You can find it here.
  • The primary (or the more advanced pre-primary) students can start adding simple categories in their discourse (‘It’s a toy’, ‘It’s an animal’, ‘It’s in the schoolbag’) and start describing the word using the relevant structures. For example, with food, we use the following four: ‘It is cold’, ‘It is hot’, ‘You eat it’, ‘You drink it’) and these are the structures that the students know and will need anyway and these particular four can be supported by a relevant gesture. The same goes for the animal riddles set: ‘It is big’, ‘It is small’, ‘It can run’, ‘It can fly’, ‘It can swim’. I also like to add ‘I like it’ and ‘I don’t like it’ even though it does not quite provide enough information for the children to guess the object as the class may simply not know what one of us thinks about it, it gives the student making a riddle an opportunity to express opinion and to make it all more personalised. With the youngest students the teacher can assist production in the beginning by asking questions such as ‘Is it hot or cold?’ or ‘Can it swim, fly or run?’. This set of structures can be developed and extended depending on the students’ age and level.
  • As regards the more advanced and older students, the riddles can be made more extensive and more resembling the riddles that the adults and kids play in English as their L1 or the riddles they play with their L1 with the use of simple homonimes or homophones, a wider range of vocabulary or structures or complexity for example by making a list of words not to use when to describe a certain word, describing it with associations (i.e. kids, fun, outside to describe the word ‘playground’), with metaphors (i.e. ‘It is the brain of the computer’ for ‘hard drive’ or ‘It is the opposite of a mountain’ for ‘a cave’) or, even, by a mixture of these (‘Tell me what it is and tell me what it’s not’)
  • As regards the material and the support for the teacher one of the following can be used: flashcards, mini-flashcards, a page from the book with words and words and images, a poster, a set of wordwall cards, a list of words.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #41 Let’s look for pairs! A vocabulary game for kids

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All the pairs. Somehow the penguin, the gorilla and the mouse got left out.

Ingredients

  • A set of pictures of animals, flashcards or on Miro. That’s it.

Procedures

  • Revise the vocabulary and ensure that all the cards are displayed at the same time for the kids to be aware of all the options
  • Model by choosing a pair of animals and putting these cards aside and justifying your choice. With my pre-primary kids, I like to use the first person statements (I’ve got 4 legs etc) as this is what we do with the younger kids (to enable the kids to talk about themselves and the animals without having to introduce the additional structures and to keep it coherent with the songs that we use ie Little bird or As quiet as a mouse). I also tend to vocalise the language ie I’ve got 4 legs (for the cat), I’ve got 4 legs (for the elephant).
  • Invite the kids to take turns to make their own pairs and to describe the rationale behind it.
This is what our Miro board looked like before we started

Why we like it

  • An opportunity for the kids to use and to develop the higher order thinking skills in the EFL context
  • The students are in charge of what they want to talk about and what they can talk about. It is appropriate for mixed-ability groups.
  • Little or no preparation as the flashcards are already there, the physical cards in the offline classroom or the set of pictures on Miro which, once prepared, can be doubled easily and used only for that activity.
  • A great variety of structures that can be revised and some opportunity to learn the new ones as the kids might have the ideas that they cannot express in English yet and this game can be the springboard which will help to introduce these. If the teacher speaks the kids’ L1.
  • Lots of opportunities for adaptation and using them with different sets of words such as toys, fruit, food, transport and, naturally, the relevant structures. I like to start this game with animals because of the range of easy structures that even the very young beginner students can use in order to complete task and because of the variety of topics that can be included (the colours, the number of legs, what animals can do, what they eat, where they live etc)
  • The level of challege can also be easily adapted, for example, the set of cards can include only 8 items or the teacher can focus on putting the animals into pairs basen only on the colours or the size which are probably the two most achievable categories, both cognitively and linguistically.
  • This is a neverending activity because the cards and the animals can be grouped and re-grouped over and over again to let the students create new and less obvious links between the items. Conversly, it can be shortend as needs be.
  • As regards the interaction patterns, this activity can be used with groups, with kids working together, at least in the beginning, or in pairs if we have the appropriate number of sets of cards as well as with 1-1 students, both online and offline.
  • There is also some potential for adaptation in the area of materials. The most obvious choice are the flashcards, the mini-flashcards or the Miro board. The teacher can also create a handout with the animals pictures and/or names which the students can colour-code as they are putting them in pairs. This might be a good solution for the kids to work in pairs in the offline classroom.
  • Last but not least, this activity is an opportunity for the kids to develop the listening skills (as they want to find out the justification for their peers’ choices) and the speaking skills (as they want to present their own reasoning, too). I simply love to observe how my students start with the simplest and most obvious connections and how they venture out into more and more creative ones.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #40 A fruit salad

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Ingredients

  • Fruit, washed and cut up into manageable chunks. The most basic set includes: apples, bananas, pears, seedless grapes, seedless oranges.
  • A plastic plate for each child, a plastic cup for each child, a plastic spoon and a plastic knife.
  • A set of tissues and a set of wet tissues.
  • Optional: a set of fruit flashcards and the video of the Super Simple Song ‘Are you hungry?’

Procedures

  • Start with presenting the idea of the activity to the parents and agreeing on the list of fruit to be used. It is absolutely crucial that the parents are aware of the procedures and the ingredients and that they approve. In my offline classes, I normally send a message to find out whether the parents approve and then I send a list of specific fruit that I would like to use. I look for seedless oranges and grapes. The list of fruit does not have to be very long. It is going to be a great lesson anyway, even if only the basic fruit are used. Although, of course, the salad will look very appealing if we include more colours and adding some citrus such as orange will be beneficial as regards the flavour, even a little bit of the lemon or orange juice will bring out the flavours of all the fruit and it will blend them nicely. But it is not obligatory. In my online classes, the parents prepare the fruit that the kids really like and it might happen that our sets will vary.
  • Wash the fruit and pre-cut them into pieces and chunks or ask the parents to do the same at home.
  • Plan where (in the school or in the classroom) you are going to set up your salad production station. Ideally, it would be done in a separate room, where everything can be prepared before the lesson and where the students can relocate half-way through the lesson. In the online classroom, the kids can relocate to the kitchen or cut things up on the table in front of the computer. In the classroom or in the kitchen, prepare the working top first: wash the tables, cover them with a plastic tablecloth.
  • Set aside the time for hand-washing. Line the kids up and go to the bathroom, wash the hands, dry the hands and go to the classroom.
  • Give out the tools while pre-teaching the names and while introducing the basic health and safety rules i.e. a plate – it stays on the table, a cup – it is in front of the cup, a knife – be careful. It is a good idea to stage the giving out of tools ie: first the plates and the cups, then the first fruit and the knives, then clean up the plates and give out the teaspoons etc.
  • Take out the first fruit, call out its name. Demonstrate how to cut it up, for example using the following set of instructions: 1) take a piece of apple, ‘Apple, please’ 2) put it on your plate 3) cut it up carefully 4) put the apple into the cup
  • Repeat with the other fruit. Throw away the plates. Give out the spoons.
  • Stir the fruit in the cup carefully.
  • Start eating.
  • Game 1: What’s this?: it is a fun game that involves eating and guessing which fruit we have fished out. Teacher can demonstrate how to play it: take some fruit from the cup, eat it without looking or even with the eyes closed and try to guess what it is. If modelled properly, with the teacher asking question ‘What is it?’ and trying to guess ‘It’s an apple’ etc, the kids will follow and will be playing in the same way.
  • Game 2: Singing and eating: Play the song and pause at every fruit and ask the kids the same question ‘Are you hungry?‘ ‘Oh, look (name the fruit in the salad). Yum, yum, yum’. The only thing to remember here is to make sure that kids finish eating before we play the song again and to continue singing.
  • Clean up, throw away the rubbish, clean the hands with the wet tissues.

Why we like it

  • It is a great and relatively simple way of making the language real and meaningful. We learn about fruit and we do something with the real fruit. With many other topics creating this connection between the classroom and the real world is a bit more complicated, fruit (and food in general) is easy. After a few basic precautions are taken, such as the allergy check, the parents permission, clean hands and a safe working environment.
  • It gives kids a great sense of achievement despite the fact that in the eyes of an adult that might look simplistic. One of my groups called it ‘a cooking lesson‘ and after the first salad, they kept asking for more of those.
  • It is an opportunity to develop social skills (we are taking turns and waiting for everyone to finish), focus (we are cutting fruit slowly and carefully), fine motor skills (we are working with a knife, we are manipulating small pieces of fruit).
  • It is an opportunity to eat in class and that is always fun but it is also something that we do together, as a group and, as such, it can be repeated regularly, although not necessarily with the salad every single time. It can turn into some ‘teatime‘ aka a lesson when we just have a little snack together. That name and the idea is also something that came from one of the groups.
  • It is not an activity for the first lessons with a group
  • If done properly, the lesson can lead to a lot of production. The ‘What’s this game’ was something that just happened in class, just because I really could not recognise one of the piece of fruit in my cup. I fished it out to taste it and I was simply blabbling to myself. The kids were watching and quickly followed suit. Together we turned into a real game and, since then, I played it with all my groups. The other game, based on a song, was something that we played in class for a few lessons, with our set of plastic fruit and it worked very well. The kids liked giving out fruit and pretending to munch on them. Moving onto the real fruit and the salad was a natural next step.

Happy teaching!