#eflideas

Soft skills in the YL classroom. Communication

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Why bother?

For us, it was a very simple story of cause and effect. We have a crash situation in my class (yes, I know, I know, they are only seven and eight and I was really hoping that this situationship could wait until year 4 or at least year 3, alas) and I noticed that, among all the other issues that was causing, the two were just fighting with each other. Obviously, it looked like fighting only to the untrained eye. What they were doing, in fact, was just an exchange, communication, only in the clumsiest and in the most unwanted of ways that one could possibly think of. They were obviously drawn to each other but instead of talking, they were just punching, pushing and what not.

On top of that, I noticed that the whole class, both groups, being still children, lack the social skills in general, although, after a year and a half in my classroom, they are, admittedly better now at playing in pairs and in teams. Hooray.

That is how I decided to take the game up to a new level and to start, slowly, developing their soft skills. I haven’t really done much of that in the classroom but everything needs to start somewhere and since we have a good team in our school, I can plan my lessons and consult them and reflect on them with our school psychologist.

In the long run, I would like to spend two or three hours a month (45 min times 3), doing ‘something else’ in class, developing certain social skills and soft skills and helping my students become better group memebers.

Our lessons are run in English but I speak my kids L1 so it is understood and accepted that at times, my students might reply in Russian, although, the aim is to use English as much as possible. I am including all the materials here.

In order to mark these lessons as special ones, we completely changed the set up of the room. The tables were moved to the walls and we were able to sit all together in a circle.

All the aims

  • talk about effective and not very effective communication and reasons for it (we used ‘good’ and ‘bad’ initially, then switched into ‘effective’ and ‘not very effective’
  • talk about different ways of communicating with examples
  • try communicating in different ways (controlled and freer)
  • talk about the different problems in communication and solutions
  • create our own code of conduct

Lesson 1: The ways in which we communicate

Step 1: We play hangman or monster game to guess the word ‘communication‘, talk about what it it is

Step 2: What is good or bad communication (effective and not very effective)? What happened here? We talk about the pictures in the presentation (slides: 2 – 7, description included in the notes). I based those on the real events and issues that we have to deal with on daily basis that are somehow connected to communication.

Step 3: We introduced and revised the vocabulary related to how people communicate. I chose these ten different ways in order to cover the basic ones (body language, words etc) and to include a few alternative ones, too, such as dance or music. I have included all of them here, in the wordwall cards. We went through all the words and illustrated them all with our ideas, mine and kids, to demonstrate that we already use a lot of them on daily basis.

Step 4: The practical part: We took turns to pick a communication method at random (cards I prepared) and an animal (the leader’s choice) for everyone to try their best to show the animal. At this point, I wanted it to be very controlled and not a game, to take the pressure off and to experience how different communication methods work. After each round, we were discussing the experience, a certain animal and a certain method using the language we know (it’s easy, it’s very easy, it’s difficult, it’s very diifficult, it’s impossible). It worked very well and we had a lot of creative fun.

Step 5: The quiz. In order to summarise the lesson and to do something together and to get back to the case studies from the beginning of the lesson, we did a quiz to discuss the better solution in each situation. There is an obvious answer in each situation but I was also accepting all the ‘But, Miss Anka, what if…’ ideas.

Lesson 2: Effective communication

Step 1: Revise all the communication methods using the cards and our examples

Step 2: The practical part #2: I prepared some simple sentences that the kids are familiar with for the task that was a bit more challenging and at the same time involved more decision-making from each child. The students, taking turns, came to the centre, picked one message to convey and then had a moment to choose the most effective way of communicating it. The class were to guess the exact message. The students were demonstrating, the class were guessing and the most interesting part of it was the experience itself. Sometimes the chosen method was not the most effective (for example, communicating with gestures is not always easy if the message is more complex) and more methods had to be added.

Again, at the end of each round, we talked about things that were easy and difficult, for the communicator and for the listeners.

Step 3: Problems with communication: We looked at the second part of the presentation to answer two questions: What is happening? Why is that a problem? In order to outline some of the potential problems with communication.

Step 4: Solutions: What can we help to communicate better? (based on the slides): listen, speak not too loud and not to quietly, take turns, use the right language.

Lesson 3: How we feel about it

Step 1: Revise all the communication methods and play the game from lesson 2 again, with a diffferent set of sentences. You can find my set here.

Step 2: ‘Why is communication sometimes a little difficult?’ is the question that I wanted the kids to answer. They came with quite a few good ideas, some based on what we talked about in class before so it was kind of a revision for us, too. But it was also a way for us to get to the topic of the day, namely the connection between the communication and the emotions. This is when we started to use our presentation (slide 3).

Step 3: This step was intended as a speaking activity and language practice for us but also, as regards the soft skills, there was also another aim: for the kids to realise that different situations may generate different emotions for different people. That is why we were looking at the photographs (slides 4 – 14). I have prepared quite a few pictures but we didn’t use a lot of them in both groups. Some generated more reaction from the kids, some not so much but we did produce some English and very very quickly in the game there were different reactions and different points of view. For example, even the very first picture, a very positive one did. Generally it made us happy (because we like presents, because we got great presents for Christmas) but also a bit sad (because we cannot see what the presents us, because these are not our presents and because we don’t know if the children like their presents or not). It was a lovely lesson because we got to see how differently we look at different situations and I cannot really tell you how many times I get to say ‘Great. This is your opinion’ or ‘Well, this is how you feel’, validating pretty much everything that was said.

Step 4: Summary with slide 14. I decided to keep it here and make it stand out although a lot of discussion was done so far anyway and it was a very simple summary: we have different emotions in exactly the same situation.

Step 5: Different emotions in communication. The linguistic aim of this part of the lesson was reading practice. For that reason, I chose a very simple conversation, with the language that we are familiar with and that we have been doing recently. There was nothing very challenging here and the kids could focus on the accuracy, intonation, pronunciation and enjoying reading a text that is all accessible to them. As regards the soft skills and communication aims, I wanted the children to notice the connection with how easy or difficult it is to communicate in different situations when the emotions of the people involved play such an important part.

To achieve all that we used an activity that I have been using for years in our regular English classes, the emotional reading. What you need is a dialogue (you can find mine in slide 16), a die and two sets of emotions (you can find our ideas in slide 17). We start with reading the dialogue with our regular, natural voices (one of the kids helped me), then we roll the die to assign the emotion for each player and then we read our dialogue in pairs, trying to portray the particular emotion. Depending on the time available, this stage can be repeated a few times. If appropriate, in the final round, all the kids can choose their emotions.

In our ‘regular’ EFL lessons, this is a lovely way of encouraging the kids to read, again and again, in preparation for a role-play, here I wanted them to focus on their emotions and the difficulties.

Step 6: Feedback. This was probably the most important step, as regards the soft skills aims for this lesson, because we had a very simple discussion about how these different emotions in our little dialogues made us feel. Our question, the same for all of the conversations, ‘Was it easy to communicate with X when he /she was happy / sad / angry? Why?’ A lot of these were done in English but, of course, my students are only children and A1 – A2, so they sometimes did resort to their L1. And that’s OK.

I have to say I absolutely loved these debates. Not only did my students put their hearts into re-enacting the emotions assigned and it was obvious that they loved this kind of an activity (mental note: we need to do more of them) but we got a lot of ideas for why emotions might make our communication a bit complicated. It turned out that when we are sad it might be difficult to talk because people speak very quietly and it is difficult to understand them but, surprisingly, when they are happy and excited, they might be speaking too fast or too loudly and that does not make things easy. Not to mention that when we are tired or sleepy or ill, things get even more complicated especially that it might not always be obvious to everyone.

Lesson 4: Things to do, things not to do aka RULES

Step 1: Modal verbs for talking about the rules: We revised the grammar points that we covered in the regular English lessons. We used two activities that were a success. One of them was a set of pictures on wordwall and the activity ‘What’s the rule?’ when the kids had to guess the rule symbolised by a sign. The other one was a simple bamboozle with places (we know these already). The kids had to name the place and give an example of one rule related to this place, things we can, must or mustn’t do there.

Step 2: What’s wrong with this conversation? We looked at seven photographs illustrating different problems with communication (powerpoint here) in order to outline what can go wrong and as a lead-in to formulating what we need to do in order to communicate successfully. I encouraged the kids to use Present Continuous here but that is not the only option, of course. You can see that I have outlined my own ideas (see the notes for the powerpoint) but the kids came up with a lot more ideas. For example, in slide 1, my main idea was that we cannot speak too quietly because it will be difficult to hear us. To my kids, however, this picture looked like a pair of friends trying to have a private conversation, sharing secrets while someone is eavesdropping on them…Same with the slide number 2. For me it was someone not listening and paying attention (teacher’s trauma, ahah) whereas my kids saw in it a man who is busy working and who cannot take part in any conversation at the moment…Fair enough, all valid points, these answers were accepted. The main aim here was to generate a few ideas for the following creative stage.

Step 3: Our communication, our rules. This was a writing task that can be done in pairs, teams or individually and its main objective is to generate ideas for Our Rules Poster. The hope is that after we have gone through the whole cycle of lessons, considered all the aspects of effective communication, we will be able to draft our own ideas that later will help us all communicate better.

The task was to do some thinking and write down five ideas later to be collected and edited and typed up by the teacher and displayed on the wall of the classroom. Which will help communicate effectively, without offending anyone and without any communication breakdowns ever again. Basically, they lived happily ever after.

Teacher says

Overall, I am very happy with the series and I am planning to continue including a series of lessons devoted to developing social skills in my amazing monsters. Simply because we need that.

As I mentioned before, I was able to use the help of our school psychologist (miss Katya<3) who helped with generating ideas for lesson 1 and who found time to come and observe our lesson 4 and to talk to me about it later and the outcomes, things we have achieved so far and things that we can expect in the future. These can be summarised as: ‘it went well’ and ‘we are taking baby steps and eventually we are going to get there’.

As a teacher of English, I am really happy because we managed to revise and practise a lot of language: Present Continuous, emotions and modals for rules. I was preparing these lessons being aware that we would not be able to carry them out entirely in the target language simply because we are not native speakers or advanced learners. I assumed that there will be ideas and concepts that we will only be able to express in our L1 and that was not a problem. However, having said that, I was really (really) happy with the language that my kids produced. They spoke in English and they spoke A LOT for their level. I’d say, about 80% of these lessons were carried out in the target language.

As a teacher of YL, I was really happy that we have sowed some seeds here. We looked at different ideas, talked about emotions, interacted, experimented and expanded our Zone of Proximal Development in the area of soft skills and, hopefully, we will be reaping what we sowed.

As regards my students, I am still to ask them what they taught of these lessons but, just from my observations, I can say that the reaction was positive. The children were involved, they were not scared to share ideas and to try new things, such as new emotions or ways of communicating. They also enjoyed the different format of the lesson and a different seating arrangement, too.

Now we will just keep looking at Our Rules Poster, remind ourselves that what we all want is effective communication and that we can do it. Fingers crossed!

Happy teaching!

Practice, practice, practie. Our favourite vocabulary games

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My primary group are now in their second year, around 7 and 8 years old and anywhere between A1 and A2, all mixed together. And, on top of that: cheeky, rowdy and creative. These have been our favourite vocabulary games this year.

Have you got any…?

Materials: a set of flashcards

Procedures: this game was inspired and very roughly modelled on the popular game ‘Go Fish’. I have already written about it here, in one of its versions. The main aim is to guess what cards the other teams or players have, by asking the appropriate question. I really like using ‘Have you got?’ because it matches pretty much any vocabulary set but there are other options possible. Please check out the post devoted to the Sheep Game.

What have you got for lunch?

Materials: a set of visuals, I use wordwall displayed on the screen, such as those here.

Procedures: the game starts with writing the key questions on the board. In the original form of the game these were: What have you got for lunch? Do you like it? Is it a good lunch for you? The teacher displays the pictures on the screen and asks the students the questions. Some of the lunch options are regular, some are crazy. Some look unusual but kids love them. The main aim of the game is to express opinion and to use the key words.

The first few times we play, we do it together, as a group but the idea is to get the kids used to talking about the pictures in pairs, so that everyone has a chance to express their opinion. This year I came up with the idea of The Cafe -we all sit at our tables, in pairs or threes and we have a little, quiet chat only with out partner, without disturbing anyone. And, surprise, surprise, my rowdy bunch did get the idea!

I have only used it with food so far but a new topic is coming up (clothes, animals) and I am planning to expand the activity with different questions.

Riddles

Materials: a list of words (handouts or displayed on the board) or, possibly, a set of flashcards

Procedures: Kids work in pairs or small groups. The leader chooses one of the words and describes it in three or five sentences. The other students guess which word they speak about. It is a good idea to display on the board the set of all the basic structures that can be used. All ideas are good ideas! Food items can be discribed using some of the following structures:

  • You eat it.
  • You drink it.
  • You eat it for lunch / breakfast / dessert. It is a snack.
  • You eat it hot / You eat it cold.
  • I like it / I don’t like it.
  • It is round / square / big / small.
  • It is yellow / green / etc.

It is a game that is most effective later in the unit when the kids have already assembled some structures and ideas about a certain vocabulary set and they can really enjoy playing it.

I have already written about riddles on this blog and you can find these two posts here and here.

Similar or different

Materials: a list of words (handouts or displayed on the board) or, possibly a set of flashcards

Procedures: Kids work in pairs and they take turns to choose a pair of any two words for their partner with the same question in every single round ‘Are they similar or different?’. The child answering the question makes a decision and justifies it in a way that is appropriate. All ideas are good ideas! We are now in the unit of food unit so for example the food items can be both lunch dishes, two drinks, two items starting with the same letter, having the same number of letters, having the same colour, being the same category (two fruit) or two things that students like etc.

We don’t play this game in the first lesson with the vocabulary but later in the unit in order to give use a chance to accumulate some additional vocabulary during the unit, just like in the case of ‘Riddles‘. In order to raise the level of challenge, we use each word only once, to make sure that we go over all the words. This game usually has a very slow start but as the kids are adjusting their way of thinking of the words and trying to come with more and more unusual combinations and connections, it speeds up and is becoming more and more fun.

Pairs

Materials: a list of words, a poster or a set of flashcards

Procedures: This is, in fact, a variation of the game described above, however, in this version each student is in charge of their own choices and they have to think of their own way of justifyin why the two words are a pair. All ideas are good ideas, as above, and the players have to play using each word only once.

Happy teaching!

‘Competitive games in the YL classroom’

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This article, just as the earlier post here, has come to be as a result of the many (many!) conversations with my trainees and what I observed in my own classroom. It is fair to say that it has become my latest professional passion / obsession / interest. The post that I have written here (‘A balancing act. Non-competitive EFL games for kids‘) is one of my proudest moments on the blog but was just the beginning of the whole story. And one of the top 10 articles on the blog!

The article that I wrote for the Modern English Teacher (Issue 33.6 Nov-Dec) is a continuation of this research anad the search for solutions. It is, unfortunately, only available to the MET subscribed members but I am really proud of it and I can definitely say that the solutions that I came up with and the ideas that I suggest really do work. After a year and a half pretty much all of my YL are now ready to play competitive games. I do recommend!

Happy teaching!

Autumn gloom and classroom management. Setting up the routines in year 2

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Well, miss Anka, you did not do a good job. The classroom management that was supposed to be updated monthly got abandoned. The end of October happened but everything else happened, too so the post didn’t. Here is a two-month reflection then.

Starting the lesson

The start of a lesson has become more SS-centred as I am barely involved. There is now a very interesting role to play, namely the one of the Hello Master. This is the student who takes over the teacher, sits in the centre of the room, starts with ‘5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Hello everyone!’ and asking everyone how they are. In November and December this person is also responsible for changing the numbers on our CountDown to New Year’s Day poster. Apart from that we have two Helpers and two more additional roles, the Game Leader (who helps with choosing the game, divide the class into teams etc) and the Decision Maker (aka the one who helps out with solving any doubts, if we have any). The kids love that and they sometimes ask me to assign a special role to them or they remind me that ‘Miss Anka, I haven’t been the Hello Master for a long time!‘

We still write the lesson plan on the board and the What time is it? and we still sing the Month Song, about how we feel, about the weather and everything related. I started to put up on the board some pieces of language because there is so much language emerging. It is absolutely necessary to keep it in memory, a bit.

It has also become a tradition for us to add a few more names to our list of students on the board. Sometimes our birds feature there (we have a well-frequented bird feeder), sometimes the toys that the kids bring, sometimes even the weird presences i.e. Poor Toe (aka a personalised version of the toe that one of my student hurt). But that means that they kids feel more involved in the lesson and they speak more.

Classroom management and rules

Our rules haven’t changed at all. They are still hanging above the board, we revise them in the beginning of the lesson and we refer to them when necessary but no new rules have been added.

Rewards chart

Our rewards chart is not quite a rewards chart but an activity chart which we use to mark attendance, activity, language production, cases of unwanted behaviour (like before, a simple description) and special rewards for great ideas, fair play, being a good friend and so on. I now simply take a photo of the board at the end of the lesson to use it later on, for assessment or to share with the parents.

We have also started using a greater variety of symbols, stars, suns, flowers, hearts. Yesterday, we managed to get to about a half of the solar system on the board, for different tasks. Basically, one more way to motivate the kids.

Reflection and feedback

These photos and notes are very useful because I have to add marks and note participation in our electronic journal for the parents but I also use them to give feedback to kids.

At the end of every week (which for us is Thursday), I take notes in every student’s notebook, giving them a mark for the week for English, for Maths and for behaviour. This is also my opportunity to thank them and to praise them for something special they did during the week. It is now our tradition to look at these notes in the beginning of the lesson on Monday. I also noticed that I started to comment on these notes during the week, on random lessons for example to praise some students for the behaviour that improved or the behaviour that needs improvement.

I realised that the notes from our tests are too rare and the notes from the electronic journal may not get through to the children as the parents are the main recipients and I needed a direct channel between me and the students. Hence the feedback.

We have been doing it for three weeks now and I know that these notes matter to kids. I keep them secret, written on a page that has been folded etc, but they announce everything to everyone anyway. They do anyway when they have something to be proud about.

Story and songs

To be perfectly honest and depressing as it is, we haven’t had lots of songs recently. We sing the Multiplication Songs from Jack Hartman in every lesson but we haven’t learnt any new songs.

In the same way, we have done lots of reading (fiction and non-fiction) but none of them were real stories. Oh, no! How did it come to that? I have no excuse and I am just deeply unhappy that I let it happen. Sigh.

Socialising

We have been interacting a lot in the classroom:

  • every English lesson starts with the sight words reading practice which we do in pairs. One student is the teacher, the other is the student and I sometimes ask them to give each other grades.
  • we did project presentation in pairs and small groups (asking and answering questions about the perfect house)
  • pairwork games such as riddles
  • Hello Master is my absolute number 1 when it comes to the favourite parts of the lesson, the one that kids do all by themselves, with the teacher being merely an observer
  • we have even played some team games and I am really proud of my kids because now they are ready to do it, on most days.
  • we have also been changing the seating arrangements and pairs since we have had some changes and the group needs a chance to be formed again, from scratch almost.

Creativity

This is the area that I am happy with because we have done enough in that area.

  • we celebrated the Craft Day (which, apparently, falls on the 16th November, at least here) and that is why we made beautiful monster bookmarks
  • we celebrated the Thanksgiving Day and we made our Thankful Turkeys, with feathers made of everything that we are grateful for (The list, for my kids, includes: mum, dad, gran, grandpa, brothers, sisters, pets, Adidas and Roblox).
  • we described and drew our Ideal House and they turned out great, especially that we were getting ready for the project day, reading, looking at photos and talking about all the unusual buildings and rooms from around the world that I could find
  • we wrote out first article in English about a special place. There wasn’t much creation per se since we wrote about real places but we had so much fun researching that and the final product, our journal, looks amazing.
  • I have also noticed that more and more of my kids have been wondering into my classroom during the long break in order to do creative things, using all the resources I have in my magic cupboard.

Teacher

Over those last few weeks, I have been a very tired teacher and I did a lot to save the energy and to use it wisely. Listening to music, chocolate and careful choices while lesson planning helped me do that.

At the same time, I have also been a very happy teacher because I could see how much progress my students have made in English and in Maths. This has become especially clear in all the speaking lessons because the unusual houses and rooms really made the children curious and willing to express their views. That, together with all the cool adjectives that we learnt. During our speaking lessons, I would give them stars for participation and beautiful English and it was just beautiful to see how fast my board was filling up stars. They had ideas and they wanted to share them, in English. A truly joyful moment!

I have also been a very happy teacher noticing how my students are growing up and getting better at dealing with their emotions during our competitive games, learning to be in a group, getting over their own insecurities and being proud of their achievements. We are not a perfect group, the picture perfect class (Well, wait, do I even want us to be that?) and we are not even at the OK stage (not consistently, anyway) but we are getting there. I hope.

Happy teaching!

Working with sight words. A handful of crumbs for the primary students.

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This is a post dedicated to my trainees and course participants because, as it often happens, good ideas surface while talking to other teachers. Thank you! And I hope you find it useful)

About sight words

If in one line, sight words are those precious bits of the English language that, in a way, are exceptions are they do not follow the rules of phonics and which, at the same time appear in the English language with a high frequency (hence another term used to refer to them ‘high-frequency words’) which makes them very relevant to anyone learning to read and write. ‘Sight words are the glue that holds the sentences together’ (sightwords.com) which makes them a necessary part of literacy development, even if they had to be learnt by heart.

There are two lists of these words, the Dolch Sight Words List and the Fry Sight Words Lists and they are organised either by the year (Dolch’s) or the frequency with which they appear in English (Fry’s).

Available resources

There are lots of resources available for parents and for teachers of the English as L1. Naturally, just like in the case of phonics, we need to proceed with caution as they were created for children who already communicate in the language so the meaning of all of these does not need to presented, clarified and practise. Here are some of the

Sight words in primary EFL (a very objective take)

It is some kind of a paradox that sight words do not make even a cameo appearance in our mainstream coursebooks for primary. Or perhaps it is not, actually. After all, despite all the changes and developments that have taken place over the last two decades (my time in EFL), literacy development over all of the years of primary still falls under the category ‘Areas for improvement’.

Year 1 is usually well-taken care of (or at least it is the year 1 coursebooks that have shown the greatest progress in the area) but the same cannot be said about levels 2 – 4. It seems that once the kids are out of year 1 and once they have gone over the few phonics sets, they are all ready to read and write pretty much everything, as long as it has the appropriate lenght and more or less the vocabulary and grammar that follows the curriculum of the level.

It does not work like that and it is not only my opinion. Every time I run a course for primary teachers and meet teachers from a variety of backgrounds and contexts (bilingual, freelance teachers, state school teachers, private langauge school teachers), they all come with the same problem that could be summarised as: ‘How do we teach the kids to read? My students are in year 3 and they still cannot read. The book does not help. I don’t know what to do.’

Yes, as teachers, we are going to be supplementing, staging and facilitating the process and the kids will eventually learn to read and write but it would be wonderful if this area had more systemic support and attention.

Enough of this whining. Let me tell you how we approach sight words with my students:

  • Year 1 of instruction is fully devoted to phonics and sight words are put on hold. The reasons for that are simple. First of all, phonics have to have the priority and I don’t want to overload the students who are taking their first steps in English and in literacy. Second of all, I am taking my time to ensure that when we start working on sight words, kids are not complete beginners and may actually know some of the words they are to learn and to practise. This is also the time when we start moving from sentence reading / writing to text reading / writing and these words really do make an appearance. We start learning and practising sight words in year 2.
  • I divided the words in my own (very subjective) way, according to the categories such as grammar words, adjectives, verbs, etc, to facilitate recognition and memorisation and to enable to come up with meaningful practice activities, something more than just reading. So far I have been using Dolch’s list but I am going to upgrade it, as soon as we get through it. The lists have been colour-coded, printed and laminated and we take one list per week.
  • Read and put your hand up: the introductory exercise, the children are looking at the list and I read the words, one by one. The kids listen and raise their hands if they know the word. The aim of this activity is for me to understand where we are with the words regarding their meaning. Naturally, if we find something new, we explain them.
  • You’re the teacher, I am the teacher: kids work in pairs. They take turns to lead the activity. ‘The teacher’ points at the words in the table, ‘the student’ reads them out loud.
  • Line by line: we work as a team, kids take turns to read one line of the sight words. If the kids are quite strong, they can point at two or three words at the same time.
  • Knock, knock!: one more copy of the sight words is displayed on the door of the classroom. Kids read a number of words on entering the room (i.e. 3 or 5). The words can also be colourcoded, randomly or by the level of difficulty, i.e. 5 words per colour (depending on the list). Kids choose themselves which colour they want to read.
  • Bingo!: teacher prepares a set of cards with the words in question and hands them out among students (4 or 5 cards per student). The teacher reads the words in a random order. The child who has the card with a certain word puts it up to signal to the teacher (‘I’ve got it’) and they put the word away. Whoever runs out of their words first is the winner, like in a regular Bingo game.
  • Make a sentence: this activity requires a bit more than just a list but there is so much potential that I decided to invest time in preparing the resources for it. You will need two sets of cards, one with sentence starters made out of sight words (i.e. I have, I can, I like, I don’t, Do you, I will, I didn’t…etc) and the second set with adjectives (i.e. blue, green, long etc). Kids pick out one card of each and show to their peer for them to make a full sentence made out of these two bits and their own ideas.
  • Invisible sentence: kids work in pairs, like in ‘You’re the teacher! I’m the teacher!’ but instead of just reading the word, the student who is a student makes up a whole sentence or a question with that word. It takes a few rounds of practising together on the board for the children to get the idea, for example with teacher and one of the students taking turns in choosing the word but once they get it, it is a marvellous activity and, apart from practising reading, the kids also put them into context. If there are still some less familiar words or even the unknown words, this is a perfect opportunity to fish them out and to clarify them.

There are just a few of them but we have just started our adventure with sight words. There is more to come, for sure!

To be continued…

Happy teaching!

How to plan for kids without bending your back backwards. A five-step manual

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This post here is my response to the challenge set by my teacher-friend Michael. Challenge accepted. Let’s go, 5 steps.

Lesson aim

The first-est step. Always.

The session devoted to lesson planning on our YL course is called ‘What do you want teacher?’ and that is for a reason. Making a decision why we enter the room and what we want to achieve by the end of the lesson is key. Is the vocabulary the focus or is it a grammar point? Or any of the skills? What is the context? Do you want to focus on the language or the most important thing on the day is the work we put in developing social skills or building the routine? It might be something suggested by the book or chosen by the school curriculum but not always. And even it is, there is always room for adjustments and adaptation. At the end of the day, there is the teacher and there are the students in the classroom that matters most. The programme and the coursebooks are to be adapted.

After the aim is selected, there are more follow-up decisions to make, namely the selection of the focused task (aka the main productive activity) of the lesson?

That’s it, done. The main thing is done and it probably took about 5 minutes. The next step will be looking for things that will help make it happen.

Books basics

The coursebook and whatever it contains is already partially included in the previous step. Most of the time, this is what we use, for convenience and just because we can. The coursebook is not the enemy of course and there is a lot of useful material. Though, not all of it.

I presume the main activity has already been chosen and the next decision is regarding all the other exercises, activities, audio and visuals that are there (and in the workbook and teacher resource packs) that either match or don’t our aim and our focused task, or, in other words, our A or the lesson and our Z.

The most important thing to remember and the thing that is on constant repeat during our sessions and in my conversations with teachers is: the book is not there for us to follow to the letter and to cover and to include all the exercises.

Things you can repeat

In every lesson for YL there are certain elements that we can and that we should repeat because they help us construct the framework and the routine. They include either the elements of the routine: the hello song, the how do you feel today, the rules revision, the homework check, the goodbye as well the elements that are short-temporarily fixed: the songs we are singing in September, the games we are playing in the unit of toys, the story we are reading in the chapter on the jungle animals. All of these will feature in the lesson over a month. It is good to included them in the plan, keeping them on the side, in order to be able to use them.

The missing bits

Having got that far in the lesson planning, it might be the time to figure out how much time we have already taken out of the lesson time and how much time we already have left. Then, look at all the activities there are in the coursebook, all ready and waiting to be used, and, only if necessary, to replace them with some other activities, from another sources or self-designed.

Most of the time, the coursebook will do the job just fine.

Something for the balance (bits)

What I like to do at the very end, when the lesson is already ready, to have a quick look at everything, to check it for the contents and for the balance and variety

  • the ratio of interaction patterns
  • the ratio of different activities: songs, stories, creative and hard work
  • the ratio of new and familiar
  • the ratio of settlers and stirrers

And, when something is off, I fix it. Done!

Instead of a coda

Here are a few words of wisdom from a grandma teacher and trainer / mentor / observer:

  • we want good lessons to be our everyday but that does not mean that every single lesson needs to be an Oscar-worthy (or a Nobel prize-worthy) unit at the cost of the teacher’s sleep, peace of mind, family life or salary. Yes, I sometimes invest a little bit more into my teaching, in terms of planning, resources and time but, after all these years of experience, I also have lessons that are ‘just regular, no fireworks’.
  • we sometimes plan lessons and as soon as we get to school, out of the blue, we come up with something entirely different and it is the best lesson ever. Yes, that happens, but (here comes a very subjective line), it is the result of all the brainstorming and thinking that has already taken place. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have happened.
  • designing your own activites does not have to take ages and it does even require a teacher to be super creative. I personally find it much easier to prepare something for my lesson from scratch, rather than spend hours of looking through materials and resources to match the needs of my group and then, on having found it, still waste time on adapting it to what we (my kids, my course and our lesson) really need (here you can find some of the posts on material design).
  • our coursebooks have a lot of different resources and pictures among them which can be used in a million different ways with very little effort. A picture is an actitivity and you can read about it here, here and here.
  • in general, being a lazy teacher has a lot of benefits. You can read about it here.
  • here you can find another post about the everyday lesson planning

Happy teaching!

‘Teacher, did you do your homework?’

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Surprisingly, that is not as random a question as it might seem. Not only because we talk about the adverbs of frequency and my kids ask how often I do mine. I always say ‘Never’, just to make my kids give out the appalled ‘Oh!’ although, really, every day is a homework day because the lessons don’t plan themselves.

But there is more to that. With my older students, I do my homework regulary, especially when it is writing. My letter / story / essay not only serves as a model for my students but it also motivates them to do their homework. We frequently use my writings to learn how to structure the discourse, how to proofread and how to improve it. There is so much to it that I even ran a workshop with the same title a few years ago and, perhaps, a separate post will come out of it, in the future.

I would also like to highlight that, as a teacher, I am all for homework assignments, even with the very young learners, and I have already written about it here. Naturally, if the preschoolers can do their homework, then everyone else can, too and I have just realised that this deserves a post on homework with older learners (mental note #2).

However, today, I would like to write about something else entirely.

Let me tell you about the context

It’s been over a year since I started to work in a slightly different context, a primary school with a bilingual programme (which you can definitely tell just looking at the content here). Last year, in my year 1 group we used to give the kids the homework, once a week, Maths and phonics and we used to keep a journal with my kids, too. I shared the electronic materials with the parents, in order to enable the children to interact witht the content at home. All types of homework were optional, although, of course, I was checking everything that was handed to me and I kept a homework record, just to be able to analyse the situation and to check if there was any connection between the homework done and the progress made. Here is a spoiler: yes, there was.

This year, we decided to change that and to standardise the procedures across all subjects and both departments (English and L1). This year our final, seventh lesson, is a self-study lesson which we devote to additional work in the areas that need that most. I am not sure how the L1 programme teachers make their decisions but I decided to go for flexibility, sometimes it is English, sometimes it is Maths, depending on the day and how the day goes.

Each day we have about 20 minutes (aka one task), the kids work on their own and they are supervised by my T.A. The children work on their own, the task is a written one (at least at this point) and there is always some flexibility and differentation as, naturally, we have a mixed ability group. The task is always an extension of what we have done in class in the morning.

My T.A. always collects the papers and I check and comment on them and give them back on the following day.

What exactly do we do? (aka Examples)

Task type A: Just One More Exercise Like We Did In Class: This is probably the kind of a task that was initially intended for this kind of a lesson. I remember the debates with phrases like ‘what we don’t finish in class’, ‘what we didn’t have time for’ and ‘just some more practice’. This is absolutely very, very useful for the children (more practice!) and for the teacher (easy to prepare) but, admittedly, not the most exciting task type. As I have found out.

Task type B: Find My Mistakes: That is the type of a task that, unlike the one above, I need to write myself. It involves a task that we did in class but there are some mistakes in it. It can be a Maths task (the type we do with Petya and Alisa, our invisible students) that follows on the specific exercise that we already did together with exactly the same procedures and instructions, already completed but with mistakes. The main objective for children is to become a teacher and to check the tasks for potential mistakes. Sometimes all tasks already have a mistake (the easier option), sometimes some items are correct.

It can be an English task, too and in this case the children look for structural mistakes (punctuation or grammar) or factual mistakes, in case the task is based on a song or a story we have covered.

Task type C: Odd One Out or Add Yours: This task type is usually used for English and we used it a lot with vocabulary. So far it has been really handy with all the vocabulary as it allowed for differentation and open-ended exercises or verb phrases or noun phrases as we could practise simple collocations, for example: What goes with this verb: wash: your hands, your face, a book, your shoes. In this particular case, the kids had to find the odd one and, also, add their own option.

Task type D: Make a Task For Miss Anka: This is also a task that is always based on the type of a task we do in class in the morning but in this case, children have to create their own examples for me. It can be a word search or a snake (see photos), it can be their own mini-story or short sentences in English or their own text tasks or examples, for me to solve or to find mistakes. This has become the Number 1 Beloved Task, for all of us. A hit!

Task type E: Miscellaneous: Guess-Related: This is a mix of all tasks, another one of those that I prepare myself and very personalised. It is usually a task for English although it can be Maths, too. We did one when I wrote random sentences about my students (a set of 7 per child) with the adverbs of frequency (‘Sasha always plays computer games’) and children had to read and correct when necessary or give me points for guessing correctly how often they do things. In the Maths lesson on the Roman numerals, I had a set of numbers ‘about me’ and what they mean and the children had to decipher them and match them i.e. the number of meters I can swim = DC and so on.

Why we all just LOVE it?

First of all, I cannot repeat it enough (and in caps): WE ALL LOVE HOMEWORK. I always have, really, but now I am discovering the new levels and reasons for this love but it is also true that my kids love it, too and, when on an ocassion or two, the homework in English did not happen in lesson 7, my kids were simply disappointed. Not to mention that right now we start the day with ‘Miss Anka, did YOU do the homework?’ (or variations: ‘Miss Anka, did you see the homework?’).

Here are the reasons why I love these homework assignments:

  • my students have an opportunity to do ‘something more’ in English or in Maths, which is the idea of the homework itself and the most precious benefit.
  • these tasks were also an opportunity to develop my students’ reading and writing skills and, at this point in the game, these are crucial. We are past the basic phonics stage and the simple sentences stage so whatever they read and write, out of their own accord, is a reason to celebrate.
  • the kids could work in a more independent format, revising everything that they have learnt in the morning, doing it again, moving it to the ‘freer practice’ level, revisiting the task and, in a way, testing themselves
  • many of the tasks gave the kids an opportunity to make decisions and even to be creative and, for that reason, I love checking the homework, to see where the course of the day took them. I can tell you, easily, almost every morning, I get a hearty laughter and my comments are some variation of ‘excellent’ and ‘I love it’.
  • these tasks, by design short, flexible and open-ended, are perfect for mixed-ability groups and very often the students are in charge of how much they choose to do. The instructions include the minimal number of examples or sentences they have to do (adjusted to my ‘weaker’ students) but it is great to see that hardly anyone does just that and many, if not all, complete the entire task prepared. Naturally, ‘every little helps’ and I rejoice every single example completed. This approach, however, takes the pressure off the students and is very motivating in itself.
  • movitation is a huge factor here, as well, and, I’d risk saying that all of the aspects of the format and the task design contribute to it. Some of the children have to leave early (to attend to whatever errands they need to run) but they take the handouts with them and bring them the following day, although it is not obligatory.
  • many of the tasks are teacher-friendly. I prepare them daily and it really does not take a lot of time. The task type A requires no preparation, apart from making copies. Task type D is even better because, usually, it requires bringing only a piece of paper for each student. Task type C is also very simple as it can be a copy of the exercise done before, only with wrong answers and that, for a high-level speaker of English and a relatively competent Maths user, also – a piece of cake. The other two, type C and E are, admittedly, a tad bit more involving, especially the highly personalised type E, but, looking back at the results and the outcome, they are just SO worth it!

Instead of the coda

I am aware of the fact that we have some advantages because of the format in which we work at my school but I decided to share these activities and the whole approach because of the benefits it has brought us and because I believe that many of these task types can be adapted to, say, a more traditional EFL classes of a language school. And bring about the same exciting outcomes.

It’s been only two months of this particular experiment so there is definitely more to come!

Here are some tasks we have done already

English: Task type C: odd one out and add yours

Maths: Task type D: created your own task

English: Task type D: write your own (based on the story we did in class)

Math: Task type E: Guess (Roman numerals and the notes my student took of her potential guesses)

Happy teaching!

Step by step! Year 2, one month in.

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I decided to contiue with my reflection journal.

One thing is that someone else may find it useful, reading about the adventures of another teacher and realising that even for an experienced one, it is not (always) a bed of roses and that, regardless of the mileage, we work with what (or whom!) we have in the classroom, adapting methods, approaches and always being on the lookout for new solutions.

The other thing, however, is that I find it really (really) useful as a teacher. Even the very fact that I created a new post here and typed in the headings, that alone helped me see this whole month of teaching from a completely different angle. An instand reflection and understanding. It does not mean that I regret doing something or that I would introduce any major changes in the month of September. We did what we had to do but now I understand better why we did it this way.

September, back to school after three long months of no routine and no learning, that had to take its toll! I am beyond happy that my students could enjoy the summer freedom from their duties but it is true that you forget, at least some of the things that you have leant. And, mind you, not so much regarding the actual language or Maths, but, absolutely – definitely – thoroughly, when it comes to habits and routines.

Outcomes? You spent the whole month of September rebuilding it. Step by step.

Starting the lesson

As regards this stage of the lesson, we went for the principle of ‘something old, something new’. We start with our traditional ‘5..4…3…2…1…Hello everyone’ and talking about how we are plus talking about the weekend on Monday but now this part is now led by our ‘Hello Master‘. One of the students is chosen to perform this task in the beginning of the task. They sit on the chair in front of the class and ask the question ‘How do you feel today?’, not forgetting to follow up with ‘Because?’. Because? Because We Want More Language Production!

At this point, we are not using our handmade flashcards with feelings. Instead, I prepared the real ones, printed and laminated and they are displayed on the walls of the classroom. I did notice that some students look around to find something to really express how they feel. Thanks to that one of my students stopped answering ‘I don’t know’ (an answer which I used to accept, it is, after all, a valid way to feel for a human). Now he looks around and finds something to say. Usually, a few things, actually, which I am not surprised with as he is the one that seems to be able to feel a whole multitude of feelings per second. At least now, he can talk about it!

We have two other students chosen in every lesson, two Helpers, who hand out pencils, books, handouts and who help with cleaning up. Kids love helping and they treat it as a privilege. Naturally, I have to keep track of the names and roles, or else, I am in trouble.

Afterwards, we sing our Month Song, I start and then, whoever has an idea, they sing, too. I love this part of the lesson and I see that they really use it to express how they feel on the day or to joke about me or themselves. And it is all improvised!

Rules and classroom language

Aside from the feelings, we are now in our own classroom and we can display whatever we want on the walls, just the way I like it! So, aside from the days of the week, the months, the sight words and the feelings cards, I also added all the rules, so that we always have them in front of our eyes.

One of the Helpers always reads them in the beginning of the day and we refer to them during the lesson. The next step will be adding the real classroom language, all the verbs and phrases we need during the lesson. After all, we still have some room on the walls and they pay attention to what’s there!

Rewards chart

A rewards chart has become an important part of our lessons in September, as a visualisation of what they do AND as an instant reflection faciliation tool.

I did experiment with it a little bit, over the month of September, using what I have learnt so far (a post is here) and, let me put it like that, because of my students, I managed to learn even more about the effective use of a rewards chart.

In the end, after experimenting and finding quite a few things that don’t work with my current audience, I decided to keep it simple. We have a list of names, all of them with attendance (either a plus or a little comment ‘Where is Sasha?’ or ‘Sasha is ill’), some of them with the badges (Helper or Hello Master) and, as we go along through the lesson, I add stars for the completion of the tasks and, sometimes, special stars for some additional achievements, for the extra work that is optional. This week I also started to add some verbs that describe the kids behaviour, the unwanted behaviour. It is not a minus or a sad face, it is just a neutral description i.e. talks or disturbs a friend etc, and, of course, they are there only to signal that there is something that they should not be doing and, naturally, if they cease, I erase. It has worked so far and the language is as neutral and bland as possible. ‘Only facts’.

Last week I also used it in the end of the lesson, to thank those few of my students who were great players during our competitive game. However, for that, I used a different symbol, a big smiley. More of that a bit later.

We also keep a lesson plan, or actually 2. I have my own, on the board at the back and I write a short, funny version of it on the main board, for the students. We keep erasing bits of it as we go through the lesson. I normally wrote it as bullet points and changed it only this week, to a snake (a theme of the day) but one of my kids asked to go back to the bullet points list as it is, apparently, easier to read. OK, point taken, thank you.

Since we are still getting used to the life in the classroom, I had to go back to another item: ‘time left’ on the board as it really helps my students manage their attention and focus during the lesson. As I have written before, it is also an interesting resource of feedback for me, because, naturally, they ask more in some lessons and less in the others so, this is one more signal of how we are going on.

Songs and story

I decided to put these two categories together because this month, to some extent, we have abandoned songs and stories. Not fully, oh no, these are the two things that I love doing in the classroom and I would never give up on them. But the month of September saw fewere of them, in comparison of what we did last year.

We do have our Month Improvisation Song in the beginning of the lesson and the other song, taken from Superminds 3, ‘School is cool’ which we love, we love to change (‘School is not cool’) and which helped us practise school subjects. We also did listen to some of our favourites from last year but, overall, there were fewer songs.

The same applies to stories. We did Dr Seuss, ‘I’ll teach my dog 100 words’, to revise and to practise verbs and one long story, ‘Johnny’s Story’ from Superminds 3 which we read, listen to, talked about and created our own versions, too. I really wanted to use this one because it is quite long and I have a few Johnnys in my groups. We definitely can relate! But, again, only two stories in four or five weeks.

I have my reasons! Hear me out! It seems that, subconsciously, I wanted to cut down on the number of stimuli and new things in the lesson, based on how much we struggled with remaining seated. Literally. It helped a bit and we will definitely add more stories and songs in October!

Socialising

This was one aspect of our classroom life that we had to work a lot on. What the kids forgot, apart from the routine and rules, were the social norms and the bond and friendships, or, in some cases, the kind tolerance we had developed towards each other in year 1. Sigh.

As a result, we had to work on that A LOT in September and this is how we did it:

  • I experimented a lot with different seating arrangements. Throughout September, kids would sit with different partners every day. I wanted to experiment in order to find out the best and the worst combinations. In the beginning, we used the September words and it was random but after two weeks I started to assign seats (using the chalk marker) to write the names on the tables for everyone and reflecting after the lesson. At this point, after a month, we are pretty much aware of what works best and, aside from little changes, everyone has their own seat. Some kids sit in a trio, some in pairs, some in a pair but with tables apart and I have some outsiders who sit at the front but at their own separate island. That said, we also regroup, too, for some of the activities.
  • We have done a crazy amount of pairwork. Only last week, over three lessons, we did comparing pictures (Flyers), playing a dice game, playing a guessing game, comparing how often we do things based on our notes, played a team game various times, with different teams. They did well!
  • We did lots of competitive games because NOW WE CAN! I am so proud of my students that another article will have to come out of it! Because of all the work we did last year, over the summer with some kids and over those four weeks of September, the kids are now simply amazing at managing their emotions and taking the defeat without tears. It was not easy, not at all, but we made it. I am just so proud! We now have a habit of getting together in a team, thinking of a name and negotiating a lot while in-game, in order to achieve the best results. In that sense, that is also a thing that works towards being a part of a group.
  • I believe that also all the other things that we do, as one big group, that also helps to remind us that we are a team: our rules, our classroom, our cards, names, all of the rituals and traditions, our notebooks and books.

Creativity

We didn’t do any real projects apart from the first one, on day 1, but we were very creative in September. Starting this year, my school introduced a new lesson, the homework time, that is obligatory for everyone and serves as an opportunity to catch up on things that haven’t been finished during the regular lessons or completing some additional tasks. And, so far, that has been so much fun!

First of all, these are the tasks that my kids do with our T.A., so there is a different vibe to them. Sometimes, we do English and on some days Maths, depending on the day. Sometimes these are just ‘some more exercises’, the repetition and revision of what we did in class and how we did things in class but, often, these tasks are more creative, for example creating stories, sentences and Maths tasks for me. I am able to check them only the following day but when I do, I usually laugh a lot because my students are having fun, with Maths and with the language.

Having said that, the time for a real project is coming up!

Teacher

Over these few weeks of September, I have generally calmed down and got my feet back on the ground because we have been more under control of everything taking place. There are still a few issues to resolve but we are getting there, step by step.

I am really happy because I can see, on daily basis, how much progress my students have made. They are so much better at reading and they do remember quite a lot from Maths, too. Hooray to that! And onto the next one!

Happy teaching!

‘It’s tricky! It’s tricky!’ Back to school classroom management

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About some ridiculous expectations

Well, it is not my first rodeo and, actually, it might be actually a good point in life to count properly how many rodeos aka Septembers there have been so far (I really don’t know) but, it turned out that I had been a bit naive about what to expect in the classroom on the 3rd of September. Or, in other words, my students managed to suprise me once more! Hooray to that. I suppose)

I knew that my students would come back having forgotten a lot and that we would not be able to pick it up where we left off, not after three months of no-school life. However, naively, I was hoping that they will remember something and that our September life will not involve starting off a brand new blank page. I was wrong!

The funny thing about it is that a few minutes into a lesson that was not necessarily bad but also not my dream come true, I kind of split my attention. There was a part of my brain that was solely responsible for the lesson taking place and the other one stepped back and started to look at the events the way a trainer would, connecting the dots and making mental notes about ‘the things to improve’. That was an interesting experience, I have to say.

This post today will have a format different to every other post in this series. I will try to analyse the things that did not go to plan and the solutions I already decided to put in place.

Things that I liked on the first real day

  • We talked about the things we did on holiday and it was great
  • We kept our Months Improvisation Song and now we are singing about ‘September’, I did my verse and the kids did theirs.
  • We did an introductory reading task and I was really happy with how it went. The kids really wanted to read (already a reason to celebrate) and to find the mistakes in the song.
  • We played our numbers spinner Maths game (‘I want…’) and it was very productive.
  • We made a mural about our favourite things that we will put up on the wall, Our Solar System. We sat together on the floor around a sheet of paper and we went on creating.
  • Even in the first lesson we had a good variety of interaction patterns: whole class, individual work, activities led by kids, collaboration on the project.
  • We have a special board where we keep the plan for the lesson.

Things that I didn’t like on the first real day

  • In one line, the kids were over-stimulated and out of control.
  • It was the first lesson in our new classroom, out of the previous set-up, associated with good habits and routines and there were too many new elements.
  • I allowed the kids to sit the way they wanted, with the friends they wanted to be around.
  • I decided to include the rules revision during the second lesson (for a reason) but I had to pay for that
  • I decided to include one of our favourite Maths games, to balance ‘the new’ with ‘the familiar’ but, I have to admit, there were better solutions, something else than a game would work better.
  • We used some of the favourite songs but I also included a new song, ‘Back to school’ but, in hindsight, I think it was not really necessary. It could have been left for a bit later.

What has changed since the first day aka Solutions

  • Nobody is sitting where they want anymore. This was my plan and I announced it in the first lesson that during the month of September we are going to have a different seating arrangement every single day. I prepared some September vocabulary cards and glued them onto the desks and a set of cards with the same words. Everyone coming into the room picks up one card and then looks for their place to sit. I want to experiment with different seating arrangements (especially that I am still working on the arrangements of the desks, too) and I want to check which combination works the best. There are some dangers involved, some tricky combinations to be avoided at all cost, but I am willing to take that risk, in order to learn. It was only yesterday that I saw a meme or a video on the social media in which teachers were saying that they let everyone to sit the way they want on day 1 specifically in order to find out who shouldn’t sit with whom. Plus we are also going to learn some cool September words)
  • Our rules have not been printed, laminated and displayed on the wall above the board. We have been reading and revising them at the start of every lesson. There are only few, my basic set: I sit nicely, I listen to the teacher, I speak quietly, I raise my friend, we are friends and Russian is beautiful but I speak English here. If we need, we will add to the list.
  • I have also decided to add another poster ‘How are we working today?‘ to help kids understand the different interaction patterns and modes of work. You can see all of them in the poster underneath and these are the terms that I am using to describe what the lesson is going to be about. They also help a lot with giving instructions to particular tasks. The most important differentiation at the moment is the one between ‘follow the teacher step by step’ and ‘you can make your own decisions’.
  • I reinstated the tool that we already abandoned, namely, the final stage of the lesson with the official announcements of the grades for the lesson, for work and for behaviour. We did not quite abandon them because I still needed my notes to add comments to the electronic journal for all my students but making formal announcements of praise and of not-so-good feedback was not necessary at the end of the previous academic year. This is back and it helps to summarise the lesson, to highlight once more the superstar behaviour and to explain why some grades are not very good.
  • We have a new call – response and last we used ;Autum leaves’ (teacher) – ‘falling down’ (students). They have already customised it and some of them respond ‘falling up’, just because it is funny. I need one more of those.
  • We sang a lot of our favourite songs during the other two days and I am planning to keep that trend for another week, without repeating, until we go through everything in our Songbook.
  • With one of my groups, I have put the games on hold for now, we are not ready yet. With the other one, the games are at the end of the lesson plan, in the ‘if time’ section. We need to get back into the school mode, back into the focus, before we start doing something more entertaining.

What’s next?

Not much, just the everyday and helping my adorable monster get back to the proper working mode. We will sing our songs, we will definitely do a story next week. We are still working without our books, rationing resources. We already have the beautiful notebooks, though, so there is a place to keep all the notes. Step by step!

Happy teaching!

We don’t need no…enthusiastic teachers. The dangers of enthusiasm

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Do I hear gasps of horror in the audience? Good. That is how I reacted when I said these words out loud, in a conversation with a teacher friend, retelling her some of the ‘recent events’…

Bear with me, dear reader and let’s see if you still gasp at the end of this post. Or maybe I will get you to at least look at the world through my eyes and give me a tiny little nod of agreement…

The ideal teacher?

‘Enthusiastic‘ is this one term that frequently appears on the list of words to describe an ideal teacher. Qin Zhang goes as far as saying that it is ‘generally recognised as one of the most essential and desirable qualities and characteristics of effective teachers‘ as one almost synonymous with energy or passion. What’s more, it is often presented as key to students’ motivation and engagement and, if you look long enough, you can even find advice how to be enthusiastic about what you teach (and in case you need it – use your voice and gestures, never admit that you don’t like your subject or topic or that it is not important). Enthusiasm then – a key factor in teaching.

Or is it?

Reading all these articles made me want to jump up and shout ‘Objection, Your Honour!’

My definition of a teacher, and especially a YL teacher, is slightly different and, surprise surprise, enthusiasm does not feature there as one of the necessary qualities. I put this list together based on years of mentoring and training of teachers who were either novices in general or novice teachers in the early years ESL/ EFL world. I based it on my own experience, the things that worked and the things that didn’t. I read about it, too, of course.

On my list, I have resilience and stamina and a variety of skills, I have resourcefulness and patience, I have creativity, energy and calmness and all three elements mentioned by my gurus such as Sandie Mourao (2018): the level of language, the knowledge of child development and of the appropriate methodology. A YL teacher is also someone who can teacher up or teacher down. But ‘enthusiastic’, well, somehow I didn’t think of including it. Truth be told, only recently did I begin to understand why.

Case studies

To illustrate that, I will use three case studies, from my professional life as a teacher, a trainer, an educational manager in all the contexts, countries and schools where I have worked and, at the same time, in none of them. The stories may have happened but in the way you think, not in the place you can guess and not with the people you know. No identification with actual persons or places is intended or should be inferred.

Case study 1: A senior teacher is asked to prepare a programme for the summer camp session. This senior teacher does not really have a lot of experience in the area and with this age group and, somehow, they do not bother to ask for advice, recommendations or support from more experienced colleagues. They just put it together, as best as they can because they really, really want to and they believe that something’s gotta give.

The programme has more holes than a slab of some Swiss cheese. There are no real ideas, no lesson plans, no support for the teacher or any attention or knowledge of any methodological principles. The only thing that there is – the enthusiasm and the Wow Factor . The camp lags from one day to the other, the teachers are confused and lost and just doing their best. But, because they are dedicated and passionate, they pull it through.

Execution mode: atrocious and unecessarily exhausting.

Aims: met as in: the world did not fall apart.

Case study 2: A teacher orgnises an excursion for her students, to the cafe, to celebrate. It is not a big group of students, there are four adults accompanying the kids, the paperwork is ready. However, the teacher doe not bother to check and to plan the route, there and back, because they are in the city city, not far from the school and the place is reacheable on foot. On the way there and on the way back, the group wanders around, they have to stop a few time to check the google maps, everything takes forever and on the way back, they take yet another shortcut and, to add insult to injury, they are caught in a blizzard.

Execution mode: messy and unnecessarily exhausting.

Aims: met (meaning: the world did not fall apart and there were a lot of lovely photographs)

Case study 3: An adult student stays after a lesson to talk about a relative who would like to work as a teacher. The contacts are exchanged and the potential applicant is advised to get in touch with the recruitment department of the school. She does and only later doe it become obvious that the enthusiastic would-be teacher has not graduated from the university yet, her studies are not even remotely related to education, she has never every taught in any capacity and does not even have any official confirmation of her language level. For all these reasons, naturally, the school does not hire her. However, she is advised to take a language test and consider starting the basic teaching qualification course. The potential applicant does not reply to these in any way and, her relative, the adult student who comes to the following lesson iss obviously disappointed and she tries to plead, with her teacher. ‘But she is so eager to start teaching. She really, really wants to be a teacher of English. It would be a dream come true...’

Execution mode: a great range of mixed feelings.

Aims: not met. I hope this person found her path.

Put the enthusiasm on the back burner!

It is easy to image that all of the directors, all of the managers, all of the parents and all of the trainers would love to see their teachers full of energy, stars in their eyes, joy in their gait, impatient to start doing their favourite thing, teaching! To impart knowledge, to help the kids learn, to help their students grow! That’s absolutely important and I hope that all my teachers, readers, colleagues have a chance to experience it on daily basis, this passion for what you do. I, personally, cannot imagine a life in which you to work without a tiny spark of happiness, just to do something in exchange for the salary. There are lots and lots of things that I do, solely out of pure enthusiasm and there are lots and lots of things that my colleagues and teacher friends do, on daily basis, that are not reimbursed financially.

But.

Enthusiasm cannot be the only resource available to a teacher. If it is and if it is there to cover up and to make up for all the other adjectives (such as organised, supportive, qualified, skilled, realistic, methodologically sane, planned, reasonable and professional), then I would like to make an objection and a strong one, too!

If we were talking about a different profession, nobody would even consider hiring a person to do the job of a doctor, a driver or a hair-dresser if the only thing they had to show for themselves was their enthusiasm or serving a disgusting cake on a pretty plate and claiming a Michelin star or two. It would not be a good idea to organise a festival without checking all of the bits, pieces and options and going for it just because we really, really want to have it.

No because it does not work like that in other areas and we should not have to deal with that in teaching, either.

Personally, I find it very, very tiring, as a teacher, as a trainer and as an educational manager. Mostly, because, in most cases, it translates into mess, confusion, teaching and learning below standard and last minute preparations and fixing problems as we (happily) go along. Perhaps, on my part, it is some kind of professional OCD but I like things to be in order.

This is not a post against enthusiasm and pession. Let’s not take it off the list, let’s just put it on the back burner, please.

Happy teaching!

References

Instructor’s Corner #3: Teaching with Enthusiasm: Engaging Students, Sparking Curiosity, and Jumpstarting Motivation | National Communication Association (natcom.org)

An enthusiastic teacher of English – How I see it now (wordpress.com)

Being an Enthusiastic Teacher – Swansea Academy of Learning and Teaching

What makes teachers enthusiastic: The interplay of positive affect, self-efficacy and job satisfaction – ScienceDirect

Sandie Mourao (2018), Research into the teaching of English as a foreign language in early childhood education and care, In: S.Garton, F.Copeland, The Routledge Handbook of Teaching English to Young Learners, Routledge, p. 429.