#eflideas

A lesson, in structures. Notes from the classroom

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The academic year has just finished.

We had our final lesson, we learned and we had a little online party, with snacks and dances. The final reports and the diplomas have all been sent out and it was only a few days later that, during a walk, I caught myself thinking that we have had a very good year in the classroom and I am really happy with what my kids have learned and how they have progressed.

I am here basically taking notes of where we got by the end of the year, not to forget how many structures and how much language can be squeezed in a lesson. Obviously, that is not everything and there is always room for improvement. Obviously, adaptations have to be considered for the younger, the older, the smaller or the bigger groups, the longer or the shorter classes…

Here is my group: 6 kids, (mostly) in their second year of learning English, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6 and 6 years old, for 60 minutes once a week (or 45 minutes when online), amazing parents included.

Here is my lesson, in structures…

Getting in

  • Hello, how are you? (I’m ok)
  • Where are you sitting? (A blue table and a pink stool (while putting the books down and while sitting down)
  • What have you got today? (I’ve got a spider (in the online classroom, showing us what they have brought or what is lying around)
  • Are you eating or drinking? (I’m eating. I’m drinking (online)
  • What are you eating / drinking? (I am eating cherries. I am drinking water (online, they bring snacks to the lesson)
  • Do you like bananas? (Yes, I do (an activity we played while walking into the classroom, they used to do it in pairs, the one entering and the one right behind them in line, with the flashcards they picked from the pile)
  • How many students have we got today? (Six. One boy and five girls. One teacher (before the hello song. Sometimes we also add: Who is not here?)
  • Where is Sasha? (Sasha is not here. She is ill) Here, it was the students who started to ask about the missing kids and for that reason we introduced the question. The kids were asking, the teacher was answering).
  • Who is it? (It is Sasha. It is Misha) This was something that we did only in the classroom and it was our reaction to kids coming late. Even in the classroom we could hear the main door bell (or answer phone) ring and we started to play the game trying to guess who might be coming through the door next. It was especially fun when a few kids were being late and, of course, we could play it only on some days:-)
  • Did you do your homework? (Yes. (online: we check the homework together, taking turns, classroom: there is more 1-1 interaction as we check the homework as the kids are walking in)

Hello circle

  • How do you feel today? (I am very happy, a little angry and very, very sleepy (online: we use the presentation, I am arranging the icons for each child, classroom: we use our faces flashcards, at this point we have about 12 in active use. Btw, at this point the kids are asking these questions to each other)
  • What’s the weather like today? (It is sunny (online: the presentation, classroom: we look outside of the window)
  • Who is wearing a t-shirt? (Not me / I am. I am wearing a blue t-shirt (online: presentation, classroom: flashcards)

Revision

  • What’s your favourite colour / pet / fruit? (I like green / cats / bananas (online: presentation, classroom: flashcards)
  • How is your mum? (My mum is happy (online: wordwall spinner, classroom: flashcards or dice, we usually do three family members)
  • What’s my secret? Look at me (It’s a car! It’s a train (used for the revision of pretty much any vocabulary, with the teacher and then the students miming their chosen word and the other kids guessing)
  • What’s my secret? It is big, it is loud, it is fast, it is red (It’s a rocket (used for description riddles, online: we use symbols on the chart to remember what to talk about or the discourse clock, offline: we use flascards. The aim here is to encourage the kids to make riddles, too, but with this particular group we haven’t got to the stage of the SS-led game)
  • Cat, how do you get to school? (I go to school by train (online: we use miro, the kids are producing the language, I am moving the images, the cat is actually getting on thet train, classroom: we use flascards, the kids put the animals on the transport)
  • I can see two cats. Yes or not? (No, I can see three cats (we use one picture, the teacher is producing, the kids are listening and correcting)
  • I can see a black cat. (I can see an orange cat (here we use two different pictures and we are looking for differences, the teacher describes picture A, the kids, in turns, describe picture B)

Songs and movement

  • Which song do you want to sing, Baby Shark or Old McDonald’s? (Let’s sing Baby Shark (while choosing the song, when we could choose)
  • Are you sitting or are you standing? (I am sitting. I am standing (while choosing what we want to do during the song)
  • Do you like the song? (I like it, I don’t like it (to ask after a new song is introduced. It is another activity in which the structure can be used but it is also good to find out if they like the song or not)
  • What’s your favourite shark / farm animal? (I like mummy shark (a short personalisation activity after a song)
  • Mummy shark is green. Yes or no? (No, mummy shark is pink (and more follow-up task, that can be used with pretty much any song)
  • Is it easy or difficult? (It’s easy. It’s difficult (another idea for a follow-up after a song, it works best with the more active songs such as Move, I am normally the one that struggles with some of the actions and the kids adore them)
  • Abracadabra, 123, you are a cat (Kids don’t really respond here, their only task is to mime a cat. However, the main aim here is to let the kids lead the game as soon as it is possible and once they do, they start producing a lot of language. The other variations include: You are a happy cat. You are a big happy cat. You are dancing. You are a cat and you are dancing)
  • Anka in the circle. Katya in the circle. Who’s next? (Sasha in the circle (classroom: we are getting up and making a circle before starting the first song. There is a follow-up: Let’s make a small circle. Let’s make a big circle.

Focused task

  • Are you ready? (Yes, I am) or I’m ready (I’m ready) (as we are sitting down in the classroom or as we are settling down in the online classroom)
  • I’ve got my book (I’ve got my book) (again, in the online or the offline classroom as we are getting ready for the task. We use it for the handouts in the online lessons, too. In the classroom, I would ask one of the kids to help hand these out. They would be saying: ‘One of Katya. One for Sasha’ and so on while giving them out. Only afterwards we would go ‘I’ve got my paper’)
  • You need one colour / three colours. What colour do you want? (Blue, please) while we were getting ready for the task, applicable in the offline classroom)
  • I’m taking blue (or, when appropriate: My car is blue) (I’m taking green. My car is green) We use these in the online lessons or in those lessons when the kids are given their whole set of markers or crayons to use. Sometimes we use ‘I’m taking’ when we only connect the dots, draw lines etc. When it is used for colouring, I prefer the describe the final product as it seems to be more natural in that case)
  • I’ve finished (I’ve finished) when the task or a part of the task is completed)
  • Close your books. Put the markers in the box.
  • There are also many specific task or specific craft-related verbs and instructions but it is impossible to add them all here.

Storytelling

  • Which story are we going to read, this one or this one? (This one) This is applicable only when we have two stories to choose from
  • Who is it? What is he doing? Is he big or small? Is he happy? Is he at home? (It’s a boy. He is sitting. He is big. He is sad. He is in the park) We talk about the character of the book, usually looking at the cover page. However, sometimes (like in case of Barry and the Scary Monster) it is much better to use one of the inside illustrations as the cover page reveals too much, you can see the monster and I like to keep him a surprise until a bit later in the game)
  • Do you like the story? (I like it / I don’t like it) This is the question we always ask at the end of the story)
  • Are you happy? How do you feel now? (I am happy) This one is also a follow-up question and it gives the kids a chance to express their emotions at the end of the story. Sometimes I use it during the story. It might be a good idea to pause and to gauge the audience to check and to ensure that the kids are not getting scared (re: Barry and the monster) or too sad (re: the little mouse in Playway 1. This is a topic that would perhaps deserve its own post, dealing with emotions in storytelling lessons, but when the character is getting too upset, I comfort him (It’s ok, mouse, don’t cry) or I suggest that the kids can close their eyes or look away)
  • What’s your favourite fish? (I like this one. I like the blue fish) one of the simpler follow-up activities)

Goodbye

  • Let’s sit down: we have homework, goodbye song and stickers (while we are getting ready for finishing the lesson. By the end of the year I am only counting on my fingers and the kids are enlisting what is left to do. I only need to correct the order, sometimes.)
  • I’ve got my homework (I’ve got my homework) only applicable in the offlince classroom when the homework is not in the book).
  • How many stickers are we getting today? Are you taking a sticker? We have got farm, sea animals and space. Which one do you want? (Three stickers. Yes, please. No, thank you. Farm, please) This is only applicable in the classroom. With my online pre-school groups we haven’t started giving out the online stickers and, although we shifted online half-way through the year when the kids were already used to stickers, they did not mind, they did not ask for stickers. I did not want to introduce the online stickers because we had too many new things at this point due to switching online. I did not want to add up to that.

Notes

  • Interaction: in most cases, kids answer in a messy choir manner (I am giggling because I have just come up with that term) and that is: they respond to the question in their own time, to produce the language, more or less at the same time. I am keeping an eye and sometimes I have to call out those that missed the moment and did not produce. We have been studying together for two years so by now this type of interaction has become a routine. There are also situations, especially with the new structures or in case of a very important message (well, you know:-) when I call them out one by one. However, since there are six of them it cannot be every single time. There are also questions and structures that the kids lead and they choose one of the other kids to answer.
  • L2 and L1: most children, most of the time reply in the way that is the preschool teacher’s dream: in a full sentence and in English. However, kids are kids and they are beginner learners so of course that would not happen in 100% of cases. Sometimes they use single words (because kids do) and sometimes they thrown in three other sentences to tell me why their mum is happy today and that is just the way it is. I am doing my best to promote English only in the classroom but my kids are 4 or 5 and it does not happen overnight. But it does happen eventually.
  • Activities: I do not use every single activity in every lesson but I do like to repeat them in order to ensure that the basic structures feature more or less regularly
  • Outcomes, before and after: This is our regular lesson in level 2 which is the middle level. As regards my level 1 students – they have been exposed to some of these structures from the very beginning and, for example, in December, after only four months of studying, they already had about ten adjectives to describe emotions at their disposal whereas all the other structures were introduced gradually and, as can be expected, the main aim for some of them was only the exposure. As regards level 3, we managed to expand the range of these structures, make them natural and get to the point when the kids would be using them spontaneously.

Happy teaching!

Teaching grammar in pre-school?

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This article was (and is) a double joy.

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

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

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

Enjoy!

Happy teaching!

Crumbs # 33 Anyone up for a pirate lesson?

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‘Anka, what about the pirates?’ was the thing I heard on Tuesday. The sentence was uttered in the middle of the lesson, in absolutely no relation to anything that happened, apart from the fact that the theme of the unit is the sailors, the mysteries of the sea, The Mary Celeste and I may have, at one point, mentioned pirates in passing. They did notice (of course), they did remember (naturally) and they waited for the best moment to use it against me. Obviously.

The funniest thing about it was the tone of voice that my kids used in that kind of situations and it is probably one of the things that I should add to the list of all the outcomes and consequences of working with a group for a prolonged period of time (you can find the post here). This tone of voice is a wonderful mix of a gentle scorn, a genuine inquiry, an honest plead and a teeny tiny layer of sarcasm. My kids are so good at it that they can squeeze it all in one word. Sometimes they just say ‘Anka‘ and it says it all…

Anyway, we did the Pirate Lesson, all the details and materials below. Enjoy!

The lovely boats I found in my hotel. A potential idea for a craft activity…

Ingredients

  • Limited: we are online
  • Coursebook material: Superminds 5, CUP, Puchta and Gerngross, unit 9
  • Paper and pencils
  • One wordwall game: The captain and the cabin boy
  • Two songs:
  • A powerpoint: I have left it here, with the comments in the speakers notes)
  • Randomness around the house: a hamster, a hen soft toy, scarves, food
  • One bamboozle game: ARRR like a pirate
  • 90 minutes and a zoom classroom.
  • The level: A2 (we are finishing), the group: 7 kids, the age: 7 – 10 y.o.
A pirate’s flag. Anka’s version

Procedures

  • First of all, the kids have to remind you that there was a time when you might have mentioned that a pirate lesson might, potentially, happen at one point. After which you forgot (after all, it is May, the end of the school year) and after which they remind you and you are crazy enough to make a huge effort to make time for the planning of such a lesson). But it is worth it)
  • There were no preparations for the students, this lesson came as a bit of a surprise. I was considering to ask the parents to let the kids dress up for that but then decided not to. I thought that we would make things up as we move on. We did.
  • I prepared my own headscarf, my ‘parrot’ and, again, I was considering preparing an eye patch but since I was not at home but in the middle of the forest and the craft resources and materials were scarce, I gave up on it, too)
  • I prepared the powerpoint (which I hope you can access) but this is something that I create for every lesson anyway.
A pirate’s parrot. Anka’s version

Why we liked it

  • From the teacher’s perspective, it was a rather successful merge of a thematic lesson and the coursebook material and I am quite happy with how it went. We managed to include lots of what we were supposed to cover anyway such as the Present Perfect practice and the skills development but it turned out that it was possible to present it to the kids within a theme that was interesting.
  • The kids liked it because it was something different to a regular lesson, we did a lot of pirate things (the name, the flag, the treasure hunt and the stories), we could play a bit and we really did have fun.
  • I came dressed up, with a headscarf on and I introduced my parrot, Angelina (who in her real life is a hen and has been my class puppet for a few years now but who got to perform the role of the pirate’s parrot). True, every time I said ‘my parrot’, my kids would correct me (‘Anka, it’s a hen’) but by the end of the lesson one of my other kids introduced his real hamster (and the love of his life at this point) as the parrot and yet another one gave this role to his rucksack (which should also be written like that: Rucksack, since he featured in our stories in the past with his own adventures). One of my girls put on a scarf, too and one of the boys switched off the camera in the middle of the lesson, to come back a few minutes later, this time wearing his mum’s scarf on his head and a paper eye-patch on a string…One of my students’ younger sister joined us half-way through the lesson and asked for her own pirate name, too.
  • The kids were really active during the role-play between the captain and the cabin boy. They even did remember to play with the intonation with the ‘But what?’ question from the captain. I was moving in-between the breakout rooms and laughing, basically. One of my students could not open the wordwall games so we agreed that he could come up with his own ideas (and these were brilliant) and some other kids started to add their own questions, leaving the wordwall behind.
  • We used the Weird Echo game again, this was the second time and it went very well. You can find its description in a separate post.
  • I wish we had more time for the storytelling of how we met the sea creatures. If I had a chance to teach this lesson again, I would have planned it as a homework task or we would have continued in the following lesson. We might still do it, actually. There are still a few lessons left until the end of the academic year. If we do, you can definitely expect the follow-up post here!
  • I personally loved my pirate name, Captain Anka O’Reily and I think the kids liked theirs, too. Whenever I made a mistake of addressing the students (or myself) using their ‘regular’ names, I was kindly reminded that that’s not how we do it. We also had a giggle because the O’Reily family was well-represented on our ship, since two of my students also celebrate their birthdays in November. The pirates on the board of our Superminds 5 ship were as follows: Captain Anka O’Reily, Captain Alejandro O’Malley, Bubbles Dasha O’Reily, Skipper Tonya O’Reilly, Hamster Jack Sparrow, Charming Timour Bailey, Skipper Eva Bailey and, for a part of the lesson, Ship-mate Ulya Jones.
  • I was really happy when I found the bamboozle game. I think it is a perfect example how a relatively simple game can be adapted and used in order to give the lesson this special flavour that we want. The students did not really learn any new words as those that popped up in the game were already familiar to them and, I suppose, you could say that we got a great opportunity to practice the long /ɑːr/ sound but that was not quite my main aim here. For a few minutes there we were loud and giggly but we were talking like pirates and it was a perfect finishing touch to this lesson.
  • The one disadvantage? Well, I am thinking of the coming-up lesson on Tuesday and the first thought that appears in my head is: ‘What, a normal lesson? BOOOORING’ so, I am afraid, I will have to come up with something…
Pirate’s shoes. Anka’s version:-)

Happy teaching!

All’s well that ends well. Activities to finish the lesson with*

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No, not the ice-cream)

A lesson is like…

There is nothing like a good metaphor and I use it a lot in the classroom, to give feedback to my students (‘Your essay is a bit like a skeleton, all the good bones but no muscles at all’), to explain grammar (‘Reported speech is basically telling stories’) or to manage the behaviour of my younger students (‘This desk, Sasha, is like your island and these other desks are other island. We don’t travel there. Never ever ever!’).

I also started to use metaphors in teacher training and, of course, you can read about it here and here and this is how this post started, too.

I asked my trainees ones how they would describe a lesson in terms of a metaphor and I found out that a lesson is a lot like: playing football, playing a game of snakes and ladders, a journey, a frame…I am getting goosebumps now because I know that there WILL BE a separate post about that, soon.

A lesson is like a story

Oh yes, it is! In a good story you absolutely need a good opening line (this is how I choose my books, yes. Because if the author did not bother to make an effort to say hello properly, why would we even be talking, eh?), a set of interesting characters, some adventures, some challenges and achievements, a climax and the ending.

In terms of a lesson, these would stand for a warmer activity (a good opening line), the community of the teacher and the students (yes, we are the characters), some engaging activities (our adventures), some new things, some learning and development (or the challenges and the achievements), one amazing focused task because all the roads lead to Rome (and this is our methodological climax) and….a good cool-down activity aka the ending.

We absolutely need the ending!

First and foremost, a lesson needs an official round-up, the final touch, the coda, the summary of everything that has happened during the lesson. Since one does not walk into the classroom and start the lesson without saying ‘Hello’, nor does one leave without saying ‘Goodbye’, there should be the first real activity of the lesson and the last real activity, too.

What’s more, a good ending of a lesson is also an introduction to the following one. If the lesson finishes on a high note, the students will leave the room looking forward to coming back next time.

Move! By Super Simple Songs! If you haven’t used it before, find it asap!

# 1 Finishing with a song

An easy and no-prep resource, especially with the younger students. A song is a signal for the students that we are finishing but it can be also a signal for the parents waiting in the hallway. It can be the same good-bye song in every lesson but it can be a song that the students choose to finish the lesson with. This is an especially useful trick with the older and more advanced children, who might eventually get bored with the same song. With one of my online students we had a tradition of choosing one of her favourite songs, in Russian, to listen to and to dance, after the offcial lesson time, just as this thing that we did together (and I had a longer break in-between classes and I could spare a few minutes). One of my trainees, Nathalie (lots of virtual hugs here), also built in a dance into her class routine. At the end of the lesson, the kids would choose one of the Super Simple Songs, for example, get up, find a place in the middle of the classroom and just dance and sing, together with the teacher and then go home.

I have yet to start experimenting with songs with my older students.

# 2 Finishing with a story

Admittedly, that is a part of the routine that is something of a staple food in my pre-school and primary school EFL lessons. Stories, both storybooks or videos, can be used either to revise the key language or to introduce and practise the new language, not quite related to the topic of the lesson. From the point of the view of the lesson, the story is a part of the ritual and something that helps to build the class community.

In the classroom, we clean up after the focused task, set homework and go back to the carpet (preschoolers) or to our hello circle (primary), we choose a story and read or watch it and talk about it. Then, the only thing left is the goodbye-song. And stickers).

This is, probably, one of my favourite ways of finishing a lesson, because we get a chance to settle, to bond, to practise the language and to express opinion, all in one. I am wondering whether and how my older students could benefit from these, too. Something to experiment with in the next academic year, perhaps?

This is the feedback the kids left after the first week of the summer camp activities

# 3 Finishing with a feedback session

There are many ways of organising a feedback session after the lesson, depending on the aim of the feedback session.

  • Self-reflection when the teacher is simply irrelevant (in a way). The main aim is to give the students an opportunity to look back at the lesson and to consider the learning process. In this case, the students work in pairs or small groups and share their views, answering a set of questions, such as: What did you like? What was the most difficult / interesting / boring / the easiest part of the lesson?
  • Feedback for the teacher: students can leave their comments on the board or on the wall (or the door!) if the feedback is to be anonymous or they take part in a discussion in small groups or as a whole class.

It is up to the teacher to decide how frequently any kind of feedback can be carried out: once a week, once a month, after each test or after any lesson with a new element in it such as a new activity or a new game.

This is our feedback after one of the tests

# 4 Finishing with a self-reflection task

This activity is an extension of the previous point but it focuses more specifically on the content and, even more specifically, on the vocabulary. My students (primary and teens) had their notebooks which we used for taking notes and for the self-reflection tasks, too.

At the end of the vocabulary lesson, the kids take their notebooks and look back at the lesson and categorise the words according to a number of the following categories: the difficult words, the easy words, the useful words, the words that look strange, the words that sound strange, the words that may not be very useful…

They can either create their own lists by copying the items from the board or the coursebook and by categorising or colour-coding them. A short speaking activity would follow in which the students explain their choices to their partners in pairs or small teams.

# 5 A revision task

That is another set of tasks that we sometimes use also based on the key vocabulary in each particular lesson and it has got a lot to do with everything that is written on the board already such as the new language or the emergent langauge. The main aim here is to give the students one more opportunity to use the target language. Since these games have no definite ending, their length can be adapted to the amount time left in the lesson.

The students work in pairs and can play one of the following games:

  • Definitions: student A calls out the word / phrase, student B: provides a definition and an example, then they change, the teacher helps out only when necessary (aka the word has already been forgotten)
  • Synonyms and antonyms: student A calls out the word / phrase, student B: provides a synonym or an antonym
  • Questions: student A chooses a word / a phrase and asks student B a question that includes that word / phrase. Then they swap roles.
  • A story: students work in pairs, they take turns and tell a story, using different words / phrases from the board
  • Pairs: students take turns and they try to find connections between different items on the board, based on meaning, pronunciation, grammatical category or associations

Sometimes we also play the memory game with the whole class: the students take turns to close their eyes, the teacher erases one or two items, the students open their eyes and try to recall the words that have disappeared as well as all the other words and phrases from the previous rounds. The class listen and help out with definitions and associations. The bonus? The board gets cleaned))

# 6 Finishing with an introduction to the following lesson

This approach to the finishing the lesson was the result of the reality of the teaching life. No matter how well you plan your lessons and how many optional activities you have up your sleeve, it might still happen that everything has been done and there is still some time left but not enough time for the teacher to properly spread the wings, be it in a game or in any other fully-fledged task.

In such a case, it might be a good idea to introduce the topic of the following lesson, without properly setting the context (no, time, remember?) for example by:

  • introducing the title of the reading, the topic, for example through a game of hangman and a discussion about the students’ expectations and prediction
  • talking about the visuals that accompany the following topic, without going into any details
  • three questions to help the students relate to the following topic for example: What do you think about…? Have you ever…? Do young people in your country often…?

This will create a link between the lessons and it can be further extended by a homework along the lines of: ‘Find out more about…’. All of these can be easily adapted to almost any topic.

# 7 Finishing with a game

The games chosen to finish the lesson with should be fun (the students are already tired and less able to focus), fast (if there is a lot of time left, perhaps it should be devoted to something else) and offering some flexibility to the teacher (aka games with no definite end or result that can be stopped or paused at any given point).

We like to play:

  • Categories aka STOP: students work in pairs or small teams, they write one word in each category beginning with a specific letter, afterwards the teacher awards the points.
  • The Game of 5: each team or pair prepares a list of 5 in their category (a separate and unique one) such as 5 irregular verbs, 5 cities in Europe, 5 farm animals etc. Afterwards, the teams have a minute to guess all the words their partners have come up with. They can get 50 points in each round, 10 points for every word they manage to guess with the team setting the task getting 10 points for every word their partners did not manage to guess.
  • One-Minute Game: this a game that requires a set of flashcards (very easy to prepare) or a set of word cards (prepared by the teacher throughout the year, can be easily recycled). Students work in small teams as they take turns to explain as many words out of the set (definitions, associations or miming) to their team within one minute. I am pretty sure that this was loosely based on some kind of a game show but I have no idea which one. Oups.

In order to better manage the game and time in class, we started to play these with the same teams over a series of lessons, pausing when it is time to go home and recommencing in the following lesson.

The stained glass project: in the making

Bonus: An Art Project

‘Anka, what’s this?’ the kids asked when entering the classroom and noticing a few boxes of the stainglass paints.

‘These are special paints. We used them to make these special pictures with the little kids.’

‘Anka!’ they said, in that very special tone of voice that my kids have mastered, the voice reserved for these particular occasions, to compain, to chide and to express disappointment. ‘The little kids? And what about us?’

So I had to think of a way of including this particular project in our classes. Making stained glass pictures is one of the coolest activities ever but it takes time as the various layers need to get dry before you apply the following ones and there is virtually no chance of completing a task in one lesson. Not to mention that it is a perfect decorative kind of a craft and trying to adapt it in order to maximise production would be simply counterproductive.

Instead, I wrote to the parents and I explained that, instead of a game, at the end of the lesson, for the next few lessons, we would be preparing our own stained glass pictures. The kids chose a template or designed their own pictures, they drew the outlines, they coloured them in and, as soon as they were ready, they took them home to cut out and to display them. All in all, it took about 5 minutes over a series of four lessons.

The Chameleon Day!

Bonus: The Chameleon Day aka Google Search

Choosing virtual stickers is not a new idea and thanks to Miro we have lots and lots of fun and we can keep track of all of our stickers throughout the entire year, if necessary. Here you can read how we deal with that with my primary students.

Further reading

The 9 Best Ways to Finish EFL Lessons from the ELT Guide

End of Lesson Activities for ESL Classes from English Teaching 101

7 Best Ways to End a Lesson from Busy Teacher

How to Finish Your Lesson Effectively from The TEFL Academy

15 Awesome Wrap-up Activities For Students from Class Craft

Happy teaching!

*) This material was collected and put together for the online training session organised by National Geographic Learning for Russia in October 2021 where I had the privilege of sharing the zoom stage with Dr Joan Kang Sheen and Tatiana Fenstein.

Crumbs # 32 Online stickers with a twist

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Ingredients

  • Miro board or a word document
  • Kids and their ideas

Procedures

  • We prepare the document, write the date
  • One of the students chooses the theme of the day i.e. The Chameloeon Day (not a real holiday, although it could be. There are plenty of ideas to find here.
  • The kids take turns to choose their favourite variation, as featured in the picture above: the cake chamelon, the black chameleon, the artistic chameleon, the Christmas chameleon, the cute chameleon, the police chameleon, the robot chameleon and the lamp chameleon.
  • The teacher opens the google search and keys in the requested phrase. The student who suggested the specific variation chooses their favourite picture (i.e. line one, number 2).
  • The teacher copies and pastes the chosen picture, then pdfs the whole collage as soon as it is ready. The collage is then sent out to parents via Whatsapp.
  • (!!!!!) For the purpose of protecting the kids from the inappropriate images that google might display, especially when the unusual combinations are made, I key in the requested phrase first and only then share the screen with the kids as some of the images might be too scary, explicit or simply not always appropriate for all ages.

Why we like it

  • It is fun.
  • The kids love it. They ask about the stickers (we don’t always use them in every lesson) and they remind me to send them to the parents in the end.
  • It is a great way of finishing a lesson.
  • It is a great way of building a community, especially if you keep your stickers throughout the year. With my group, we still have some of the stickers we found during the first stages of the pandemic in spring 2020 and we had a lot of fun finding them, looking through them and remembering whose they were and why.
  • It gives us a chance to practise some of the computer language in contex (go / scroll down, go / scroll up, stop, I’d like …)
  • It offers some opportunity to practise describing objects in a detailed way (it is the big one, the small, the one with the green nose etc), especially the adjectives.
  • We can create, express ourselves and express opinion on what other people choose.
  • My advertising people tell me that this is something that you do while researching and brainstorming new ideas, too, in order to ensure that yours is, indeed, a fresh solution that no one has ever thought of. So, in a way, my kids are also getting ready for the market research, too!
This is one of our pandemic 2020 stickers)

Happy teaching!

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

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@ Magdalena

Ingredients

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

Procedures

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

Why we like it

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

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #29 How do you feel today? The alternatives

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From the series: The Beautiful Life

Ingredients

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

Procedures

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

All the variants (so far)

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

Why we like it

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

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

Happy teaching!

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

Crumbs #28 Funky envelope

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

Ingredients

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

Procedures

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

Why we like it

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

Happy teaching!

All you need is…a picture. Vol. 2

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This is still one of the top 5 among the most popular posts on this blog. But it was written about a year and a half ago. It looks like the high time for part 2. Here it is.

There is only one picture…

A to Z picture: teacher writes the alphabet on the board, students work in pairs or in teams, they talk about the picture by naming the word or words beginning with each letter of the alpahbet. Younger (or lower level) kids can use only single words, older students (or higher levels) can produce relevant sentences. Thank you, Polina Smirnova, for this activity.

Dice points: kids work in pairs. They describe the elements of the picture (ie one person, animal, element of their choice or assigned by their partner (Tell me about this…). They use the structures and vocabulary that they are familiar with, depending on the level. After each round, they roll the dice to find out how many points they get. They take a note of the points and add them up at the end of the game.

I spy with my little eye: teacher demonstrates the game by describing one of the elements of the picture ‘I spy with my little eye something big and red’. It works even with the youngest children as they are not even required to name the item in the picture, they only need to point at it. When the kids are ready, they take turns to describe something to the rest of the group or to their partner. The language can be made more complex by focusing on prepositions, adding more adjectives or details. It is a great speaking and listening activity.

Yes or No? Teacher makes sentences about the picture, children listen to check if these are correct. If they are, they confirm ‘Yes’ or ‘Yes, that’s true’. If they are not, they say ‘No’ or ‘No, it is not true’ and they correct the sentence. Afterwards, they can take turns and talk about the picture for the group or their team to listen. Again, this is one of the activities that I use with my pre-schoolers and it is lovely to see how they move on from one-word utterances (correcting only the key item) to full sentences. The complexity of these sentences or their number can be adjusted to the level and age of the students.

Travelling sentences: It is a version of the Yes or No activity. The teacher displays the picture for all the students to see and gives out small cards, one per student. Each student writes a true or false sentence about the picture, the teacher can support this with providing sentence starters. When the kids are ready, the sentences start travelling, with each student passing their sentence to the student on the left or on the right. They read the sentence on the card, say if it is true or false (and correct it) and the game goes on. This stage can be done in pairs or in groups of three.

Travelling questions: the teacher prepares a set of questions about a picture. These can be reused in many different lessons so it might be a good idea to laminate them. Students work in pairs or in groups of three. Each pair picks out one of the questions, they look at the picture, read out a question and answer it. The teacher monitors and when the time is up, the students exchange the questions by passing their question to the group on the left and they continue the game. The set of questions might include: Where are the people? What are they doing? What clothes are they wearing? How are they feeling? What’s the weather like? Can you see any animals? Do you like this picture? What’s your favourite thing about this picture? What’s your least favourite thing about this picture? Is there anything strange about this picture? If it happens, that the question is not relevant to a specific illustration, this particular question can be left out or the teacher can introduce a way for the students to get out of the situation, for example: ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I don’t know. Maybe…’

Picture boardgame: It is a version of the Travelling Questions and it was created based on the same principle: there is a set of topics, themes and items that are involved in most of the illustrations that kids can talk about. The board, such as this one here (created with toolsforeducators.com) can be reused with pretty much any visual. The students play in pairs, move their checkers on the board and describe the picture according to the suggestions from the board.

Draw the picture: this is an activity that I used to use a lot with the first years of primary in order to practise reading and, obviously, with students who like drawing. We use a set of specifically prepared cards on worwall, like this one here. We get the pencils and the paper ready and I set the first card ready (‘We are in the park’). Afterwards, we read the cards, one by one, in any order (if something does not match, I skip the card to get back to it later), the students take turns to read the sentence and we all draw a picture according to these instructions. At the end, we compare our pictures and talk about some potential differences. It is a good activity to practise simple words, prepositions, colours and verbs.

Half the picture: Students work in pairs. Each pair receives only a half (or rather a part of the picture, depending on the particular photograph or illustration). First, they describe together what they can see and, as the second step, they try to guess and predict what can be seen in the part which they cannot see. Ideally, all the kids should be working with the same visual and then, in the feedback stage, the class share and compare their ideas before the teacher reveals the missing part of the picture. The materials can be easily created by cropping visuals but it is even easier with the electronic resources when a part of the photograph (or parts) can be easily covered and uncovered on the screen.

There are two pictures (or more)

Compare these two: students compare two pictures, they talk about the similarities and differences, very much like in the PET exam or like in the FCE exam, if there is a follow-up question, only without the time limits and without any B1 or B2+ language expectations as this activity can be done also with A2 or even A1 students.

Compare the two boardgame: there is a selection of pictures from the same topic ie school, sport, hobbies. They are numbered and displayed on the screen or on the page. Students play the boardgame and whenever it is their turn, they choose two of the pictures and compare them briefly. The pictures can be used many times in different combinations and students speak for about a minute.

Choose two to compare: students are given a set of picturse, for example 4. They are asked to choose any two to compare them and to explain why they have chosen these two pictures. The most interesting part of this activity is the follow up question which can be one or more of the following: Which one is your favourite? Which one is your least favourite? Which one is the happiest / saddest / funniest / most challenging / most unpleasant / strangest? Is there a picture that nobody has chosen to discuss? Why do you think you’ve never chosen this one?

Tell me about this picture: this game requires a set of pictures whose theme and level of complexity can be easily adjusted to the age and level of students. We normally use the wordwall which we play on the big screen. The kids play in teams and they take turns to open one of the boxes. They take a minute to talk about the picture they find there and they get the number of points for that. The teacher keeps track of that and announces the winner in the end. This game can be played with the lower level kids, like this one here, with pre-primary students on the topic of animals (here we play the group vs the teacher), with the level 1 primary school students on the topic of rooms, the level 5 primary school students on the topic of souvenirs (What is it? Who would like this present?) or even with B1 teenagers on the topic of travelling (What’s this place? What can be easy or difficult about travelling to this place?)

Two versions: this one is a bit more complex in terms of preparation as it involves some searching and researching. The idea behind this picture is to compare and contrast two interpretations of the same topic. Our photographs usually focus on the photographs and it would be the teacher’s job to find the other matching (or ‘matching’) item for example a painting, a sketch, a cartoon, a poster, an advertisement, a wordcloud and so on. The students discuss the visuals, compare them and choose the visual which they prefer and which better illustrates the idea.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #24: The sheep! A game

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Instead of an introduction

I have a small problem: my brain does not like dealing with written instructions and, really, any instructions whatsoever. I cannot make myself. What that means for my life is that I use devices instead of reading the manuals, I prefer to watch cooking videos rather than reading any recipes (and, indeed, no matter how exciting the food, if the instructions for cooking are longer than four or five lines, I immediately lose interest). In my teaching life, that means never reading any teachers’ books (if I can help it and most of the time I can). If I find an activity that I like, in a resource pack, for example, and I cannot figure out how to use it only from the game itself, well, I just never use it at all.

Or I make up my own rules. That’s exactly what happened with this game.

It actually makes me giggle. I have had this game for about three years (a lovely present from Chee-Way) and it was only this week that I noticed the name of the game. Apparently, it is called Snap. Oh, well.

This morning I was finally inspired enough to google how to play it and I found it easily enough, only to find out that I had never played it the right way. Oh, well.

Actually, I had some suspicious that what we were playing was inspired by another game, that I once heard about but when I bothered to find out, it turned out this morning that I couldn’t have been more wrong. Oh, well.

The Sheep Game (as we know it)

  • There are 12 different emotions / feelings / adjectives in the set. We started to play with those that the kids knew already and, then, we kept adding one or two with every next game. At this point, they know all of the adjectives and we play with the whole set.
  • There are 4 cards of each adjective but in any real game, we use only two of each. One is displayed on the floor in the middle of the circle. The other one we deal among the teams. Usually each team ends up with four cards.
  • The students keep their cards secret from the other teams.
  • We sit in a circle, students ask the questions to the team sitting on their left or on their right but the questions are always travelling in one direction.
  • The main question is ‘Are you happy / sad / angry?’
  • If the team have this one particular card, they have to answer ‘Yes, I am’ or ‘Yes, we are’ and give away the card.
  • If the team don’t have this particular card, they have to say ‘No, I am not’ or ‘No, we are not’ and then it is their turn to ask the team on their left / right.
  • The game can be played for a certain number of rounds or until one of the teams loses all their cards. Then the winner is announced and that is the team has the biggest number of the initial set left.
  • It is a great game to practise the key vocabulary, in a sentence and although the students play in teams, they can win the game only when they pay attention throughout the entire game, listening to all the teams and keeping track of all the cards (or words) that were mentioned and lost, too.

Variations

  • Blue, please – one of the first games that I normally play with my primary students, in the first weeks of the course, as soon as we feel comfortable with the basic colours or numbers, we play with flashcards that we usually hide inside of the book, to make sure that the cards remain a secret. As soon as the kids progress, we replace the simple ‘please’ with a full question ‘Can I have blue, please?‘ and we play it this way with any set of vocabulary
  • Do you like… – another variation of the game that we play with the beginner primary students, we normally switch into that version when we start the topic of food and drink. If the students / teams have this particular flashcard in their set, they have to answer ‘Yes, I do‘ and they have to give the card away. If not, they answer ‘No, I don’t‘ and they continue playing.
  • What’s the matter with your…– a version that we played with my teens while working on the health / medical vocabulary which turned this game into a mini dialogue with different yes and no answers (yes = I need to have it / them checked, no = nothing I am fine) or Excuse me, where is the check-in gate? while we were working on the travelling / airport vocabulary (yes = it is next to…, no = sorry, I don’t know).
  • Any other set: the vocabulary set + the structure that would be used with this set
  • Whole class vs groups of three? With the younger kids we normally play whole class, in small pairs because it helps them learn the rules of the game much faster and because the game is easy to set up and you need no other materials apart from the set of flashcards normally used in class. With the older students, I use words on small cards and we normally play it with the whole class only in the beginning, later on they play in groups of three.
  • And the winner is… Well, there are at least two options here. For a very long time we played it in such a way that the winner was the team who had the biggest number of cards left at the end. Until my kids suggested that perhaps the winner should be the team who managed to get rid of their cards first and we played it this way, too. On the one hand, it makes the game less competitive and it is not a real shame to be ‘losing’ a card but we have had a situation when a team avoided asking the right question not to help their opponents win…I suppose the game can be played as normal and it can be decided only in the end who the winner is (all the cards lost vs all the cards saved) but we haven’t really tried it in the classroom. Not yet anyway.
  • Leftovers. We normally deal out all the cards available but keeping a few cards away and keeping them secret adds up to the challenge. These leftovers are going to be automatically the incorrect questions and the players will have to figure out first which ones these are and secondly, which ones not to ask anymore.

Happy teaching!