#eflideas

Crumbs #15: Our new favourite vocabulary game aka General Kutuzov

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As soon as I said it out loud, it turned out that in my classroom is a crowded place. Apart from the teacher (that would be me), my students (older and younger), there is a whole bunch of characters who simply are there.

There is Pasha (the invisible student), there is Angelina (our class puppet), there is Mr Milk (the little-known-superhero), there is the Flying Cow…And there is also general Kutuzov. To whom this game is dedicated.

The thing is, general Kutuzov is a personal hero of mine. Every time I find myself in the middle of a big project, with one million areas to oversee and to manage, while on the verge of going crazy (because I multi-task well only in the classroom and in the kitchen), I think of general Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov, one man managing troops, camps, provisions, civilians, and all that in the face of the approaching enemy (aka Napoleon). This thought calms me down.

But not only that.

We sometimes play games with my kids (duh!) and sometimes they get very competitive (duh!) and sometimes, instead of ‘just playing’, some of them take time to think, to ponder, to come up with some very clever strategies in order to win…Which, on one occasion, resulted in me saying ‘Oh, look, here is general Kutuzov, planning something’ and ‘General, Kutuzov, please, can you make a decision? Today?’

They giggled. They are eight but they got the reference. And general Kutuzov stayed with us. So now, when they want to comment on someone taking their time to think or someone coming up with a strategy, they call him or her ‘general Kutuzov’ which, to be honest, I am rather proud of.

And that’s what I called that game:-)

www.wikipedia.com

How to play?

  • The main aim of the game is to get from the START to FINISH, choosing your own route on the board.
  • Players move across the board and as they do, they have to explain the word in each box. They answer the question ‘What’s…?’ or ‘Tell me about ….’
  • It’s always good to put the key structures on the board, to support the production. In the animals game, with my A1 students, we used ‘It has got…(body parts)‘, ‘It can…(verbs)’, ‘It likes to eat…(food)‘ and ‘It lives in… (habitats)’.
  • Students play in pairs or groups of three per board.
  • Players move one box at a time, to the left, to the right, up, down or diagonally up or down.
  • Each box has a number of points assigned and the students collect the points throughout the game.
  • I give the kids small cards, folded, on which they are to write their points and to keep them secret until the end of the game.
  • In the end, each player adds the points and we announce who the winners are, in each pair and in the class.

Why we love it

  • The game generates a lot of language and it keeps the students motivated and involved.
  • It is a competitive game but you can win it not because of good or bad luck but because you plan your movements well.
  • It is suitable for mixed ability groups as the students choose their route themselves and can, if necessary, avoid using the words they don’t know.
  • We played it in our offline lessons but it can be also used online, with the kids annotating on the screen. It would work best with individual students, small groups or big groups playing in teams.
  • It depends only on the players (or their teacher) how long the game is going to last. Naturally, the kids will try to get from start to finish and as soon as one player does it, the game is stopped and the points counted. At the same time, the teacher can set the timer at ‘ten moves per player’ or, simply, stop it at any given point in the game (with the same number of moves per player, of course), announce the end and count the points.
  • It takes a few minutes to prepare and it can be used with any kind of vocabulary, a thematic set (lower levels) or any random set of vocabulary taken from a story or a listening task.
  • The first time we play it, the game is teacher-led and we play with teams of students, on the board but once they get the idea, they can play in pairs.
  • No dice is necessary. Kids can either use checkers or colourful markers to draw their route across the board.
  • I have played it with primary school students (A1) and with my B1 teens, too.
  • The game can easily be made more or less challenging by keeping only two types of boxes (1 and 5 points, for example) or by adding more of those (1, 3, 5 and 10 points) and the number of points can reflect the level of difficulty of the word or phrase.
  • Players can move in any way they choose, one box at a time, but to make it more challenging, the teacher can exclude moving diagonally or any other of the movements.
  • The same can be applied to the rule of using the same box twice. It can be allowed or not.
  • I have thrown my kids at the deep end but I think that if I were to introduce the game again, in a new group, I would probably create a board of boxes worth only 1 point to highlight the importance of strategic thinking here. The kids figured it out themselves, though: the longer the route, the more points (the kids’ aim) and the more language produced (the teacher’s secret objective:-)
  • The board can be colour-coded. It will make it more attractive visually and it will help the kids understand where to move next, for example: a green box = 1 point, a blue box – 3 points and a yellow box = 10 points. Having said that, the black and white simple chart with points works equally well.
  • You can get my animals boards here: the colour-coded board and the points board.

Happy teaching!

P.S. The inspiration for the game might have been a listening activity in one of the old coursebooks by OUP called ‘I Spy’ which had a listening activity in each unit called ‘the maze’. Maybe or maybe not))

New kids on the block. Teens joining a group mid-year.

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Tuscan Flying Beauties

A post inspired by a reader. Thank you @kids.in.english.

Where the inspiration came from

It was ten years ago. I was standing at the board, looking at my students working on a task,all of them, working hard, involved, a teacher’s dream, and yet…To my right – the bunch that had been in my group for the past two or three years, to my left – the three new students who had just joined us and in the middle – a beautiful wall, invisible but sturdy and getting thicker by the minute. They were not aggressive verbally or otherwise, they did not do anything mean, there was no bullying. They simply decided that they do not like each other. The ‘old’ kids – because they did not want any invaders, they ‘new’ kids – because they did not feel welcome.

I did not like it at all. I was looking at them (yes, a little bit annoyed because we had everything figured out) thinking ‘Not on my shift, people. Na-ah’. Today I would like to share some of the tricks that I applied and have been applying since then in the new-teen-in-the-group scenario.

Ideas for building and re-building a group

  • Change the seating arrangements during the first month or the first six – eight lessons with the new students. The main aim here is to enable everyone in the group to work with everyone else. It has to be initiated (or ‘forced’ if you prefer) by the teacher because the students will be acting as a group and might not have enough courage to break ranks in order to befriend the new students or to venture out and try to join the cool kids. It is a good idea to explain to students why this is done (‘we need to get to know each other’) and give them a specific time limit so that they know when they will be able to go back to sitting with whom they want. Even if, initially, the students do not like the hassle and the uncertainty that it introduces, they have a deadline and they know when things go ‘back to normal’. The burden is easier to bear.
  • Frequently group and regroup the students for activities and use a tool that will be completely arbitrary. These can be for example re-usable cards with the students’ names that are kept in a box or in a bag. Before the activity, the teacher (or even better – one of the students) simply picks out cards randomly and this is how pairs and teams are formed. This way, it is simply fair, impersonal and, every single time, there is a high probability that student A might end up working with their best friend. If they are lucky. Again, the burden is easier to bear. Both of these tactics will also help the teacher establish how the students work in different set-ups. It will be more important in case of the new students
  • It is a good always but especially during those ‘first’ days or weeks to include activities which promote team-work and cooperation, such as smaller or larger scale projects, ideally in every lesson. The students will be already mixed, the new with the old and it is quite likely that they will want to share the responsibility for the task and they will want to complete it. This will be their excuse, the teacher asked them and they are just completing the task, without losing the face since working with the new partner is not their own choice.
  • While cooperation works well, competitive games are even more effective. If the students have their favourite games, they obviously like to play and win. Since they will be put in mixed groups, the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ students together, they will be put in a situation in which they might have to cooperate with ‘a new friend’ to compete against ‘an old friend’. Of course, these two elements, the competitive and the cooperative, should complement each other and balance each other. Some of my favourite games include ‘the game of five’ and ‘stop!’
  • When we start working with a new group, some getting to know each other activities are in order. Here, however, the situation is a bit tricky. If there are three or four new students in the group, then we can easily use some of those. When only one student joins the existing group, it might not work that well. The majority of the group already know each other very well so they will not be motivated in taking part in it. What’s more, it will be rather obvious why it is added to the lesson and the new student might be accidentally put in the spotlight. Not to mention that if a few students join the group, separately, it would mean including these activities in a few lessons in a row and the students might be even less motivated to take part in them.
  • Instead, an activity in which the students can express themselves and share personal information is a much better solution. It can be, for example, ‘Who is X?‘, a task in which students would have to match the names of all the students in the group to a set of sentences (in any structure that is the topic of the lesson). If it is the Present Simple then the sentences describe daily routines ( X never does homework, X always wakes up early on Saturday), if it is the future then the sentences describe future predictions (X will live abroad, X will become famous, X will travel to Spain) etc. During the feedback, students will be mingling and confirming and justifying the sentences about themselves. The task that I really like to use for that is the United Buddy Bears art project but this one is a bit more difficult to add to any lesson in any level at any point when the new student joins the group. But not impossible))

If you have been in a similar situation and you have some great tips and tricks up your sleeve, please share them with the rest of us in the comments box! Thank you!

Happy teaching!

In defense of paper, In defense of magic. Storybooks in the EFL classroom.

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Once upon a time, there was a world in which children were developing their reading skills, imagination and creativity with storybooks read by mum at bedtime.

Then, the Wicked Witch of the West came and replaced all the books with apps, tablets and games. The Wicked Witch of the West said that it is all easy, available, accessible. All the parents and all the teachers applauded. The books lay forgotten and deteriorating, and a few years later, the time came when one of the dinosaur teachers by accident said ‘open your books’ in class and a little Masha raised her hand in the first row to ask ‘What is a book, Miss?’

Luckily, we are not there yet and, hopefully, we will never be. Of course, the pandemic was / is / has been a huge challenge for us in that department but, nonetheless, I do continue to stand proud in defence of paper and in defence of magic.

May this very post to be the introduction and the directory to everything that using storybooks in the classroom can be.

One thing that it definitely is not, is just opening the storybook and reading it out loud. This is what it can be.

One. Baby steps

At the start of the level 1 of any pre-primary or primary course, the kids are real beginners, they have no language, no structures and no vocabulary. It would be rather optimistic to hope that a teacher is going to be able to use a story with all its richness. However, that is also not a reason NOT to include them in your lesson plans. After all, storybooks are something that the little kids are familiar with, they know what dealing with them involves and that they are part of life. For that reason, they can and they should be used with children.

  • Simple vocabulary revision with a different tool: the teacher points out at pictures in the book and calls out the colours, counts them, asks if they are big or small, if the children are happy or sad, if the students already know this vocabulary. This might happen only at the level of the colour (It’s green) and not necessarily with the actual noun (It’s a green fish), although, admittedly, there is some potential here, too, to learn the new vocabulary through storybooks
  • Simple functional language practice: Hello Pete, Goodbye Pete in the first lessons with the book and then according to what the students know.
  • Storybook reading-related language: something that will be introduced gradually but that will come in handy throughout the course, for example ‘It’s story time!’, ‘Sit down’ ‘Are you ready?’ ‘Turn the page’ ‘Do you like the story?’

Two. Role-play

This way of using a storybook will involve the students a little bit more as they will be retelling the story together with the teacher, as soon as they become more familiar with it. Naturally, not all the stories will lend themselves to this activity, only those that include some repetitive language, even if it is only one phrase. Stories that can be used here can involve

  • Dear Zoo (‘I wrote to the zoo to send me a pet’)
  • Where’s my baby? (‘Is this your baby, Mrs Monster?’)
  • We’re going on the bear hunt (‘We’re going on a bear hunt, we’re gonna catch a big one. Oh, what a beautiful day. We’re not scared’)
  • Any other story in which you might want to implement a structure that the kids might already know or that they might benefit from knowing, even if, originally, it is not in the story. For example, ‘…., Senor Croc’ is a storybook for kids in Spanish about the birthday party of the main character Mr Croc, by introducing the following ‘Let’s’ (Let’s open the presents, Let’s dance, Let’s eat the cake)

Three. Vocabulary practice

The storybooks are there and we can use them and the beautiful story and illustrations in any way we want. The story is not really read but told, with the language graded to the level and needs of the particular group.

Most frequently I choose the storybooks to go with the vocabulary that study in the unit. This way, the children can participate in telling the story and continue working on the vocabulary that they are learning. It will start with producing single words but it can lead to producing

  • How to lose a lemur – to teach and revise transport
  • Dear Zoo – to teach and revise animals
  • Julia Donaldson’s The Smartest Giant in Town – to teach and practise clothes
  • Go Away Big Green Monster – to teach and revise body parts
  • Marvin Gets Mad – to teach and revise emotions and verbs

Four. More vocabulary practice

Taking one more step in that direction, any storybook can be used to teach, to revise and to practise any vocabulary, even if it does not feature explicitly in the storybook.

The first storybook that I have used in that way was the traditional story ‘The Three Goats Gruff’. The story is lovely all by itself but I have been using it to practise and to revise the food vocabulary. Only in my version of the story, every time one of the goats tries to cross the bridge and the troll attempts to eat it, they always have some food on them and they try to buy themselves out by asking ‘Troll, do you like bananas?’, which, of course, the troll never accepts.

Five. Storytelling without storybooks?

Absolutely! For example, because you realise that your own precious copy of Dear Zoo has been misplaced / lost / stolen only a few minutes before the lesson in which you want to use it…You do not give up, naturally, you only wander around the school, find a few flashcards and a box. As an experience it is unpleasant and stressful but, in the end, you realise that, hey, a storybook itself is just a tool and a story can be told without it. And it is lots of fun.

Another sources of inspiration for that kind of approach to storytelling, can be a series of storytelling videos produced in the 90s by the Brazilian TV Cultura. This example here is in Portuguese is a story about a crocodile, a grasshopper and a spider, with a scotch dispenser starring as the spider, a pair of scissors as the crocodile and a table tennis ball as grasshopper.  

This kind of pretend-play with the use of the everyday objects or toys is something that children do in L1 as well and it can easily be implemented in our EFL lessons, too.

Six. I can read!

This is a big moment for the teacher and the student when they can finally take an active part in the proper reading of the story. For that reason, the storybook should be carefully chosen.

  • ‘Bear on a bike’ is easy enough because the whole story is told through illustrations and single words or short phrases, some of which are also repeated. ‘Apple, pear, orange, bear’ follows a similar pattern
  • ‘Llama, llama, red pajama’ includes rhymes and some parts of it are easy enough for the primary beginner students to deal with
  • Graded readers and phonics stories that were specifically created for beginner readers

Seven. Storybooks for everyone!

A few years ago, at the IH YL Conference in Rome, Beverly Whithall from IH Braga gave a fantastic seminar on using storybooks with teenagers and adults. The older students, because of their maturity and the level English, can properly appreciate the story, its language, plot and illustrations and every story can be a starting point to a discussion. Just imagine a typical literature lesson that you had in school, when you are looking not only at the story itself but also at the bigger picture. Seen from that angle

  • Rhinos Don’t Eat Pancakes is really a story about a family and about loneliness
  • Elmer is a one big question of whether one should be like the everyone else
  • Giraffes Can’t Dance is about bullying
  • Up and Down is whether we should always follow our dreams

Questions

  • How to choose a storybook? It might be a good idea to start with the classics but also to keep your eyes open while visiting bookshops and browsing, to find out more about the beautiful world of the storybooks and to learn more about how they can be used in the lesson.
  • How long can I use the same storybook? Well, definitely more than once and as long as the students are interested. It might be a good idea to put the book away for some time and then return to it, letting the students choose which book they want to read or ‘read’
  • How do I adapt the language? Like with all the lesson planning, for any kind of an activity, choose the aim first (functional language, structures, vocabulary practice, revision or introduction) and them adapt the book to help you meet that aim. The gestures, the visuals, the voice and the universal story magic will help children to understand. Translation will not be necessary.
  • Do I need to include storybooks in every lesson? It is not absolutely necessary, it is like the other tools and techniques, they are definitely beneficial for the children but there is no absolute must to have them in every lesson. More likely than not, with time, you will see the positive impact of storytelling on the students, on the classroom management and on yourself and it is for that reason that you will want to include them in every lesson or almost in every lesson.
  • How do I start? Slowly! Practice makes perfect.

Tips and techniques

  • Let the children look at the story, all or some of the pictures, before you start telling the story, unless, of course, there is some big surprise in the end which should not be revealed too soon.
  • This demonstration can be done in silence or the teacher can point at certain pictures and elicit the words from the students.
  • While telling the story, point at the crucial elements in the illustration and pause to elicit the language from the children.
  • If the kids are already familiar with the story, start telling it with mistakes and wait for the children to correct you. They are going to love it.
  • Include gestures and physical actions that will accompany your story. This will help children first to understand the story and then to retell it and to really remember the language.
  • If possible, use some prompts such as realia (toys, plastic food, clothes), flashcards or mini-flashcards.
  • If possible, try to recreate the atmosphere of the story by preparing a soundtrack i.e. the jungle sounds for story set in the jungle, the beach sounds for the stories set by the sea etc.
  • Don’t forget to use your voice, this is the teacher’s most important and powerful tool.
  • Get ready and rehearse, think how you are going to position yourself, how you are going to hold the book, where the children are going to say.
  • If you are not using the original story, try to remember what changes you have introduced in order to be able to retell the story in more or less the same way every time you are using it
  • The storybook is never used in one lesson only. It is only in lesson two or three, when the students are already familiar with the story and with the language, that they can really enjoy it and participate in it fully.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #7: Line up, everybody!

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Today about a little and very un-revolutionary change in the routine that has, nonetheless, made a huge difference to my VYL and YL classes.

Instructions

  • Make sure the door to your classroom is closed and that the children wait for the lesson outside.
  • When it is the time to start, come out and line them up, perhaps with the parents’ help in the beginning, until they get used to the new routine
  • Wait for them to be ready, say hello to everyone and count together how many students are present
  • Say hello to the first student, ask how they are, let them into the classroom, wait until they book the books and bags away, choose their seat and sit down.
  • Let the second student in.
  • If setting homework is a part of your routine and programme, this is when you can check the homework, asking each student a few questions about it.
  • If there is no homework, this time can be devoted to a short individual conversation with each student. It can be a short revision of the vocabulary, talking about a picture or, if the students are already in one of the primary levels – some reading practice with flashcards or a few questions about any material covered in class. We often use it for practice with ‘Tell me about…’ with the use of a picture.
  • When the students get used to the first part (entering the room), you can add the second element and make sure that the students already sitting in the classroom are occupied, too. They can either play a simple guessing game if this game has been practised in class and if they have been given a set of flashcards. They can also play some games on the phone or the tablet, for example to practise reading with phonics. Again, they have to first to try it under your close supervision, to get used to taking turns etc.

Why we love it

  • It helps to introduce the order from the very start of the lesson since the kids are not waiting in the classroom and the teacher’s arrival is not an interruption of something that they are doing.
  • It is obvious who is responsible for the students during that time, the teacher’s take-over is clearly marked. It might not be as obvious if the kids enter the room during the break or before the teacher, especially if the teacher wants or has to spend the break time outside of the classroom, for whatever the reason.
  • The parents are of a great help in the beginning of the course, they can help explain what the kids are supposed to do, they can help with the name etc.
  • This part of the lesson is a fantastic opportunity for the 1-1 conversation with each child. Regardless of whether the teacher uses this time to check the homework or to ask and answer questions or to read, they are giving each child all their attention (almost all, the eyes at the back of the teacher’s head are watching the kids already in the room, of course:-) and they can check the progress and language use.
  • For the parents, this is a wonderful opportunity to find out how their children are interacting in English, without the parents’ supervision and this is how they can, indirectly find out about their child’s progress, before every single lesson if they wish to do so.
  • For the parents, this is also a chance to find out how the homework handouts or materials are used, what questions the teacher asks and how much language can be generated out of a page that, to the untrained eye, looks like a simple colouring page. If they want to and they have have the time, they can later use this knowledge to practise English at home.
  • In the beginning, when the children are just getting used to the new routine or if they are really young, this part of the lesson can be kept short, later it can be made longer. Similarly, in the begining, the T leads the activity but, later on, the kids can ask each other at least some of the questions, too.
  • I have been using this technique for about six years now. My first ever group for which this has been created (because there were ten of them and we hardly ever got to talk 1-1 in class), now in the third year of primary, still line up to chat with me on entering the room. I have been using it with my pre-primary students, too, groups and individuals, too. The parents always wait in the hallway, at the back of the line and they always wait to hear how their children talk to me. If they leave the school, it is only after their kids have walked into the classroom. They always wait and not because they don’t trust us/me but because they are curious and want to know how it goes.

Happy teaching!

A Brand New Class. Volume 1: Teenagers

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September is upon us. It is a joyful month, what with all the new books, freshly sharpened pencils, markers that have not lost 50% of the caps yet, storybooks and flashcards that are still as God intended (in order!) and all the new adventures because ‘The kids are back!!!!‘. At the same time, my favourite tune of the month is …Green Day and when they sing ‘Wake me up when September ends…‘ Every single year. And this year more than ever.

Until we have all survived yet another autumn rollercoaster, spiced-up by the pandemic-related uncertainty, here is a tiny little something: activities for the first lesson of the course, today something for teenagers: 5 ‘sandwich fillers’ and 5 activities in their own right.

All of them are and have been my favourite start-of-the-course activities but they can be adapted to different topics and used throughout the year.

Most of them require only the basic resources and little preparation.

Some, although admittedly not all, will also work in our online classrooms.

None of them are how-did-you-spend-your-summer-themed because I never do it in my first lessons (and definitely won’t do this year since a) we did spend the summer together studying English and b) other than that we were stuck at home or at the dacha, growing cucumbers and carrots and feeding birds…) but they can be made so, if needs be.

You can find them: HERE!!!!

Ideas for the first lesson with primary can be found here

I hope you have fun using them. Looking forward to your feedback, too!

Happy New Academic Year!

Happy teaching!

P.S. Activities for Pre-primary coming soon!

Crumbs #5 End-of-course Goodbye-Letter

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This is one of my favourite end-of-course activities for all young learners.

Instructions

You need a piece of A4 paper per student. You can use regular white or colourful photocopying paper.

Write the names of the students on the sheets, one per student, and put them up in the hallway, ideally at a distance from each other. Have a card with your name, too but keep it in the classroom. It will be used for demonstration.

Show your card and tell the students that everyone has a card like that in the hallway. Explain that they are going to walk around and write something for everyone.

If necessary, pre-teach or revise some language, for instance ‘You are…’ and adjectives or ‘Thank you for…’.

Clarify the rules: a) we don’t come up to the card with our name, b) we write something for everyone, c) we can leave anonymous notes or we can write our names, d) we only write nice things, e) if we have nothing nice to write, we only leave a smiley

Give our markers, line up and go out. Monitor and keep an eye on the clock. This part of the task takes about 15 minutes with a group of twelve.

Ask the students to go back into the classroom and quickly collect the letters. Give them out in the final lesson.

Why we love it

  • It is a great opportunity for the students to read and to write something that they really care about and it is a great souvenir from the course, handmade and personalised.
  • The students have a lot of freedom and can write as much as they want or only leave a smiley in case they really have nothing to say.
  • This activity can be adapted to the level and age of the students. It can be done in the classroom, with the papers being passed from student to student, until they make a full circle and return to the owner and the youngest kids can only draw some simple shapes for example a smiley, a heart, a sun, a star and their name.
  • The first time I did this activity, I planned for the kids to re-write the letters before handing them out to the addressee but they stopped me (‘But Anka, this is much cooler and more beautiful!!!!”) and they were right!
  • I keep my card on the board but I don’t actively encourage the students to write something for me, too. Somehow they always do anyway))

Happy teaching!

The W.O.R.L.D. or What is an ideal craft activity for the EFL classroom?

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A post for those who have been contemplating using craft activities in their pre-primary lessons, especially for those who have not started yet or those who have tried but have not really been quite successful with it.

First of all, let’s get started from the facts.

Fact number 1: kids love craft and no wonder they do – you get to creat; you produce something real and you can take it home. Even if your creation has a limited durability and appeal and after some time (a day in the playroom and a week on the fridge door) it gets destroyed and lands in the bin or it gets folded carefully and is stored in the ‘Ania/kindergarten’ box.

Fact number 2: teachers are a little bit more cautious with expressing their love for the craft activities. Some of them do, of course, but there are still quite a few who don’t really appreciate all the hurdles you are required to jump over in order to get to the finish line called ‘A great craft EFL lesson’. Because it can get messy, because it requires more preparation than other acitivities and because it needs to be planned properly to ensure that you don’t spend the lesson colouring and cutting and NOT using the target langauge.

Perhaps that is also the reason why even the most recent coursebooks for primary and pre-primary (which shall not be named here) do not really seem to promote craft activities as much as they should in my humble and very subjective opinion. Alas.

Why craft?

There are many great blog posts and articles on the advantages of using craft, I am not going to be attempting to reinvent the wheel here. Here are those that I have found useful. Have a look yourself.

  1. Kids and Arts and Crafts https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/kids-arts-crafts
  2. Arts and Crafts with Young Learners https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/arts-crafts-young-learners
  3. Using Arts and Crafts to teaching languages to young children https://www.teatimemonkeys.com/using-arts-and-crafts-to-teach-languages-to-young-children/
  4. Adding Language to Crafts https://www.englishclub.com/efl/tefl-articles/adding-language-to-crafts/
  5. R. Bastianoni, The Linguistic Benefits of Using Crafts in TEYL http://www.teyl.org/article16.html

Planning a lesson with a craft activity

If you are looking for a manual how to set up a craft activity and what to think about while planning it, then you should definitely start from reading the introduction to the craft chapter in Carol Read’s 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom where she outlines the principles of the MAD FOX (which, by the way can be used as a framework for all of the VYL and YL activities). Strongly recommended!

Where to find a craft activity?

Well, this is the best news ever: nowadays, finding out about available craft activities is really a piece of cake. There are plenty of websites, blogs, Instagram accounts written by and for:

  • The teachers of English as a foreign language
  • The parents of young children
  • The teachers of kindergarten

There are also multiple groups on facebook, vkontatke (or whatever is your local equivalent), pintrest and just the good old google or Yandex search enginge.

How to choose a craft activity for the EFL lesson?

Well, this is where the W.O.R.L.D. might come in handy. This is an acronym that I made up for myself and for one of the workshops that I was giving a few years ago. Also, because I really wanted to have an acronym:-)

Here it is!

W is for ‘WHY?‘

Probably the most important question a teacher can ask while planning a lesson with a craft activity: why am I even doing it? It is great to include craft only for the sake of ‘the variety in the classroom’, but I strongly believe that a craft activity must have a follow-up, that it cannot be an end in itself. After all, we are language teachers and not art teachers.

An ideal craft activity is only the preparation for the proper language exercise, it is our way of getting the kids interested in what we are doing and using the finished product to encourage them to engage in a language activity. If this element is missing, there should be a really good reason for including it in your lesson. Is there?

O is for ‘On their own‘

No matter how amazing an activity looks in the photograph or the video, no matter how beautiful and colourful it is, no matter how strong its ‘wow’ effect might be, there is no point of bringing it into the EFL classroom if your students cannot complete it on their own.

Perhaps, the assembling process is too long and too complex and the materials too small and too flimsy and your students will not be able to complete it all by themselves. If it is a 1-1 lesson, sure, you can help but let’s take ‘the worst case’ scenario, a lesson with a group of 8 students, each of whom gets stuck at precisely the same moment in the activity and the teacher having to help every single one of the 8 students at 17:25:04…No. Not worth it.

R is for ‘Recycle‘

It will not always be possible but in order to justify the time and work invested in preparing and carrying out a craft activity, it should be possible to recycle ‘the product’ in one of the following ways:

  • The same product is used throughout the course to recycle the particular vocabulary set, story or functional language phrases
  • The same product is used throughout the course with different vocabulary sets, for example the boardgame the children made is used to practise vegetables, then fruit, then transport
  • The same type of product can be made again, with different vocabulary or structures, for example mini-flashcards booklets, flapbooks, window decorations. If the format of the activity is used later on in the year, setting it up and executing it will be much easier because both the teacher and the students will be familiar with it.

L for ‘Language‘

First and foremost, we are the teachers of English and our main aim and priority should be the development of the linguistic skills in our students, regardless of how old there are. In the same vein, the main advantage of a craft activity is how it contributes to generating language.

Level A: the exposure. This is of course, always there, teachers speak, students listen. No matter what they do, they are also develop their listening skills and the ability to focus. So, technically, any craft activity will score high in that area as the teacher gives instructions and students follow them. What’s more, it is instantly obvious – the kids are leaving the room with a card, a puppet or a mask hence they have understoon the instructions. Good but not good enough.

Level B: the functional language. All craft activities have their stages, the students are encouraged to ask for the coloured pencils, glue, scissors, react to the teacher’s praise, sometimes praise their friends’ work and this is how some functional language comes into the picture and students are given an opportunity to practise it in context. Better but not good enough still.

Level C: the production. In an ideal craft activity, the making of is only the first step towards the follow-up stage in which the finished product will encourage them and will give them a chance to speak English.

D is for ‘Duration‘

Realistically speaking, how much time of the lesson time is the activity going to take, from the moment it is presented to the moment the last scraps of paper end up in the bin and the crayons, scissors and glue back in the box where they live? 5 mintes? 10 minutes? 15? 20? More than 20?

I am not going to try to discourage anyone from those longer craft activities because they need to be seen in perspective, together with all the other pieces of the puzzle, but it needs to be remembered that the longer the activity lasts, the higher the chances that kids will lose interest, that they will find alternative things to do, start chatting in their L1, get bored and tired and that, basically, it will be increasingly difficult to manage them and to get something out of the activity.

The potential time contraints apply to teachers’ too, actually. How much time and effort does the teacher want to spend on preparing the activity? Will they inolve the whole family into pre-cutting and pre-folding the night before? Will it be really worth it?

What is the ratio between the before-the-lesson preparation time, the activity-in-class time and the follow-up production stage time?

For that reason…

  • Cutting out a bunch of grapes that takes twenty minutes to complete: no
  • Making a complex puppet that takes half of your lesson so that you could use to say ‘hello, my name is Mitya’: no
  • A set of tiny little bits that have to be carefully glued onto the piece of paper: no
  • A picture to colour: no (not when it is just that ‘a picture to colour’)
  • Goggly eyes: no
  • Food craft without consulting parents first: no
  • Draw your…: no
  • Glittter: no (but that’s just me) and any ultra fancy materials that teachers would have to purchase themselves in specialised shops: also no

Anything else you would like to add? Anything that you don’t agree with? Please, let me know!

And don’t forget to pop in here to read about one ideal (and tried and tested) craft activity for the EFL preschoolers.

DIY Rulez! Listening homework tasks.

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DIY is the answer, in most cases. Especially in the VYL world.

All those missing, lost or non-existent flashcards, magic wands, puppets, handouts, balls, hats, masks, storybooks that we just nevermind-gonna-make-my-own-then (it really should be a verb).

DIY was the answer, an obvious answer and, yet, an answer that, on this particular occasion, took quite ages to land on the table and to become obvious.

The equation? A group of very young learners, studying online, helpful parents (but no printers at home so no customized handouts), a coursebook (but with tasks that I could make work only in the classroom), no ready-made material (and two steps away from regretting the decision to use the book altogether).

The first fifteen minutes went by peacefully, filled with sighing and staring blankly at the page in the coursebook. The next fifteen minutes were similar, only the sighs became more desperate and angrier.

Not happy at all. Until…Nevermind, gonna make my own then.

This time: Listening homework tasks! It’s been only a month but I am absolutely loving it!

How to?

  • Minimal requirements, your phone recording app will do.
  • Usually two takes are enough to record (although, suspiciously enough, as soon as I start, there is always a police car or a fire engine whee-yoo-ing just outside my window)
  • After a first few exercises, I started to type up ‘the script’ and it made everything much smoother.

Why?

  • An opportunity to take English out of the classroom and a recording that the kids can listen to as many times as they want to
  • Extended exposure to English, especially in the area of the functional language that the teacher can create, shape and enlarge as the course progresses
  • A great support for the parents, to help them work at home with the child and to structure it properly
  • Any picture, any illustration or any photograph in the coursebook (or online) can be used as the basis for it.
  • Widens the range of homework activities (see the ideas below)
  • Amazingly, it is also a great tool to practise scaffolding for teachers because you have to dissect an activity and verbalize all the procedures in simple English and only then you start think of all the micro-stages and you can hear what your students might hear.

Some of the activities we have done so far

  • Identifying pictures (pre-primary): It is a simple riddles game, based on an illustration with the key vocabulary. Most coursebooks for pre-primary include a page which introduces all the new words. In the example that I am sharing with you, I also managed to incorporate a verse from song ‘Are you hungry?’ by Super Simple Songs.
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onlENphATDQ

  • Dictation (pre-primary) It is better to use a black and white picture, perhaps from the workbook
  • Any illustration can be used for this kind of an activity. A chapter usually starts with an illustration of all the key woIt’s a teddy. Brown (children circle the bear brown)
  • Identifying differences (primary). Additional listening and speaking practice in the format inspired by the YLE. You can use set of pictures from Movers or Flyers, a set of illustrations for Movers or Flyers story or your own set prepared using the miro board (my example uses a picture from classroomclipart.com and the miro icons). Students listen and describe how their picture is different. The same activity can be prepared using only one picture. In that case, the students are listen to the sentences about the picture and correct the mistakes, for example: In my picture, the white cat is sitting on the chair.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTBhq4TkE_M

  • Find a mistake (primary). The audio is a follow-up to the story / text done in class, record a summary of the story with some mistakes (and with pauses between sentences). Children listen and correct the mistakes. This is also an opportunity to expose them to a lot of past tense.The following task was prepared to follow-up a cartoon lesson from Superminds 1 by Cambridge University Press. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbwiidV_i7Y

  • Ask your mum! (pre-primary) Here, the audio is only used to set up a conversation between the child and the mum. A set of pictures (for example a picture dictionary at the back of the book) can be used as the worksheet for the kids to mark the answers they get from the parents, for example: ask ‘Mummy, do you like carrot?’ (and circle / cross the fruit that mum likes and doesn’t like, these symbols have been used in class before, the kids are familiar with them). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onlENphATDQ

Happy teaching!

How to see a city. From the series: Teaching English through Art

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source: www.izi.travel

A while ago, I was teaching my first teens group in Moscow, an amazing bunch of students that I had a privilege to take from A2 to FCE and that I referred to as ‘my monsters’, though never to their face. And this is how this project came to be.

It could be called an attempt at a CLIL lesson. It could be said that the not-yet-dead-historian in me was behind that project but the truth is that, at the time, I was simply bored out of my wits the coursebook we were ploughing through and I wanted something else.

And, inspired by Kenneth McHoan, a character from the Crow Road by Ian Banks and one of his lines (‘He is my son. I’ll fill his head with anything I like’), I decided to teach Art.

The lesson that I am sharing today is the first in the series of ten lessons ‘How to see…’ that I taught as part of our general English course. The group that I trialled it with were B2 young teens but, since then I had a chance to teach it both to adults and pre-teens, C1 and end of A2 levels.

Why we liked it:

  • I had lots of fun, accompanied in the classroom by my favourite artists.
  • I did enjoy the change, in the curriculum and the pace, and it did feel great to be teaching a subject, in English, not just the language.
  • The students did enjoy it, too, being given a chance to have an opinion and to express it, freely and the fact that one painting could generate so many different views. 
  • Last but not least: although it did not happen overnight, I did realise that when my students were given a chance to talk about Art, all of a sudden, they were using the vocabulary from a higher shelf and really working hard on communicating what they thought in a beautiful way.

Lesson 1: How to see a city

Language focus

Aim: to introduce the language and the approach the students will need to be able to deal with the task. Normally introduced in the lesson beforehand, to allow sufficient time for practice and to make sure the students feel relatively confident using in the Art lesson itself.

  • language to express opinion / to agree / to disagree
  1. expressing opinion: I think, In my opinion. The way I see it.
  2. agreeing: I think so. I agree. Exactly. That’s true.
  3. disagreeing: I don’t think so, I don’t agree. I am not sure.
  • Three sheep: the name I gave to a trick I learnt from Rafael, to teach your students how to construct their discourse, how to express and justify opinions, even for the lower level
  1. Sheep 1: the opinion itself (I think)
  2. Sheep 2: reasons etc (because, so, and, but)
  3. Sheep 3: an example from the real life

Setting the context

Aim: to help set the context for the Art lesson

  • T shows the students a few photographs from New York
  • Questions to discuss
  1. What can you see in these photographs? Do you know the city?
  2. What is New York famous for?
  3. Have you ever been there? Have you seen any films set in New York? Have you read any books set in New York?
  4. Is New York similar to or different from Moscow? Is it similar to or different from any other cities you know?
source: wikiart.org

Interacting with the artwork: stage A

Aim: to provide an opportunity for the students to interact with the painting in a freer way, to provide opportunities for speaking

  • T divides the students into two groups and assigns a painting, group A to work on Frida Kalho’s painting, group B to work on Georgia O’Keefee’s painting
  • Each group can be divided into pairs, depending on the group dynamics
  • The students are discussing their painting, answering the following questions:
  1. What can you see in the painting?
  2. Is it a happy / sad / angry / depressing / scary painting? Why?
  3. In your opinion, how did the artist feel about New York? Did they like the city they lived in? What makes you think that?
  4. Could this image be used in tourist brochures to promote the city? Would it make a good postcard or a souvenir?
  5. How does the painting make you feel? Would you like to have it on the wall in your room? Where could it hang, in an office, in a hospital, in a shop or in a museum?
source: museothyessen.org

Interacting with the artwork: stage B

Aim: to provide an opportunity for the students to interact with both paintings

  • T mixes the students so that students from group A can work with students from group B, in groups or new pairs
  • Students show each other their painting and report their personal and their group’s opinions
  • T gives out new questions for the students to discuss
  • Which of these two paintings do you like more? Why?
  • Both of these paintings show New York in a very different way. Why do you think these artists had such a different view of the same city?

Open class feedback

Aim: to report back to class, to compare views

  • T leads the open class discussion, all the groups present their views, focusing on the two different ways to portray the same city. The teacher reveals that both paintings were painted at approximate the same time (1933 and 1925)
  • Error correction

The mini-lecture

Aim: to present the background information to provide the background for both paintings

  • T gives a short lecture, adapting it to the level and the age of the students, highlighting the main points
  • Both painters were not New Yorkers by birth, they came to the city with their husbands, one from exotic Mexico, the other from a small town in the prairies in Wisconsin.
  • Frieda felt alienated in the city, she didn’t like it, she missed home, she stayed only to accompany her husband
  • Georgia lived with her husband, in Manhattan, on the 30th floor, in Hotel Shelton and painted and sketched what she saw from her window.
  • Perhaps these are the factors that influenced both artists.
  • Questions from students
  • Error correction

The follow-up

Aim: to give the students an opportunity to look at their own city and reflect on how their feelings might influence the way they see the city

Part A

  • T divides the students into new teams / groups of 3
  • Students discuss the following questions about Moscow / own city:
  1. Do you like Moscow? Is it a good city? Would you like to live here in the future?
  2. What are the main tourists’ attractions?
  3. What are your favourite places in the city?
  4. If you could change something in the city, what would it be?
  • Open class feedback

     Part B

  • T gives out different paintings / photographs of Moscow / own city
  • Students discuss the following questions
  1. Look at these three different ways of showing your city in a painting/photograph. Which one is the best? Why? Which one is your least favourite?
  2. If you painted a picture of the city or if you were to take a photo to represent it, what would you include?
  • Open class feedback
  • Error correction

The follow-up: homework

Aim: to present an alternative way of looking at a city: through its inhabitants

Option A: Based on the photographs by Stan Raucher who photographs people on the metro in different cities

  • T selects the photographs / a photograph, appropriate for the age/ level of the students, hands out
  • SS at home prepare to talk about the photograph
  1. Who are the people in the photograph?
  2. What are they doing?
  3. What are they wearing?
  4. How are they feeling?
  5. Where are they going?
  6. Which city are they from? Why do you think so?

Option B: Based on the stories from Humans of New York, a project that interviews the people in the streets of New York and retells their storiesT selects the story/stories, appropriates for the age/level of the students, grades the language, if necessary, hands out to students

SS at home read the story and prepare to talk about their character:

  1. What is the name of the person?
  2. Where is he/she from originally?
  3. What does he/she do?
  4. What do we know about this person?
  5. What makes this person special?
  6. Would you like to meet this person?

In the following lesson, students report back, in pairs/teams and they choose the most interesting story / person / photograph.

Resources:

Frida Kalho, My dress Hangs there, 1933

Image and the basic information about the painting:

https://www.fridakahlo.org/my-dress-hangs-there.jsp

For more information on Frida Kalho see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frida_Kahlo

https://www.wikiart.org/en/frida-kahlo/my-dress-hangs-there-1933

https://worldhistoryproject.org/1933/3/frida-kahlo-paints-my-dress-hangs-there

Georgia O’Keefee, New York Street with Moon, 1925

Image and the basic information about the painting

https://www.museothyssen.org/en/collection/artists/okeeffe-georgia/new-york-street-moon

https://www.wikiart.org/en/georgia-o-keeffe/new-york-with-moon

For more information on Georgia O’Keefee see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_O%27Keeffe

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/georgia-okeeffe-new-york-street-with-moon

Yuri Pimenov, New Moscow, 1937

Image and the basic information about the painting

https://izi.travel/en/3185-yuriy-pimenov-new-moscow-1937-the-state-tretyakov-gallery/en

https://en.opisanie-kartin.com/description-of-the-painting-by-yuri-pimenov-new-moscow/

For more information about Pimenov https://soviet-art.ru/soviet-artist-yuri-pimenov/

Stan Raucher

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3615702/Photographer-Stan-Raucher-captures-everyday-lives-ordinary-people-metro-systems-world.html

Stan Raucher’s photography https://stanraucher.com/metro

Humans of New York

https://www.humansofnewyork.com/

10 ways in which you can use gesture in your pre-primary classroom.

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The Gesture is King!

How can you tell a VYL teacher?

It could be the Mary Poppins’ bag full of markers, stickers, a storybook and random treasures that they carry. It could be because you can catch them hum ‘Baby Shark’ or ‘Broccoli Ice-Cream’ while they think no one’s listening. It could be also that it is difficult to catch them in pretty tights and dresses because many an outfit was destroyed by clumsy little hands. By accident but irreversibly, too.

Look at the hands, too, a lot more expressive than those of an average teacher, hands that constantly gesture and motion, a habit that is difficult to drop even outside the classroom.

It is true that Total Physical Response stopped being the new black a few decades ago and nowadays referring to learning styles is looked down on or even mocked. Nonetheless, the gesture is one of the vital components of the pre-primary classroom, simply because it works and it helps the teacher and the students to communicate more effectively, especially if the students are 5-year-old beginners.

One: participation

Throughout their pre-primary adventure with English, the students will always be pre-A level but as the course progresses, their vocabulary range will grow. But in the first few weeks of the course those kids really are a clean slate. Thanks to gestures, however, they can participate and be involved in class activities.

They can for example wave ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’ to the teacher or other children, silently, they can participate in ‘Head, shoulders, knees and toes’, touching or pointing at the correct body parts because they will be mimicking the teacher’s gestures and not because they know exactly which part of the body is the head and which ones are toes.

That is why including gestures will be important in the beginning of year although they can be used to the same effect at the start of each unit. Students, still not familiar with the new vocabulary, will react to it by miming ‘cat’, ‘dog’, ‘princess’, ‘sheriff’, ‘book’ etc. Before they are ready to produce the words orally.

Two: clarification

Little students cannot use a dictionary or translation into L1 because sometimes the teacher does not speak it. In that case, the teacher has limited resources to clarify the meaning of the new words. The visuals and the realia will help, of course, but adding gestures is definitely going to reinforce the meaning. Two hands together with palms touching and moving apart (a book), fingers of one hand scratching the air (a cat), the arm touching the nose and waving (an elephant and its trunk), a hand cupped around the nose (a clown), two hands touching above the head (a house) and so on…

Three: memorising

Almost automatically, adding these gestures will help to ensure that the kids will remember the words better. There is evidence that suggest that sign language and gestures in general active additional neurons and the information can be stored and retrieved more effectively.

Four: support for production

Once the gestures have been introduced and become a part of the classroom reality, they can be used by the teacher to support the language production by the students. While they are trying to answer a question or to make a sentence and if they experience any difficulty retrieving the word or the structure, instead of whispering the word or giving the L1 equivalent, the teacher can hint at the word by producing the familiar gesture, assisting the student but not actually saying the word.

Five: asking for clarification or support

Similarly, their use can also be extended to asking for clarification or support by the students themselves. Chances are that after the children have become familiar with the gestures used in class on daily basis, they will be using them actively, too.

This was one of the surprising discoveries I made during a classroom research for my MA degree. When a communication breakdown occurred, my five-year olds did resort to familiar gestures to ask for a word they wanted to use but forgot. They still remembered that the word ‘long’ was accompanied by two hands flying apart or that the word ‘sandwich’ was demonstrated by pressing two hands together, one on top of the other, even though the words themselves had not stuck in memory. The produced the gestures asking for my assistance and then, provided with the word, went on with the sentence.

Six: imagination, creativity and symbolic representation

The development of symbolic representation in pre-primary children is an important stage of their growth as human beings (Bruce 2004, p. 170) and introducing and using gestures is one of the ways in which a teacher of English can also contribute to it.

It is fascinating to observe how, at first, very young learners only imitate the teacher and reproduce the gestures exactly, as they are introduced and how, later, they move on to creating their own ways of representing certain words or phrases. And how the teacher can actually learn from the students here because their 5-year-old ways of miming a clock, a flower, a pumpkin or a melted ice-cream are much better and much more interesting!

Seven: instructions

This is, probably the most straightforward way, used from the very first minute of the course. The students, entering the classroom don’t know any English and can’t react to all the teacher’s instructions if they are not accompanied by some gestures: one or both hands being lowered for ‘sit down’, hands palms up being raised for ‘stand up’, waving the hand towards the chest for ‘come here’.

Eight: classroom management

Naturally, gestures can be used to praise the students or to show disapproval for any unwanted behaviour. Both thumbs up or a high five (or a double high five for really special occasions) show the teacher’s approval, both palms crossed at wrists might signal ‘stop’, the index finger put across the lips will work as ‘silence please’.

The gestures may vary, from class to class or even from culture to culture. What matters is that the teacher is consistent with the gestures they use with a specific group. Examples? For my youngest students the small waving hand (something similar to the way the Queen would wave hello) became a sign of warning, although I seriously doubt that anyone else would ever read it this way. For my group, however, it was closely related to our rewards chart, kids’ names on it and stars or smileys drawn next to them. Sometimes, during the lesson, I would indeed wave my hand slightly, to remind them that if they don’t stop misbehaving, I might erase one of their stars. And it worked, for us.

Nine: emotions

Knowing how your students are feeling is very important in general, but especially with the pre-primary children as their reactions and participation will be closely connected to whether they are happy, sad, angry or scared. The teacher should be able to read those emotions but children will also be taught to recognise and to express them, in English.

The first lessons will start from the the basic adjectives accompanied by gestures (a big smile and arms up in the air for ‘I’m happy’, a sad face and fingers drawing the tears rolling down the cheeks for ‘I’m sad’, a frown and stomping for ‘I’m angry’, eyes covered with both hands for ‘I’m scared’) but then more and more of them can be added. These emotions can help the teacher, too, for example to signal that they are happy with students’ achievements or sad when they are misbehaving…

Ten: bonding and creating a community in the classroom

Last but not least, everything that we do together in class, helps the children to bond and to create a community in the classroom, with its own rules and ‘traditions’. Not only songs or stories can be used that way but also all the miming games. They are easy, everyone can participate and they are a great stirrer, too.

After the teacher’s modelling and after everyone becomes familiar with the game, the kids, one at a time, are allowed to lead the game and to suggest what you all could mime. And this is when the real fun begins.

It doesn’t have to be very complicated, only the emotion adjectives and fruit, pets, school objects, anything you are studying at the moment. Have you ever tried to mime a cat? Probably yes. Have you ever tried to mime a happy cat, a sad cat, a sleepy cat? Yes? Then you should definitely try to mime an angry pencil then!

I wonder if I have managed to convince you, dear reader, that the gesture is the absolute king of the VYL world…

Happy teaching!

T.Bruce (2004), Using symblos,in: T. Bruce, Developing Learning in Early Childhood, London: Paul Chapman Publishing, pp 170 – 195