A colouring picture ‘in the park’. Any will do but I used this particular one because it contained enough detail. Sadly, I cannot find the reference for it.
A set of stickers. I used animals because that is exactly what I had in my leftover box but it could be anything. We were not aiming at creating a very realistic picture, as you can see in the example.
Procedures
We introduced and practised the vocabulary featured in the picture. We used the wordwall for that (this one). We drilled the words, we read them, talked about the things we like and don’t like. I also decided to introduce the gestures for each of the words because I wanted to activate this part of my kids’ imagination as our following game involved miming and guessing. One of the children was sitting with their back to the screen, the group were supposed to mime something together for the student to guess. Naturally, we took turns to sit on the big chair. I was invited to particiapate, too!
We continued practising using the prepositions: with a song, with the YES/NO game and with out toys.
We sat at our tables, each with a copy of the picture and did a quick run through the picture to familiarize ourselves with all the elements (‘Can you see…?’).
Every child got a sheet of stickers that I had leftover from other activities, animals from different habitats that I just cut up into pieces, to match the number of children in the group.
The idea of the game is very simple: the leader directs the group where to put the sticker i.e. ‘Take one sticker and put it on the bench’ (in the tree, under the tree etc). Everyone listens, the teacher monitors and checks.
The sheets of stickers are passed on in the circle (‘New stickers, please!’) and the game continues.
The game is led by the teacher for the first few rounds but then the students are asked to take over and to dictate when the stickers as put.
The game goes on for as long as it is necessary.
Why we like it?
It was, eventually, a very student-centred and productive activity and we used a lot of the target language (prepositions) and in the format of the Starters YLE Speaking.
We had a lot of fun. It started quietly and very realistically, with animals on the grass and in the trees, but, as was to be expected, it didn’t last once someone decided to put something on the girl, on the sun, in the air etc. We laughed a lot and kids were very eager to show their pictures and to announce what they put and where.
Although our main aim were the prepositions, we also revised (and introduced in some cases) the names of the animals as the stickers had all the habitats and I thought it was a nice opportunity to at least try to extend our vocabulary.
The activity is very easy to prepare and any set of stickers can be used.
I was really proud of how my kids worked well as a team. Everyone played by the rules, they did not take more than one sticker, they passed on the sheets without delay, they looked at and praised their friends’ pictures.
I was wondering whether it can be adapted to any types of vocabulary and what I have come up with so far are the following: a picture with a few people or characters and a set of stickers to practise ‘has got’ (‘Choose something for the princess’, ‘The princess has got a cat’) or a picture with characters and practising ‘likes / doesn’t like’ (‘Choose something for the princess’, ‘The princess likes / doesn’t like apples’). I also used the similar ‘recycled stickers’ for a guessing game with older students with the places in the city. The kids had five stickers which they had to put somewhere around the city. They kept the picture secret because the speaking task was about describing the places for their partners to guess. This version could also be adapted to the picture of a house or perhaps even to the map of the world to practise the names of the countries.
In the picture above, you can see one of the examples, created by my student.
A task that you need the kids to complete, the one that can be divided into parts, for example a grammar revision page that consists of exercises, a reading comprehension task or, as was in our case, a set of addition of two digit numbers with carry over which my kids love but which is still a bit of a challenge. I wanted something to motivate them and to reward them for their hard work.
A colouring picture, a copy for each child, cut up into pieces, one piece part for each part of the task.
A pencil, a glue stick, a paper where the puzzles will be glued in the end and perhaps markers for colouring.
A set of envelopes, one per each piece of the puzzle, labelled in the same way as the parts of the task and magnets to put them up on the board.
Procedures
Depending on the task, you need to prepare the kids for it. In our case, we revised the numbers and number bonds with the wordwall cards and we also watched a short video on adding two-digit numbers.
I showed the kids the handout and the letters and the corresponding envelopes on the board, each of which contained one piece of the puzzle picture. I demonstrated how after they have completed one part of the task, they are allowed to come up to the board and to take the corresponding envelope and one piece of the puzzle from it. Because of the nature of the task, we had obvious answers and I wrote them inside, too, for the kids to have something to check their answers.
We ran a quick session of instruction check questions such as: Can we run? (No!), Can we take the envelope to our desk? (No!), Can we take two pieces from the envelope? (No!). I accompanied these with gestures, too.
The we got down to work and I focused on monitoring and helping out when necessary.
As soon as someone was ready with all eight pieces, I started to give out the gluesticks for them to glue their pictures in the notebooks.
Why we like it
It was a perfect way of spicing up a very serious and complicated Maths task and of rewarding the kids for completing it.
The kids were very curious about the picture and it helped us make it seasonal and special. To be honest, a lot of our Maths in October has been given them Halloween label. We have counted many pumpkins, lollipops, candy, spiders, witch’s hats, cobwebs and cats. This was one more lesson in the series. Plus, it is also how we are preparing for the actual holiday next week and how are practising the vocabulary.
The task can be easily adapted to different tasks or subjects and, naturally, the theme of the colouring picture, can also be easily changed to match the topic of the lesson.
We had 8 pieces of the puzzle but this number can be extended or limited, depending on the kids and their age.
The task is also very good for developing fine motor skills (re-organising the puzzle pieces) and cognitive skills (putting the pieces together).
It was also a great activity to give the kids work individually on the same task, with turn taking, respecting the other participants, not revealing the answer and playing by the rules of the game. They could almost do it and the most challenging part turned out to be the fact that all the kids went through the task in the same order so the evelope A was in high demand, then the envelope B etc. This is something to think about in the future. I am also considering putting up different envelopes (or stations) around the classroom, on different tables or shelves.
The kids got really involved and they really liked the task. Some of them already asked if we are going to do it again. And yes, we will. Either in Maths or in one of the other subjects.
October is for us a month of shapes and every week gets a different shape hero. Because of that at the start of the lesson we revise shapes, sing songs, look for shapes around us and talk about shapes as symbols and our associations with this particular shape which last week was a star.
The only trick is to prepare a great variety of activities to make sure that everyone stays interested but, beginning October, at my school we introduced a new element to the format of our Art Explorers classes. Our group used to meet twice a week and we had quite a few students, younger and older, from pre-school to grade 4. It was not the best solution as there was a huge gap as regards the lingustic skills and abilities, motor skills and abilities and creative skills and abilities. Luckily, we were able to divide the group into two, the older and the younger and this way adapt the course and the activities. The lesson I am describing here was taught with the older group. The younger kids practised the same vocabulary but their focused task was different, the one that I did before with the same lesson (see below).
Vincent van Gogh meets Kasimir Malevich
The artist
In a way, I was waiting for this lesson. Starry Night by van Gogh is this one painting that immediately puts me in a good mood (although I cannot help but think about the paradox of how such a troubled soul managed to create such a peaceful image) and it is probably one of the most easily recognised paintings and kids respond to it immediately. I have already used it in the magic wand lesson, with the younger kids and I was looking forward to taking it to another level with a more advanced group.
As usual, we introduced the artist, together with his country and his favourite things. We also looked at different interpretations or parodies of the painting which can be easily found online. They all feature the amazing background of the starry night and…anything: Batman, Snoopy, birds, cats, ghosts, Santa, Mona Lisa and a city of your choice. This is what became the inspriation for the art part of the lesson.
The art
It was relatively easy. The main ingredient to prepare was the starry night background that we printed in colour, one per child. I was considering preparing it ourselves, from scratch and it would have been amazing but our lessons are too short and there was no chance that I could do it over two different classes. For that reason, I decided to print.
I also brought a lot of coloured paper and just some regular white paper. The main idea was to draw the shapes, figures, objects for your picture, to cut them out and to glue them back on the starry night background.
The images that you can see in this post were created by my students and as you can see, they represent different directions that the kids decided to take. There is another Halloween van Gogh, inspired probably by my example, a Starry Night Malevich that got carried over from the previous lesson devoted to a square (and Malevich, see the post here) and we had a starry night that became the setting for a meeting…
The best thing about this kind of an approach is that any student can produce something according to their abilities, either something very intricate, beautifully drawn and cut out or, on the contrary, something very simple if they don’t feel confident about their drawing skills. I have also decided that next time I am teaching this lesson, I will be also bringing newspapers and magazines for the students to be able to make the collage even more fun and feasible. This will be also beneficial for the students who are not very confident about their drawing skills.
With my younger group, preschoolers and year 1 of primary, I decided to do something that I have done before and something that was a huge success. Instead of creating a picture, we created out own magic wand with the use of two stars (printed, cut out, decorated, glued together), a chopsticks (although a wooden stirrer will do, too) and some ribbons. The regular glue stick will do the job well, you just need to apply a lot of glue on both stars. Don’t worry if they look a bit damp and unappealing, they dry well and if they are given a chance to spend a night among the pages of a big book, they will also be flat and just perfect.
Oh, and one more thing, with my regular English classes, we create wands whenever we need a tool to practise Present Continuous (‘Abracadabra, 123, you are…) or just whenever we learn something that can be mimed, for example pets or toys.
As you can see the last few pictures come from this year’s Autumn Camp which we taught in two groups. I decided to go for a proper collage whereas my colleague, miss Victoria, decided to upgrade it and use mixed media methods: a picture painted by the children themselves and then decorated with stickers. I simply love the idea and how it turned out. With preschoolers, btw.
A folding surprise by Kolya (Renamed as: Teachers in September)
This post, like many many others, starts in the classroom when yours truly spends countless hours every week. Some of those hours are happy hours, some are very much not. Sometimes, no matter how passionate and dedicated you are as a teacher, no matter how much time you have dedicated to preparing amazing lessons, resources and activities, it is just not coming together and it does feel like it is the absolute end of the world. But, definitely, it is not. But it feels like it.
In the sessions devoted to classroom and management behaviour, there is this one activity that we do: ‘Look at the picture of the classroom. What is wrong with it?’ My trainees usually have lots of great ideas but where I am trying to get them is the fact that, beautiful as it is, this photo, a real class and a real lesson does not really look like that 100% of the time. So google, with all its amazing visuals, this time helps us create unrealistic expectations regarding our professional life.
I am not saying that it does not happen, that kids never get fully interested and involved in the task or that the teacher never has the full attention of the group. They do and when it does, it is the best thing ever, cloud number 9 and the top of the world. But, to be perfectly honest, a day like this one in the Kindergarten Cop, this is also a part of the teacher’s life.
Those bad days are perhaps more likely to happen when you are less experienced and somewhere at the start of your teaching career but (and I am sorry to be saying that), no matter how many years you have been teaching for, bad days can still happen. Although, indeed, as experienced teachers, we are more prepared for them and better equipped to deal with them, on the spot and in the long run. That is why, in this post, I decided to share how I resuscitate myself and get myself back on my feet from having crumbled into pieces after a bad day at school.
Prevention first
Apart from lesson planning and keeping your resources organised, it is very important to remember that a teacher needs to be alive and feeling well in order to remain happy, smiling and passionate about the lesson and in order to be able to give a good lesson. That means that a teacher needs to eat and drink, breakfast and lunch and snacks, and, a teacher must find time for her / his own breaks.
I know very well how easy it is to skip breakfast, lunch or the mid-lesson snacks (or, even more impotantly, the mid-lesson toilet runs) because, well, because things just happen. Kids lose things, kids need help, kids have a bad day and a meltdown and a teacher, more often than not, just brushes off her/ his needs and does whatever is necessary to help the kid. It’s just in the blood.
Then there are the unplanned meetings with the headmaster, the admin, the parents and sometimes it is possible to put them on hold or to reschedule them and sometimes it is not. Again, the break (whatever its purpose) gets cancelled or cut short. The teacher goes on teaching without food, coffee, water or worse and, naturally, that has an impact on the level of tiredness and / or stress and on the lesson.
When the bad day has already happened…take time out.
Most of the time this will be a very short time out slot, a few minutes in the teachers’ room, or even in your classroom, looking out of the window, wasting time, listening to your favourite song, or, if you are really lucky and the breaks are long enough to allow for that, you will be able to get out of the school to pick up a coffee somewhere round the corner or simply to take a walk, somewhere in a slightly different environment.
This will help to see the world from a different perspective and, naturally, to regain the peace and quiet for the teacher.
Talk to your teaching buddies
As soon as the opportunity arises, chat to your teaching buddies. It doesn’t matter if they themselves had a good day and will be able to act as the source of the energy or if they had an equally disastrous day and there will be there for you to compare the levels of the educational catastrophy. The most important thing is that this will be a chance to talk to someone who fully understands how horrible it feels to have to walk home after a bad day at school and who can offer an ear if not a real solution, although the latter is also an option, too, because the school life is full of fiascos, tragedies and all kinds of situations and, quite likely, your friends have it already happened to them and might be able to tell you about how they sorted it out. In any case, listening to their stories will help to understand that you are not on your own and that’s a lot!
Talk to your VIP, whoever they are
For me, personally, equally important is talking to my Very Important People, not only because that is what they are, but, also, because they have absolutely nothing to do with education, teaching English and teaching children.
Getting valuable advice or even having someone to talk to, in order to relate all the horrors of the day is not the main aim of these conversations. On the contrary, these help me get a completely different perspective and go back to basics, to everything else in life that matters an that is as far as possible from the young learners EFL/ ESL. Just to check that the world outside of it still exists and that it is doing great.
I love my job and I cannot imagine not teaching kids but, on some days, I need to forget about children, parents, child development, methodology and everything related to it, specifically in order to recover and to recharge my batteries, physiological and psychological.
Get a hug (real, virtual or metaphorical)
Well, yes, just that! The hug can be real, the hug can be virtual as not everyone huggable might be available physically but it can also be any way of pampering yourself and doing somethinggood for your body. A nice meal, a pint of beer, a quiet evening, an evening with your favourite music, a piece of chocolate, a walk with a dog, a bunch of flowers, a cup of coffee, a sports game, a round of your favourite computer game, exercising, a combination of a few of those or all of them together. Whatever it is that makes you feel good and that brings a smile to your face.
For example, I am a real public transport supporter but, on those really difficult days, I like to take a taxi home and being in the backseat, driven home, with my favourite city in the world blinking on the other side of the window, it really does calm me down.
Sleep on it
Or, in other words, not being too harsh on yourself and taking time to reflect and to see the whole day and everything that happened from a different angle and from a distance.
The world looks a bit different after a proper night’s sleep and only then it is possible to reflect on the day, to connect the dots and to understand better the reason behind the kids’ behaviour or the explanation why the activities fell flat on their face. Finally, this distance will also help to see the good things that also happened because they always do, although, admittedly, they are easily overshadowed by the disasters.
Try again!
Last but not least, there is always tomorrow, another lesson and another day to have another go and see what happens. With young learners especially, the first time we play a new game or try a new activity, in a new format and with a new set of rules, the very first attempt is just a reconnaissance, for the teacher, for the resources and for the kids. It is almost bound to be a failure and it is a big mistake not to give it another shot.
This is my September and New Groups Diary. Here you can find the previous episodes: week 1, week 2, week 3.
Starting the lesson…
…stays as before, no changes.
How do you feel today?
We continue to do our little chain reaction of the question – answer, from student to student and, on top of all the phrases, a few new lines appeared, too. First of all, someone suggested ‘I am everything’, which is an interesting albeit unconventional approach, and some kids picked up on it. I will have to come up with a flashard for that.
The other thing that happened, in one of the group, was a flurry of ideas to add to our set. One of the students asked for a piece of paper before the lesson, to create a card, some others got inspired and they ended up producing four or even five during the breaks. Apparently, what we needed (and I did not know!) is:
I am feeling sick.
I was sick.
I want to stay home.
I want to go to school.
I am bad.
I don’t know how I feel.
These cards are already ready, pretty and colourful. I just need to laminate them on Monday.
Songs
This week we have only added one song to our playlist, Let’s go to the zoo! and that is because, imagine that, on Wednesday we were going to the zoo, on a school trip. Accidental though it was, it made me realise that, actually, we are in a desperate need of some ‘we want to move’ songs, for some brain breaks for the lessons themselves or the in-between the lesson time. I am planning to introduce either Move or The Dance Freeze Song next week. They are going to love these and it is about time we learnt a few new verbs.
Actually, there is a lot of verb-related material this week as we also did Milo’s I like you in our English classes and our story was also verb-related as it was ‘Don’t eat the teacher‘ (see below for details).
Rules and Classroom Language…
…has stayed the same as before. We haven’t been in need of any new rules. The kids have improved overall and they know all the rules and they help me revise them in a more efficient way right now. So far I have been giving them the first half of the sentence, together with the gesture (‘I have…’) for the kids to add the key word (‘a question’). Right now, they know all of them and can recreate them when I demonstrate the gesture. On Thursday, I also happened to forget one of the rules and one kind soul reminded me (and us) about it, too.
Rewards chartand Time..
…have seen no changes whatsoever. We are just using what we have introduced.
Story
This week is a week of verbs (see above) and since we have reached the end of the first full week of classes, I have decided to introduce a school story, one of my favourites is ‘Don’t eat the teacher’ by Nick Ward.
We have:
done the vocabulary
introduced the main character, Sammy, the shark, talked about the cover picture and the little problem that Sammy, the shark has (biting things when he gets too excited (although we used the word ‘energetic and happy’ because these are the words we know)
watched the story
done an activity with matching the sentences with symbols, ‘don’t’ with different verbs
and a similar activity on a handount
I really wanted to add the structure to our set of verbs, on top of ‘I like to do’ that we had from the song. I am also planning to reinforce the ‘let’s’ from the song and to practise both, as they will be very useful in the classroom. Overall, I am happy with the story but I don’t think I will use the video again. We have the paper storybook somewhere in the school library and this will be a much better choice as with the paper, the teacher can control the language, the pace and the audio, the emotions and the understanding.
Socialising
These are the things we did in the previous week to faciliate the community building:
We continued doing everything we have done so far: making decisions, choosing songs and activities, helping with the resources, student – student interaction.
The biggest event of this week was the trip to the zoo and, for one of the groups, a trip to the park during the science lesson to look for different types of plants. First of all, it helped us create some memories, as a group and we definitely had a chance to be a group, to listen to the rules, to remember about behaving well. Everything went well and I was very happy and proud of everyone.
This week was the first week in which we were working with our big notebooks. We have one for all the subjects and we use them to glue in all the handouts, to take notes (yes, we have started) and to work on all the tasks. I have already noticed that the kids enjoy looking back and checking what has been done so far. One or two have already decided to add some bits and pieces to the previously completed handouts and drawings. The kids who were absent were also curious to look at the work that we have done during the days they missed, in order to catch up. I decided to check all of these at the end of the week and leave little notes and comments.
We also did an interview game, to practise all the basic questions we have done so far, with all the kids interviewing ‘the new student’ and, during the Maths lesson, we were measuring ourselves and that also required a pairwork, so that the kids could easily read the measurements for their partner. Otherwise, it is very difficult to see how long your nose is or your mouth. This went really well and we had lots of fun!
Creativity
We have had some opportunities for creativity in this week, too!
We created a picture of an unusual plant and we labelled it properly with all the part plants. We watched a video from youtube and talked about the plants and their resemblance to what we know. Afterwards, we revised all the plant parts and I wrote them on the board and that helped me create my Coffee Plant, with leaves, roots and coffee cups in lieu of the fruit. Afterwards, as a group, we brainstormed some ideas for the kids’ plants and hey ho, they were on the right path. We did it in the notebooks and ‘the handout’ was only a small piece of paper glued in by me before the lesson, with the list of plant parts to use as a checklist in the end of the activity. I might actually put it all into a separate post later on. Fingers crossed!
During our zoo trip I was also the designated photographer and the photos will be used in a whole class project next week. There is more to come!
Teacher
This is only very much Anka-relevant and it might not work or be important for all the other teachers in the world. I decided to take a note here, though, to remember and to see how these things will be changing because they also affect how we work as a group and how I feel, too.
I am very happy because everyone is a tiny bit better at writing. Our handwriting booklets are filling up since we are already at T and all of my kids are better at dealing with this slot of the lesson. Something that was a huge challenge for some of my kids is not just a part of the lesson. Some of the students are working ahead of the group, since they are faster and already have a good handgrip and I am ok with that. Three have completed the whole booklet already and they get a tiny little break while we are working. I was thinking what to do about it and I decided to leave it as it is. It will be only a week more for us, to get to Zz and afterwards, we will all be on the same page again.
Even the kids who are beginners as regards English started to be more attentive and more productive, at least as regards the repeated parts of the lesson. They get a lot of langauge from the songs, too and it is really good to see. Everyone works very hard in Maths and Science and I cannot tell you how happy I was when on Thursday we did our first ‘copy and finish’ activity in English and everyone (but everyone!) took notes about themselves: I am Anka, I am 100. I am happy. I like cats. I’ve got a brother. Beyond happy, that’s what I was.
This was not a tantrum free week, far from it but I noticed that I am better at dealing with them and that also my students are making an effort to try to control their emotions, hard as it may be in some cases. There is hope, basically.
Coda
The ghastly month of September is coming to an end. ‘Wake me up when September ends’ the Greenday sings and this day is today! Hooray.
I will continue keeping notes on everything we do and I will add another post in a month, to see where we are with my kids! Until that day then! Happy October to all of you!
This is the third episode in this series. Don’t forget to check out week 1 and week 2 first. There is the week 4 post, too!
Starting the lesson
Nothing has changed here and I have to say it is a lovely feeling to have it ‘just happen’, at least for a few minutes of the lesson. It is a confirmation that things are happening and according to plan and that, eventually, we are going to extend this ‘law and order’ to the other stages of the lesson, too.
How do you feel today?
According to what I planned, we added two more feelings ‘I am ill’ and ‘I am scared’, one to describe how we really feel in class (Hello September, Sneezing and Coughing!), the other one because I want to have it ready for all the stories to come. It might be also a nice phrase to use when we talk about emotions, also to say ‘I am not scared’, which is a very positive affirmation to make anyway! At the end of week 3 we have a total of 13 adjectives and phrases to use to answer this question and I have two more expressions, as suggested by the kids themselves. There is more to come soon!
Apart from that, I decided to let the kids take over and to take turns to ask the question to each other. At this point we are still doing it in a very closely-monitored way, with the teacher supervising and the kids simply answering a question from one student and then asking another one, in a chain. It took some time of the lesson as the kids were taking their time to choose the following child but it was definitely worth it! I was observing the children and I did notice how seriously they took the task and, actually, how much pleasure it gave them, too, to be involved in such a way.
Songs
We have practised all the songs introduced before and since we already have quite a few, it is possible to ask the class to choose a song to sing: ‘Do you want to sing ‘I can count to 20’ or ‘Count from 10 to 100′?’ to give the students an opportunity to make decisions about the lesson. That is what we did.
We also sang ‘Pete the Cat, I am rocking in my school shoes’ and during some of the lessons, this turned into almost a theatre, because all the kids wanted to sing and to perform all the actions, to sit at the desk, to eat something (they quickly reached out to their bags for a snack) or to read a book, in exactly the same way as Pete does, lying on the floor…This was definitely the song of the week for us!
From the new song, we only introduced ‘Have you got a pet?’ which we needed to introduce and to practise the verb and the structure which was the theme of the week. We also played the game with the spinner from wordwall, in which we sing the song for students, one by one, spin the wheel and the child in question answers ‘I’ve got a tiger. I like it. It’s a good idea’.
Rules and Classroom Language
We have been revising all the classroom verbs and phrases we introduced in the previous week and we devoted one of the English lessons to introduce and to drill some more advanced classroom language that include:
Can I go to the toilet, please?
Can I drink some water, please?
I sit nicely.
I listen to the teacher.
I am a good friend.
I have a question.
The two new phrases include: I don’t fight and I don’t shout, because this is exactly what was happening. I normally try to avoid using this kind of a language and to focus on a positive way of formulating the rules but one of my groups needed a very serious reminder.
Rewards chart
There have been not to many changes here. With my group A, the chart is no longer necessary, we only need to revise the rules and bring them back, to remind the kids about the behaviour we want. My group B need the rewards chart constantly but with the use of the chart and the rules, we are slowly moving towards the point where we want to be. I have some students who struggle with managing their emotions but there has been some progress in that area, too.
Time
Not too many changes here. We keep using the system we have created and it works. The kids are more familiar with the lesson plan, the different length of breaks, the changes of teachers, work in progress, nothing else.
Story
This week I decided to introduce a phonics story and, because of the theme of phonics, animals and have got / has got, I went for ‘Hen’s Pens‘. Overall, it was not as exciting or popular as the other two we have done so far but because it is a different style, without a song but it worked well.
What we did:
introducing the new vocabulary and reading
describing the picture on the cover
looking for dots and zigzacs around us
listening and talking about it
doing one wordwall activity on rhymes together on the screen
a reading activity done individually, on paper
a colouring picture for those students who wanted it
Accidentally, just before this lesson, one of my students found our paper copy of Usborne stories and he brought it to the classroom and looking through the book, he found there our story. This way, he created a link to our following lessons because I want to use the story in a few shared reading activities.
Socialising
These are the things we did in the previous week to faciliate the community building:
we continued doing everything we have done so far: making decisions, choosing songs and activities, helping with the resources.
we added a little bit of student – student interaction during the first stages of the lesson (How do you feel today, see above)
we did a few activities in Maths and Science to help the kids work in teams. We had two team activities with one student working for the group – two treasure hunts. In Science students took turns to find clues what to draw in a picture (types of plants), in Maths, similarly, tasks (addition and subtraction to 20) in order to uncover the secret phrase (‘Maths is very interesting’). In another Maths lesson we also played with subtraction and posters and small objects. In this game, kids had to work in small pairs to solve the task (put the hands on the poster to leave the required number of animals visible and take out the small objects out of the box).
we also tried to play ‘I spy’ in one of the Maths lessons, this time in pairs. It was mildly successful as a speaking activity but they did get a chance to sit together and work on a task together. It was a necessary step and I would like to repeat it again in week 4.
Creativity
We have had some opportunities for creativity in this week, too!
we created a beautiful picture of different plants in a Science lesson. It was guided (my instructions) but the execution was up to students. Of course, they really wanted to take them home.
in our final Maths lesson, we decorated the first page of the notebooks that we will start next week
there was a follow-up colouring picture for the story, for those kids who wanted to get one
Teacher
This is only very much Anka-relevant and it might not work or be important for all the other teachers in the world. I decided to take a note here, though, to remember and to see how these things will be changing because they also affect how we work as a group and how I feel, too.
I managed to convince my fellow classroom dweller to rearrange the tables in one of the classrooms so now we have a beautiful U and I am happy.
I am planning my lessons with the resources and boxes online, in order to be clever about all the carrying things around.
Tuesday was quite difficult in terms of behaviour, very jagged and patchy, hence annoying and tiring and I went to school the following thinking that, no matter what, ‘I will have a good teaching day and the kids will have a good learning day!’ and somehow we all did. Partially, it was due to this approach, partially, because I prepared activities to help me achieve it. I noticed that I have been setting my expectations and the level of challenge a bit too high for my kids, without taking into consideration the fact that it is still only week 3 of our adventure and that we spend together 20 hours a week, some lessons are early in the day, some lessons are late in the day and they all simply cannot be just amazing. Although they can be good and they can be better if all these factors are taken into consideration. I did and Wendesday and Thursday were much better.
A set of shapes of your choice, cut out of paper before the lesson
An A4 piece of paper with the list of figures that will be included in the activity.
A glue stick for every child, a pencil to take notes
Procedures
Naturally, this project involved some pre-lesson preparation: the handout, the glue and, most of all, all the shapes which needed to be cut up and sorted out. I used 5 separate boxes to make sure that they don’t mixed and are easy to select and to abandon.
We had two lessons devoted to shapes and so we could do all of the following as a preparation for the project: introducing the shapes, looking for the shapes in the classroom, song Can you see a circle? from Super Simple Songs, looking at Shapes Monsters from Twinkl, to recognise and to count them, making shapes from pipe cleaners (the example of which you can see above), working on the sequence (‘circle, square, circle, square’) and, as a direct example for our creativity, looking at some transport made of shapes (also found on Twinkl).
The next step was a set of instructions. At the moment I work with a teacher assistant and I saw it as an opportunity to use this resource in setting up the project. I prepared my instructions to use the simplest language possible but I still asked my TA to translate sentence by sentence. The main elements were these: We are doing a project. We have five shapes (displayed on the board). You can make something for yourself. Maybe a flower, maybe a car, maybe a monster (referring to everything that we saw in class). All ideas are good ideas. You can use 10 shapes (gesture). Please sit down and think. I will call one student to come here and choose shapes. Sasha, come here, choose 10 shapes. etc.
Afterwards, with Sasha choosing her shapes, two students helped with giving out the handouts and the glue.
Everyone kept working on their shapes, I was walking among them, helping and monitoring and as soon as they were finishing, I would come up and ask them to count all the shapes they have used.
In the end, the kids were showing their projects to each other but it was not a formal stage of the lesson. Ideally, we should have finished with everyone showing their work and presenting ti with a simple ‘I’ve got…’ but, unfortunately, in our case, we ran out of time.
Why we like it
In general, it is a simple project with a lot of potential and it can be used in a variety of lessons.
In a Maths lesson, like ours, it is a an opportunity to see the practical use of shapes and to balance the serious studying with a more creative task. It also involves shapes recognition and counting. It was also an interesting follow-up and development on the previous lessons in yet another way: we looked at shapes, we counted shapes in shapes pictures, we looked for shapes in the classroom and we made shapes out of pipe cleaners. These last two activities were especially exciting for the kids and that was my cue for a more hands-on activities.
In an English lesson on shapes, this activity could also work very well, especially that there is the early literacy activity which, potentially, can be extended. The kids can be asked to copy the words from the board and, in this case, the ‘handout’ will not be necessary. The kids can also be asked to write the name of the picture they created, especially if they work within a vocabulary framework, for example toys, pets, animals or transport, although, admittedly, this would put a kind of a harness on the creative thinking here.
In an Art lesson, this activity can be connected with any artist who liked shapes for example Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian, El Lissitzky or even Picasso. Apart from the main art project, there would also be an input session devoted to the Artist of the Day. If you are looking for ideas, please have a look here, at Teaching English Through Art.
As a first project, this lesson was a wonder (and please forgive me blowing my own trumpet here!). The kids got the idea and they really took to it. Everyone interpreted the task in their own way and created some lovely pictures, some of which are an inspiration for me as a teacher, for example to draw the shape first and use the shapes to create a proper collage or to make a list of all the shapes necessary beforehand, in order to facilitate and to promite the Thinking Time stage of the project. Please make sure you have a look at the examples below.
The kids got involved in the project, even though there were a few who were slightly reluctant in the beginning. However, as soon as it became obvious that, really, all ideas are good ideas, they started to work on their projects.
The next time I do this project, I will make sure I prepare my own model. I was planning to do it but then the teaching day started and I simply forgot. It would have helped with the instructions and the whole project, including the counting of the numbers and the final presentation.
As regards the choice of the resources, it seems that it was also a good idea to go for a more exciting type of craft paper, as regards the gloss, the texture, the print or a mixture of these. It really adds up to the success of the project. It might be also a good idea to consider an A3 paper for the base, the A4 might be a bit limiting, although A3 is definitely a more tricky size to carry around, to take home or, even, to put up on the wall.
It really was a way for all the kids to exercise their creativity and I am very proud of my students. Some of the creations are simply brilliant and they helped me learn something new about my students. It is also a signal for me to use more of these activities.
Some noteworthy examples of creativity from my kids
This is Lena who was the student to plan her project properly, out of her own accord. She prepared a list of ingredients necessary and, as you can see it does not quite match the number of the shapes used. We fixed it later, after the photo was taken, by writing: circles: 3 + 3 etc.
This is Sergey who decided to take a completely different route and to create a proper work of art, made of hearts only and with a red pencil which is also glued to the paper.
This is Sasha, who was initially very uninspired by the task as he prefers listening. However, after a while, he figured out how to combine the two. He drew an ice-cream cone and then, once it was ready, he came to choose his shapes. This is a lovely approach and I will definitely be using it in the future!
This is a beautiful example of how creative kids can get. Sasha, whose most favourite thing in the world are horses, found a way of creating a horse with the shapes we had. It shows a high level of development of symbolic representation as well as creativity. We see a horse in it hence it is a horse.
This is a picture by Nicol, quite simple one, just a house, we might say, but it is just wonderful because of the paper used and because of the consistent use of hears as windows.
And another wonderful picture, a bear, in which Sasha, decided to use a variety of techniques, including drawing and elements of origami to create a 3D eyes and muzzle for the bear.
This example comes from Sasha, who decided to go for a seemingly simple design of a structure, made of only four shapes. However, it was nothing but simple! The big blue square is in fact glued expertly along three edges to create a pocket into which the small blue rectangle could be put in and taken out. Sasha was extremely proud of his example and I was proud of him.
Please make sure you read the previous post in the series here. Here is the week 3 post and the week 4 post here.
Starting the lesson
Nothing has changed here. We continued doing everything the way we did last week but I did notice (with joy) that this week it all went smoothly and that all the kids were answering smoothly and without my support, gestures and hints, even when it was the school admin who came in to check the attendance officially which normally takes place in lesson 1 and which sometimes overlaps with my roll call.
How do you feel today?
This stage of the lesson didn’t change at all in the previous week either. On the one hand, I was a bit guilty about not introducing any new phrases / adjectives but, only other hand, it is not bad that some elements stay exactly as they were, not to overload the kids. I am definitely planning to introduce them in the upcoming week.
Songs
As regards the new songs, yes, we do have some! First of all, Who took the cookie from the cookie jar is now officially a game and students themselves remind me of it. First we go over all the structures and gestures (the set displayed in the video) and we watch the video together and ‘rehearse’ singing. Afterwards, we play together and it is lovely to see how the kids get involved. Generally, the idea is that we play in a chain and the last student ever is the ‘kangaroo’ who took the cookie, however, it did happen a few times that the kids themselves decided to own up to having taken the cookies, in the middle of the game and we just accepted it and played on. What is more, one of my students, went out to the cloakroom and brought back his jar of cookies to be used as a prompt while his turn came. He also promised to share the cookies with the class during the break which was sweet and it made every happy. It was also great to see that the kids picked up on the melody and the structure and we made the first attempt at our own version of the chant…
I also wanted another song for numbers and I found this one, from the Singing Walrus: Count 10 – 100, in a slighlty upgraded version. ‘I can count to 20’ was a huge success, not only because of the easy lyrics but also because of a simple dance routine and that is why I decided to create a similar one for the other song. I will not dare to include a video here and the decription will be muddled, I fear. The main idea is that there is one arm movement for each number and we end up with waving our arms joyfully for ‘one hundred’. I am happy to say that it has worked very well and now we have to educational brain breaks for the Maths lesson.
A special bonus is the third song from Pete the Cat. To find out more about, please scroll down.
Another lovely realisation was the fact that my students chant and sing the songs during the breaks, out of their own accord, and even at home. As one of my education parents said ‘Who took the cookie is a very dangerous song! Sasha sings it all the time at home!’ Music to my ears!
Rules and Classroom Language
We have been revising all the classroom verbs and phrases we introduced in the previous week and we devoted one of the English lessons to introduce and to drill some more advanced classroom language that included
Can I go to the toilet, please?
Can I drink some water, please?
I sit nicely.
I listen to the teacher.
I am a good friend.
I have a question.
We have a poster for each, with the phrase and a picture and I came up with a gesture for each of them. We introduced them, we drilled them, we played a few movement games and we came up with a chant, too. There was a handout, too. The posters are on the wall and we start with reading them in the beginning of each lesson.
I wanted to introduce two more (‘I ask if I can take something’ and ‘I ask if I can write on the board’) but they turned out to be too complex for coming up with a gesture and to repeat and I need to rephrase them.
I am also compiling a list of a few more sentences for us to start using, some of them based on the classroom procedures, some of them based on the students’ behaviour that we will need to work on.
Rewards chart
As I mentioned last week, I changed the list from the board to a small whiteboard because, first of all, I need the board for other things and, second of all, it is easier to carry my mini whiteboard with me around the classroom.
Another interesting thing happened. One of my groups (9 kids) is already at the point when they don’t need a rewards’ chart. They are involved, they want to study and, although they are still kids and they have their crazies, these do not require any real intervention and it is easy to deal with them only through reminding them of the rules. So far so good.
My other group (12 kids) are a bit more rowdy and I have two troubled souls there and the rewards’ chart works really well for them as a reminder of what we want and what we don’t want, together with the rules. We had at least two very tricky situations but we are dealing with them and I am hoping that my tricks, the help from the school psychologist and the parents will help me work on all of that.
Time
We continue using the clock and I noticed that more of my students get a better understanding of the clock and the lesson time versus the break time. The only thing that I added to the lesson time is also a small box with the number that the big hand of the clock needs to reach.
The lesson plan I mentioned in the first episode of this series worked much better and more effectively this week. I used it in almost all the lessons in the previous week. It worked very well with 1A who already have their favourite Maths game and who try to include it in all the lessons as the final point. One of my students actually remembered the name and he made an effort to remember how to write it from memory in order to be able to add it to our plan.
Story
Traditionally now, Thursday (my last day of the week) is a story day in English. This week I decided to introduce the kids to Pete the Cat and specifically to ‘I am rocking in my school shoes’.
I love this story for many reasons:
Pete the Cat is cool and apart from the narrative and the dialogues, it includes songs and they are cook, rock songs, a nice addition to the very kiddie-like Super Simple, for example.
This particular story includes about seven or eight verbs in the Present Continous, related to the activities in the school (I am playing, I am reading, I am writing, I am adding, I am painting, I am sitting, I am eating, etc). I decided we really need them in order to describe what we are doing and to check that everyone is on the task (‘Sasha, are you writing?’) etc. This is a topic that is very easy to introduce, you can play Abracadabra and have a low-prep movement game and, very soon, we will be able to use it to tell stories.
The story also includes the names of the places in the school which I want to focus on in the upcoming week and have the kids use them, after I have labelled all the doors in the school in English.
So far, we introduced the game and practised the verbs in a game, we watched the story and try to sing the song and we had a small reading / drawing task (‘I am eating’ + add your own noun). As a surprise, kids also got a Pete the Cat colouring page to do at home. Naturally, Pete the Cat is coming back next week.
Socialising
These are the things we did in the previous week to faciliate the community building:
more students’ help with giving out and collecting back resources (handouts, markers, glue, notebooks) and with cleaning the board
some opportunities for making a choice: ‘Which song do you want to sing?’, ‘Which game do you want to play?’. I also tried ‘choose the next student’ but they are still too shy and it did not work very well. I nominated instead.
I kept an eye on the kids interacting with each other and I also started a journal for both groups, to keep track of these observations (related both to progress and to behaviour and socialising). I plan to add notes to it only once a week. I noticed some new friendships forming, between girls, between boys and in mixed groups, I noticed kids playing together and collaborating during the breaks and during the outdoor time. I noticed Sasha sharing his cookies with the whole group, although social skills are not his strong point yet or the kids policing each other during some lessons.
Creativity
This was only our second week but I decided to include some creative tasks in Maths or in Science and it turned out that this is exactly what the kids needed. We did three of those: a plasticine model of a plant (Science), making a book with plant types (Science) and a real project in Maths ‘Let’s make something out of shapes’ All of them were very successful. How do I know? Right after the kids saw the finished product and the resources, I got flooded with the same question coming from 12 or 9 different directions in the classroom: ‘Can we take it home?’ and although I would love to put these beautiful creations on the walls, I gave up. I collect all the other handouts and put them in their portfolios, here, I did not have a heart. Everything beautiful went home. I only took photos.
Teacher
This is only very much Anka-relevant and it might not work or be important for all the other teachers in the world. I decided to take a note here, though, to remember and to see how these things will be changing because they also affect how we work as a group and how I feel, too.
We finally have the internet connected in both classrooms so I can use a much wider variety of resources, powerpoints, videos, songs as well as all of the online resources. This has an impact on the variety and it helps to keep the kids’ attention and focus.
I am not very happy (as in: AT ALL) with the tables which are ‘the typical tables in the classroom’, in three rows of four. I hate these rows and because I share the classroom with the L1 teachers, I cannot move them freely. Not only because they are a bit on the heavy side but also because some of the breaks in-between the classes are short and there is no time to reorganise the room before I leave it. I am not sure. I am thinking.
The other issue related to the fact that I am in two classrooms is this: I am in two classrooms which means that I am in none and I am slowly turning into a Mary Poppins, only not with a bag but with a set of boxes that are my treasure chests, boxes that I carry around…Much as it is true that my arms need some toning and some workout and it might actually be beneficial for me, it is another thing that gets on my nerves. I cannot change the set-up, I will be sharing and moving around, but I think I have a solution. I just need to reserach it.
As regards, the resources, in general, I am better organised and that makes me happy.
The academic year has started and this September I have found myself with a new group of children, in a new school and, in general, in a completely new environment. It is a bit of a whirlwind and how else? Greenday’s song with the most amazing title and line ‘Wake me up when September ends’ was not written for teachers but it surely feels like it was. However, primary school kids, a new academic year and a new course means only one thing: working on the new class routine. This still stands true.
All of it might a blessing in disguise. A teeny tiny bit uncomfortable because I am literally out of my comfort zone (and my classroom) but how beneficial! Instead of bringing the kids into my world and my kingdom (aka my classroom), I get to take what I know and believe in and to organise a new world and a new kingdom (and a classroom!) accordingly. These new circumstances are an interesting opportunity for me to reconsider what the class routine means for me, what are its main elements and how they can be translated into a new environment.
I decided to keep a diary of the first month to see what is going on and this way create a mini-series on the blog.
Starting the lesson
Where I teach at the moment, the kids have their classroom and they can go in and out of the classroom, outside of the lesson time, whenever they want. For that reason, we cannot do the line-up outside that I like so much. What is more, the school does not have any bells or any signal system as there are primary and pre-primary classes, with a slightly different timetable and that means that anything ringing for one would be a distraction for the other. However, that also means that we have no official start of the lesson.
For that reason, as soon as it is time to start the lesson:
I put the hands up and we count down from 10 to 0, while I am counting on my fingers to give the kids a few seconds to calm down
We exchange hellos (‘Hello everyone!’, ‘Hello, Miss Anka’)
We do the roll call (‘Let’s check who’s in today!’ ‘Sasha?’ ‘Here’) – this is not only for me to mark everything in the register and to learn and to practise the names of all my kids (after two days, I already remember all of them, phew). This is also for me to check who is sitting where (as this can change) and we connect it with ‘checking’ that everyone’s names are on the board which is especially important for the kids who do not yet recognise their name in English.
How do you feel today
This was something that I knew I wanted to be a part of our routine from the very beginning and for many reasons, too. It is always a good idea to gauge the mood of the audience, regardless of the age or level and I like to know how my students are feeling on the day but it seems to be especially important for the younger kids in the beginning of the course and super super important for the year 1 students who are getting used to the routine and who are also getting used to being away from mum. All these emotions can help with dealing with different behaviour issues and they will be necessary to help the kids develop empathy towards their classmates. Plus, a lot of useful language that we will need to tell stories.
Anyway, we started the week with the six basic ones (happy, sad, angry, scared, sleepy, OK) but more adjectives and phases followed and by the end of the week we also had ‘hungry’, ‘tired’, ‘thirsty’, ‘not so good’, ‘energetic’ and, suggested and created by one of the kids, ‘I miss my mummy’ (in the photo above). Which, by the way, is an absolute treasure – my student not only noticed the need for this flashcard / emotion, he decided to share it and to produce the card following the conventions of the genre (aka all the cards I produced), including the colour, the size, the style and the choice of the symbols. He also insisted on my writing the English version of it and on displaying it on the board. And you know what? He read the audience exceedingly well! This is now one of the most popular way of answering the question…
I have them all on very simple foam flashcards and they are displayed on the board in the beginning of the first lesson. We go over all of them, ‘reading’ them and using the accompanying gestures i.e. even if the flashcard has only ‘happy’ written on it, we say ‘I am happy’ and I demonstrate the gesture for that.
Afterwards, I ask all the kids, in turns, ‘How do you feel today?’ and the kids answer. This stage is followed up by a song, which we sing together and which creates a nice balance, an individual task / production followed up by a group, choral activity. At this point we are using ‘Hello Song‘ from Super Simple Song.
We also write on the board the following: the day, the date, the weather, the subject and the time slot.
Songs
We have only started the course so there aren’t many songs that we know or that we have managed to choose as our favourites. However, I try to include songs as punctuation marks because we have a long day and although the kids get their snack and movement breaks, they still need some stirrer in the middle of the lesson. So far we have included the following: A is for Apple (English), I can count to 20 (Maths) and Who Took the Cookie from the Cookie Jar (as our final game in the Maths lesson, which, at this point, is the end of the English day. This will have to change in the following week).
Rules and Classroom Language
Speaking of rules, I think I have broken a few myself. I HAVE NOT introduced any rules in the first week. The teacher and the trainer in me are appalled at such a negligence. Or, rather, they should have been but they are not. Oups, sorry not sorry.
As I said, I am in a new environment and I decided to act on my intuition and now, after the first week is over, I am actually having a blast trying to analyse what I did and what I did not and why.
I introduced a few basic gestures – expressions in the first lesson and we have been revising these since but I have chosen only the few basic ones that help us navigate around the lesson and the classroom and these are: Yes, No, Stand up, Sit down, Stop, Quiet, Wait. A very, very basic set indeed, to help us survive but not to overload the children.
As regards the actual rules, things to do and things not to do, I took things easy because I wanted to see the kids first, to observe them and to analyse them in order to figure out what are those 5 basic rules that we need first. Again, to help us survive but not to overload the children. Now I know and we are going to be introducing them in the upcoming week, together with more advanced classroom language.
Rewards chart
Our rewards chart was another area that I started to introduce rather cautiously, almost hoping that I can get away with not using it at all. Alas, after two days it turned out that we will need it after all, as one of the tools to help the kids regulate their own behaviour. I am planning to use it temporarily only. I have already written about this kind of an approach and about all of the advantages and disadvantages of rewards charts in general. If you are interested, please follow the link here.
So far I have been using the names on the board, however, because of many different reasons, from tomorrow, we are starting with the hand-held chart.
Time
This is a brand new element that I did not use to think of much before or to include in the routine framework. Until this summer and until this academic year. Here are the two tools / tricks that we have used this week with my kids.
Lesson plan, or, a list of activities we are planning to cover in class. You can read more about it here. The points keep disappearing as we complete the activities. This helps the kids see the passing of the lesson and to manage their time and behaviour in time. Naturally, all the elements such as ‘songs’ or ‘games’ create something to look forward to in the later stages of the lesson
A clock on the wall: we started the week without a clock and I lasted two days, upset, confused and angry. This is how I realised that Anka, the teacher adores a clock on the wall, to start and to finish the lesson on time and to understand how and if the pace of the lesson needs to be adapted. On day three the clocks were already on the wall and we used them for the benefit of the kids. One of the things that we put on the wall is the names of the subject (English, Maths, ect) and the time slot of the lesson, for example 9:00 – 9:45. Afterwards, I say: the lesson finishes when the big hand gets to number 9 on the clock, while pointing to the hand and the numbers on the clock. I have noticed that children started to respond to that. We will continue.
Story
I have also decided that our last lesson of the week (Thursday) will be a story lesson, in order to finish the week on a high note, to do something lighter and to be able to take advantage of everything that a storybook can offer. This past week my story of choice was ‘Too Loud’ a story by Kay Widdowson about a cat mum who walks through the garden asking everyone, bees, frogs, dogsg and ducks, to keep quiet and only in the end do we find out that it is because her kittens are sleeping and she doesn’t want them to wake up.
We used the story to practise reading the names of animals, CVC words and not and to read and the kids were involved through the phrase ‘Stop. You are too loud’. This phrase is an adaptation of the line that features in the story, although I adapted it a little bit. I decided to use only ‘too loud’ instead of ‘too loud’ and ‘too noisy’ and I have developed it into a full sentence that we can use in the classroom on daily basis.
Socialising
Turning a group (or a class) into a community is a long-term project that will take us a large part of the academic year. I have already written a bit about it here. We have already started to work on it and in the first week:
we have done a lot of activities whole class, to give us all a sense of one organism
I have tried to use the kids’ names whenever possible and to keep them on display all the time, to give us all a chance to learn them. We have also done a few rounds of ‘Can you read that name?’
we have tried to play a boardgame, for me to see to what extent the kids are ready to take turns, to obey the rules, to work in small pairs
I have been observing how different kids work and interact with different partners although they hasn’t been a lot of mingling yet because I did not want to introduce anything mess-inducive before the kids are ready.
we have worked a lot with markers because it is fun and markers are an easier writing tool but it also helped with the simple team work as the groups of two or three students were given a box of markers to share and to take care of
I have started to involve the children into taking control of the classroom and the lesson i.e. inviting them to be the teacher, assigning a student to give out and to collect resources.
Don’t forget to check out the next episode in the series, at the end of the week! There is more to come! Here you can find the story of week 2, week 3 and week 4. You can also check up on us after four months in the classroom. Here is the newest addition to the series.
(Notes from the Back to School September 2023 webinar at BKC Moscow)
The aims?
Since I believe in leading by example, also here I decided to verbalise the aims for this webinar and for this post. I knew that I would have a mixed-ability audience, with some experienced and some less experienced teachers who might have or might have not used stories in their lessons. For that reason, I chose two main aims for this session:
For those teachers who have little or no experience with storytelling in the classroom (or little or no love for storytelling in the classroom): to provide the basic tools that will help them get started
For those teachers who already have a lot of experience with storytelling in the classroom (or a lot of love for storytelling): to bring in a new angle which will help to reinforce this love
What is a story and why we even bother
A structure of a story it is super simple. Rob Bisenbach calls it a three-legged stool here, since there are always characters who have a goal they try to reach and, on the way there, they encounter some obstacles or get over some challenges or, basically, who have some adventures. Everything else is an added value, like a set of blocks that you can add, take away or rearrange. I like this approach to and it does help me with preparing the materials for my students.
The best thing is that our life, our private life, our non-teaching life, is all built around stories. We read, watch and listen to stories in form of books, audiobooks and films and series. We tell stories of what happened to us at work, at school or just something that we witnessed on the metro or in the street. We tell stories to share our feelings, to make people smile, to make the little people fall asleep or to eat lunch. If we look for even a wider context, our family’s history is a story, our nation’s history is a story, everything that we read about on the news, the serious bits and the less serious bits, everything is a story.
No wonder then something that is such an important part of our life made its way into the EFL classroom, for children and for adults. Two years ago I gave myself a task of counting all the reasons that there might be to bring a story into the kids’ classroom and, based on what I could get my hands on in 2021, I found as many as 50, some related to child development, some related to teaching foreign languages. You can find this post here. I do recommend!
Different types of stories and their advantages (and all the tricky bits)
Coursebook stories: This is the place to start from all the teachers who have not worked much with storytelling with young learners. From the point of view of the leaners, these stories are easily availalbe, they often include the favourite characters who the kids can follow throughout the entire year and the language in terms of structures and lexis is carefully chosen and consistent with the material covered in each unit. On the other hand, these stories are also very teacher-friendly because they come with a set of instructions and ideas. Even if they are not ideal, they are a great starting point for adaptation and development. Our coursebooks also provide for a good variety of stories. Superminds from CUP for example include the following: cartoons (print and video versions), action stories for the younger kids and real, extensive reading stories for the more advanced primary school kids.
Traditional stories: They are a little bit more challenging, for both parties but they also have a lot of advantages. In many ways, these stories are already available to our students. It is quite likely that they have already heard them, watched them or read them in their L1 as the Little Red Riding Hood, the Enormous Turnip or Jack and the Beanstalk are a part of the world culture and bringing them into the lesson, in a different language version will be welcomed with joy. However, the beautiful and rich language, that is the main benefit of using these stories is also the biggest challenge in the context of the EFL or ESL young learners. More often than not, children would have to rely on their memories as a lot of the story will not be available to them. Consequently, these stories require more adaptation and grading and, in general, more work since these stories are not accompanied by ‘How to’ manuals and teacher’s books.
Phonics stories: This is another type of a story that was created not for the second/ foreign language learner but simply for a child learning to read. The language of these stories, although very often simplified and handpicked, focused on certain sounds and phonics, might still be beyond a regular young learner beginner learner. However, the teachers still use them because of their potential for the literacy skills’ development although it means more work and more careful lesson planning and staging on the part of the teacher.
Storybooks: There are many advantages of using storybooks with YL. These are the real stories, written for children and their plot is not limited by the set of the words that need to be introduced in unit 5, which, unfortunately, often makes the story very educational and, consequently, very boring. Storybooks are far from this danger zone. They use beautiful language, great characters and fantastic illustrations which can help develop not only the children’s language but also their visual literacy and literary tastes. It is true that, again, a lot of work might be required to adapt the langauge and the plot to make it available for our EFL/ESL students. Not to mention that the handouts and teachers’ books don’t exist, either so teachers are basically on their own. However, as a teacher who had an opportunity to see the long-term impact of these stories being present in the YL classroom, I can say that it is absolutely worth it.
There are some earlier posts on using storybooks in the EFL classroom and you can find them here
My favourite storybooks to have in the classroom, Top 10
Choosing a storybook for your EFL classroom, My experience
Videos: That is an interesting resource that was not available to us in the past and that has definitely blossomed since the time of the pandemic. There are certain limitations regarding the language, the support for the teacher but it is a resource that is readily available for the teachers and for the students and their parents and that is almost unlimited. Teachers often like to use Peppa (that most kids are familiar with), Pete the Cat or the Little Princess. I have so far committed only one post on Peppa and you can find it here.
YLE Cambridge
If the fact that stories are everpresent in our life is one important reason to bring stories into our lesson, then the Young Learners Exams are another. All of the modern coursebooks are aligned with the YLE skills and requirements, they offer skills development in the format of the exam and even if we do not prepare our students for taking the exams we will be developing their language skills in some connection with the papers format.
The exams themselves were introduced in 1997 and since then, as a conference presenter, a teacher, a trainer and a manager, I have often come across comments (doubts, inquiries or even accusations) that the exams were introduced for purely mercenary reasons and that children should not be exposed to any formal assessment at that age.
For me, personally, the main benefit of the YLE Cambridge is the research that was done and has been done in order to find out what being a young language learner is about and how chilren’s language skills can be tested in an appropriate way. And it was done not in connection with a group of students from only one L1 background but around the world which means that by analysing a lot of date, the L1-influence can be taken out of equation, helping us understand how children learn. Here is only one number for you: the initial versions of the tests were trialled on a group of 5000 children from Europe, South America and South-East Asia. If you are interested, please have a look at the Research Notes published by Cambridge online in February 2002.
Stories feature in three exams, starting from a very simple picture-based reading and writing task for Starters, through Movers, up to Flyers, with a real extensive reading and a reading comprehension task, a writing and a telling of a story based on a set of visuals. The storytelling tasks are included in the KET writing task.
The language
This is, by far, the most important reasons to use stories in the classroom: the language.
In order to tell a story, the students need to be able to operate quite a few structures such as the present or past tenses, adjectives, emotion adjectives, adverbs, linking words, time and sequence words, sensory words as well as the functional language in the dialogue. This means that the students need to possess all these skills to tell a story which, in turns, means that for quite a long time, for some of the levels, the students will not be able to do it. Or will they?
I do believe (and I will try to prove it:-) that storytelling is not only the aim in itself, it can also be an approach, and these structures can be introduced in order to enable the students to participate in storytelling as soon as it is possible.
For example, as regards adjectives, according to curriculum, the beginner students are not required to know any, apart from a few basic ones. The real adjectives input is scheduled for the A1 level (Movers) when the kids encounter comparatives and superlatives for the first time, although adjectives are around us and the meaning can be easily presented and practised because they are representational.
Far from being a call to action to change the curriulum, it is possible to introduce a lot of this language much earlier, in a way that is appropriate for young language learners.
I have already written about something that I called The Storytelling Campaign. You can read about it here: Introduction and here: Activities. Below, you will find the ideas as I presented them in our webinar.
Introducing adjectives: emotionsand not only
These are very easy to introduce. With our pre-school and primary school students, we start with the basic set of happy, sad, angry but then, as we go through the year, more and more adjectives are added. The photos that you can see here illustrate the set of adjectives that I use with my online YL and a set of homemade flashcards for our pre-primary. This second photo was taken in December, after only three months of classes with my youngest pre-primary and at the time they already knew all these 12 adjectives only because we started each lesson with talking about how we feel.
The other source of language as regards adjectives are the songs, from Super Simple Songs and other channels on youtube, for example Open Shut Them or As quiet as a mouse.
All of these can be used in the following way:
talking about how we feel in the beginning of the lesson, it is good for the language, for bonding but also for the teacher to find out how the kids are in class
this is the langauge that can help to signal problems, when kids are not feeling very well (‘I am sad’, ‘Are you angry?’)
and it can help sort out other classroom management issues (‘Look, Sasha is sad now. Don’t take her pencils, please’)
adjectives can be used to make riddles and to express opinion and this way personalise the content
adjectives can be used in simple Yes No game to describe any picture to prepare the kids for the listening or reading task or to practise vocabulary, for example: ‘The cat is sad. Yes or no? No, the cat is happy’
and this is exactly the same structure and approach that will be used to describe the pictures that are a part of a story (see: Movers or Flyers)
This is another topic that, in my opinion, is not really used to its full potential in our coursebooks. For that reason, I like to introduce games and activities that promote the use of verbs. From the very first lesson we play a movement game (‘Abracadabra, 123 you are (dancing)’ and ‘Everybody is dancing’). I also introduce the verbs through the songs, for example What do you like to do, I like you and Please be quiet, I am trying to sleep. Sometimes I introduce them because of our curriculum, for example the third song here that covers Present Continous and the rooms of the house. Sometimes, they feature in our course just because they are a source of a plethora of verbs and this is how we learn them before Present Simple or Present Continuous make an appearance as per curriculum.
In the classroom, apart from the obvious advantages for classroom and behaviour management, as it is an easy to use stirrer, we can also use these structures to describe any pictures, which, again, is a preparation for storytelling with visuals.
The illustrations above come from the YLE Cambridge sample papers and they can easily be used in class, not only as the actual exam practice activity and not only with the children who are actually preparing for Starters. The story is so obvious and funny (and it includes all there elements of a story mentioned above) and the visuals simple enough for the pre-primary students to use, too. If they are prepared for it and if the activity is properly staged.
In the beginning the teacher is the one to initiate the structure either by making incorrect sentences (Mummy is eating. Yes or No) or by proving the sentence starters (Mummy is…) but, with time, the kids get more and more independence and skills. Actually, this activity can start wtih kids looking only at one picture before they are shown the whole sequence. And, bearing in mind that the teacher is the one to select the picture (or pictures) for the activity, it is really easy to choose a particular focus, closely connected to the topic of the lesson, for example talking about toys, talking about clothes, talking about food etc.
A simple story can be created even if only one picture is available, like the one above that also comes from YLE and is, in fact, a reading task, this picture can also become the basis for a story. We can see a beautiful family scene, a Sunday afternoon and everyone is doing something and feeling something. The first step is a simple picture description. The second step is figuring out what all the characters do next. ‘Next, mummy is drinking tea’, ‘Next, daddy is sleeping’ etc and here the kids can become a lot more creative. Naturally, all ideas are good ideas.
One more way of using this approach would be using not the visuals but the sets of words, like the one we have in Movers Reading and Writing part 1 or in Flyers Reading and Writing part 1. The teacher would only need to add some introduction, just like in Movers and Flyers story speaking. Kids need to continue the story and they need to use the words provided. I came up with this idea only while preparing the webinar and I am really looking forward to trialling it out with my students. Above, you can see my example from the webinar.
Introducing linking words
Simple linking words such as ‘because’, ‘and’, ‘but’ and ‘so’ can also be introduced as part of the traditional curriculum for pre-school or primary students.
‘Because’ is the one that we start using in the first half of year 1. It can be included in the hello circle when the students talk about how they are (‘How are you today?’ ‘I am happy’ ‘Because…’) and start giving simple justification for their adjectives. ‘I am happy because it is sunny / because it is Friday / because I have a little homework’. It might happen that the kids will start to answer in their L1 or in a mix of L1 and L2, but it is perfectly fine. First of all, I like to know why my students are happy or sad or angry because it might have an impact on their behaviour in class. Second of all, it helps me to react to their news and to bond.
‘Because’ can also be used while describing pictures or while expressing opinion in a simple way (‘Do you like this story / song / picture?’ ‘Yes, because it is happy / funny / fast etc’)In the beginning, this has to be initiated and supported by the teacher, with the sentence starters or with offering a few options for the answer. It also helps when the teacher acts as a model (‘I am happy because my lunch was yummy’).
‘And‘ is even an easier linker to promote. First of all, it can be demonstrated and supported with gestures (i.e. fingers, to signal more than one element). Second of all, it can be used with any vocabulary, colours, toys, food or emotions (‘I am happy AND beautiful’).
‘But’, by comparison, poses a bigger challenge but it is not impossible. With some of my groups in the past, I used the song already mentioned here (‘What do you like to do’ by Super Simple Song) because its every verse is build around a simple contrast (‘I like dancing BUT I don’t like dancing with a bear’). With some other groups, I started to introduce it with a song, too, ‘Do you like broccoli ice-cream?’, simply by adding ‘but’ for some dramatic effect in-between the lines of the story (‘Do you like ice-cream? Yes, I do’, ‘Do you like broccoli? Yes, I do’ ‘BUT do you like broccoli ice-cream?’) and the kids simply picked up on that.
The most challenging of all of these for my Movers kids turned out to be ‘so‘ as they seemed to confuse it with ‘and’. I haven’t had a chance to implement it in the classroom since it was an idea that came to my during the preparation for this webinar, but this connection could be created in a natural way between ‘I’ve got a stomach ache’ and ‘I don’t eat ice-cream’ or ‘No ice-cream today’ which we use with my pre-primary kids while talking about health and health problems. Again, one more thing to trial and test when I am teaching level 2 of pre-primary again.
As regards the story sequencing linkers such as ‘first’, ‘next’, ‘in the end’, we introduce them through exposure while telling stories based on visuals. It is one more activity that starts with the teacher being responsible for providing those and encouraging the children to follow up with the events of the story.
Staging of the story
One of the biggest challenges that the students face while telling the story is the very genre and the way we tend to present it in class. Very often, children, when they hear the word story, they automatically raise the level of challenge for themselves and they approach the task in a very serious way, hoping to create something that will at least match the creativity and the success of Harry Potter. Which, of course, is not the case. When we start telling stories in class, we are expecting something with a character, a goal and some obstacles, something with a beginning, the middle and the ending and, if we are using the YLE Cambridge materials, something that describes the three or four or five visuals provided.
Our task, as teachers, is to show the students, how this task can be broken in and managed, moving on from a very controlled practice, to freer practice, and, perhaps, eventually, to a very creative story writing or story telling.
Here is one of the approaches that I used in class effectively, based on the Flyers speaking materials.
Step 1: Collecting resources to tell the story in a simple way.
Students can work individually, in pairs or teams. They make a list of all the things they can see in each picture, starting with the basic nouns that can be seen which later can be extended into adjectives, verbs, emotions etc, anything more abstract. Afterwards, the kids, in pairs, describe the pictures (aka tell the story) with all of the words on the list, crossing them out as they use them. This is how we can ensure a good length of a discourse, especially that the teacher will be monitoring the kids as they are creating the list and the teacher can add some of the crucial words if they are missing. The students can exchange their lists and tell the story again, with a different set of words and they can also write the story for homework.
Step 2: Crazy words aka freer practice
This step is a simple development on step 1. The words on the list on the right have been provided by the teacher and, as can be seen, they do not feature in the visuals provided. Since, however, the children already know the story very well, they can be invited to take part in a more creative task. We read the words together with the whole group and I tell them ‘These words are in the story but they are not in the picture’ and we make a few examples together about the first picture, for example: ‘Students are hungry. It is 10 a.m.’, ‘Students are looking at the flowers in the garden’ etc.
Afterwards, children work in pairs and create their own story trying to incorporate all the crazy words.
Step 3: Story and its framework
This is the most creative approach in which the kids use only the general framework of the original story. After the kids tried to tell the story and tried to tell it with a few new details, they have a chance to change as much as they want to within the framwork. I prepare the main events, in the form of questions and we reveal them one by one while the students are working in pairs, thinking and planning their story. Afterwards, we have a big, whole class, storytelling session and it an absolute joy and fun to see in how many versions you can tell the story based with the same building blocks. Here, in the post on the activities in the storytelling campaign, you can find the framework for yet another Flyers story, Charlie and the elephant.
A few bonus ideas
Vyacheslav – about one more, super simple way of setting up a storytelling activity
