#eflideas

Dear Diary…My favourite activities from this year’s summer camp

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Here is a most random post of a kind that I have never tried to get involved in: one long, constantly updated, written-throughout-the-entire-summer post, with all the fun things I did in class. A kind of a Summer 2023 Diary.

A little bit of a background: this summer I am teaching at a non-residential summer camp, for primary school children that has a special curriculum and a set of materials that were prepared by the educational management team at my school. Naturally, we, the teachers, are allowed to adapt and supplement these and, naturally, I am doing a lot of that. Here are my favourite bits so far.

I really like to swim

This is a small case study in the theme of ‘How to use a song effectively to teach vocabulary and to practise a grammar structure’ and I am very happy to share it here. Here is to hoping that the framework and the pattern can be adapted and re-used with other songs.

The song that we used was the amazing Milo and ‘I like you’ from Super Simple Songs. I love this song not only because of Milo but also because it includes a long beautiful list of verbs (hobbies and activities) that, as a result of the song, become a part of the kids’ vocabulary.

We started with the vocabulay introduction, with the teacher and kids miming, drilling the verbs and the structure (I like to read books) and playing Mime&Guess, with the teacher leading the game. I didn’t have flashcards to represent all the verbs that feature in the song so I prepared a set of my own mini-flashcards. Afterwards, we worked in pairs and the kids were miming the verbs for their partner to guess, each pair with their own set of cards. This way, the kids got a chance to get ready for the song itself. We listened to it and watched the video. At this point, I was singing but I didn’t push the kids to do so. I wanted them just to watch it and to enjoy it.

The following step was a proper pairwork. Each student got their copy of the handout and they were instructed to mark the activities they liked and didn’t like with pluses and minues. When this step was ready, we paired up, compared our lists and reacted (Student A: ‘I like to count stars’, Student B: ‘Me, too / I don’t’). This was something that we had already done in our lessons so it all went quite smoothly, including re-grouping. With six kids in that group, every student had a chance to talk to three different students.

At the very end of the lesson, we played the song again and, this time, I tried to encourage the kids to sing. Today, when I am writing this post, we have had only one lesson with this song and I am convinced the next time we meet in class, the response to this song will be even more active and productive.

Elephant

This is not a new idea. I have created this activity for my English and Art classes, again, with my pre-school students. However, the interaction of salt, water and paint is interesting in itself and it has a lot of potential for the older kids, as a science experiment and it was a part of a lesson with three experiments (together with the other two mentioned here, static electricity and the rainbow Skittles / M&Ms).

We went on with the drawing just like we did with the younger students, but the version for the older students included the following: learning the names of all the ingredients involved, trying to predict what we will do and what will happen (‘We will…’, ‘It will…’), describing the experiment while it was happening (Present Continous) and assessing it afterwards and grading it on a scale from 1 – 10.

Sugar Rainbow

No matter how old they are, the kids and the adults are simply in awe when they see the rainbow in a plate. Even if they have done this experiment before. Even if they are teachers. Speaking from experience here.

This is a very well-known experiment and you can find all the details here. I have used it so far in a lesson with my super advanced primary school kids to introduce and to practise the zero conditional. This time, since it is camp, we used it as a proper science experiment. The younger levels focused on the colours, the older and the more advanced ones could predict and assess and talk about the sugar dissolving fast and slow in the hot and cold water.

My little monster

I really love the folding surprise drawings and I have used them a few times in class already, although so far it has been done mostly with pre-schoolers and the follow-up activities involved a simple presentation, saying hello and a few Q&A, depending on the structure that we were practising at the time. It was an interesting experience to try to bring into the classroom with the older and the more advanced kids.

First of all, I decided to make it more creative and instead of a drawing dictation, with all the kids following the teacher and ending up with the same puppy or kitten, we all went our ways and created the monsters we wanted. One group used the collage technique using old newspapers and markers, the other opted for creating their own drawings and, indeed, in a short period of time they were actually able to draw their own beautiful monsters.

Second of all, I wanted a lot of language to come out of it. For that reason, as soon as the monsters were were, we sat in pairs and talked about them. The lower level group focused on describing the monster using the same structure (‘My monster has got…’), in a few rounds with different partners. The more advanced group had a set of questions starters (‘Has your monster got…?’, ‘Is your monster…?’, ‘Can your monster….?’ and ‘Does your monster like….?’) and they were able to keep up the conversation for a while themselves. The only requirement from the teacher, apart from the sentence starters, was to ask 20 questions.

Storybird

Storybird is a wonderful tool to develop kids’ imagination and the love for telling stories. You have to subscribe to be able to use it extensively but if you do, you get the access to a multitude of stories written by other users and their students and, even better, the access to a multitude of illustrations by budding artists which you can use in your stories. There is also an option of the trial period so you can start playing with everything that the website has to offer without investing and then you can make a decision whether you really like it or not. As for me, I haven’t even managed to go over everything that it has to offer but I am going to tell you about the one feature that I have used many times in my classes and why I love it.

We use Storybird to encourage the kids to express themselves more freely, in writing, without the hassle of actually having to write or type, during this delicate period when the students already have something to say but they do not yet have the fluency in writing, holding the pen, typing up or, in case of some my students, they do not write in English at all because they are still in pre-school. With the use of Storybird, I select the pictures and then kids talk and the teacher (yours truly here) is their secretary with quite a reasonable WPM (word per minute) numbers.

So far, I have used it in four different formats

  • The oldest learners, in a group of 1-1s: a set of thematic pictures, with the same characters, that we look at, figure out the story, order and then tell the story, slide by slide. This can be done at any point during the course.
  • Any group of learners: a set of any pictures, as the Year Book, at the end of the academic year, with the students choosing a picture to represent themselves and they can include anything they want about themselves, as they would in a year book.
  • The younger learners in a group: a set of thematic pictures for example toys or animals in which a student chooses one for themselves and then talks about it, using a set of structures, depending on their levels and skills. Students take turns to talk to the teacher and there is also a need for a task that all the kids will be doing alongside such as a colouring page or a wordsearch
  • The younger learners 1-1: a set of thematic pictures, for example toys or animals, with a student choosing 5 or 6 or how many of their favourite and they talk about every single one of them while the teacher is typing up.

Kids talk, either producing a discourse or a narrative with dialogues, the teacher types it all up, we publish it privately, we read it together, with either the students or the teacher reading the text and then, and this is definitely the best part, the book can be pdf-ed and downloaded and shared with everyone. There are even two modes for that: a simple e-book or a craft-version, for the kids to print it and assemble it into a real book which they can later read together with their parents.

If you are curious about the final product have a look at these stories we created together with my online and offline students: The Ballerina Cat and Her Friends, Our Toys and The Circus Story.

The only thing that I have a love-hate relationship with on Storybird is that since it was not created for the EFL teachers per se, it has a huge range of illustrations sets but in a rather random order. It gives me a lot of joy to be going over them and admiring the artword BUT it is time-consuming and you can use only the illustrations of one author in a book, without the options to collate different pictures. On the plus side, there are so many different styles and approaches represented that it can be used to teach Art, too. And, once you have found your favourite bits, you can reuse them with different groups.

Apparently, the best transport in the world…

The best transport in the world

This type of a speaking activity can be adapted to any set of vocabulary. We did it with transport because that was the theme of the day but I have already tried it with animals (‘The best animal in the world’), professions (‘The best job in the world’) and cities and countries (‘The best place in the world’), with different age groups and levels. This week’s camp group were kids aged 8 and 9 who are somewhere in the A1 level, mixed ability.

Before we started the game, I introduced the question (‘Which one is better?’) and a few comparatives to use while describing different means of transport (faster, slower, louder, quieter, more beautiful, more interesting, more expensive, more dangerous) and it is important to highlight that the students already knew all of these adjectives as we used them in some of the previous lessons of the course.

There is only one resource necessary and that is either a set of flashcards in a pile, a set of word cards or even a set of the electronic flashcards such as these, anything that guarantees that the words will be coming up at random.

The teacher or the students taking turns pick up two random cards and compare them, i.e. a boat a nd a bike, answering the question ‘Which one is better?’, they justify their answers and choose the one. Then we proceed to another random pair and so on, until we go through all the cards. The ‘winners’ or ‘the better ones’ in each pair are kept separately as they have qualified for round 2. The activity continues until there is one winner, the best transport in the world.

There are a few variations to the activity, for example, with bigger classes, the students can be divided into smaller groups and they can do the whole activity on their own, choosing their best trainsport. As the whole class feedback, the groups present their results or they can have the final of the finals. Another solution is diving the cards among the groups and having them run the qualifiers for the whole class debate to choose the winner. For the classes where the students don’t know each other very well or when they do not quite get on with the group, to avoid any kind of competition or peer pressure, the final stage can be replaced with choosing your Top Three, individually. Last but not least, there is the option of extending the activity into choosing the worst of the worst from among ‘the losers’. That is also a lot of fun.

transparent background toys clipart – Clip Art Library (clipart-library.com)

Colouring dictation

I am pretty sure I have already described this activity somewhere here because I have been using it successfully for ages but this summer I am revisiting it and with a lot of joy, too.

Preparing the activity is very simple as you need only a picture to colour with a copy for each student and a few sets of pencils, crayons or markers, one per pair. As for pictures, I usually use the YLE Cambridge Starters, Movers and Flyers listening materials (without the audio) or, even better, the black and white clip art. Googling ‘toys’ or ‘zoo animals’ or ‘clothes’ will give you a nice set of pictures. If there are some more complicated and less common words, I create my own pictures, also with the black and white clip art.

The more important aspect here is the setting up of the activity as its success (maximising production) will depend on it. I start with putting the students into pairs and assigning roles (‘a teacher’ and ‘a student’). Afterwards, I give out the copy and the pencils but only to the students as they will be the ones working hard.

The next step is modelling. In an ideal world the real teacher can do it with one of the stronger students, at the board: The teacher says ‘The rocket is green’ and the student colours the rocket green, then they continue with the other toys. ‘The teacher’ is the one making all the decisions, the student is listening and colouring. That’s the ideal world. I have had classes in which it was necessary to have a round of the teacher starting the activity in all the pairs, one by one and only later monitoring. It is not the most efficient as some pairs will be just waiting (and only possibly obsesrving) but it has been the most effective way of setting it up with new groups and students who have never worked in pairs before (yes, they do exist).

The students continue speaking, listening and colouring for some time and then they swap roles. They can continue colouring the same picture or the teacher can give out another set of copies. It is important to note that not all the items have to be coloured in. The roles swap can take place after 5 minutes, for example, depending on the group and the remaining items, toys, animals or clothes, can be coloured in later on. The kids can finish the picture in any way they want, without their partner’s instructions.

The best thing about this activity is that it can be done with even the lowest levels as the structure used is pretty simple but it gives everyone a chance to practise the key vocabulary and to listen and to speak. There is another way of extending it, in the feedback stage. Since all the kids will have a different picture, with different colours, they can share what they have either in a whole class feedback (Teacher: My giraffe is green and yellow. S1: My giraffe is pink. S2: My giraffe is yellow. etc) or, with another partner after they have been regrouped. A lot of production:-))

astronaut clipart – Clip Art Library (clipart-library.com)

My astronaut passport

This is the lesson that I designed while trying to come up with an activity that could become a fun project lesson, something else than just a poster or a role-play. It is not my original idea, I have come across these online but I needed something that would be feasible with a group of primary beginners.

The main idea of the project is a kind of a role-play in which one student interviews the other in the format of a test. Our days was space-themed and that is why the kids were taking a test for an astronaut, answering the questions about themselves and about their skills (‘Can you…?’) because this was our target language on the day. However, this can be adapted to many topics such as a test for a traveller / explorer, a test for an athlete, a test for a student of English and so on.

I was considering a few different set-ups for this activity but since my group was a mixed ability group, my two strongest students did a lot of interviewing, with the kids taking turns to come up to the table to answer the questions and to demonstrate their skills. In the end, they also interviewed each other. All the kids who completed the test, were getting their passports with a stamp and they could sit down to decorate and to colour them. In the end, we had a small awards ceremony, with the appropriate music and applause.

I was happy because everyone really did practise the language and the kids were very excited about completing the tests successfully. So excited, in fact, that during the follwing lessons, on seeing some templates in my hands, they would ask again and again whether we would be doing the passports again. If you are planning a similar lesson, you can find my template here.

Going shopping

There is a separate post describing this activity and the resources necessary. You can find it here.

Making instruments and making music

This activity and this lesson has also become a post. You can find it here

Monster bookmarks

Again, there is a separate post devoted to these beauties. You can find it here.

To be continued…

Happy Teaching!

5 times when a piece of paper made a difference (in the EFL classroom)

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The EFL classroom, just like the Mary Poppins’ bag, is full of the little pieces that to other people might be just random junk but to the teachers of young learners, they are the true gems and the amazing, life-saving fireworks. This post today includes only 5 of them, something old, something blue, something borrowed, something blue or, in the EFL words, something for production, something for games, something for classroom management…Because sharing is caring.

One: paper hearts

You need: a set of small colourful cardboard cards, which stand for ‘I like’ (the colour side) and ‘I don’t like’ (the side with a small cross).

You will need these to encourage the kids to start expressing opinions. The hearts are used as a symbolic representation of the structure when it is introduced, they are used in all the handouts, even with the youngest kids, but they really start working when the students can physically hold them and use them to react to express opinions by showing the appropriate side of the heart, depending on their opinion. First come the gestures and the symbols, then the language itself and then the hearts become unnecessary because the kids are ready to just talk about the things they like and those that they don’t. It works amazingly well with small groups and it works even better with the bigger groups because all the kids can talk at the same time and the teacher gets the immediate group feedback with all the hearts up into the air.

Two: Little random word cards

You need: a set of regular small cards with the key vocabulary from the unit. They can be handwritten or printed. For the younger kids these are replaced with a set of mini-flashcards, with the images and the text or only the images.

You can: use them in a variety of games to practise vocabulary such as: riddles (make a definition to guess the word), questions (ask a question with the word for your partner to answer), similar or different (taking two words at a time to look for similarities between them), categories (with students grouping the words in any way they want), random stories (telling stories with the words taken out of the pile in a random order) or testing each other (to check the meaning or spelling of certain words) or pelmanism if there are two sets of words per group or pair. Anything for more vocabulary practice and use.

Three: Faces

You need: a set of cardboard circles with emoticons for them. The disposable paper plates work amazingly well here, too.

You can use them during the hello circle to help the kids answer the question ‘How are you today?’ as they are allowed to manipulate the cards while talking to the teacher. We also use them all the time while telling stories to help illustrate all the emotions involved and while working with any visuals that accompany listening or reading activities in the coursebook. The emotion flashcards can also come in handy with different behaviour issues. Knowing the words such as ‘angry’, ‘sad’ or ‘ill’ can really come in handy in many class situations.

Four: Stars

You need: a set of cardboard stars, cut out of regular or, if you are really fancy, out of some colourful cardboard paper, and some blutack or magnets. In a super upgraded version these cardboard stars can have a piece of magnetic sheet glued to them (aka this is how we recycle the merch magnets given out at out local pizza place, cut them up and glue them to things we want to use on the board).

Why? These have become my go-to, clutching-at-straws solution to motivate my kids to speak more English in class at the point when my sweet primary kids grew up and became more talkative and they were more likely to choose their first language to chat away. The stars, given out demonstratively with an excited ‘Oh, what beautiful English!’ worked in two ways. On the one hand, they made them focused on using the target language, on the other hand, somehow, magically almost, it got them to use the target langaguage from the higher shelf. Once they got into the habit of communicating mostly in English, we could stop using the stars in every lesson.

Five: Names Cards

You need: a set of small cardboard rectangles, with each of the students’ names on them, one per card, possibly laminated, to make them year-long-lasting.

You can: use them for any pairwork or group forming activity without getting personal. The cards can be kept in a box or a bag and drawn out by the teacher to organise the kids in a fun way. Even more so, the students can be involved in the draft. This way the grouping and pairing will be the most impersonal, the most random and the most genuine ever. It might also make it easier for the students to accept the outcome, even if they end up working with the classmates whom they might not like very much. After all, it will be due to luck, good or bad, not due to some very arbitrary decision of the teacher.

Happy teaching!

Top 10 kids books to have in the classroom

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This is my number 1 storybook illustration ever. Marvin Wanted More by Joseph Theobald

This post came about as a result of conversations with some of my trainees and colleagues, most recently with Vera, and it inspired me to reflect on not necessarily on my favourite storybooks as this list would be much, much longer but on the list that I would start a storybook library from and the titles that I would buy first.

Making this list was not entirely pleasant because as soon as I got to number 10, I started to revise it as I was being flooded by the titles and the characters that also wanted to make it. It is quite likely that this list will be modified in the future.

Here we go then. The Very Personal List Of My Favourite Storybooks To Be Used In the EFL Classroom with some very short rationale and some interesting links.

  • Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle: It is a true classic and it is quite likely that your students, no matter how young, have already read it in their L1. It has a great character that we can relate to (I know I can) and it can be used to teach food, emotions (‘I am hungry’, ‘I am not feeling very well’), the life cycle of butterfly and, potentially, the seasons and weather, too. It can be combined with a treasure hunt in the garden and in the park and with a craft lesson.
  • Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell: This is a storybook that I know it by heart and I did use it in class a few times with only a box and a set of flashcards. It is a great resource to teach and to practise all the animal vocabulary but it is a great starting point to teaching adjectives, too. I used it to introduce the idea of a riddle which we later extended to make our own. It has been
  • Marvin Gets Angry by Joseph Theobald: I have a special place in my heart for Marvin and his antics. This book can help you to teach the basic emotions (happy, sad, agry, tired) and it is great in the first lessons, while establishing class routines and teaching kids how to behave but it also helps to accept that we all get angry sometimes and we need to find ways of dealing with. Other than stamping on the flowers, frightening the hens and biting the cow’s tail. It works for body parts, too.
  • Brown Bear by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carl: It is a wonderful book for the first lessons with year 1 students because it has a repetitive text and it works very well with colours. It can be also used to teach ‘What can you see?’ ‘I can see / I see’ which is a good first functional phrase that will be used throughout the course.
  • Barry And the Scary Hairy Monster by Sue Hendra: It is not the first book of the series, but it is the first one I used and I fell in love with. It has a great plot with a fantastic surprise at the end and I normally use it in the beginning of the year 1 course, to practise emotions, colours and some simple questions such as ‘Where are you?’, ‘Who are you?’. It is great for involving kids through miming and counting. It also normalises the fact that we are all afraid and it helps the kids to deal with the fear.
  • Three Billy Goats Gruff (traditional): This is my favourite traditional story to be used in the EFL classes although the reasons for that are rather random. I started using it with my students only because I found it lying around and came up with ways of dealing with it. We use it to talk about emotions and food because all the goats offer some random food items to the troll trying to bail themselves out. At least they do in my rendition.
  • Where Is My Baby? by Julie Ashworth: Here is another book that I am very attached to emotionally. We have a history, you could say. Naturally, I know this one by heart, too. It has some repetitive language, it can be easily turned into a role-play with the whole class and it is a perfect resource for teaching and practising body parts and adjectives. I love the ending, too because it helps to teach the idea of tolerance. It can be combined with a craft lesson.
  • Zog by Julia Donaldson: I love Zog because it works well in the EFL classroom to teach body parts, health problems (‘What’s the matter?’) and ‘I can’, ‘I can’t’. Apart from that, it also has a great story that includes an underdog hero, a princess that does not care about castles and honours and who wants to do something real and a prince that learns that it is not necessary to fight with dragons, all the great ideas that can help teach kids develop and believe in themselves.
  • Don’t Eat the Teacher by Nick Ward: This books made it to my top ten because it includes aquatic animals and a shark as the main character and a lot of school vocabulary. It has got a funny plot and can be used to teach imperatives and the rules of classroom behaviour. It is one more book that I like to use in the beginning of the year. It can be used in the unit on animals or, specifically, on life aquatic and it can be combined with the Baby Shark song and craft, too.
  • Rhinos Don’t Eat Pancakes by Anna Kemp: This storybook might be a bit too challening for the youngest of students, in terms of concepts or vocabulary, but it is still an amazing resource. It has some potential to be used in lessons on colours, emotions, house vocabulary, animals, verbs and adjectives. It is a fantastic resource to start a conversation on the power of imagination and the relationship between the kids and the parents. I am also planning it to use it in my Art and English classes. This is also the storybook that I used with all the ages of students: from pre-school to my advanced teachers.

Those that almost made the list: Elmer by David McKee, Marvin Wanted More by Joseph Theobald, Pete the Cat by Eric Litwin, James Dean and Kimberly Dean, Hugless Douglass by David Melling, Dinosaurs in the supermarket by Timothy Knapman and Sarah Warburton, Perfectly Norman by Tom Percival, The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas, The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalk and Oliver Jeffers, Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers and many many more…

Happy teaching!

Some interesting links:

Crumbs #59 Hello Elephant!

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Ingredients

  • One piece of A4 paper per child. It can be the regular photocopying paper or a sheet of the drawing paper, of regular texture, from a drawing album that kids use at school.
  • Markers or pencils, scissors and glue.
  • My elephant was inspired by the design I found at Creative Family Fun website, which I adapted to the needs to my group.

Procedures

  • Show the kids the finished product. I do not always do it but in case of this craft it seemed important to help the kids see the final product and to visualise how they are going to proceed during the entire activity.
  • Check that everyone has all the materials by going through the list, picking the items up and showing them to the camera, asking ‘Have you got…?’
  • Fold the A4 paper into halves, crosswise. Open the paper and draw the line in / along the fold. Cut into two.
  • Put one of these halves aside. It will be used later for the trunk and the ears.
  • Take the other piece of paper, hold it lengthways (with the longer edge on the top), draw a line along one of the shorter edges
  • Closer to the top edge draw two eyes. It might be a good time to decide if the elephant is a boy or a girl and add eyelashes and / or a bow on the forehead.
  • Open the glue and apply some glue along the line that has just been drawn along one of the shorter edges. Roll and glue into a tube. Put it on the side.
  • Take the other piece of paper. Draw a circle. Cut it out. It is ok if it is not a perfect circle.
  • Fold the circle into half and draw the line in / along the fold. Cut into two semi-circles.
  • Draw the line along the diameter of the circle, on both semi-circles.
  • Apply the glue on the line, on one of the semi-circle and attach it to the side of the head of the elephant. Press. It might be a good idea to show the kids how to press it here – with the fingers inside the tube and the fingers outside of it.
  • Repeat with the other one.
  • Prepare the strip of paper that will be used as the trunk. It will be glued under the eyes and it might be a good idea to check its length and perhaps cut off a bit.
  • Roll one of the ends of the strip around a marker or a pencil. It will twist it a little bit and it will make it look a little bit more like a trunk. Apply the glue under the eyes of the elephant, attach the top of the trunk and press.

Why we like it

  • This is a relatively easy craft that can be completed by children online, although I would not choose this particular activity as the first craft of the year. However, it is appropriate for five-year-old children, half-way through the academic year or the children who have taken part in some craft activities before.
  • It is a simplified version of the original craft and it requires less preparation on the part of the teacher. It was ‘designed’ and tested with regular A4 photocopying or drawing paper, without any real templates or special resources such as the cardboard tubes and goggly eyes.
  • If the students are younger, the teacher might choose to cut up the paper before the lesson (one big rectangle for the body, one small rectangle for the trunk and a circle for the ears).
  • It is an online-friendly activity.
  • The finished product can be easily used as a puppet (if it is put on the two or three fingers of a hand). One of my students also turned it into a bracelet, only because she chose to use a bigger square and, in the end, it was big enough to be worn on the wrist. As such, it can be used in simple role-plays.
  • It definitely has the WOW element and kids get very excited to be able to make a real toy out of a piece of paper.
  • It can be used to accompany a story, for example ‘Elmer’ or ‘Dear Zoo’ as one of the animals.
  • Our elephants were very simple and white but they can be made colourful, very much in the theme of the elephant party we know from Elmer in which all the grey elephants ‘get dressed’ for the occasion. The teacher can use the colourful paper or the kids can decorate their squares before glueing them together into a tube. If there are some leftover stickers available, these can be used to decorate the elephants in the end.
  • We used the elephant as a part of our unit Animals in Art and English classes and apart from making the elephant we also looked and talked about different elephants created by Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso and Henri Rousseau, among others.
  • We also had a lot of fun playing with the semi-circles. We used them as our mouse’s ears, cat’s ears, sunglasses, monkey’s ears and wings. ‘I am a butterfly’ as a lot of fun!

Happy teaching!

Craft #58 Baby shark craft

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Ingredients

  • One A4 piece of cardboard paper, ideally in colour but if that is not available, the while cardboard will do, too.
  • Markers, scissors, glue
  • Something to use as a template for a circle i.e. a small plate for the bigger circle and a small glass for the smaller circles
  • A link to inspire you. Mine came from supersimple.com, after some adaptations for our online classes.
  • A link to the song which this craft usually accompanies. This is my favourite rendition of the song.

Procedures

  • The teacher starts by demonstrating the finished product to facilitate the whole process. I do not use this kind of an approach but it might come in really handy with this particular craft activity.
  • The teacher and the class go over the all the resources necessary for the lesson. The teacher calls them out and shows them to the camera. The kids do the same.
  • The teacher demonstrates how to draw a big circle on the piece of cardboard. If the kids are ready, they can draw a circle themselves. If not, the teacher shows them how to draw around a plate. It is a good idea to use the paper economically, in order to ensure that there will be enough paper left for the small circles. The kids do the same and show their circles to the camera.
  • The teacher cuts out the circle. The kids follow suit.
  • We fold the circle into half and we draw the eyes and a smile at the front.
  • The teacher demonstrates how to draw two small circles (or how to circle the smaller object twice). Afterwards, these are cut out, too. They are folded into halves and cut into halves, too.
  • Two of these half-circles are used as fins. They are glued to the side of the shark. The teacher demonstrates that, step by step.
  • The third half-circle is to become the frontal dorsal fin. It is glued to the top of the shark, at the back.
  • The remining half a circle is cut into two pieces (in any way) and these are are the tail (or the caudal fin, what a pretty name!). Their ends are glued together to form something resembling the letter V and they are glued inside the folded circle.

Why we like it

  • It is a perfect craft to accompany the song or to be included as a part of the life aquatic-themed unit.
  • It is easy enough to make, even online. It works well in the offline classroom, too and the teacher can adapt it to the younger students by preparing the circles before the lesson or even by folding them beforehand.
  • Even if the circles are drawn by the kids themselves and they do not turn out perfect, the sharks will look good.
  • The sharks are 3D and are a lot of fun.
  • They can be used as a puppet and they can be used in role-plays.
  • The kids can decide if they make a baby shark or a mummy or daddy shark and they can decorate the sharks accordingly.

Happy teaching!

English on the carpet: The 5 milestones

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Writing one of the previous posts, on creating the curriculum for pre-schoolers, and I compared the pre-school EFL on the pre-A level to an ocean. It is huge, it is surprising and it is uncharted. It is!

At the same time, while travelling across it, to the first beacons of the A1 level, you can and you will come across those buoys that help you understand that yes, you are making progress and moving forward.

Today, I would like to look at these five important posts that we arrive at in our journey across the curriculum of the VYL English learning. Disclaimer: it is a very personal list and it might be getting extended, changed or removed with time.

One: We start producing sentences

All the learning in pre-school starts with single words, our first hello (although this is a proper sentence), our first blue, green, yellow and pink and our one, two, three, four, five. When that happens, it is Christmas, Easter and birthday put together. I love the start of the course and I spend these first few weeks in awe, observing how my little students venture out into a new territory and how they learn how to navigate it and how to enjoy it. Some of them run into it and embrace it from the word go, some of them are a bit apprehensive and they slowly warm up to it. I take a lot of pleasure in helping them do it and in supporting them on the way.

However, that is just the first step, something that needs to happen and something that the course needs to move on from, to the real first aim and that is: phrases and sentences! These can be very simple and their range might remain narrow for a long time, limited to ‘it is’, ‘I like’, ‘I can’, ‘I’ve got’ but they can be introduced, developed, practised and used from early on. Among all the contributing factors there are: the teacher creating the appropriate exposure by using full sentences while introducing and drilling new vocabulary (‘It’s a dog’, instead of ‘a dog’), introducing structures, supporting the use of the structures with gestures or visuals, encouraging the kids to use full sentences, introducing and using the functional language chunks.

Sooner or later, the kids will develop the habit of using full sentences and they will be doing it more frequently, although, of course, that does not mean that they will only use full sentences because, in their real, L1 life, kids also respond in single words sometimes!

Two: We start producing langauge spontaneously

Let’s imagine this moment: you have covered a few units or modules, your little students already have some vocabulary, they feel comfortable in the classroom and they have even started to use some simple structures. It is going well. The next step might be to focus on creating conditions that would favour some spontaneous language production in order to ensure that children communicate not only with the teacher and not only when prompted by the teacher but when they have something to say and something to share.

The activities that foster this freer communication include: letting children lead activities, setting up pairwork and allowing students communicate to other students, not only the teacher, showing children that the language can be played with and creating opportunities for that with, for example changing and creating own versions of stories or songs and, in general, being creative in English, for example our own version of ‘Do you like broccoli ice-cream?’, deciding what five questions thay may want to ask starting with ‘What’s your favourite…?’ or even by giving commands to the class during the Abracadabra game (‘Abracadabra, 1, 2, 3. You are…’). One of the most powerful questions that can be used in class is ‘Who’s got an idea?’ this way inviting students to take part in shaping up the games and, effectively, the lesson.

Three: We start using a variety of communication strategies

This is the one that I was unaware of for a very very long time and only during the first term of my MA programme, while going through piles of articles and publications in search of something that I might get interested in, I found the idea of communication strategies. This is a fascinating topic anyway, for me as a teacher and for me as a speaker of foreign languages but it turned out to be even more amazing because I decided to check whether my little students use any of those or, more specifically, any more than initially claimed, namely – do the little kids do something else than just refering to their first langauage. And yes, they do!

I still need to publish the outcomes of this research in any way but here I would like to highlight only all these instances of the pre-school students trying to deal with the communication breakdowns and in the way they do it because, in my opinion, it does show that kids become language learners and langauge users, taking control and trying to deal with the situation. The most common go-to solution is falling back on their L1 but there are many many more such as approximation (using a word that is similar enough and may do the job effectively), repeating, self-correction, using gestures to clarify. According to the findings of my small scale research done as part of the MA programme mentioned above (small scale as it was), even those very young beginner students are capable of using some of those strategies, showing that they are becoming aware of the learning process and their place in it.

Among the activities that can help foster and promote the use of communication strategies, there are the use of gesture as part of instructions and new language presentation and practice (to include some alternative, easier communication channels), using riddles in class (to get the kids used to describing objects) as well as modelling repetition or self-correction, to name a few.

Four: We start reading

A large part of the story in the EFL pre-school happens without any written word, unless you count the random words of instructions in the coursebook or the words at the back of some of the flashcards or the letters in the storybooks that we do not really pay any attention to in any active way. Many of the preschool EFL students are too young to start learning to read and write in English as the instruction can start as early as 3. What is more, the curriculum in some of the countries is organised in such a way that the literacy component is purposefully excluded from pre-school and the early years of primary in order to interfere with the literacy skills development in the kids’ L1 and not to overburden the students.

However, since the EFL world encompasses many countries and many teaching contexts and formats, there are out there the pre-primary that include some literacy skills development and there are some pre-school kids who start reading and writing in English.

In the context in which I am working at the moment (pre-primary EFL, 2 academic hours per week or 2 real hours a week), we start introducing some elements of literacy in the second year of the EFL instruction and / or when the kids are older than 5. The first steps involve: introduction of the alphabet, revising the vocabulary according to the alphabet / phonics, simple blending and the CVC words as well as some elements of the sight words and creating the written English exposure in the classroom.

Five: We start learning grammar

The pre-primary EFL world is a fascinating place to be and the element of grammar (or structure) in it is one more piece of evidence.

Traditionally, the pre-primary coursebooks focus on the introduction and practice of vocabulary and not structure. On the one hand, such an approach seems to be justified – the students are very young and the explicit grammar presentations are the last thing that they need or are able to deal with. On the other hand, however, learning a language is not about reproducing lists of words, organised thematically into colours, pets and fruit and ‘structure’ must be introduced in order to enable the kids to communicate in a natural way, even if only as the beginner learners.

It does not require any serious change of materials or any extensive supplementing because even if the coursebook itself does not include any structures, these can easily be added, practised and used. Naturally, the way in this is done needs to be different from the traditional explicit grammar presentation. Other methods have to be found and I have already written about my favourite in an article for the Modern English Teacher in May 2022. The article is only available if you have a subscription but MET recorded two related videos which have been made public and can be found on youtube. Make sure you check out one of the earlier posts here.

Coda

These are my five milestones in the pre-primary EFL world and, at the same time, my top 5 favourite moments to be a part of. There are no certain times or days schedules for them, they happen when the kids are ready

So far, there are five. If you have anything to add to that list, please do so in the comments section below!

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #57 Early reading: Secret words

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Ingredients

  • The most important thing is a set of words to represent each letter / sound of the alphabet. Some teachers like to use the set from a song to make it possible to use and reuse the same set of words and to help the students memorise and practise them in an easy way, in class and outside of class. One of these more popular songs is this one from Kids TV 123, Phonics Song 2. I use the song, too, although I created a different set of words for myself and for our teachers with b is boy, g is for girl etc. What is more, in our exercises we use a wider range, too, as an opportunity to revise all the words that the kids already know. Sometimes b is for boy and sometimes b is for banana, ball, blue or black.
  • The other thing that is necessary is a place to display the words. It can be a whiteboard, a noticeboard, a powerpoint or, as in the case of my online classes, a miro board. All the photos presented here are the screenshots from my miro board from the past two weeks.
  • Depending on the type of display, a different set of resources will be necessary. In the classroom, I simply draw and write on the whiteboard. As regards miro, I duplicate pictures and post-it notes. It would be possible to do the same using a set of specific flashcards and letter cards. In this case, the words could even be displayed on the carpet or on the table.

Procedures

  • The teacher chooses the word(s) for the lesson and prepares the visuals to represent them.
  • The pictures are drawn on the board or arranged on the miro board.
  • In class, the students, aided by the teacher, sound out all the pictures (‘What’s this?’ ‘Apple’ ‘Ok. Apple starts with …aaa or ooo’ ‘A’).
  • The teacher writes the letters as the kids call them out.
  • When all the letters of the words are on the board, the students try to read them as one word, supported by the teacher.

Why we like it

  • This game is introduced as a part of every lesson, as a starter or as a final game and normally two or three words are used.
  • We start playing the game only when the kids are familiar with all the letters / sounds of the alphabet and alongside the traditional phonics and sight words work, not instead of it. It is a way of encouraging kids to read the familiar words that might not and do not fall into all the patterns of the phonics system and which are not going to be as frequently used as the sight words.
  • In a way, it is a decoding activity that is made fun and achievable with the use of the familiar visuals and it has worked well as a transition from sounds to letters through an intermediary of the carefully chosen images, before we are ready to decode words using only letters.
  • Kids enjoy this activity and they quickly improve their skills. In our lesson yesterday, my student Sasha started to call out the sounds in the sequence of the pictures so fast that I could not catch up with typing the letters. Recently, we made even more progress. She just looked at a series of pictures and called out the hidden word out loud, not even bothering to wait for me. I guess that means that we are ready for the next step.
  • The next step and the development of the activity will be decoding secret words with a mix of letters and visuals before we finally move to reading only letters.
  • The choice of words used is up to the teacher. It makes sense to start with the easy, short words, the students’ names, the familiar cvc words or the frequently used words such as sight words or the functional words (‘Hello’, ‘Bye’, ‘Thank you’ etc). The decisions made here are in no connection with the phonics or the sight words that we currently work on. Most frequently, these represent some of the target vocabulary or the words that are interesting for the student (hence all the Frozen characters here).

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #56: VYL Miming Upgraded

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Ingredients

  • Any set of new vocabulary, at the stage when it is introduced or when it is practised.
  • A set of flashcards, electronic or paper, to support the clarification and building the connection between the word, its visual representation, its meaning and the gestures and phrases chosen to represent it
  • The teachers and their face, hands and voice

Procedures

  • The teacher introduces the vocabulary, as usual, with a set of flashcards or realia
  • What follows is a set of practice activities appropriate for the students’ level, age and interests
  • The teachers add miming but apart from gestures accompanying the key words, there are also simple phrases for each of those i.e. ‘a doctor’ represented by a flashcard, a gesture (for example, putting on the stetoscope) and a phrase (‘Open your mouth and say ‘aaaa’).
  • Students look, listen and say the words.
  • In the later stages, students also mime and produce the language for the teacher or the other students to guess.

Why we like it

  • First of all, this particular trick (I would not dare to use the term ‘an activity’ here) was simply a coincidence. We were practising the vocabulary in the unit of professions and, as part of the revision stage of the lesson, I was miming jobs for my student to guess, just like we had done many times before, with other sets of vocabulary. It was then that I realised that there are certain limitations and that miming some of the jobs might be confusing for the students. ‘A ballerina’, ‘a singer’, ‘a photographer’ were easy enough but I got stuck with ‘a firefighter’, ‘a doctor’ and ‘a teacher’. Until I realised that to my miming and gestures, I can add a word or two.
  • The main aim here is still the same – the gestures, the TPR, the miming are supposed to help the children understand the target vocabulary better and remember it better, for example, while miming the word ‘firefighter’ the teacher can pretend to be directing the hose and the stream of water at the invisible fire but, to make it more obvious and visual and rich, the teacher can also say a simple phrase, for example ‘Look! A fire!’, to illustrate the word and to create associations with it. All in all, the combination of different learning channels is beneficial for the language learning.
  • This added linguistic element to our TPR means an extended exposure to the target language and an opportunity for more listening practice.
  • The set of phrases used with the specific vocabulary should be kept the same in the beginning, not to overcomplicate and to overburden the children, but, naturally, there is a lot of potential here for a wider range of the structures later on.
  • Initially, it is the teacher who is going to be producing the language here, however, with time, the students can also be encouraged to take over. We have only been doing it for about two weeks at this point but I have already noticed that my students started to pick on the language and start using it. And that means a lot more potential for maximising language production.
  • So far we have been using this approach in two different activities: Guess my word (miming, as a revision of the target language in the beginning of the lesson) and Abracadabra (setting a word for the other students / teacher to mime, with a wider range of vocabulary).

Happy teaching!

Teaching English Through Art: Water! (and the Jellyfish craft!)

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The artist

This is an unusual situation for me and for my course designer experience. This time the artist is not one person but a whole bunch and they are only connected by the theme of their paintings and this is water.

In class, I introduced a whole set of all the water words, in photograhps and in paintings, such as Turner, Hokusai, Monet and Levitan. We mimed all the words, we drank the water because when the picture of the bottle came up, we all realised that we were thirsty and we mimed all the words. We also started to talk a little bit about all the pictures i.e. I like it / I don’t like it. It is big and quiet, stormy, beautiful etc. There is definitely more to come here.

The language

There were two language aims in this lesson and, because there two, I am planning on the kids to be able to use them with ease after a series of lessons only.

The more important set were the ocean animals. I am planning to study ocean animals and then take it towards verbs movement and ‘I can’, ‘I can’t’ and ‘it can’, ‘it can’t’. We practised the names of the ocean animals and played different vocabulary games, such as One, Two or Many. We also sang ‘Baby Shark’, how else? We also categorised the animals into big and small on the Miro board.

The other set, for now on the back burner, are all the words related to water, which I described above.

The craft

It had to be a jellyfish, as the first of many life aquatic craft activities and the reason for that was the generally low level of challenge. Plus I have done this kind of craft before because it is easy and a great opportunity for the practise of colours and it can be done even with the youngest of students. Frequently, this has been the first craft in many of my year 1 pre-school classes. This is what it looks like.

This is a lovely jellyfish but I was worried whether it would be appealing enough for my already craft-advanced kids. I needed something to spice things up although without any fireworks because my lessons are online at the moment and I could not ask my online parents to buy something extremely fancy. I have to admit that I spent the whole morning last Monday, teaching my C1 English and my financial English classes, fully devoted to the lesson in progress minus the 10% of the brain that was trying to come up with ways of making the jellyfish more exciting. Effectively, because I remembered the tinfoil in my drawer. Bingo.

This part of the lesson started with us going over the list of all the materials ready for the activity (white paper, glue, scissors, tinfoil, markers) by showing them to the camera.

First step was to draw a big circle on the A4 paper. I modelled, of course, but the kids were supposed to do it themselves, without any stencil. It can be done this way because even if the circle is not quite perfect, the jellyfish is going to be a success. Afterwards, we cut the circle. Afterwards we fold the circle in half and we draw a line on the fold. In the end, we cut the circle in half, along the line.

The next step was to draw the jellyfish face on one of the halves. We drew the eyes and the smile and then the kids decorated their in any way they wanted. Some jellyfish ended up being princesses. I made sure we put them away, on the side, to make sure that we don’t glue anything on it until it’s time.

Next, we took the roll of the tinfoil and we tore off a sheet. Afterwards I demonstrated how to tear it into strips. It can be done with scissors but I tried before the lesson and it didn’t work very well, actually. Tearing strips off is more fun and, more or less naturally, kids choose how thin or how thick the strips are.

We take the additional half-circle and put the glue all over the half and then arrange the strips along the edge. In the end, we put more glue on the back of the jellyfish princess’s face and we put one on top of the other. Stick and press.

The jellyfish can be hung in the window or anywhere in the sun to let it reflect the sunrays or in the doorway to let it float in the air. If you can permanent markers, the tentacles can be decorated (inspired by Our Beautifully Messy House). My friend Michael also had a nice idea for an adaptation (being in need of a jellyfish carft but with not tinfoil in sight). He prepared a very simple template of a jellyfish (imagine not a half-circle but a half-oval) that the kids can cut out and simply cut the bottom part into strips this way practising their scissors skills.

Finally, and traditionally, we talked a bit as our jellyfish and we sang the final song.

Happy teaching!

Damien Hirst and butterflies! Teaching English through Art

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The artist

It was interesting this time. The spring came and I really wanted to a related theme. It is true that at the time the snow was still lying around or still falling but I just wanted bees, butterflies and flowers. And caterpillars, of course. Only later did I start to look for an artist who could help us with it. Believe or not, dear reader, I found one! Just to prove that with this Art and English, if only you try hard enough, you can connect any two dots, even the most random ones.

I have heard about Damien Hirst before. He is, after all, one of the leading British artists and his name pops up here and there. But only now was I able to see his art in all its beauty, the dots that I had seen in so many places without realising what they were and the butterflies!

As usual, we introduced the artist, the photogragraph, the country and his two favourite things and we looked at his butterflies. And our Miro board was just perfect for it. We looked at the circles first (‘Can you see the circle?’, ‘Can you see the butterflies?’) and then we zoomed in (‘Can you see the circle?’, ‘Can you see the butterflies?’) as the circle disappeared and a multitude of butterflies emerged. Almost like magic).

Afterwards, I showed them my mini-graph and moved it around to illustrate how Damien turned butterflies into a circle and how we are going to turn circles into butterflies.

The language

This whole unit and the lesson revolved around spring, gardens and all the garden creatures, insects and not only. We have practised our vocabulary, we were describing gardens (‘I can see’), we practised numbers 1 – 20 and we sang a song about gardens, too.

We watched and tried to retell the cartoon about Six Hungry Caterpillars from Playway to English and a series of lessons we made a garden (see the photo below) and our own caterpillars which you can find out about in this post here. We also looked at different gardens in art and we talked about those that we like and don’t like.

The craft

My main inspiration for our butterflies was the video from World of Art and Craft because it is supereasy and very effective. However, because our classes take part online everything has to be made achieveable for the kids to do on their own and on the other side of the screen. For that reason I gave up on the stapler and experimented first with paper and glue. It worked.

As usual we went through the list of all the resources (‘Have you got the glue?’ ‘I’ve got the glue’ with showing it to the camera) to make sure that all the parents prepared what I asked for in a message before the lesson.

We started with choosing the two colours of the coloured paper, drawing the circles (‘not very small, not very big’) and cutting them out. I was a little worried about that bit but the thing is that even if the circles are not very regular and even the butterflies will be pretty. I was using the craft paper (one sided, the white inside), the kids were using some double-sided coloured paper, thinner and thicker, everything worked.

Afterwards we drew a line across each circle (to make sure that we don’t spread the glue all over the circle) and put some glue on the line. We closed folded the circles in half, and pressed in the middle. Afterwards, we fluffed up the sides a little bit. After both parts were ready, we put some glue in the middled and pressed the two halves together.

In the end we cut out a thin strip of paper, folded it in half and glued it as the butterfly’s antennas.

And then the second version of the butterfly appeared. I could not reuse the 3-D butterfly because while making the caterpillar, we had some problems with the glue and the paper which was just too thick and so another butterfly had to appear.

This one started with us going over the resources and choosing two colours of the coloured paper. We drew a circle on each, again, not too small, not too big and we cut them out. Afterwards, we drew the line across each circle, on the B side, and we folded each circle into half. The next step was to cut off a slice of the folded circle (‘Look, it is like cutting off a slice of cake’), to create the edge to shape the wings. Afterwards we drew the body of the butterfly on a piece of A4 paper, and we glued the wings on. We made only one butterfly in class but, of course, depending on the skills of the children, there is definitely a potential for more.

In the photo, you can see the intended butterfly and what happened in the classroom because students started to play with the materials and experiment how you can turn them into a butterfly.

Footnotes

It is only now that I have found out about the many surprises that Damien Hirst has up his sleeve. It turns out that his mandalas are made out of dry butterfly wings from real butterflies and that he himself is the biggest importer of butterflies in the UK. And I have to admit, I feel a little bit less enthusiastic about it all.

Happy teaching!