#eflkids

Crumbs #83 Clouds or Working with the vocabulary

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Ingredients:

  • just a set of words that you are working on
  • flashcards, wordcards, a page of the coursebook with all of the vocabulary to be introduced and practise
  • a board to display the category or a powerpoint to display them in an online less

Procedures:

  • Introduce and drill the vocabulary as usual, with flashcards, electronic flashcards or realia
  • When the kids feel comfortable enough with using and prounucing the word, move on to the second part of the presentation / controlled freer practice that this activity is
  • Display the question and ask the students to answer it. When we just get started with this activity or if the group is small, we do it together as a class, later on, the kids do it in pairs for a moment or two.
  • The whole activity is a categorising task, according to the kids’ preferences and opinions.
  • I started doing it with my online students and the questions were presented in the form of colourful clouds on the slides, hence the name of the activity.
  • All of the options that I have come up with and used with my kids include: I like / I don’t like, It’s interesting / it’s boring, I’ve got it / I haven’t got it, It’s made of metal / plastic / paper, It’s easy / it’s difficult, I always and I never, It’s big / small, Tell me more about…

Why we like it?

  • It is a low-key, (almost) no-prep activity.
  • It gives the kids an opportunity to use the new language together with the familiar structures, in a few different ways.
  • It is not quite creative but it is personalised because the students categorise the words according to their ideas and preferences.
  • The lower levels (i.e. pre-A1) can only categorise the words, the higher level kids (from A-1 upwords) can provide a simple justification for their choices.
  • The most productive of them is ‘Tell me about’ but it might not be feasible with all of the topics and vocabulary sets.
  • It is not very challenging so all the students can complete it.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #82: An Advent Calendar

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Ingredients

  • 31 words for December (yes, we are extending since we are learning almost until the end of the month and not until the 24th)
  • a noticeboard
  • a simple December calendar to cross things out

Procedures

  • As a part of our hello circle, we check the calendar and count the days since the last lesson. We have classes only twice a week so it is 2 (on Thursday) or 5 (on Tuesday) and we pick as many cards from the bag.
  • We read the words, the teacher writes the date on each card and the word (we are working on our literacy skills, too).
  • The teacher puts up all the words up on the board.
  • One of the students crosses out the days on the calendar.
  • Then we play with all the words we have so far.
  • Things that can be done: read all the words, mime the words for the kids to guess, play ‘What’s missing?’, read the words (if special word cards are prepared) and play riddles (It’s an object / person. It’s big / small / medium. It’s red and green. etc).

Why we like it

  • It is a great way to learn new vocabulary and to revise all of the words that we already know. It is not getting in the way of our regular vocabulary and topic. It is done on the side.
  • All the words are on display and we can see how we move through the unit and the month.
  • We are also learning about the calendar and the month.
  • We are preparing for the New Year’s Celebrations and by the time we get there – we will know all of the words.
  • It is a nice addition with new games, miming and, eventually, songs that are Christmas-themed.
  • This particular activity is very seasonal but even though we have just started, I can already see its benefits and the big picture and I really want to use the concept for some other topics. My first idea is the next seaon peak – spring and Easter. I am thinking.

Happy teaching!

New year and new preschoolers! (and an old teacher:-)

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There has not been a school year in which I would not actually go to school, not since 2007, anyway but, somehow, every year is different, in its own way. This year I went back to teaching a lot of students individually, online, and then back to groups of preschoolers offline.

The classroom and the resources

Long story short: Nothing happens overnight, nothing happens in a blink.

Naturally, I hope for all of us teachers out there, that we enter the classroom in a kindergarten, in a language school, in the student’s home or in a language studio and everything is just as we imagined and the classroom is just perfect, teacher and student-friendly and we have all of the resources and organised beautifully.

In case it is not (and, most likely, it will not be so, in about 99% of cases), it will take some time to get it into shape.

During our sessions on the course I keep telling teachers that it is the most precious thing, to have this ideal pre-school classroom at the back of your head because it will help shape the real environment in which we find ourselves with our students.

This year, it has taken me about two months, to turn the classroom into a place that we all enjoy being in and which works out logistically, with our routine and with our numbers.

It is not a very big place and we have to share it with some other classes, groups and adults, but we have enough room for the small chairs and the hello circle, one big table for our writing and craft and a bit TV and room in front of it for dancing and singing. We have two small cupboards for our resources and lots and lots of walls for our posters and materials.

I have already figured out the layout of the resources and I have organised the flashcards, too. I am not using a basket this year but I have a box for all of the resources for each group where I keep all of the resources for the unit. It makes preparing for each group a bit easier without putting them all away every single day. And, at the same time, I can put them all away not to get in the way when someone else is using the classroom.

The teacher

There is only one thing here (a word from an old hand): dear teacher, be good to yourself. We want the best for our students, we work hard, we teach, we prepare, we reflect and do a better job next time. No two groups are alike and but, with a little bit of time and patience, we can get good results. Kids Can! Teachers Can!

The kids

My students are, of course, amazing. Some of them have been with the school for some time, studying with some other teachers in the past, some of them are new to the school and to learning English. The approach is just being open-minded and working, step by step, towards the routine that I would like to have.

The older group have got used to it pretty quickly and it was relatively easy to just work effectively, with an established routine.

The younger group is still work in progress because we get new students joining in. As a result, wee have been at the stage of ‘building the routine’ since September, simply because every time I think ‘oh, I think that’s that’, there is a new student and, in a way, we go back to square one.Everyone needs a fair chance and the time necessary to figure things out, to get to know the other children and to learn the ropes. It does help a lot that the ‘old’ students (aka those who have been in the group since the start of the year) are our beautiful role-models and we are catching up again.

The activities (and the pairwork)

Our hello circle is quite a long one and in every lesson we talk about all of the following:

  • Homework check
  • My name is…and I want…(kids introduce themselves and ask for something, I draw it on our mini-whiteboard)
  • What’s the weather like today? (asking and answering questions and then putting the relevant pictures up on the board)
  • Hello song
  • Clothes: Who’s wearing jeans?
  • Christmas Words Advent Calendar (only in December)
  • Literacy practice (only the older group)
  • A revision game (based on what we have covered so far, different, depending on the group)

The older group have started doing pairwork and it has worked amazingly well.

  • They have been in one group for two years already and they know each other very well
  • They have had a chance to lead certain activities
  • I have used the seating from the hello circle (small chairs in a circle, we only moved them a bit for the kids to face each other)
  • We have used an activity they already know well (a set of flashcards and a question – answer: Are you scared of…? – I’m scared / I’m not scared /I’m brave / I like..). We have done this activity a few times with the teacher leading and with a student leading for the whole group.
  • If you are interested in setting up pairwork with a beginner group, have a look at the earlier post here.

The other activities that have been a hit this year:

  • Secret words here
  • Soft toys: for body parts, for prepositions, counting and colours
  • lots of adjectives for emotions (now we have 16 to choose from) for our hello circle
  • Funky Envelope
  • Little hearts for ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’ and a very big heart for ‘I love’ which the kids requested))

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #81 3 letters!

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Ingredients:

Almost nothing, only a whiteboard and a marker. And, of course, a set of words that you are planning to practise. In case of all the young learners, they will probably be coming from one vocabulary set i.e. transport, pets, clothes, etc.

Procedures:

  • Teacher revises all of the words from the unit / set, using flashcards or the electronic flashcards.
  • Teacher writes only the three letters of the words, students guess the whole word. The easy version: the first three letters, in the correct order. The more challenging version: any three letters of the word in the order they appear in the word. The super difficult version: any three letters of ther words in a random order.
  • In the early stages of the game / unit, the teacher writes all the other letters of the word before moving on to another item.

Why we like it:

  • It is super easy and it requires no preparation whatsoever.
  • The length of the activity can be adapted to the needs of the lesson.
  • The level of challenge can easily be adjusted to the level of the students, the level of literacy and the level of familiarity with the particular set of words.
  • The game is challenging and it teaches the kids to focus on the accuracy and it helps them practise spelling accurately.
  • With the support of the coursebook or a set of flashcards, the students can play the game in pairs or small teams, with one student setting the task and the rest of the group guessing.
  • The game is fun, it is challenging but also achievable since we are working within one set of vocabulary or theme. It draws the students’ attention to spelling, all of the peculiarities of different words and their spelling.

Teaching children online. Where to start?

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What a teacher’s table looks like after an online lesson in primary…(realia, toys and adjectives)

Instead of a preface

I am writing this post as a response to many of the enquiries that I get from the trainees of the teacher training courses that I have been running for a decade now. Of course, this question rose to popularity with the year 2020, the pandemic and the fact that we have all embraced the online world since.

I have not always been a huge fan of the online education but, like many of my colleagues, I was forced to at least try exisiting in the online classroom over the period of the lockdown in the spring – summer 2020. And, because of how the world has turned to be, since the pandemic I have been spending about one third of my teaching life one: teaching all my young learners online during the pandemic, teaching online and hybrid in the crazy 2020 – 2021 academic year, teaching adults and my teenagers online permanently and teaching pre-schoolers, the regular EFL/ ESL and teaching English through Art, too.

As a result, today, when my teacher trainees ask me about teaching children online, I say: Yes, sure, it is just one of the classrooms that I work in.

This particular post is intended to be a set of ideas and suggestions for teachers who have never worked online and who want to start. These are not all the answers, only how I would get started, with a brand new group of kids. Maybe someone will find it useful)

Before the first lesson

The most important part of the course, before it even starts, would be talking to the parents. What I would like to find out would be:

  • as much as possible about the children as humans: how old they are and what their interests are, how they spend their time and what they like to do
  • as much as possible about the children as learners: whether or not they have learnt English before or interacting with English in any capacity and whether they have had a chance to learn anything online
  • as much as possible about the parents’ expectations regarding learning the language

Depending on the answers to the above questions, the conversation with the parents would have take into consideration to make the lesson successful and effective:

  • the working space for the child. It might be obvious for the parents that the child needs a special place to sit down, i.e. a table and a chair (not the bed or the carpet in the playroom), but a chair that can be moved aside if the movement stage of the lesson comes up. This should be a place that is quiet, away from the TV or the busy living room or the kitchen where the rest of the family hangs out.
  • the set of resources that might be necessary. It can be a list of standard resources that you will be using in every lesson, a notebook, a set of markers or crayons and handouts, all depending on the age of the child, as well as some specific resources needed for the particular lessons.
  • the presence of an adult who will be helping the little student during the lesson and what kind of a support is going to be necessary. With younger children (pre-schoolers), it might be necessary for an adult to be around all the time, although it might be necessary to highlight that the children need to be developing their independence
  • the length of the lesson that will depend on the child’s age and the previous online learning experience. Even if the optimal length is estimated at 45 minutes, it would be recommended to start with a shorter lesson. If the kids have not studied online before, they will not have enough attention span to participate and to focus to make this lesson effective. It is better to start with 20 or 25 minutes and extend it to one academic hour over a few weeks. And, of course, explain it to the parents.
  • the potential resources, the most important being the potential for printing resources at home. If the parents can do that – you will be able to use a little bit more, if not – in that case the lesson will be based only on the electronic resources.

The platform

There are a lot of platforms available and, in the end, everyone chooses something that works for them. It has to be the tool that you know very well and the tool that works in the classroom. I personally like to have a platfrom that lets me share the screen and see the students faces at the same time, that is not very tricky with the sound sharing but I don’t really care about the whiteboard option or the drawing on the screen option for the kids. Just a choice and I know that some teachers use these a lot. For the older primary students studying in groups, I like to have the breakout room option for some of the activities (although, again, that is for the groups only and that is not something to do in the very beginning of the course but something to aspire to).

The resources

Please remember that I am myself a dinosaur and I have always been a lazy teacher or a minimalist teacher (save for the special occasions when I splash out). The same applies to the resources in the online lesson. During the early stages of the pandemic, there has been this panic to find and to incorporate as many platforms, games, resources in the lesson as possible. Basically, every week was THIS NEW THING that you had to learn about and to use with your students. That was overwhelming, to say the least, because the most important thing in the lesson is the teacher and the methodology and the tools, no matter how fancy, cannot replace a good structure and a plan.

For that reason, what you see below, is a very basic list, the things that I am using at the moment but that is not everything out there. That said, I am always on the lookout for the new solutions and new things to inspire me, so feel free to use these ideas and keep your eyes open for more!

  • the coursebook, if applicable, the paper copy for the kids
  • the self-made handouts that I send to students if the parents can print them
  • the mini-flashcards that we prepare with the students, if the parents can print them. Usually, there are four per A4 paper, the parents cut them before the lesson, the kids can colour them, I have my own set and we use them for riddles, for testing each other (T: show the card, S: say the word, then swap the roles), substitution drill with the new structures, What’s my secret word? (guessing which card from the set the T / the S is holding) etc.
  • online games – for the lesson and for the homework or revision.
  • bamboozle games, although for the younger or new students, I start with one team games (‘we are collecting the points for us’) or with severly adapted power-ups list
  • some of the Games to learn English. This is a good example of why it is good to continue checking and searching. I have known this resource for ages but I haven’t used it for a year or so but I visited it last week and so much has changed. There are some new games, focused on a specific structure and the past tense or the prepositions. It definitely feels like a new best friend.
  • traditional (and not so boring) powerpoints which is my homemade online board replacement. I used to use the professional online board but, admittedly, it became simply overwhelming. I use the powerpoints in the same way, T: moves/uncovers the item, S: say things and I like it more because I can organise them by the team, copy them for each student etc.
  • the realia that you have and that the kids have at home. Luckily, with the online world, we are truly blessed, practically everything that we teach in primary and pre-primary kids have at home, toys, clothes, colours, sport equipment and even the pets or the family member. They should be used in the lesson to make the langauge real. It might be a good idea to inform the parents before the lesson what will be used in class, just to make them aware that the kids might be walking around and bringing things and that it is for a reason.
  • the craft resources such as plasticine, coloured paper, glue, scissors, crayons or markers or whatever else you want to use. Craft online is a bit more challenging but not impossible. It might be a good idea to leave it for later in the course when you and the students know each other a bit more and when they understand how the lesson works. Again, the parents need to be notified ahead of time, to prepare the materials or even to check and to confirm that they are available. Of course, if a kid is at home, the coloured paper or the glue are lying around at home but it is always better to confirm ahead of the lesson time.

The lesson

Again, this is the lesson format that works for me and it does not really differ much from what we do in the offline classroom with my students.

Regardless of how long the whole lesson is, I divided into three sections: Revision, New Material / presentation, Practice. They are more or less even, without being to strict with the time slots.

  • A song to get us started, a proper Hello song or just a song that we like.
  • Revision: saying hello, talking how we feel, what we are wearing etc, depending on the age/ level of the child, actually revising the vocabulary, playing some familar and favourite games.
  • New material presentation: in the middle of the lesson, when the kids are already warmed-up but still with enough energy and focus for something new, this is when I introduce the new vocabulary or the new material and when we do some controlled practice, too.
  • Practice: more productive games, more freedom for the kids.
  • Goodbye: a new song, a video, a story, to finish on a high note.

Coda

If you are just starting in the online world, good luck to you! Remember that in many ways, this is a just a new lesson with student or a new group, doing a new thing and in our early years world, it is very rarely that things work from the word go. It is the routine, the repetition and the familiarity that make things look like we want them. Quite frequently, a new activity done for the first time is just like a preview. If something does it work, reflect on why it didn’t and then try to change some things around and do it again.

Make sure you keep in touch with your students’ parents. Feedback is always necessary but it is crucial during the early stages of the new class because apart from building the routine with the student, you are also building the trust with the parents. And it is a process.

Happy teaching!

‘This feeling is a message from my brain!’ Talking about feelings in primary.

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How do you feel today?

Easily, the emotions (and adjectives) have always been a great passion of my professional life. One reason is that they are a little bit unappreciated in the early years EFL world (a personal opinion) and they can make a huge difference in communication, even for the little speakers. The other reason is that they help the kids describe how they feel and, apart from that making them want to talk because they are sharing something personal, that is a precious something for the teacher to know. Having 9 happy preschoolers and 1 angry preschooler in the classroom or having 5 happy, 3 sleepy and 2 sad preschoolers makes a huge different and, whether you want it or not, it will have an impact on your lesson. Basically, it is better to know than not to know, in order to prepar and to adapt, if needs be.

And then we found the song…

It was only last week that, together with my students, we were trying to remember what was our first Hopscotch song. It was, probably, The Fractions Song. What a hit! Itt really (really) helped us get the concept and to memorise the fraction vocabulary. Not to mention the catchy music and the hilarious plot. And when, after about three weeks of listening the song, we found out that each (more recent) song includes bloopers…we were collectively in love.

I had never heard about that channel before so I got down to researching and I found piles and piles of treasures. Some went into the category ‘subjects’ and some, the really delicious bits, into the category ‘oh, my, the langauge we are going to pick up here!’. One of the latter, was the Feelings Song with as many as 56 beautiful adjectives.

Quite a few words, actually, and some of them from the higher CEFR shelves so I decided that we will just sing the song and aim for picking up a few words, such as hangry, disappointed, overwhelmed or inspired.

It was only much later that I decided that the song will fit perfectly in our end-of-year concert as it has a plot, all the emotions have been neatly divided into groups, like almost 5 acts of the play, there is an introduction and a funny ending, too. And a beautiful message. So, having sung and listened to the song for about two months, we took to staging it and really looking into the other words.

A conversation

At this point in the game, we had been starting every single day with a conversation about our emotions. ‘How do you feel today?’ ‘I am…because…’ and to help us with it, we use about twenty different emotions such as angry, sad, sleepy and confused which we have on posters on the walls of our classroom.

I made into two additional lessons in which we learnt and revised the feelings from the song (or most of them, I still decided to skip a few). We went through all of them, clarified the meaning, practised pronunciation and devoted time to talking about our own examples when people might feel disappointed, overwhelmed, angry or inspired.

A self-reflection

I admit, initially, I only wanted something to write. My kids, now in their year 2, when putting letters in the Latin alphabet is no longer scary or tiresome, take pleasure in writing (insert: a little joyful dance that I can actually say this!) and we are now working on writing neatly, without mistakes, remembering about the punctuation marks and spacing. We write the date and the topic and we sometimes take little notes. This is exactly what I wanted to do last Tuesday, just write something neatly. I figured out that it will be a feasible and open-ended task if we all finish the sentences: I always feel…I never feel…I sometimes feel…I rarely feel…

It was amazing how the kids took time to think and to decide how exactly they feel in certain situations.

Showtime!

Somewhere in April, when we started to discuss our plans for the end of the year concert, I realised that this is the song that I want us to do. Initially, I was even considering turning it into a theatre show, with a few acts (one act = one set of emotions) and some conversations in-between, a musical of sorts. But then, the end of the year itself, the tests, the whirlwind of May took over and I decided to scale down. The plan was as such: we are going to sing the entire song and we will present the emotions to the audience as there will be parents and younger kids.

In order to turn it into ‘a video’, we started to prepare illustrations for an emotion or for a pair of emotions. I prepared the cardboard (A4) and the drawing materials, I also wrote the emotions on them, in big letters and I prepared a few examples, to show the kids that the emotions can be illustrated either by the situation (i.e. our ice-cream drops onto the floor = we are disappointed) or the associations (i.e. the rainy day, colour blue, wilted flowers = we are sad). We got down to work.

I think, in the end, we prepared about 40 illustrations and all of them were absolutely brilliant, either because my kids can really draw well or just because it was a fascinating experience to be going through the creative process and the creative decisions with my students. Some emotions were more difficult to draw (I dealt with them), some were really popular and so we ended up having about four pictures illustrating ‘love’.

I put them into groups, as they are in the song, and put them into a chain with coloured paper that had the text of the relevant verse on the back. Two of my more responsible students were assigned as the holders and as the verse would come up, they would pick up the big and beautiful streamer from the floor to present to the audience. And to peek at the lyrics.

The video finishes with the bloopers in which the emotions (represented by a cookie-like creature) are thrown out and up (Attention: don’t keep them in, don’t bottle them up, deal with them!) and we had a few ridiculously funny conversation how we could illustrate that without frightening the parents or the little kids with the year two kids suddenly making the ‘throwing up’ gestures…But we decided to go for the amazing streamers throws that one of my students suggested.

We rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed and my kids actually sang the whole long song, almost entirely from memory and it was a really touching moment, for all of us. Not only because we loved the song and because it was the end of year 2 but also because, while we were singing, it was already obvious that our school was to close down, for ever, and, naturally, we had A LOT OF different emotions to deal with at the time, all of us, kids, teachers and parents.

It was beautiful, it was touching and everyone was amazing. We gave a good show and we created fantastic memories. That is what will matter in the long run.

Happy teaching!

Advertising April: Mayakovsky!

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The language

Because of our chosen piece for this day, I wanted to get the kids into the mode of thinking what they really like. For that reason, we revised the question ‘Do you like…?’ and different ways of answering the question (I like, I love, I don’t like, I really don’t like and I am not sure). The kids were interviewing each other using a set of mixed flashcards, with toys, sports, food and activities. We were also justifying our choices.

The artist

Our Artist of the Day in the third week of April was Vladimir Mayakovsky, a poet. We introduced him (powerpoint here) and looked at a few of his works, trying to locate the product advertised. I also showed the kids our main source of inspiration, the poster with Lilia Bryk, Mayakovsky’s muse and we talked a bit about the style and the use of colour and shapes.

The art

Our task was to prepare an advertising poster in the style of Mayakovsky, our own version of it. This time I prepared one model before the lesson, promoting ‘Create’ and I planned to prepare another one with kids during the lesson. Initially, I wanted to use coloured paper and markers, in a collage layered on the photo of Lilia. That is what I did. My students, however, decided that they had a different approach to the task and they opted for a simple drawing. Only then did I realise that, yet, that could have been a great approach, too and a set of good markers and a black and white photo perfectly lend themselves to the task.

We set to work. During the lesson with the older students, I only had two kids. The task was relatively easy, made even easier with the technique that the children suggested (and to be honest, I think that was their main reason – it was a long, very hot day and they wanted to invest as little of their time as possible) and it might be a perfect choice for the older group.

My approach, the collage, was very enjoyable, too and, personally, I had lots of fun preparing my two pictures and now I am happy because I have two cool pictures to put on the walls.

On Monday, I am going to teach this lesson again, this time with the younger group. I am hoping we are going to enjoy it, too!

Happy teaching!

Advertising April: Great Artists at work. Andy Warhol

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The language

This time, I decided to let the topic and the language lead the way in all the lessons this month. On the one hand, it has already proved to be a great way of revising the structures we know (I like, Do you like, adjectives) and, even more importantly, it will help us aling what we know beautifully with our artists and their ideas.

Andy Warhol and the idea for the lesson (that I owe to my friend, just like this whole idea for the series that was born during a conversation) was that instead of focusing on Andy, we focus on food and creating our amazing combinations of it. No suprise then, that the lesson had to include the amazing ‘Broccoli Ice-cream’ from Super Simple Songs and our own version of it, too, which we created with a set of flashcards. The kids were taking turn to pick out two flashcards randomly from the pile and sing a new version of the story (‘Do you like bananas? Do you like sandwiches? Do you like banana sandwiches?’). And the rest of us reacted.

The artist

‘Miss Anka! It’s him!’ It is precisely when the Art teacher smiles, upon hearing a comment like that! The kids were super excited to see Andy again because most of them have already met him, either in our Chebourashka lessons and our Christmas tree lessons or both.

This time, we invited Andy again, to introduce him as an artist and as a copywriter and the art director, too. As usual, I used a presentation (this one here) to show his advertising portfolio and the kids were calling out the products advertised.

We also looked at all the soup cans, read the flavours and chose our favourite one.

The Magic Soup

The art

I showed the children the template of the Campbell soup can (I got mine from Fine Art Coloring Pages Archives · Art Projects for Kids, Thank you!) and explained that everyone can create their own. We made a list of all the decisions to make: flavour, name, logo, colours. This time I did not prepare my own model (I did not have a template available before the lesson, a rookie mistake) but I decided that this time we will have a chance to brainstorm together and that it might also be a source of inspiration for my students. It also so happened that I had my older / smaller group first so I prepared my soup cans with them and when I already ran the second lesson, with my younger / bigger group, I had lots to show to inspire them and it all worked out just fine.

I was really happy because all the kids could accomplish this task and we had a lot of different types of soup posters and our noticeboard looks like a print by Andy.

The Zombie Version of Campbell’s

All the kids worked very well, also the young ones and most of them had a very clear idea of what they wanted to get from the very beginning. The selection of colours took a bit longer but it was also beautiful to see how they were all coming together.

Not to mention that I love all the final products and, again, I could not but keep repeating ‘Oh, that is a lovely idea!’ My students treasured their creations, too! It was one of those lessons when I had to beg to at least get the permission to photograph the posters because so many of my students just snatched their works to take them home as soon as possible. At least I have the photos!

I was planning to ask the kids to make a list of all the ingredients but, somehow, it did not always work out. Next time, I will have to ask the kids to start with the writing, before we get to create properly.

But look at that! We’ve got some magic soup, some tomato soup, some garlic soup, some sun soup, some octopus soup as well as some darkness soup and some zombie soup. I am happy. I hope that Andy would be happy, too! Just look at all these colours!

One of my creations
The Darkness Soup
The Garlic Soup

Happy teaching!

Just a little bit of Art (in your English classroom)…Erik Bulatov once more!

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This time, I did not teach my regular Art lesson. Last Thursday, in the middle of a regular unit but at the end of the term, with all my kids already tired and looking forward to holidays and with the first properly spring days outside of our windows, I decided to let our hair down and engage into some creative activity as part of our regular English lesson. Yay to great ideas!

The language

This time round Erik Bulatov joined us in our regular English lessons. At the moment, we are in a fanstastic unit ‘Going places’ (Global English, CUP) and we have already revised the transport, learnt some less traditional transport, we did our Big Transport Tournament (choosing the best one, in qualifiers, quarter-, semi- and finals which was basically a lot of speaking) and now we are comparing the transport (‘Are they similar or different?’). We have also worked on the verb ‘to get’ and all its meanings (aka ‘The best verb in the world’).

And then I needed something lighter, more fun and more creative for the last lesson of the term.

The artist

I taught this lesson before, twice, in different ways (the previous posts can be found here and here). I reused the presentation I prepared before even though some of the students have taken part in my Art Explorers lessons already and it worked well.

We talked a little bit about the meaning of words and the meaning of pictures and I introduced the Artist of the Day. We looked at his paintings and the meaning and how Bulatov tried to show his ideas through words and through images.

I have also showed the kids again the images in Portuguese I created for the previous lesson (in the posts mentioned before).

The art

I showed the students the template I prepared, just a simple word TRAVEL in block capital letters and together we brainstormed their own associations with the word. Afterwards, I explained that their task will be to illustrate the word in such a way so as to show the word speak: as a word and as a visual. And that all ideas are good ideas. I gave out the pencils and the markers and they got to work. They were working and I was just supervising and helping with the content as we had to do some research to look for images or for information.

Afterwards we had a short presentation for everyone to see all the ideas (‘This is my poster. I’ve got…because…and…’) and when all of them were done, we also had a feedback session. I wanted to praise everyone together, as a group, apart from all of those individual praises I gave while monitoring and I also wanted to highlight that we had lots and lots of different ideas and that they were all precious. One of the students suggested choosing the best poster but I objected. I explained that all of the posters were great and so different that it is impossible to choose one, the best, they are all great.

Apart from that I also wanted to ask the students for their feedback and whether it was easy or difficult to use the words and images in such a way. This was also a precious part of the lesson.

It is also important to mention that this lesson, untraditionally, was longer as it took more than 1 academic hour that we normally spend on Art in our Art Explorers. I could do it because we had a double English on that day and it was absolutely necessary as only a few of my students are the regular creators and I did notice that these did have a different time management mode and ideas generation mode. The others needed more time to make decisions, to generate ideas and to execute them. Which is something to bear in mind. If it hadn’t been the last day before the term break, we would have created in one lesson and carried out the presentation + feedback on the following day.

The teacher watches and ponders…

Oh, this was one wonderful lesson!

I was really really curious how my regular class would react to the Art content as out of all the students only three or four attend the Art Explorers regularly, all the other ones do not have the chance to stay for the afterschool classes and only some of them attend our term break classes when these take place.

But it went well…I mean, it is a good lesson and, for me as a teacher, it has been tried and tested so I was confident and I knew that great things might come out of it. But the kids took well to it. They were curious about the artist and his paintings, especially that they were in Russian and they were interested and invested in answering the questions I asked.

The brainstorming session, something that we rarely do in the Art Explorers, also helped because it helped the (potentially) less creative students generate ideas or, at least, to see that there is a range of interpretations to choose from. To be honest, some of the kids really surprised me with their ideas and their interpretations as they were fresh and spot-on.

The presentation was a great idea, and again, something we rarely do, because only in our classes we have more time and a relatively even levels of English for everyone to produce and to understand but it was also worth it. I need to think of how to smuggle elements of it into our Art Explorers classes.

My favourite part, however, apart from the creation, was the feedback and all of the comments the kids made. The general consensus was that sometimes it was easy and sometimes it was not to come up with the ideas and to deal with their execution. I really loved the fact that there was such a variety of the interpretations and they the kids had a chance to see everyone else’s angle, too, further broadening their horizons. Some of my favourite ones were the following: travel represented by the sights from around the world, travel represented by things that we need to travel, travel represented by the flags of the countries that the artist likes, travel represented by the flags of the countries that start with the letters t, r, a, v, e and l, travel represented by the travel associations that look like the letters of the word or, even, travel represented by the potential problems which you might encounter while travelling…

The most beautiful line and the one that I will finish this post with was a question from one of my students, one of those cool one, the older ones, the ones who do not attend the regular art classes. It went like that:

‘Are we going to do it again?’

Happy teaching!

A dice story that wasn’t…Crumbs #80 One more way to write a story

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Ingredients

  • the idea this time was taken from Global English 4, with the unit 5 whole focused on storytelling. There is an activity there with a framework to write a story: you roll the dice and choose one of the options for the time of the story, the setting, the characters and the dilemma. This grid gave me the idea for our lesson and it helped me shape the preparation stage to our writing. It can easily be replaced with a much easier vocabulary set, adapted to the level of the students. And a few die.
  • a template
  • my own story to be used as an example

Procedures

  • We started the lesson in our usual way, with hellos, our hello song and an exercise to practise past tense, our main grammar thing this month.
  • We revised the main parts of a story that we would use mentioned above and the dialogue and why we have it in the story (to help us express emotions in a story better)
  • I showed the kids the template written on the board and I read the story I wrote before the lesson using the dice and the framework from the book
  • We put together a few stories, using the same framework, and a variety of set-ups: everyone rolling and contributing one element at a time, everyone contributing an element each, in turns (i.e. 9 different days, 9 different locations etc), each child contributing their own element, without the support of the book etc.
  • Afterwards, we started to work on our own stories. I kept the coursebooks open for the kids to have some sources of support and ideas but even before I managed to finish giving the instructions, some of my kids were asking ‘Can we use our ideas, please?’
  • Everyone had a handout (see above) and we were going step by step, with me modelling and creating my second story on the board and making sure that everyone was on the ball as we went along.
  • In the end, we added the title and signed the story.
  • When the stories were ready, we had a reading session and all of them were read out loud. With one of my groups, I had to suggest three options: a) the story is read by the child, b) the story is read by the teacher, c) the story is read by the teacher only (for the sake of my shiest student). I introduced all the stories and we had a round of applause at the end, for everyone.
  • We haven’t done it yet but I want to type up and print all of the stories for the following issue of our school journal so next week I am going to ask each student to write a short description of the illustration they want the A.I. to create for their story.

Why we like it

  • The dice story was a perfect introduction to the lesson and an ideal idea-generator. I decided to use the coursebook as it is, in order to expose the students to the real un-graded language.
  • It was an easy thing to write (it was short) but it had enough for funny and entertaining stories which my kids’ work proved.
  • By adding two lines of dialogue to the framework in the coursebook, it became even easier and more fun to write and to read.
  • Initially, I planned it as a one-lesson event but seeing how much they benefited from extended practice and preparation, I extended it into two 45-minute classes.
  • All of the kids got really into writing their stories. One of my students literally dragged me into the classroom, from the break, as, in his opinion, I wasn’t walking fast enough and he wanted to start work as soon as possible.
  • All of the stories that were written are great and I am really proud of my students, but there are four or five that are really way above the average, with the funny dialogue and an unexpected ending, a really good piece of work!
  • I am planning to use the dice framework to prepare a similar but simpler sets for the everyday use, for us to tell little stories in the beginning of every lesson while we are still practising the past tense. I am hoping that now the kids will be able to tell these stories in pairs.

Happy teaching!