#eflkids

Why you DON’T want to mix age groups and levels. Adventures of a teacher

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Sigh.

This was my first reaction to the context I had a chance to teach in last week. To be honest, I am still sighing because an experience like that does not wear off too easily. Yes, it was not a positive experience.

Now, even being just dead inside and very very angry (not a contradiction) at the time it was taking place, I was still a devoted teacher and, even more importantly from the point of view of this post, I was a trainer, reflecting and assessing. So here we are. For you, what not to do and why.

What happened

Last week I had a chance to teach an extremely mixed ability group. I am an experienced teacher and an experienced trainer and, over the years, I have had an opportunity to work in a variety of contexts with different students and mixed ability groups in all shapes and forms and types of a mixture. Last Wednesday I reached a new level.

There were nine kids in the classroom. Three of them – real beginners who should be learning colours and their first hellos. Seven of them – pre-literate students who would require an alternative set of materials. Two kids – of a higher than ‘just pre-A1’ who should be in a more advanced group. One child, aged 5 (according to the information from the admin) and aged 4 (according to what he told me) – a pre-schooler who should not be spending in the classroom more than 30 minutes. Three kids, aged 10 – who should be in a completely different group where they are given a task on a higher cognitive level of challenge than just a picture to colour. And yet, there we were, myself and all nine kids (all of them called Sasha, traditionally), in the same classroom, for 4 academic hours of a lesson.

We all survived. Here are some notes from this memorable day.

The youngest Sasha…

  • The youngest Sasha was completely out of place. He did not understand what we were doing and the only reason why he even stayed in the classroom was that his older sister was present and involved. He was trying to join in, though, and the result of it was a little boy babbling in some kind of a newspeak, that was neither pidgin, nor Sasha’s L1 and not any langauge known to mankind. Albeit, to be honest, it to someone who did not know English, it might have sounded like English, from afar. My heart was literally aching at his efforts.
  • The youngest Sasha had no idea of the way you interact in the classroom. On countless of occasions, he would get up, come to the board, pick up markers to draw on the board (since the classroom was not baby-proof, I did not expect a pre-schooler), to try to nick a few post-it notes. He did not understand why he did not get a set of mini-cards (and some kids did, the leaders of all the small teams) and when he got a small heart for the other activity, he did not want to give it back. Because why would he? At one point, I felt like being on the playground and ‘fighting’ over toys.
  • It was beyond the little Sasha’s understanding why we would even dictate the colours for each other to use in a colouring dictation. ‘But I want to colour it blue and green!’, he said, already on the verge of tears and, later on, naturally, he was thoroughly confused that his picture was different from the teacher’s, his sister’s, all the other kids’ and he kept asking if he did a good job and if he completed the task well.

The Sashas in the middle…

  • Generally, these Sashas were under control. After all, they are the kids who have spent the longest period of time in the classroom and they are the kids who have had a chance to experience and to benefit from the routine of the previous two weeks. High five to the teacher who made an effort to build this routine. It was worth it. These are also the children who constitue the biggest group and the activities were generally designed for them and graded to their linguistic, cognitive and social skills. They did participate, they did produce, they did work well in pairs and, unknowingly, they were the kids that the teacher was looking at and sighing with relief. ‘Not all is lost’, thought the teacher. ‘I have not run in vain’, thought the teacher, quoting her favourite quote from the Bible, albeit a very un-religious one.
  • But, still, the atmosphere of the lesson, chaotic and messy, unravelling and tense (my bad, I know that) also took its toll even on them. My amazing twins were on the edge and, at one point, a heated debate broke out because one of them wanted to play a simple gussing game (as intented and as they were instructed to) whereas the other wanted some hints and suggestions (because that is how we played in the previous weeks). ‘Why aren’t you miming? Why aren’t you telling me if it is big or small and if you like it?’, he was asking. They ended up getting upset with each other and breaking up for a minute. The other pair, Sasha girls were sleepy and tired and on the verge of tears and even though they did play, they also spent a moment discussing whether they should just divide the cards into two piles or take them from the same pile and how much time is necessary to make a decision which word you want to use to talk about (Answer: not too much, the sooner, the better).
  • The day is quite long and the kids like to ask how much time is left. We have established a routine that when they want to know, they should ask (‘What time is it?’) and the teacher checks the watch and writes how many minutes are left until the nearest break. I don’t quite like it but they are quite young, they cannot tell the time using the clock and, still, they need something to understand and to manage the lesson time. We have drilled the question, it is always on the board and, although it is slightly annoying to hear the same question over and over again, it gives me an idea of how involved the group are. The more frequent the questions, the more ‘trouble’ we are in. Unsurprisingly, in that particular lesson, this question was popping up again and again and again.

The oldest Sashas…

  • The oldest Sashas finished the task way too quickly for teacher’s liking and we all had to wrap up a bit faster, although, indeed, they got convinced into taking part in some kind of an extension and it did buy the rest of us some time.
  • The oldest Sashas, because there were more than one, spent the lesson being on the brink of getting involved in some alternative, mostly illicit activities. In the end, they did not, with an experienced teacher present, but, oh Lord, there was so much potential for it. If there had been only one older Sasha, they would have been more easily contained. With two or three, at times, they could bounce their exciting ideas off each other, fueling the behaviour that were not quite welcome.
  • It was almost a miracle that the older Sashas enjoy colouring and that they got midly interested in completing the task. They were most engaged than I would have expected from children of their age. I can safely say that, yes, I did get away with it.
  • In an ideal world, these Sashas would be getting a much closer monitoring from the teacher to ensure that they are using the same material but producing a lot more langauge than the average student. Unfortunately, with the kind of mix that I actually had to deal with, it was not possible. Apart from the storybird activity that involved a 1-1 interaction with the teacher, closely supervised. Overall, the teacher was not happy at all.
  • I have also noticed that one of my older Sashas has got a very strong inclination for bullying. Nothing happened but I do not like the vibe and the way he behaves around the younger children (aka all the other children in the group). He is naturally a leader without any skill to be one and he has absolutely no one to look up to and to be inspired by. He would benefit more from being in a group of older children in order to develop his social skills and to learn from the other kids.

If I could think of a metaphor for that day…

A sweater that is fraying uncontrollably, at three different ends.

Washing the windows in a flat ont the top floor, in a blocks of flats. Standing on the chair and reaching out to this little piece in the corner, thinking that this may all end up in a very, very bad place.

A flooded kitchen, with you trying to make decisions quickly and to save something, to wipe the floor and not to let the flood spread to the neighbours below you.

A three-course dinner for ten, prepared by one relatively skilled chef, on one hob, with a pot and a pan.

A herd of cows that your grandma asked you to bring back from the pasture, walking them on the main village road, with all the tractors and all the combine harvester coming back from the fields and using the same road AND all the neighbours and villagers standing by the fences of their houses, watching the god-damn show because a city teenager trying to manage a task she had no preparation or knowledge of. Speaking from experience, in case you are wondering.

Any of the experiences that you spend hating every second of and yet you go on and you survive. Exhausted. And then you just sigh and vent in a post on your blog.

Coda

There is not much to say here apart from this one thing: all these kids should not be learning English together. There are too many factors that come into the picture that make it an almost impossible task for the teacher. It is true that English language groups are rarely homogenous and it is especially true in case of young learners groups and, especially especially, in case of primary school students. Teachers are simply obliged to deal with that issue on daily basis. Managing a group of kids who are on the same level of English but who are of different ages – it is possible. Managing a group of kids who are of the same age but have different levels of English – it is manageable. However, this kind of a mix, different age groups, different levels of English, different levels of literacy skills, cognitive skills and social skills development with such a number of kids is simply not a good idea. If you have a choice, please, DO NOT DO IT.

Happy teaching!

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:

Teaching English Through Art. Jeff Koons and his rabbit

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The language

  • The activities mentioned here were a part of the final lesson of the month and in the unit on animals. We practised the names of animals and we tried to make very simple riddles about animals (‘It is big. It is green. It can swim’). In this particular lesson, for the first time ever, I invited the children to make their own riddles and, with the help of the teacher, they managed.
  • I also introduced the forest version of ‘Walking in the jungle’, which very conveniently, includes a rabbit.
  • We used the finished product for practising the target langauge (Rabbit, can you jump? Yes, I can). We created a few questions (and I say ‘we’ because I only needed to start and the kids took over), answered them and then followed that with singing the song that we learnt in this unit (Little bird, can you clap, from Super Simple Songs) which turned into our own conversation and / or a version of a song (‘Anka, Anka, can you dance?’) which is now one of our favourite parts of the lesson. Kids took a lot of pleasure in answering the questions about themselves.
Porcelain edition Jeff Koons | Bernardaud Porcelain

The artist

  • Jeff Koons was chosen to be the artist of the day only because he was what came up as a result of the google search along the lines of ‘modern artists who drew animals’. His most famous animal is, of course, the balloon dog but I really could not think of a way of turning it into a fun craft activity in the online environment, without asking parents to purchase some unique resources. Plus, we made a puppy craft only a few weeks earlier and I wanted something else. Luckily, Jeff Koons created more than just one dog and a balloon rabbit was one of his creations.
  • We introduced the artist (name, country, favourite things) and we looked at his animals and tried to guess what they are.

The art

  • We started with checking all the materials: an A4 piece of paper (either the drawing album paper or just regular photocopying paper), scissors, glue and marker. I also sent the photo of the finished product to the parents so that they could help, if necessary.
  • As usual, I was modelling every step, then waiting for the kids to complete the action before moving on to the following stage.
  • First we drew two lines along the long side of the piece of paper and we cut along them.
  • Then I put the two strips together into a letter L (although in class I used the references from Russian and we made a capital letter G) and glued the ends together. Then came the time for the most challenging step, making the harmonica (or the spring (the reference that came from the student who had a slinky and called it a spring). I used the phrase ‘on the top, on the top’ while demonstrating how I was folding the paper. We glued the ends, too.
  • On the remaning piece of paper we drew a circle and drew the face of the rabbit on it. Afterwards we drew ‘two letters A’ for the ears and cut them out. We glued them together and then we glued them on the top of the spring.
  • Next, we drew ‘4 zeros’ for the paws and we also cut them out and glued them on the pieces of spring, two at the base and two somewhere in the middle. The glue here can be applied on the top or at the bottom of the piece and glued on, it does not really matter.
  • The rabbit was adapted from the original version from DIYArtPins to make it feasible in an online class but, still, it is the most complex and the most challenging craft that we have done in our online class. I had experiemented with it before the lesson, making my own copy, checking whether the quality of paper will or will not have an impact on the final product, visualising the stages and instructions. I was ready but I still got cold feel once we started to make it. However, my amazing kids who have been creative for two years and who have been creative online for one year managed. The youngest artist was supported by her mum and she managed, too. I would not recommend this activity for beginner online artists of beginner offline artists, either.
  • Without doubt, the rabbit is just cool. It is a real toy, made of paper and when you press it, it springs back or, we could and we did say, ‘the rabbit can jump’.

Happy teaching!

Teaching English Through Art: Upgrading Picasso

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The artist

This is not Pablo Picasso’s first appearance in our lesson because last week, in our unit on animals, we looked at elephants by different artists and among them was also the most amazing and the most beautiful elephant by Pablo Picasso (see below). Even then I knew that it would not be the last we see of it.

I was planning to introduce Pablo Picasso in our traditional way, with the country and his favourite things (faces, shapes and line drawings) and I have prepared our gallery for it, but, as it sometimes happens, there was no time for that in the lesson. We are going to catch up on that next time, in our final lesson in this academic year.

In this lesson, we only looked at different one line animals created by Picasso and we tried to guess which ones they are using this set of visuals on wordwall.

The language

This lesson was a part of our Animals unit and the langauge that we have been working on and this was one more chance for us to use and to practise the following langauge: names of animals, categorising animals (big and small, I like and I don’t like) and, most importantly, talking about what animals and what we can do, using I can and I can’t and a series of verbs. We have based it on the song from Super Simple Songs, Little Bird, and we have been working on extending the list of verbs beyond the song.

We have already been playing with the spinner, asking the question: ‘Can you jump?’ and doing the actions to prove that, yes, we can but not as much language came out of it, even though it has been one of our favourite activities recently. This Monday, however, we started to adapt the song and sing it for all the kids, one by one (‘Sasha, Sasha, can you clap?’) and, finally, the langauge came out it. The girls were either singing or singing-reciting their answers, in full sentences. Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

The art

In the last few lessons, we have done a lot of work with paper, scissors and glue, creating various toys. It was fun and lots of it but, at the same time, I was getting ready to introduce a new technique in our lessons. That is how the idea of upgrading Picasso came about.

I have looked through all the amazing line drawings that Picasso created and I was experimenting with the animals that we could all draw in class, online. Unfortunately, that meant that I had to give up on the chameleon (although that would have been the animal to upgrade with colours!) but I will leave it for another occasion. The flamingo and the horse were the other ones that I was considering but decided against, in the end, because they would be a bit too complicated for the younger students.

Eventually, I have chosen the elephant, the fish and the owl because they are simple and they represent three different actions and animals from the song which was also used during the craft activity. The verses of the song helped us to punctuate the activity as we sang it at the end of every stage of the craft, that is, after we completed the fish, after the completed the elephant and after we completed the elephant.

Before the lesson I experimented with the technique and checked with the parents that all the resources were available at home. In class, we went through all the resources, showing them to the camera, as usual: an A4 piece of paper, a pencil, paintbrushes, watercolours and two pots with water, one with the regular water and one with the water with salt.

First we drew the fish, step by step. I was drawaing one element, the kids followed and I waited for them to finish. This was not our first drawing dictation so the kids are now very good at following, showing the piece of paper to the camera after each step. Normally, I hold the piece of paper on a clipboard and I show it to the camera. This time, however, I decided to hold the camera over the paper because of the watercolours and I did it consistently throughout the activity. We drew three animals, one by one and put the pencils away.

The idea for upgrading Picasso I got from this great video on youtube. First, we prepared the based and covered the drawing of the owl with the water mixed with salt. The we put it away and started to apply the paints, first one colour, then the other. It is necessary to take some paint with the paintbrush and delicately touch the paper. The colour should spill and seep into the paper beautiful, opening like a flower. It has to be done slowly and carefully in order to be able to observe how that happens. After the first colour is applied in such a way, we repeat with the other or with the others, depending on what the kids choose.

In the end of the stage, I announced ‘I am ready. My owl is blue, red and pink’ and elicited the same from the kids. Afterwards, we sang the verse for the owl. This gave the kids a little bit more time to complete their birds.

Later on, we moved on the the other two animals and repeated the steps. I told the parents to leave the animals somewhere to let them dry completely.

My students were really involved and they had a lot of fun. One of them even used the animals to play a game with her dad and grandma (‘What animal is it? Can you guess?’). They drew their own Picasso animals themselves and they upgraded them beautifully. I was a very proud teacher that day!

And the most amazing of one line drawings and the most amazing of elephants that actually made me fall in love with Picasso…

Happy teaching!

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!

Off the leash. Creating the curriculum for preschoolers

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How it started?

Throughout my teaching career…oh no. STOP. No energy for all these big words.

There have been many different context in which I have met my pre-school students. There has been teaching for big schools and for small schools. There have been groups and individual kids. There have been institutions and neighbour’s and friend’s kids. There have beenn the English clubs, temporary and permanent, courses based on songs, stories, craft, Art and courses based on coursebooks.

This time, however, with my private student, Sasha (it is always Sasha:-), I found myself in a completely different place. She was already quite a mature preschooler, about to turn 6 and she was not a complete beginner. The initial reaction was that I would test her to evaluate her level and then, somehow, match it with one of the courses (aka coursebooks) that I am familiar with. Because it is just easier this way and although I am not a zealous follower of a coursebook, I suppose, I wanted to have a ready-made curriculum at hand.

There is nothing wrong with that approach, essentially, but I started to think about all the implications. I needed to find the coursebook in my country. Sasha’s parents would have to find the book in her country. She is between the levels so we would not be able to use only one book and I would have to supplement anyway. Too much hassle. I decided to let go of the coursebook and to let go of the whole coursebook-related curriculum. I decided to let the teacher (myself) off the leash and to put the student in the centre of this whole adventure. And see what happens.

After all, the whole pre-A level is like an ocean – big, surprising and pretty much uncharted and you are allowed to do whatever you want. My favourite set up, you might say.

How it’s going?

In one word, it is going great and I am having a lot of fun desigining the curriculum and adapting it to my students’ particular needs. In the beginning I did consider using some handouts and coursebooks-related materials, when applicable, but it was only an initial idea. With time, these were phased out and at this point the course materials inlcude: wordwall games, miro activities, songs and videos available on youtube and all the resources we use to develop our literacy skills, such as specific phonics platforms and resources and the notebook we used for writing.

Overall, I am very happy with my student’s progress and development, in all the areas and skills. And, apart from that, I am having a lot of fun on the way. I have especially enjoyed the freedom that this approach gives the teacher and the opportunity to find out more links and new links between different topics, themes, structures and vocabulary.

All my reflections and tips, in the paragraph below.

How to go about creating a curriculum for the EFL pre-schoolers?

  • Choose a time frame for your courses in order to better manage the time and the content. With two real hours of the lesson time per week (2 x 60 minutes) available, I decided to work on the monthly basis, choosing a different theme for each calendar month.
  • Make a decision regarding the target vocabulary, as regards the topic and the number of words to be introduced throughout the entire unit. This list will depend on how old the students are and how many of these words overlap with the words in the students’ L1. For example, in the topic of animals or jungle animals, words such as ‘a tiger’ or ‘a zebra’ are not new for the L1 speakers of Polish, Russian or Portuguese.
  • Make a decision regarding the structures and / or the target language to be introduced and practised alongside the target vocabulary. These should be relevant to the kids’ age and life experience and, at the same time, relevant and connected to the target vocabulary.
  • Select the songs, stories, videos and craft activities that could be included in this unit. This requires some research and googling but it is also a lot of fun because new videoes are created and added, more up-to-date, more fun and more EFL-friendly. There are some topics that I taught two years ago, for example, and today I use completely different materials to those that were my favourite in the past. The same applies to stories and craft.
  • The coursebooks can be consulted for ideas or resources since there are a lot of lovely, ready-made resources in all the published materials but I wanted to avoid doing that, on purpose, in order not to be bound by everything that has been created so far.
  • The sequence of topics as well as structures chosen has been determined by one or more of the following factors: the time of the year (Christmas, spring), student’s interests (life aquatic) and the connection between the topics. We have managed to move from one to the other, at every step revising the previous units. Some of the decisions were predictable, some of them were completely unexpected,
  • This is a fully student-centred curriculum. It is a combination of what I would like us to cover and of what she is really interested in. Understandably, it is much easier to achieve with a 1-1 student and it would be slightly different with a group, although the students’ views would also be taken into consideration while shaping up the curriculum. Some of the topics appeared in a most random of way like life aquatic which we started to deal with because my student simply fell in love with orcas, dolphins and whales and I decided that not using this passion to learn English would be a waste. Apart from learning the key vocabulary and revising everything that we did in the ‘animal unit’ a few months earlier, I figured out that we could use it to learn and to practise talking about what the animals can do. We started with the basic verbs (because the ocean animals cannot really do a lot, apart from swimming, jumping and walking) but we extended later on. In the same way, my idea to introduce the topic of transport fell flat on its face and had to be directed towards the city because Sasha was not especially interested in cars, boats and helicopters.
  • The course aims are as they would have been for any pre-school EFL course but I do make an effort to formulate the aims for every single lesson I teach as has been my habit and since I started, this has had a huge impact on my teaching and lesson planning. You can read more about it here.

Topics we have covered so far

  • Food, fruit and vegetables and I like, I don’t like, Do you like? as well as What’s your favourite food / drink / fruit / vegetable?
  • Animals: wild animals and pets, habitats and adjectives to describe animals such as big and small, fast and slow, beautiful and ugly. The main structure was the verb to be (3rd singular), used to describe the animals and to make riddles, in the affirmative, negative and question form. We also managed to revise like / don’t like while talking about the animals’ favourite food but in order to keep it coherent we used the plural form (Lions like to eat meat).
  • School: school objects, rooms in the school and Present Continous to describe what we do at school. This unit was fully based on Pete the Cat, Rocking in my school shoes.
  • House: rooms in the house and verbs in Present Continuous to describe where we are and what we are doing. We also revised the family members and started to talk about them.
  • Weather: an opportunity to revise a few different sets of vocabulary and structures: clothes (It is sunny. I am wearing a dress), feelings (It is sunny, I am happy), objects (It is sunny. I’ve got an umbrella).
  • Christmas: Christmas characters and decorations, more adjectives to describe these (long / short, cold / hot) to make riddles about these, as well as prepositions of place (in, on, under, next to) which we need to describe where the Christmas decorations were located. We also managed to go back to the rooms and Present Continuous (‘Mum is in the kitchen. She is cooking’)
  • Life aquatic: different animals that live in the ocean, adjectives to describe these animals with a few body parts typical for animals (legs, a tail, a head, ears). We also started to talk about what the animals can and cannot do, starting with the aquatic animals and three main verbs (swim, jump, walk) and then extending the number of verbs and all the animals.
  • Transport and the city: different means of transport and places in the city. We further extended the list of adjectives (fast / slow, loud / quiet) and we talked how we travel to different places (I go to school by car). We also revised the prepositions of place while constructing our own city (The school is in Green Street. The school is next to the park.)
  • Professions: our target langauge in this unit is related to professions, although I am planning to extend it towards characters (fairy tales and people in our life). As regards grammar, this is our first step towards talking about other people. We have already covered she / he is and, only yesterday, she likes and he likes.

What’s next?

To be perfectly honest, I have no idea. This is still an ongoing project and I have not been planning it with a lot of time in advance. The professions unit is coming to an end and it seems that we are going to take it towards fairy tale characters, superheroes and ‘people’ in general as this will be a chance to revise and further reinforce the 3rd singular (to be and likes / doesn’t like). That will be our May.

As for June and July, I have not decided yet. I know that I would love to introduce some elements of the past tense and a structure to talk about the future, too, but I am not sure how it is going to go. The more immediate plans involve the extension of the current unit by revising the family and introducing a variety of fairy tales characters which will allow us to start telling stories. Then we will see. I am sure to be reflecting on it here in the future.

Happy teaching!