#eflkids

Crumbs #54 Caterpillars everywhere

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Ingredients

  • A4 paper, one sheet (for the leaf) and some coloured paper, I have tried both cardboard and regular craft paper and they both worked very well. The smaller caterpillar in the photo was done with the cut-up cover page of the drawing album and it works well, too. Some of my students were using ultra-thin craft paper and it worked, too so I presume cut up colourful pages of glossy magazines could be recycled this way, too.
  • Glue, scissors, markers and crayons.
  • This lesson was a part of the series of lessons devoted to spring so among all the other materials that can be used there are: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, the book or the video, the story or the video from Playway to English 3 about 6 Hungry Caterpillars, a video about the life cycle of a butterfly, the garden craft and the butterfly craft. It can also be a part of the Art lessons on the topic of weather and seasons. More about it – soon!

Procedures

  • Check that we all have all our resources, one by one showing them to the camera and, more often than not, finding the missing bits.
  • Show the kids the final product. This is not something that I do in every lesson, sometimes this element is left out for the surprise element. This time, however, I wanted the kids to understand exactly what we are doing and why.
  • Draw the leaf on the A4 paper, colour it green and cut it out. Demonstrate each step to the camera and wait for the kids to complete it before moving on to the next one. During this particular lesson I have also came up with a little chant that we started to sing while colouring and cutting (‘It’s a big, big leaf for a very hungry caterpillar’)
  • Ask the kids to prepare the strips of the coloured paper, of any colour they want. The paper can be cut sideways (probably the easier option as it involves less cutting) or lengthways (in this case each strip needs to be cut in half). I didn’t tell the kids how wide the strips should be. We have been doing craft online for a few months now and my kids are now able to make such decisions themselves. I assumed that everyone will choose the width themeselves (as wide as they can handle).
  • We glue the strips into a ring by putting the glue on one end and shaping it into a circle. We glue all the rings first.
  • Glue all the rings together by applying the glue and attaching the rings and pressing them with two fingers.
  • Cut out one circle for the face, draw the eyes and the smile, glue the circle onto the caterpillar. If possible, the little antennas can be added, too.
  • Sit the cateripillar on the leaf, introduce the caterpillars, say hello, use them in a dialogue etc. We sang the song about the garden that we had been practising for a week then.
Here are the caterpillars made by my kids. Courtesy of FunArtKids

Why we love it

  • It is very easy to make.
  • It is beautiful and sweet. Whenver I choose and prepare activities for my groups, I always wonder if my kids will simply approve of it, if they just like it. When I showed them the caterpillar, simple as it is, I got this very special ‘Ahh!’ and big smiles.
  • It can be done in the offline classroom but it is also possible in the online classroom.
  • It gives the kids some opportunities to make decisions about the creative content, the size of the leaf, the colours for the caterpillar etc.
  • It can be easily combined with any spring lesson or with any story lesson.
  • The level of challenge can be adjusted. In the classroom the teacher can prepare the strips of paper or the parents can be asked to pre-cut them if the lesson is taught online. We used five strips / rings but the caterpillar can be made longer or shorter.
  • There is some potential for the literacy skills development – kids could write the key words on the outside or on the inside of all the strips before glueing them together.

Happy teaching!

All you need is… a picture. Vol. 3

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This episode is going to be devoted to the older students, juniors, teenagers and adults and those of the higher levels, from B1 upwards.

All of these activities were inspired by the approach in the visual based speaking tasks of the Cambridge exams. I use these activities frequently at the beginning of the ‘unit’, to introduce a new theme, to ease us into it and to start with some freer speaking activity, that, really, does not have any specific linguistic requirements or a very formal framework. Not to mention that by the way, my students get an opportunity to practise and develop their exam skills, in a slightly more relaxed way.

All of these activites are deeply rooted in my professional laziness because even though I have to devote some time to the picture selection, that is, really, the only time investment beacause the task is usually a one sentence instruction and, to be perfectly honest, most of the ideas listed below were created during the lesson, as a follow-up and an extension of the regular Cambridge ‘similar or different’ task.

Usually, my greatest helper while preparing these activities is google search engine. I type in the key words and I look through the images until I find these four, six or eight that match the idea that I have in mind. They can be saved in a document or displayed on the screen (powerpoint or Miro). I save them and keep them for later because they are always recycled.

Frequently, I start the cycle with the simplest of the activities (‘Choose two to compare’) and I follow-up with a wider discussion (‘Have you ever…?’) or any other combination but, naturally, these can be used on their own. All of the activities can be done with the whole class or in pairs.

  • Talk about your favourite photograph: students choose the photograph that they really like, they describe it and justify their choice
  • Talk about your least favourite photograph: students choose the photograhp that they like the least, they describe it and explain why they don’t like it
  • Choose two pictures for your friend to compare: students choose two of the pictures to compare them, to look for similarities and differences, very much like in the B2 speaking part of the Cambridge exams. The fact that there are more than two pictures allows for the activity to be repeated a few times, over and over, in pairs or with different partners. The longer the activity takes, the more interesting arguments appear and the more creative the answers.
  • Choose two pictures for your friend: students work in pairs but in this case they choose two pictures for their partner to compare. It makes the activity more interesting as it is easier to avoid all the obvious choices and this way more interesting contributions are generated.
  • Have you ever done that? This is the activity in which we use all the pictures at the same time. Students ask each other the question about all pictures, one by one.
  • Would you like to? This is another activity that can be used with all the pictures. Students ask each other questions related to the situations in the pictures, but more focused on the future.
  • The comparatives: Another activity in which students discuss all the pictures, going over the list of questions and choosing the pictures that somehow stand out. The set is closely related to the theme of the photographs. For example, in a lesson devoted to health and health problems we looked at these four pictures and we answered the questions: Choose the most serious problem, the least serious problem, the most common problem, the easiest to deal with, the least unpleasant for the doctor, the least unpleasant for the patient, the most expensive to treat, the least expensive to treat, etc.
  • What happened before? What will happen afterwards? This is a cool actvity that I adapted from the latest editions of New Cutting Edge Advanced. Students choose their favourite pictures and discuss the before and after, almost telling a story.
  • Ask a question: students work in pairs, they ask their friends questions related to the pictures, they have to use different pictures and different question words and they need to a different word each time: What? Why? Who? Where? How many? How much? What kind of? When? How often?
  • It reminds me of: students work in pairs, they talk about all the pictures. The talk about their associations, memories or references. It can be a free activity or it can have a theme of: books, films, songs and personal memories.

Make sure you also have a look at the first two parts of this series. You can find them here and here.

Happy teaching!

Adults learning from kids. Or how I accidentally formulated my teacher beliefs

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I have already been writing about ‘the shock’ of a teacher of YL going back into the adult EFL classroom in an earlier post ‘What an old dog learnt?‘.

A message to the parents

Two weeks ago, after one of the lessons, I sat down to write to the parents about the homework, the upcoming test and some feedback. It was just a lesson and a busy one because we were doing a lot of preparation for the test. ‘Nothing special’ you might say because we didn’t have any amazing activities, no ‘fireworks’ or ‘surprises’, only a lot of hard work and practice. And yet, somehow, the lesson was just beautiful, so great, in fact, that I decided to write about it to my educational parents, too. I just wanted to tell them that the kids were amazing (they are!) and that we had a speaking activity and it all went very well. ‘You know, I wish I could show our group to some of my adult students to show them what communication might and should look like‘, I typed, and it was only then that I did sigh, in awe at my own wording and the very idea.

Oh, how I wish I could do just that.

What would my adults see…

First of all, they would see children of different ages, aged 10 in this group, but also 3 or 17 in my other groups, kids studying together, in groups or individually. If they came, they would be surprised at the level of English the kids already have at this point. Or, rather, as a proud teacher of my kids, I hope they would be impressed. Just a little bit.

I would also hope that they could notice how comfortable the kids feel in their other language version. It is not an accessory that you carry around in your hand, a tool that you try to use although you are not quite sure how to. Nor is it a costume that you have to put on and become something else, a dragon, a princess, a cat, something that you are not. On the contrary, I would love them to see how, regardless of the age and the level, English can and does feel like the second skin. Something that is just you, the other version of you but also the very self that you are.

I would love my adults to be inspired by the open-mindedness and the general attitude to anything that is new and out of the box, especially the readiness to see, to try, to experiment. That does not mean that everything that I bring into the lesson and everything that I dump at them, grammar, tests, exam preparation, all the games are welcomed with the open arms and everyone, but absolutely every single person jumps at the opportunity of diving in. It is absolutely not the case. My kids are ‘normal’ kids who get tired, who have lots of homework, who sometimes, I bet you, would be doing something else entirely, not the things we are dealing with in the classroom. And, consequently, they are looking for the ways out, for the ways of cutting the corners, for taking a time out. Which, to be honest, is something that I secretly admire them for, although I will never own up to it. But, even so, overall, they are ready for a challenge.

I would love to the adults to notice the egalite as one of our rules and standards that everyone has the right to and that everyone has to learn to accept, because, indeed, sometimes this is something that we have to work on, although for kids the reasons are slightly different. The younger kids are developing their social skills for the first time, as it were. The adults hide either behind their personality or good manners or, perhaps, the corporate culture that might be developing the habits in some relation to the hierarchy in the company. Although here, I don’t know, I am just guessing.

Last but not least, it would be very interesting to have my adult students see that the teacher is not some kind of an air traffic controller, deciding who goes next but more of a head chef, the individual, who, although fully present and involved, is only keeping an eye on the process and making sure that the food is made and served or, in other words, that the aims are met. What is more, and very closely related, is that everyone gets to execute their freedom of speech, or in simple and less grandiose words: that people talk whenever they have something to say, not only because the teacher asks a question and when she does it.

I have no idea why but with every word typed up here, it started to feel more like typing up a teaching manifesto, my own teaching commandments almost. I can promise that I will leave it here as it is and I will get back to it in a few weeks to see if it still feels like that and if I still believe in it.

As a result…

The truth is that I wouldn’t really do it. The kids’ need to stay protected, in the precious coziness of our online classroom and without any ‘invasions’ from strangers. The adults, on the other hand, might not appreciate having their teacher suggest that their new role models in communication are some ten-year-olds. Everyone will stay in their own classroom and I will just continue doing my job and learning from observing and reflecting on two different environments and types of lessons.

And using them as a source of inspiration for new activities, like this new series on the blog Discourse Development. Here’s to hoping that staging, scaffolding and practising will lead to automacy and to the development of new habits and even my adults, all my adults, will be interacting with more freedom and ease.

So far, there have been four but I got a feeling that there will be more coming up

There is definitely more to come!

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #51 Peppa Pig in the VYL classroom

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Lisbon

Ingredients

Procedures

  • Work with the vocabulary and structures of the unit, here the weather and the clothes
  • Introduce or revise all the weather accessories and all the other key words (i.e. umbrella, hat, warm milk etc)
  • Watch the video, with pauses to ask short questions about the video and the story. These will depend on the level of the children and their ability to produce. In the beginning we often talk about the emotions of the characters and about everything that we can see. As soon as students can use some elements of the Present Continuous or to evaluate the behaviour and the actions of the characters, the conversation really takes off.
  • We follow-up with a speaking activity. The yes / no quiz is an easy version and it is based on the students comprehension and the listening skills. They listen to the teacher and react with a simple yes or no, but, with time they will be also better able to produce simple sentences. The other activity, the reordering, was created for a more advanced pre-school student and we retold the story together, with the teacher reorganising the cards and helping the student produce the sentence. Sometimes it was a full sentence (‘It is raining”), sometimes, the teacher started a sentence and the student finished (‘Dr Brown Bear it talking…’ ‘to George’)
  • The activity can be repeated in the following lesson to give the students an opportunity to participate with more confidence and, hopefully, more language produced.

Why we like it

  • Kids already know and watch Peppa and it is fun to bring her into the English lessons, too.
  • The episodes are relatively short (around 5 min) and it is an amount of time that will not be a challenge for the students and it can be relatively easily included in a typical lesson for pre-schoolers
  • Although the language of the cartoon is not graded and it is possible to find the episodes that will be easy to understand also for the very young students who have just started to learn English as the foreign language.
  • The videos can be shared with parents and watched again at home.
  • In my classes, we use the videos in the final stages of the unit, as one more source of the target language and of the target langauge in context and to create some opportunities for production.
  • Usually, I don’t watch the videos twice in the same lesson. It might have been beneficial for the general comprehension but I am not sure about the effectiveness of such an approach. Ten minutes is a large chunk of a lesson with pre-schoolers and I doubt the kids would be still interested and focused. I prefer to pause and to chat getting the kids ready for a more communicative video-watching. In the beginning, our conversations are quite simple, very often limited to calling out the words we can see in the video or discussing ‘Is that a good idea?’, a phrase that we frequently use in our classes anyway but it helps kids reflect on the story and perhaps predict the events to follow.
  • Some other episodes that we used in class included: Peppa Pig and the Pet Day, followed-up by matching the kids and their pets, Peppa Pig Lunch followed by a Yes / No quiz, and Peppa Pig and the Fruit Day followed by an activity in which we made our own smoothies on our Miro board.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs # 50 Vyacheslav or about getting ready to tell a story

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Ingredients

  • a group of A2 or A2+ kids preparing for the Cambridge Flyers or the Cambridge KET exam
  • a set of the storytelling pictures from the exam writing materials
  • a piece of paper and a pen

Procedure

  • The teacher displays the visuals on the screen and tells the kids that they will be used to tell a story.
  • The teacher asks the kids to look at the visuals and decide what their character is going to be called. Everyone writes the name down on their piece of paper.
  • The teacher tells the kids to write down ten numbers, 1 – 10, and, when everyone is ready, to write ten things that they can see in all the pictures. These can be only nouns or a selection of nouns, verbs, adjectives etc.
  • The teacher asks the kids to decide what kind of a story they are going to tell: a happy story, a sad story or a scary story. Everyone decides and draws a relevant smiley at the bottom of their list.
  • The teacher divides the kids into pairs and sends them into breakout rooms to tell their stories. They have to use the name, all ten words and they have to make sure that their story has the mood they have chosen for it.
  • Back in the common room, the kids give the group a summary of their story (‘It is a story about a boy who…’)

Why we like it

  • The main aim for me in this particular lesson was to show the kids that even such uninspiring illustrations as the ones we used (and sadly, they were really boring this time) can be a start of a fun storytelling activity and that the final product’s quality depends only on the writers that is us.
  • We are preparing for a progress test and a mock test and I am hoping that an activity of that kind will get the students ready for the independent work during the test itself. Looking at the visuals and making the list helped the students think of the words that they see and it helped to assure that they will be closer to getting to the required wordcount (35 words). If they have ten on their list already 30% of the way there. It also gave them the time necessary to really look at the pictures and to start thinking of what might be happening.
  • From the word ‘Go’ the stories became personalised because the character got a name and became six different boys instantly, Fred, Bob, Tom and Vyacheslav among them. (‘Anka, but why Vyacheslav?‘ ‘I am not sure. I looked at him and I just thought he looks like a Vyacheslav‘).
  • Deciding how the story will end in the beginning also helped to shape it. It was the first time we did it and for that reason I only offered three options: a happy story, a sad story and a scary story but that list can be easily extended. We shared how we were planning to tell the story before we went into the breakout rooms and among our six stories there were three happy stories, one sad story, one scary story (mine) and one ‘ill story’ because one of my students decided that his character is going to catch a cold in the end. Anyway, from the very beginning the kids knew where they were taking their Fred and their Bob. They also knew that their partner’s story will be a bit different so, hopefully, they were more interested in listening to it. There was some variety in the group so I could put them up in a pair whose angle was different.
  • It can be easily done in the classroom but it works amazingly well in the online classes and this is how it came to be. I wanted to avoid sharing the visuals and wasting time on opening them.
  • It is easy and it can be a speaking activity in its own right or it can work as a story-writing preparation task as it was in our case. Consequently, a set of three pictures can be used (Flyers and KET writing tasks) or a set of five pictures (Flyers speaking tasks).
  • As a potential follow-up, the kids can write the story for homework.
  • Next time (and there will defnitely be another round of this activity), I am going to add a more communicative element that will give them a proper listening task and that will give them an opportunity to interact with their partner’s story such as retelling the story they have heard in the breakout rooms, creating a title for their partner’s story or continuing it (‘The next day…’). I know that choosing the best story is sometimes suggested with this kind of an activity but, to be honest, I am not a fan. Not everything needs to be a competition.

I am a lazy teacher and why you should be, too!

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Two weeks ago I was invited to present at the monthly meeting of the Teacher – Mentor Learning Community which was founded by Anna Kashcheeva who, over the years, has been my fellow teacher, ADOS, trainer, my trainee and my trainer and supervisor. Oh, what a lovely list))

I prepared a session on laziness, one of my professional passions. The session went well, the audience were amazing and I got a lot of positive feedback. We were not recording but the presentation was followed up by a post on the community’s blog and you can find it here. Once you get there, don’t forget to have a look at all the other posts and materials.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #49 Linking words and developing discourse

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It is actually funny that this particular post makes an appearance as only the third one in the series, although it should definitely be the Number One as I do it with my youngest students and with the lowest levels. That is the Beginning of Discourse.

Ingredients

  • A set of cards with some opinions or statements. These are some of those that I put together for this exercise: 4 Magic words (used with my A2 primary kids), I can speak (prepared for my A2+ juniors) or just a set of topics (used with my B2 teens and adults).
  • With my offline groups we also use a dice with a linker assigned to each number (i.e. 1 = but, 2 = because, 3 = for example, 4 = and, 5 = so, 6 = or)
  • A model sentence for presentation, i.e. It is raining.

Procedure

  • Presentation starts with the model sentence on the board or on the screen and the teacher introducing different linkers with different follow-up sentences, for instance ‘It is raining…’ ‘…because it is November’, ‘…but I am going to the park’, ‘…so I am not going to the park’, ‘…and it is cold’ and so on, for the kids to understand the meaning of the linkers and the differences between them. Depending on the age, the number of linkers can be limited to the most basic ones i.e. because, and, but. The others will be added later.
  • Controlled practice: kids try to come up with their onw follow-up ideas, still working with the same model sentence and different linkers. This is done together, as a whole class, for the teacher to be able to monitor closely.
  • A slightly freer controlled practice activity can go towards students using a selection of other simple sentences.
  • Freer practice is the first activity that is done in pairs or small groups. If this is an online class, one of the students opens the cards, reads one of the sentences. The other student chooses the linker to use and only then the first student continues the sentence. Afterwards they swap. If this is an offline class, the kids work with pairs and with a pile of cards with these sentences and they use the dice to decide which linker to use. The dice is also an opportunity to award points as the number is not only the linker they should use but also the number of points they get in this round.

Why we like it

  • It is definitely one of the activities (or topics) that, for me, personally, are the breakthrough and the first step in the transition from the baby English, pre-A and A1 level towards more linguistic freedom and fluency. Instead of ‘I like apples’, we get ‘I like apples because they are yummy’ or ‘I like apples but I don’t like pears’ or, even the simplest ‘I like apples and bananas’.
  • First of all, it leads to more production since the students are producing two sentences instead of one in the form of a complex sentence and they get more power as regards the profile and the angle of the message. It is not only ‘I like apples’ and it can develop this into ‘I like apples but only fruit. I don’t like the apple pie or the juice’, ‘I like apples so I buy them every week’, ‘I like apples but I didn’t like them when I was a child’ and ‘I like apples but my brother likes watermelon’ taking the entire conversation towards providing details, comparing the present and the past or including other subjects in it.
  • Naturally, sometimes these basic and more complex linkers are included in the coursebooks and they do include great practice activities. However, I like to introduce it early in the game, when the students are ready, regardless of the curriculum. This set of activities allows for a lot of flexibility and it is easy to use with a variety of levels, age groups and topics.
  • I have started including all the key words in the name of the activity for the sake of my online kids working in the breakout rooms, only partially supervised. When we practice in the common room, I leave the key words on the side of the screen or in the chat, for the kids to remember. It is a little bit more challenging in the breakout rooms. But, with the key words in the name, the kids can still see it even in the breakout room. The teacher only need to work a bit on developing the habit on remembering about them and on paying attention to them.
  • The student or the dice making decisions about the linking word to use makes it a bit more challenging but also a bit more fun. It is also a guarantee that a wider range of linkers will be used, rather than ‘but’ or ‘and’ in every single round.
  • The main sentence can be further extended if we ask students to produce not one but two or three sentences or if the other student is required to comment on what they have heard.

Here you can find the two other posts in the series on developing discourse through sentence adverbs and via one-minute essays. There is also one of the older posts on the many ways of developing discourse for the youngest students.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #47 Our Weather Book

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Ingredients

  • 6 pieces of paper, A5-size aka 3 pages of A4 cut into halves.
  • glue
  • drawing materials: crayons, markers, felt tip pens, coloured pencils

Procedures

  • Introduce and practise the weather vocabulary as usual. This is not our first year of English so we have been using the extended set of words and phrases. Over the series of lessons we have been describing the weather, miming riddles (and yes, I have come up with the gestures for ‘it’s foggy’ and ‘it’s cloudy’, it is not impossible:-) and we have also watched an episode of Peppa Pig, George catches a cold, because it gives us an opportunity to practise the weather, the clothes, some Present Continous and the feelings. Here you can find the set of wordwall cards that we use for the retelling exercises. As you can see, the weather topic became the opportunity to introduce and to revise a whole range of vocabulary sets and structures and it will be reflected in the Weather Book. We are also using the songs and here are our three favourite ones: How is the weather?, What’s your favourite season? and Put on your shoes.
  • First it is necessary to make the book itself. We study online so I asked the parents to prepare the materials before the lesson (six pages, glue, markers), in the offline classroom there is the option of making the book first or the teacher preparing the booklets before the lesson, depending on the age of the students.
  • Making the booklet in class is easy if you follow these few steps: check that everyone has all the necessary materials (‘Have you got the glue? Show me!’), counting all the pieces of paper together etc. Then we draw the line alongside the edge of the paper, page by page and putting the ready pages away. These lines will be help the kids to apply the glue and stick the papers together. The teacher needs to model all the stages and it is absolutely necessary to wait up for the kids, to make sure that everyone is on the same page (no pun intended:-). Afterwards, the teacher shows how to apply the glue (‘Put some glue on the line’) and how to add another page on top, repeating until all pages are glued together into a book (‘Look, we’ve got a book!’)
  • Kids, together with the teacher, number the pages. The numbers will help the teacher and the kids to navigate the booklet throughout the activity. We also write our names on the front page.
  • The next step is to start filling the booklet, one topic per lesson. When we are ready, we put the books away until the next lesson. Once there is something in the book, we start the activity with talking about what we already have got.
  • The topics that we have included so far include: the weather, the emotions (‘It is sunny, I am happy’), the clothes (‘It is sunny, I am wearing a dress’). In the future, I would like to add to it some basic accessories (‘It is sunny, I’ve got my sunglasses’) and some basic Present Continous (‘It is sunny, I am riding a bike’).

Why we like it?

  • There is a lot of potential for craft as the book activity can be extended over a series of lessons.
  • The book also allows for personalising the topic of the weather by associating it with emotions, clothes etc.
  • And, last but not least, it gives us a lot of opportunities for producing the language and, since a large part of the content is revised and repeated over and over again, the kids become a lot more confident at producing it and becoming creative with it, too. After a few lessons, we started to make up silly sentences not matching the weather for the other student(s) to correct the information that they have already heard and have become familiar with.
  • It can be used with a variety of topics, not only the weather, for example food (with pages devoted to fruit, vegetables, drinks, lunch and desserts) or animals (with pages devoted to big and small animals, animals which can fly, swim, run etc) although so far, I have been using the weather book only as a long-term project, with my 1-1 online student. We made the food book with my online group, as a one-off project. It was also a success.
  • There is more flexibility as regards the format, too. We made the booklets and starting filling them in in the same lesson because my kids were ready but it is also possible to divide it into two stages: lesson 1: making the book, lesson 2: start filling it in.
  • The same can be done with all the other lessons. The weather words and the emotions are quite easy to write and adding these in is feasible enough, one lesson (or a ten-minute slot) is going to be enough. The clothes or the accessories might take longer and it can be divided into two lessons to avoid the risk of the activity taking too long and the kids getting bored.

Happy teaching!

Wordwall activities Vol. 2

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This is the second part of the post first published in November 2021 with my Top 10 Favourite Wordwall activities. Don’t forget to check it out here! Lots of ideas there!

  • One or many?

Materials: A set of cards, specifically prepared for this game. This is the one we were using in our Christmas lessons.

Activities: You can read more about it in one of the earlier posts.

Works well with: pre-primary, online and offline, individuals and groups

  • Song follow-up exercises

Materials: As part of our Christmas lessons, we were practising the basic prepositions and singing Santa, Where are you? from Super Simple Songs. The following set of cards was used in a follow-up activity.

Activities: Teacher sings or asks the question ‘Santa, Santa, where are you?’, with every card. The kids answer, either chorally or individually, taking turns. There is also an option of extending it further, by adding how Santa is feeling or what exactly he is doing.

Works well with: pre-primary, online and offline, individual and groups

  • Story follow-up exercises

Materials: This particular set of cards was used as a follow-up activity to a video lesson with Peppa Pig in which George catches a cold. It is a great episode to practise the weather words, the emotions and some present continuous, if the kids are familiar with it. I have used the ‘rank the order’ template, with very simple sentences to describe the actions of the story. Here you can find the final version and another one with ‘answers’.

Activities: In lesson 1, the kids watch the video with the pauses, and the teacher encourages them to produce simple sentences about the story. In lesson 2, the student watch the video again and try to retell it by choosing the order of the pictures and describing them. If the kids are not ready, the teacher can support them by choosing the pictures and giving the students all the sentence starters.

Works well with: pre-primary and primary, online and offline, probably easier with individual students or with students taking turns, in a group.

  • Early reading exercises

Materials: A variety of cards for different activities. The first one was used as a part of the Christmas lessons with my ‘advanced’ pre-primary. The other two, Yes or No and Usborne rhymes were used as part of a series of lessons with Usborne’s Ted in a Red Bed and Fox on a Box.

Activities: In the first activity, the teacher is introducing the kids to the written form of the words. The teacher reads the first sound or the first syllable and asks the kids to continue. Afterwards, the card is flipped. The other two activiites use the target language and the rhymes from the two Usborne stories. The kids are encouraged to see the sentences themselves and say whether they match the illustrations (Yes or No). The other activity is a revision game for the main rhymes from both stories.

Works well with: primary and some of the older pre-primary students who are learning to read.

  • Draw it!

Materials: This particular set here was used as a follow up of the Usborne Phonics Story mentioned above, Ted in a Red Bed. We were also practising furniture and colours.

Activities: The students need a piece of paper, A4 or A5 and a set of pencils or markers. The teacher demonstrates the cards on the screen, starting from the first one (START: I can see a room, which unfortunately is not always the first one in the deck, I set it up before the lesson and then we go through all the cards anyway, to check that we have included everything). The kids take turns to read the simple sentences and to draw elements of their room. In the online lessons, it is a good idea to ask them to show the card to the camera after each step. It is a great activity that encourages the kids to read and to create. It can be made more complex for those of the students who know prepositions (The lamp is on the table). The same kind of a game was used to practise the school vocabulary, toys and colours (starting with a shelf), things in the park etc. The activity can be stopped whenever necessary, after 5 or 8 cards, depending on how focused and interested the kids are.

Works well with: primary, online or offline, I have only done it with individual students but I suppose that it could be adapted to the needs of a group of primary kids, too. I would start with cutting down on the number of pictures, during the first few games.

  • Teaching English through Art

Materials: I have found wordwall extremely useful in creating materials for my Art Explorers lessons. They can be simple flashards that use traditional photographs and paintings to introduce a new set of vocabulary for example Animals in Art. It is also easy to find beautiful materials such as these Pumpkins which we use to express opinion.

Activities: Pumpkins are displayed on the screen, one by one, with the teacher or one of the students asking ‘Do you like this pumpkin?’ and the group answering. It is also possible to include some other elements ie the colours, the basic adjectives, the numbers to encourage kids to produce even more language. I would like to encourage everyone to use paintings to introduce and practise vocabulary even if you are not teaching English through Art. And not only paintings! There is such a beautiful variety of visuals that can be used – photographs, drawings, clip art, paintings, symbols and so on. This will help develop symbolic representation and the general visual intelligence. And it is fun!

Works well with: pre-primary and primary, both online and offline, individual students and groups.

  • Pairs

Materials: We used this set in the unit devoted to weather, with the aim to extend it beyond the single words or even simple sentences, for example to talk about the things we do when it is sunny, when it is raining etc.

Activities:

Works well with: pre-primary, online or offline, individual and groups.

Only 7 new entries here but worry not! I am still working, I am still creating and I will be adding things here. I am sure. Until then!

Happy teaching!

A square, a circle and some scotch OR three amazing Christmas crafts. And a lion.

by

Dedicated to Mishka and Mum @_mad_alen_

These three activities were brought about by the calendar, this title by the title of a wonderful Christmas (?) book by C.S. Lewis. The lion just found itself.

A square aka ‘The Winter Wonderland’

This is a lovely activity that was found on Instagram by one of my colleagues, Larisa. The original, created by @kardasti.saz was a lot more intricate and a lot more complex, too complex in fact for my online classes.

The activity starts with a square of regular A4 photocopying paper. It is folded diagonally, to create a triangle, twice and opened. The kids are asked to trace one of the lines, from one corner to the other. We then draw the pictures above the line: the trees, the snowman, the presents and, finally, the snowflakes. It is very important to stage the drawing carefully, element by element, modeling and pausing for the kids to follow. This way, even the younger kids will be able to create such drawings.

We trace the line along the fold, from the centre of the square to the corner, on the bottom part of the square. We cut along this line, until we reach the centre point. We put the glue on the top of one of these newly-created triangles and we put the triangles on top of each other and press.

We have done this activity online so I had to limit the materials to the simplest and basic ones but in the classroom or if the kids have it, there is more potential for the cotton snow or 3-D figures in the little yard.

A circle aka the Rocking Santa

Circle is the best shape ever and this activity has be yet another piece of evidence to prove this. I have found it online, on the Noreva Project channel but, again, because we did it online, the instructions and procedures were simplified – only the regular A4 paper, white, which, in case of the triangle, was simply coloured red in class. The parents helped with preparing the materials (a circle and a triangle) but, again, we did everything ourselves and because we went slowly, step by step and line by line, the students could follow and create their own Santa. All the instructions are in the video.

We combined this craft with the song from Super Simple Songs, Santa, where are you? and we used to practise the prepositions (in, on, under) in a guessing game in which students hide Santa somewhere in the room and we keep guessing where it is (Is it on the table? etc).

Some scotch aka the Coolest Christmas Tree There Is

This piece was a present that my niece, Mishka made for me with her mum @_mad_alen_ and I can’t repeat it enough: it is simply amazing. It would be too much to try to pull off in the online classes but it is perfectly feasible with the offline groups. I have certainly done craft that involved the same level of pre-lesson prep work.

What you need is a piece of cardboard, with the cut out shape, a few strips of scotch taped to the back of it, sticky side up and a selection of things to decorate with: sequins, buttons, pompons. I suppose there is some potential for less professional ingredients (crayons or coloured pencils shavings, sand, scraps of coloured paper) or even food (buckwheat, seeds).

The scotch here makes it a bit more manageable (no glue!) and the card can be displayed in the window to let the sun shine through it. Or simply used to check how different sources of light change the picture. And there is an opportunity (and a need) for a health and safety training on not eating craft materials and handling small objects.

Not to mention that Mishka’s Christmas Tree has been elected the Christmas Tree of the Year.

Happy teaching! Merry Christmas! Happy holidays!