As soon as I said it out loud, it turned out that in my classroom is a crowded place. Apart from the teacher (that would be me), my students (older and younger), there is a whole bunch of characters who simply are there.
There is Pasha (the invisible student), there is Angelina (our class puppet), there is Mr Milk (the little-known-superhero), there is the Flying Cow…And there is also general Kutuzov. To whom this game is dedicated.
The thing is, general Kutuzov is a personal hero of mine. Every time I find myself in the middle of a big project, with one million areas to oversee and to manage, while on the verge of going crazy (because I multi-task well only in the classroom and in the kitchen), I think of general Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov, one man managing troops, camps, provisions, civilians, and all that in the face of the approaching enemy (aka Napoleon). This thought calms me down.
But not only that.
We sometimes play games with my kids (duh!) and sometimes they get very competitive (duh!) and sometimes, instead of ‘just playing’, some of them take time to think, to ponder, to come up with some very clever strategies in order to win…Which, on one occasion, resulted in me saying ‘Oh, look, here is general Kutuzov, planning something’ and ‘General, Kutuzov, please, can you make a decision? Today?’
They giggled. They are eight but they got the reference. And general Kutuzov stayed with us. So now, when they want to comment on someone taking their time to think or someone coming up with a strategy, they call him or her ‘general Kutuzov’ which, to be honest, I am rather proud of.
And that’s what I called that game:-)
www.wikipedia.com
How to play?
The main aim of the game is to get from the START to FINISH, choosing your own route on the board.
Players move across the board and as they do, they have to explain the word in each box. They answer the question ‘What’s…?’ or ‘Tell me about ….’
It’s always good to put the key structures on the board, to support the production. In the animals game, with my A1 students, we used ‘It has got…(body parts)‘, ‘It can…(verbs)’, ‘It likes to eat…(food)‘ and ‘It lives in… (habitats)’.
Students play in pairs or groups of three per board.
Players move one box at a time, to the left, to the right, up, down or diagonally up or down.
Each box has a number of points assigned and the students collect the points throughout the game.
I give the kids small cards, folded, on which they are to write their points and to keep them secret until the end of the game.
In the end, each player adds the points and we announce who the winners are, in each pair and in the class.
Why we love it
The game generates a lot of language and it keeps the students motivated and involved.
It is a competitive game but you can win it not because of good or bad luck but because you plan your movements well.
It is suitable for mixed ability groups as the students choose their route themselves and can, if necessary, avoid using the words they don’t know.
We played it in our offline lessons but it can be also used online, with the kids annotating on the screen. It would work best with individual students, small groups or big groups playing in teams.
It depends only on the players (or their teacher) how long the game is going to last. Naturally, the kids will try to get from start to finish and as soon as one player does it, the game is stopped and the points counted. At the same time, the teacher can set the timer at ‘ten moves per player’ or, simply, stop it at any given point in the game (with the same number of moves per player, of course), announce the end and count the points.
It takes a few minutes to prepare and it can be used with any kind of vocabulary, a thematic set (lower levels) or any random set of vocabulary taken from a story or a listening task.
The first time we play it, the game is teacher-led and we play with teams of students, on the board but once they get the idea, they can play in pairs.
No dice is necessary. Kids can either use checkers or colourful markers to draw their route across the board.
I have played it with primary school students (A1) and with my B1 teens, too.
The game can easily be made more or less challenging by keeping only two types of boxes (1 and 5 points, for example) or by adding more of those (1, 3, 5 and 10 points) and the number of points can reflect the level of difficulty of the word or phrase.
Players can move in any way they choose, one box at a time, but to make it more challenging, the teacher can exclude moving diagonally or any other of the movements.
The same can be applied to the rule of using the same box twice. It can be allowed or not.
I have thrown my kids at the deep end but I think that if I were to introduce the game again, in a new group, I would probably create a board of boxes worth only 1 point to highlight the importance of strategic thinking here. The kids figured it out themselves, though: the longer the route, the more points (the kids’ aim) and the more language produced (the teacher’s secret objective:-)
The board can be colour-coded. It will make it more attractive visually and it will help the kids understand where to move next, for example: a green box = 1 point, a blue box – 3 points and a yellow box = 10 points. Having said that, the black and white simple chart with points works equally well.
P.S. The inspiration for the game might have been a listening activity in one of the old coursebooks by OUP called ‘I Spy’ which had a listening activity in each unit called ‘the maze’. Maybe or maybe not))
Welcome to my favourite art project: The United Buddy Bears. I first met the bears face-to-face (almost because they are 2 meters tall so face-to-face, eye-to-eye is not so easy to do) in Sofia because we all happened to be visiting the city in spring 2011. They were an art project back then already (since 2002 actually) but after our encounter they also became an EFL Art Project.
The United Buddy Bears: Brazil
Ingredients
First of all, if you have never heard about the project, start with this article on wikipedia or the bears’ own website.
A set of photographs of some of the bears that I use in a quiz. The students are shown the photos and they are asked to look at them and guess the name of the country. Naturally, the set should include the kids motherland.
Depending on the age and the level, the follow-up stage might involve describing individual bears, especially the bear representing the students’ country or symbols in general, as well as talking about the bears they like or dislike.
The main objective of the project for the younger students (primary) is to draw their version of the bear to represent their country. First, it might be necessary to brainstorm and to introduce the vocabulary and concepts that people normally associate with the children’s country. In case of Russia, it is especially interesting as it creates an opportunity for the students to learn that they already know many of these words, for example balalaika, borscht, matryoshka and they only need to learn how to write them in the Latin alphabet. Then, the students decorate their bears using the template provided by the teacher and, eventually, present their bears to the group.
The older students are invited todesign a bear that represents them. It can be a bear that will show their hobbies, personality, favourite sports, school subject or a band, or, really, any concept that they consider important. The sky is the limit here. The students present their bears to their friends, ideally in a mingling activity.
In the end, all the bears are proudly presented on the walls of the school or the classroom.
In both cases, it might be necessary to start drawing and decorating in class, to make sure that everyone is on the task but to set the task for homework, with the presentation scheduled for the following lesson. Some students might need more time to complete their drawings or to prepare their presentation and that might help to solve this problem.
The United Buddy Bears:Poland
Why we like it
It works like magic. Or almost. Some of the bears are easy to interpret, some of them require a bit more of background information but this way they can serve as a springboard to learning about different countries. The set of bears used in the quiz can be easily adapted by choosing the more straightforward bears for the younger students.
Regardless of which project you choose, the students get a wonderful chance to personalise the content, either because they will be drawing to reflect their own interests and hobbies in the bear or because they will be creating their own version of the Russian bear. It is a very happy coincidence that the Russian bear (or the first Russian bear because later I did find some other versions) is rather ugly. As a result, all my students with whom I have ever done that project, all of them without exceptions, were deeply offended that it is supposed to represent their country and were more than eager to create their own, better and more beautiful bears. The one you can see below is the more beautiful, later version of the bear.
It can be adapted to different levels and age groups. I have done it with elementary primary students and with advanced teenagers.
It is an opportunity for the students to express themselves, to create and to produce the language.
It can be used to supplement the coursebooks and it can be done as a part of the extra-curricular programmes such as summer camps, CLIL etc.
The United Buddy Bears: China
Happy teaching!
The United Buddy Bears: Russia (the beautiful one) from www.buddy-baer.com
What a wonderful book this is, The Worst Alphabet Book Ever, by Raj Haldar and Chris Carpenter. In a way, it has inspired this post here, on all things related to homework for pre-primary EFL students.
Mine is a very messy alphabet, with some letters in, some letters missing, all of them in a very un-alphabetical order…
The Worst Alphabet Book Ever
S is for ‘Should we even think of setting homework for preschoolers?’
Some of the arguments against:
Kids are too young
It is too much pressure, too early. They will grow up, start school and then they will have to really learn what it means to be a student.
Kids forget to do the homework.
Parents forget to do the homework.
Parents may not speak English well enough to help with the homework task.
Parents work and are essentially too busy to deal with the homework tasks.
Some of the arguments for:
We are teaching the kids English but we are also teaching them how to be a student. Doing the homework and taking responsibility is a part of that process.
It has to be the homework task that is appropriate for the students’ age (2 – 6 years old) and level of English (pre-A1) so also something that non-English speaking parents will be able to do and something that will not take a lot of time
Certain procedures for setting the homework and checking the homework should apply to ensure that the tasks are not a hassle for the parents or the children
Homework is a wonderful way of creating a link between different lessons
So the short answer to the question in the heading would be ‘Yes, we definitely should’.
The Worst Alphabet Book Ever
E is for the extended exposureand R is for results
This is one more argument in favour of the VYL homework, so important in fact that it is going to have its own paragraph here.
Usually, pre-primary students who learn English as a foreign language have a very limited exposure to the language as they come to class twice a week for 45 minutes or, in some cases, for only 45 minutes once a week. That is not a lot but it is enough to get good results if the time in class is spent well. Or, if there is an opportunity to extend this English exposure time by homework tasks.
In practice, in might mean only the additional five or ten minutes or fifteen minutes per week but it will be the important link that will provide some additional practice between the lessons, which will be very beneficial for the children and it will help to recycle and keep up the language from Tuesday to Thursday and, even more importantly, from Thursday to Tuesday.
As it happens, a few years ago, me and my colleague-teacher, Anya (hello Anya!), we had a chance to be a part of a very informal and very small scale classroom research or an accidental experiment. We both worked with the same levels onsite (at one of our IH schools in Moscow) and, at the same time, offsite (at one of the kindergartens). All the kids were amazing, very bright and a pleasure to teach. They had the same teachers and they were following the same programme and yet, we realised that the onsite students were making more progress. We tried to analyse the situation and the only difference between the groups that we could put a finger on was the fact that our offsite groups were not getting any homework, according to the arrangements with the client.
Then, there were my other groups, a few years ago, that all of a sudden started to make lots of progress and, surprisingly enough, we did not have to devote so much time to drilling and practising the new vocabulary, right after it was introduced.
Normally, the first two lessons with the new material were filled with a lot basic games whose aim was to provide the exposure and the controlled practice before we would move onto more complex vocabulary games and introducing structures. Until, that is, I noticed that all this drilling was not necessary and, in most cases, already in the second lesson the children were using the new vocabulary with a lot of confidence. What it did look like in class, of course, were my students’ faces quickly losing interest in ‘just’ repeating the words with voices and emotions and, even, random comments (or, shall we say, feedback) muttered, here and there, ‘Да, мы уже все это знаем...’ (‘We already know all that...’)
I would never complain about that, we could move on and do the more interesting and challenging things but it took me a while that it was connected to the additional practice opportunities that the parents were providing at home. Just because they wanted to.
The Worst Alphabet Book Ever
P is for the parents
It is not a secret that in case of all the young learners or non-adult groups, the parents are the third party involved in the process and, one way or another, they will have to be included because, really, they are our clients, not the students themsevels. This is particularly true in case of the pre-school groups, mainly because children are very young and if we want to make the learning process effective, with homework or without it, we will be dealing with parents, too. Even more so, we need parents to make it all work.
Parents always want the best for their children but many of them are also taking their first steps in the EFL world, this time through their children. They might have had different previous learning experience (their own or of their kids’), they might have different expectations and aims that might not always coincide with ours, with our previous teaching experience or with our school’s policy. That means that we cannot take things for granted and that we should always talk to the parents, to explain what we do and why we do it. That applies to the homework tasks, too.
Some parents might really not be able to spend time with their children, some might choose to spend the time they have in other ways, not working on the English homework and we should accept and respect that. However, there are also parents for whom the English homework will not be so much of a burden but rather an opportunity to do something together in English. We can help them by showing them what can be done at home and the actual homework task is the first step here.
The Worst Alphabet Book Ever
N is for nuts and bolts
Here are some things to take into consideration
The homework should be short. Our students are still two or three or five and will not be able to remain seated for a long period of time, in class or at home.
It should be easy to complete, too. The students are still two or three or five and tasks that are very complex cognitively will not be appropriate for them.
However, the fact that the task looks like a simple colouring page (see below) does not mean that it is just colouring because the actual physical task will be connected with the language produced that is presented and practised in class with the teacher, practised at home with the parents and then practised again, with the teacher, during the homework check in the following lesson.
Ideally, the homework task should be consistent, in form and in content, with the focused task completed in class. This way, we do not only provide additional practice of the vocabulary and structures that we currently work on but we also ensure that the students will know how to complete the task because the instructions are the same, for the focused task and for the homework task. Of course, that is not always possible but it is a good aim to set for yourself while lesson planning.
For that reason, the longer I work, the more convinced I become that in an ideal set-up, I would rather work with a coursebook only, without any activity book whatsoever, in order to give myself the flexibility to match and to better combine the programme, the focused task and the homework task. This is, of course, only my very subjective view and I am aware of the fact that it would not be everyone’s choice.
The task should be set in class, with the students. After all, these are the ones who are learning to be responsible for the task. For the teacher and the students this is, yet another opportunity for practice. The teacher can bring another copy of the handout or the book and do the task together with the students.
The homework task should be explained to the parents, too, because, they will have to remember to take the task out and to complete it before the following lesson. There are different ways of doing it. The teacher can explain the task after the lesson, alone or with the help of the students, the administration of the school can be asked for help, too. Some teachers like to leave the notes about the homework on the door of the classroom and, nowadays, we all have the whatsapp groups which we can use to communicate with the parents, too.
The homework checking is a part of the routine and another opportunity to practise the language and to talk to students, one on one, as they walk into the classroom (more about the line-up routines here). In the past, I used to reward my students with stickers for the homework but I stopped doing that when I realised that not everyone does or brings their homework and that is precisely because mum or dad or granny forgot…Now, I only acknowledge the hard work with smileys, suns, flowers, ‘Fantastic!’ and ‘Excellent’ and I keep a spare handout, my homework or any visual in order to be able to have a little chat also with those students who are without a homework task on the day.
The Worst Alphabet Book Ever
B is for the basic homework tasks
Here are some of the staple food tasks that work well as homework tasks. All of these were created using the miro board. These are not actual handouts but only sample tasks in each type.
a)colouring: task: students colour the objects and produce simple sentences ie ‘The apple is green’ or ‘It’s a green apple). This kind of a task is especially appropriate after the new vocabulary has been introduced and colours can and should be revised throughout the course.
*****
b) drill: task: students look at the the sequence of words, name them, using a single word or a sentence and make a decision what should be the final word. This is also a task appropriate in the beginning of the unit. Here, some students might choose to colour the picture but that is not obligatory.
*****
c) odd one out: task: students name all the objects in the sequence and decide which one does not match the others. We usually use very simple langauge here for example: Goodbye, cat.
*****
d) matching: task: students look for the same objects in both columns and connect them with a line. This is also a task more appropriate for the beginning of the unit and for younger students, too. The older students can complete it, too, but in their case it would be a good idea to encourage the kids to produce a full sentence.
*****
e) finish the sentece: task: students try to build simple sentences by naming the elements of it represented by visuals or symbols and by choosing one of the elements.
*****
f) categorise: task: depending on the language, students can categorise the objects into those that they like or don’t like, big or small, animals that can fly or swim or even words beginning with the same sound if you have started working on developing literacy skills. They can either colour or circle different categories with different colours, at the same time producing the target language.
*****
g) count: task: students look at the picture and count all the apples, bananas, kiwis and nuts, they write the number.
*****
h) maze: task: students trace different lines in order to produce the required sentence, for example ‘I’ve got a doll’ and similar. Again, thanks to the fact that all elements of the sentence are represented visually, an activity like that is going to support maximising production, here full sentences.
*****
i) collage: task: in class, students make sentences about mum, dad, grandma (my mummy likes apples) glueing simple pictures in the appropriate part of the handout. All the leftover pictures are given out as homework. Students glue them onto the handout and produce similar sentences but now about brother / sister, grandpa or friends.
A is for the alternatives
Normally, the homework task is set as a handout (or in the activity book) but the pandemic and the lockdown of 2020 has changed everyone’s way of looking at homework and, fortunately or unfortunately, it has closed some doors but it has opened some others. During the lockdown, not all the studnets had access to a printer so sending out homework for the parents to print and complete was not always possible. What is more, not all the students even had coursebooks and so these could not always be used as the basis for homework tasks.
W is for Wordwall
This website has been a real revelation and a milestone in tasks for age groups of students but especially for my pre-primary studnets. Wordwall is available for everyone and free in its basic version. Anyone can register and gain access to all the tasks and games that have been created by the community and made public. These games can be used in class and shared with the parents to play on any device available at home. Another advantage is that each of the tasks or games is available in a few different formats (or ‘templates) which means that the parents (or the teachers) can still practise the same set of vocabulary or structures but in a slightly different game.
If you are willing to invest a small sum of money, you can choose your own plan and start creating your own activities to match the programme or the curriculum of your group or school, too.
Here are some examples of the games that I have created for my pre-primary students
a) Let’s count, created for the students who were in the beginning of level 1
b) Categorising, created for level 2 students (farm animals which can fly, swim, run, jump)
c) Tell me about this picture, created for my level 3 students to practise opposite adjectives.
All of these we played in class, first and then the same or a similar task was shared with the parents.
L is for homemade listening tasks
These are lightly more complex but a real lockdown revelation for my primary and pre-primary classes. You can read more about them here.
Happy teaching!
P.S. All the samples of activities were created using the images on Miro and all the in-text photos come from the same wonderful book, P is for Pterodactyl, The Worst Alphabet Book Ever by Raj Haldar and Chris Carpenter and illustrations by Maria Tina Beddia from Sourcebook Jabberwocky, which by the way can be (and will be) used with my teens. More on that later:-)
*** This post was based on the talk I gave at the 2020 IH YL Conference.
P.S. A request!
It is very simple.
I would like to know a tiny little bit more about my readers. There are so many of you, popping in here, again and again, and the numbers of visitors and visits are going up and make my heart sweel with joy. But I realised I don’t know anything about my readers and I would love to know, a tiny little bit more.
Once upon a time, there was a world in which children were developing their reading skills, imagination and creativity with storybooks read by mum at bedtime.
Then, the Wicked Witch of the West came and replaced all the books with apps, tablets and games. The Wicked Witch of the West said that it is all easy, available, accessible. All the parents and all the teachers applauded. The books lay forgotten and deteriorating, and a few years later, the time came when one of the dinosaur teachers by accident said ‘open your books’ in class and a little Masha raised her hand in the first row to ask ‘What is a book, Miss?’
Luckily, we are not there yet and, hopefully, we will never be. Of course, the pandemic was / is / has been a huge challenge for us in that department but, nonetheless, I do continue to stand proud in defence of paper and in defence of magic.
May this very post to be the introduction and the directory to everything that using storybooks in the classroom can be.
One thing that it definitely is not, is just opening the storybook and reading it out loud. This is what it can be.
One. Baby steps
At the start of the level 1 of any pre-primary or primary course, the kids are real beginners, they have no language, no structures and no vocabulary. It would be rather optimistic to hope that a teacher is going to be able to use a story with all its richness. However, that is also not a reason NOT to include them in your lesson plans. After all, storybooks are something that the little kids are familiar with, they know what dealing with them involves and that they are part of life. For that reason, they can and they should be used with children.
Simple vocabulary revision with a different tool: the teacher points out at pictures in the book and calls out the colours, counts them, asks if they are big or small, if the children are happy or sad, if the students already know this vocabulary. This might happen only at the level of the colour (It’s green) and not necessarily with the actual noun (It’s a green fish), although, admittedly, there is some potential here, too, to learn the new vocabulary through storybooks
Simple functional language practice: Hello Pete, Goodbye Pete in the first lessons with the book and then according to what the students know.
Storybook reading-related language: something that will be introduced gradually but that will come in handy throughout the course, for example ‘It’s story time!’, ‘Sit down’ ‘Are you ready?’ ‘Turn the page’ ‘Do you like the story?’
Two. Role-play
This way of using a storybook will involve the students a little bit more as they will be retelling the story together with the teacher, as soon as they become more familiar with it. Naturally, not all the stories will lend themselves to this activity, only those that include some repetitive language, even if it is only one phrase. Stories that can be used here can involve
Dear Zoo (‘I wrote to the zoo to send me a pet’)
Where’s my baby? (‘Is this your baby, Mrs Monster?’)
We’re going on the bear hunt (‘We’re going on a bear hunt, we’re gonna catch a big one. Oh, what a beautiful day. We’re not scared’)
Any other story in which you might want to implement a structure that the kids might already know or that they might benefit from knowing, even if, originally, it is not in the story. For example, ‘…., Senor Croc’ is a storybook for kids in Spanish about the birthday party of the main character Mr Croc, by introducing the following ‘Let’s’ (Let’s open the presents, Let’s dance, Let’s eat the cake)
Three. Vocabulary practice
The storybooks are there and we can use them and the beautiful story and illustrations in any way we want. The story is not really read but told, with the language graded to the level and needs of the particular group.
Most frequently I choose the storybooks to go with the vocabulary that study in the unit. This way, the children can participate in telling the story and continue working on the vocabulary that they are learning. It will start with producing single words but it can lead to producing
How to lose a lemur – to teach and revise transport
Dear Zoo – to teach and revise animals
Julia Donaldson’s The Smartest Giant in Town – to teach and practise clothes
Go Away Big Green Monster – to teach and revise body parts
Marvin Gets Mad – to teach and revise emotions and verbs
Four. More vocabulary practice
Taking one more step in that direction, any storybook can be used to teach, to revise and to practise any vocabulary, even if it does not feature explicitly in the storybook.
The first storybook that I have used in that way was the traditional story ‘The Three Goats Gruff’. The story is lovely all by itself but I have been using it to practise and to revise the food vocabulary. Only in my version of the story, every time one of the goats tries to cross the bridge and the troll attempts to eat it, they always have some food on them and they try to buy themselves out by asking ‘Troll, do you like bananas?’, which, of course, the troll never accepts.
Five. Storytelling without storybooks?
Absolutely! For example, because you realise that your own precious copy of Dear Zoo has been misplaced / lost / stolen only a few minutes before the lesson in which you want to use it…You do not give up, naturally, you only wander around the school, find a few flashcards and a box. As an experience it is unpleasant and stressful but, in the end, you realise that, hey, a storybook itself is just a tool and a story can be told without it. And it is lots of fun.
Another sources of inspiration for that kind of approach to storytelling, can be a series of storytelling videos produced in the 90s by the Brazilian TV Cultura. This example here is in Portuguese is a story about a crocodile, a grasshopper and a spider, with a scotch dispenser starring as the spider, a pair of scissors as the crocodile and a table tennis ball as grasshopper.
This kind of pretend-play with the use of the everyday objects or toys is something that children do in L1 as well and it can easily be implemented in our EFL lessons, too.
Six. I can read!
This is a big moment for the teacher and the student when they can finally take an active part in the proper reading of the story. For that reason, the storybook should be carefully chosen.
‘Bear on a bike’ is easy enough because the whole story is told through illustrations and single words or short phrases, some of which are also repeated. ‘Apple, pear, orange, bear’ follows a similar pattern
‘Llama, llama, red pajama’ includes rhymes and some parts of it are easy enough for the primary beginner students to deal with
Graded readers and phonics stories that were specifically created for beginner readers
Seven. Storybooks for everyone!
A few years ago, at the IH YL Conference in Rome, Beverly Whithall from IH Braga gave a fantastic seminar on using storybooks with teenagers and adults. The older students, because of their maturity and the level English, can properly appreciate the story, its language, plot and illustrations and every story can be a starting point to a discussion. Just imagine a typical literature lesson that you had in school, when you are looking not only at the story itself but also at the bigger picture. Seen from that angle
Rhinos Don’t Eat Pancakes is really a story about a family and about loneliness
Elmer is a one big question of whether one should be like the everyone else
Giraffes Can’t Dance is about bullying
Up and Down is whether we should always follow our dreams
Questions
How to choose a storybook? It might be a good idea to start with the classics but also to keep your eyes open while visiting bookshops and browsing, to find out more about the beautiful world of the storybooks and to learn more about how they can be used in the lesson.
How long can I use the same storybook? Well, definitely more than once and as long as the students are interested. It might be a good idea to put the book away for some time and then return to it, letting the students choose which book they want to read or ‘read’
How do I adapt the language? Like with all the lesson planning, for any kind of an activity, choose the aim first (functional language, structures, vocabulary practice, revision or introduction) and them adapt the book to help you meet that aim. The gestures, the visuals, the voice and the universal story magic will help children to understand. Translation will not be necessary.
Do I need to include storybooks in every lesson? It is not absolutely necessary, it is like the other tools and techniques, they are definitely beneficial for the children but there is no absolute must to have them in every lesson. More likely than not, with time, you will see the positive impact of storytelling on the students, on the classroom management and on yourself and it is for that reason that you will want to include them in every lesson or almost in every lesson.
How do I start? Slowly! Practice makes perfect.
Tips and techniques
Let the children look at the story, all or some of the pictures, before you start telling the story, unless, of course, there is some big surprise in the end which should not be revealed too soon.
This demonstration can be done in silence or the teacher can point at certain pictures and elicit the words from the students.
While telling the story, point at the crucial elements in the illustration and pause to elicit the language from the children.
If the kids are already familiar with the story, start telling it with mistakes and wait for the children to correct you. They are going to love it.
Include gestures and physical actions that will accompany your story. This will help children first to understand the story and then to retell it and to really remember the language.
If possible, use some prompts such as realia (toys, plastic food, clothes), flashcards or mini-flashcards.
If possible, try to recreate the atmosphere of the story by preparing a soundtrack i.e. the jungle sounds for story set in the jungle, the beach sounds for the stories set by the sea etc.
Don’t forget to use your voice, this is the teacher’s most important and powerful tool.
Get ready and rehearse, think how you are going to position yourself, how you are going to hold the book, where the children are going to say.
If you are not using the original story, try to remember what changes you have introduced in order to be able to retell the story in more or less the same way every time you are using it
The storybook is never used in one lesson only. It is only in lesson two or three, when the students are already familiar with the story and with the language, that they can really enjoy it and participate in it fully.
Here is my favourite character who would be a perfect amabassador for ‘We want more‘, my professional obsession (you might have noticed:-) and some of my favourite solutions for the classroom.
Trick number 1: The language
Regardless of what coursebook is used or what curriculum is followed, there are certain language items that can be included even in the pre-primary programme that will enable children to communicate and produce more language.
Some of these language items include:
descriptive adjectives, such as big – small, long – short, happy – sad, beautiful – ugly, serious – funny, old – new, etc. Introducing them in opposites will make it easier for the students to understand and to remember
simple linkers, introduced gradually, starting with ‘and’ (‘blue and green’, ‘cats and dogs’, ‘I like bananas and apples’), then moving on to ‘because’ ( starting with ‘I am happy because it is sunny’) and perhaps even ‘but’ (‘I like dancing but I don’t like dancing with a bear’, like in the song from Super Simple Songs).
introduce Present Continuous, because it will be easy to play with it in all the miming games and it will come in very handy while describing pictures and telling stories.
talking about other people. Personalisation is very important while learning language, not only with the little ones, but it is also a good idea to start introducing other people and the language we need to talk about them such as ‘she/he is / has got / can / likes’
Trick number 2: The freedom of speech
This freedom of speech has got very little with the civil rights. It is all about the degree of freedom that the students are given or, in other words, about the scaffolding and the support that are slowly removed in order not to limit the students and to enable them to choose what they want to talk about.
One way of doing it is shifting from closed yes/no questions towards more open-ended questions. ‘What do you like to eat?’ is more likely to generate more language that only ‘Do you like bananas?’ which will lead to one-word answers or maybe even only gestures. ‘Tell me about‘ will be a lot more generative.
Using this approach while working with illustrations, pictures or any kind of visuals will give students the opportunity to choose for themselves what to talk about. And it is quite likely that they will pick the topics (elements or aspects of the picture) that they are either more interested in, have more knowledge of or are better prepared to discuss. In any case, more language is likely to be generated.
Examples or real activities? Here you are:
Pairs is a speaking activity that uses a simple material of a set of pictures. The students put them in pairs, in any way they want. They also have to justify their choice. In case of the younger learners, this principle can be the colour (‘Panda and zebra. They are black and white’) but kids can also choose any other reason for that, like ‘Zebra and horse, they have 4 legs’ or ‘Bear and deer. They live in the forest’.
This activity can be also used with the older students who are given a list of words and have to put them in pairs, according the knowledge and the language they have.
Below you can see the end of the game with my pre-primary student. It started off slowly, with simple sentences about the colours that the animals have in common but as the activity progressed, the categories changed, too and we have here an example of animals that have a long tail (a lizard and a monkey), animals that live in the forest (a bear, a fox and a deer) or animals that like meat (a tiger and a lion).
This is the final product of our Pairs activity, using the visuals on Miro
Tell me about is another activity that uses a visual, for example a set of pictures with animals or a picture scene. Students choose an element for their peers to describe, for example Tell me about this boy’ and it is easy to imagine the variety of responses that these can generate. Students can choose to talk they boy’s clothes, feelings or actions.
Trick number 3: The appropriate activities and materials
Our students do what we want them to do. It is assumed so, precisely because we are teachers and they are students. The roles have been assigned once and for all. The question to ask yourself, though, is Would they really want to do it, if they had a choice?Is there anything in the task itself that would encourage them to? Or not.
Certainly, it does not meant that all those less-exciting-but-crucial activities will be renounced forever, because even though they are not always fun from the point of view of our students, they might still be necessary and useful, but it is an interesting aspect to start taking into consideration while lesson planning.
Here a few activities that use that principle
Yes or no? This is an activity that also uses visuals as the basis. In the first stages of the activity, the teacher describes the picture using very simple structure ‘I can see’ when some of the sentences are true and some are false. Students listen to the sentences and correct the sentences. In case of the pre-primary students, this is likely to be one-word production but with time, they are learning to respond in full sentences. Later on, when the students are familiar with the format of the activity, they are invited to take a leading role in the activity, also producing true or false sentences about the picture for the teacher and their peers to correct.
Kids love the game because they can correct the teacher’s mistake and they are allowed to create their own un-true sentences about the pictures and to try to trick the teacher. I have used it both with primary and pre-primary students. The younger kids, naturally, needed more time to adjust and to start producing full sentences, in the beginning they would only provide the key information, for example the colour or the number of objects but, eventually, they were comfortable enough with producing full sentences. At approximately the same time, they were ready to lead the game, too. The older, primary students could make this transition within a lesson.
This is how we were telling our own version of ‘Pete the Cat. I’m rocking in my school shoes’ using the visuals on Miro
Storytelling for pre-primary is based on picture description. Here, the easily available materials might involve the stories from the coursebooks for pre-primary, retelling together any other story used in class or even any of the materials in the YLE Starters materials. In this case storytelling is scaled down to simple picture description, in the appropriate sequence.
Storytelling for primary can also use the visuals but it can be more challenging with the use of storydice or a storytelling treasure hunt (see here)
The lion and the kitten is a simple boardgame that has been very helpful in encouraging the students to produce the language. It was created and used with the online 1-1 pre-primary students. The game does not use a dice. Instead the students can choose the box where they want to go next and in each round, they have to talk about one of the pictures hidden under the yellow, orange and blue diamonds. In the beginning the sentences are very simple and focus on simple vocabulary (‘It’s mommy‘), later on these can be exchanged for a more detailed description (‘Mommy is happy‘ or ‘Mommy is dancing‘) and even further extended with the use of ‘because’ (‘Mommy is dancing because she is happy’) or in any other way that is within the children’s linguistic ability.
This game gives children a lot of freedom and almost a guaranteed victory. The cards can be changed easily, especially in the online format, and even if not, new sentences can be made every time the game is played. With a group of children, a dice would probably have to be used.
This is the board for our boardgame, also created using the visuals available on Miro.
Are you in the park? is a simple guessing game turned into a role-play. Each student has a city plan (since this was the language that we were working at the time) and three stickers which they glue somewhere ‘in the city’. They keep their picture secret and they try to guess where their partner is at the time.
Student A: Are you at the bank / park / market?
Student B: Yes, I am / No, I am not.
After a while, they can ask for help.
Student A: Please help me.
Student B: I can see…I can hear…I can smell….
Student A: You are…
Initially, the stickers were introduce only to prevent the kids from ‘cheating’ but they absolutely loved having random leftover stickers all over the place. In the first lesson we play, it was pirates, in the second one, it was farm. They laughed a lot about having little pigs and chicks all over their cities. The other incentive was the opportunity to imagine and to describe the places from the angle of what they saw, heard and smelled in different places in the city. The kids had the full control over the game and they were making the decision themselves when to move to the second stage.
This post started with a line, one of those things that one says, casually, in a conversation with a teacher or at a conference. ‘There are many reasons to use a song…’ , I said and my brain, always ready for this kind of a challenge, took over. ‘How many? Can you count?’
I accepted the challenge. I have found sixty. For now:-). Not all of them are mine, of course but since this post is meant for teachers, not researchers and since I am on some kind of an academic holiday, no proper referencing. This time. All the inspiration sources and the follow-up reading below.
Now, fasten your seatbelts and let’s go! 3…2…1…
We are using songs with the primary and pre-primary EFL learners because:
Kids like them
They are a part of the kids’ world, regardless of the language.
They help to reduce stress.
Songs create a positive atmosphere.
They can help set the context of the lesson.
The kids don’t care if the teacher does not have a really beautiful voice but they care about a teacher who does not really sing.
Singing and music are present in many areas of our everyday life.
They can be used differently, depending on the day and how the children feel – to calm them down, to cheer them up, to wake them up.
They can be used to develop motor skills, gross motor skills (jumping, dancing, skipping) and fine motor skills (finger play).
They lead to personalisation for example by choosing favourite songs and expressing opinion on songs.
Using different types of music develops children’s musical taste.
They provide the exposure to the target language.
They help to remember the vocabulary and structures
They help with pronunciation, rhythm and intonation.
And with the early literacy development, by developing the ear, rhymes recognition.
They use a natural language
The traditional rhymes, chants and songs carry the culture of the country.
Songs are an opportunity for expression.
They help memory development.
Singing games usually involve a group or a team and so they help to develop social skills.
They can be used to develop turn-taking and other social skills.
They can help the kids to settle in the lesson and in the L2 environment.
It is something that we do together, it helps to unite the kids after they have taken part in pair-work, team work or individual activities.
They are a nice change of pace in the lesson, a punctuation mark.
They are an easy-to-use stirrer.
They are an easy-to-use settler.
They give the lesson a frame (Hello song, How are you chant, Did you do your homework chant, storytime song, table time).
They help the kids to move from one stage of the lesson to the other.
They help to create a community.
They help to take the language out of the classroom. The kids can sing the songs at home, in the car, on holiday.
They are one of the few tools that help to involve a variety of learning channels: auditory (because we listen and we say), visual (because we can use flashcards to help kids remember the lyrics) and kinesthetic (because every song can be and should be accompanied by gestures)
Thanks to music they remember the language better
They are the first step language production; a song is basically a lot of discourse with some music.
They are great for beginners, children can participate in a song, even if only through the gestures.
They are great for shy students; singing is not scary if you do it in a crowd.
They help to create routine and balance the ration of the new (material, songs, activities) and the familiar (all the favourite songs).
Kids learn how to make decisions – choosing which song to sing next.
They can be used as an activity timer (you have one song to finish colouring)
Songs often tell a story this way creating the context for the language.
They can be used to introduce new vocabulary and structures.
They are great for recycling vocabulary.
They can be used as background music during craft activities, to encourage the kids to sing rather than just chat in L1.
Songs and chants can be used to give instructions.
They can be used during any stage of the lesson.
They can be used to get the students’ attention.
They are easy to use and do not require a lot of preparation.
There are plenty of songs to choose from.
It is easy to make up your song or chant that can be used for one specific reason.
They contribute to the variety of resources used in the lesson.
They can contribute to the development of the cognitive skills, such as attention and focus.
Children learn to take responsibility for the lesson and to lead by choosing the songs to sing.
Songs can lead to creativity in the language. Once the song become familiar, they can be the stepping stone to creating own versions of them.
They can ‘just be sung’ or they can become the theme of the lesson, if accompanied by the vocabulary introduction, craft, story.
Singing a song can be a reward for good behaviour or special achievement.
Some songs can contribute to learning other subjects such as art, maths, science etc.
Parents like when their children sing so songs might be used during parents’ days, end-of-year performances.
They help to motivate the kids to learn the language.
They give the kids the sense of achievement, as even after a few lessons, they can feel like the speak the language, because they can sing the songs or recite a rhyme.
Learning through songs is fun and memorable.
Because, finally, adults, also get an excuse to sing!
It looks like, for now at least, all the reasons to use a song = 60 reasons to use a song. If you have any more ideas to add to this list, please let me know in the comments!
And may the VYL and YL classrooms be alive with the sound of music, like this or like this!
If you want to learn how to move from singing a song to a discourse, have a look at the earlier article on How to un-sing a song.
If you are new to teaching and you are not sure where to start
have a look at some of the coursebooks and teacher’s books for primary and pre-school to see how the authors suggest dealing with a song in class
Yvette Coyle and Remei Gomez Garcia (2014), Using songs to enhance L2 vocabulary acquisition in preschool children, ELT Journal, 68/3
Nihada Delibelovic Dzanic, Alisa Peijic, The effect of using songs on young learners and their motivation for learning English, 2016, NETSOL, An Interdisciplinary Journal, 1 (2),
Today about a little and very un-revolutionary change in the routine that has, nonetheless, made a huge difference to my VYL and YL classes.
Instructions
Make sure the door to your classroom is closed and that the children wait for the lesson outside.
When it is the time to start, come out and line them up, perhaps with the parents’ help in the beginning, until they get used to the new routine
Wait for them to be ready, say hello to everyone and count together how many students are present
Say hello to the first student, ask how they are, let them into the classroom, wait until they book the books and bags away, choose their seat and sit down.
Let the second student in.
If setting homework is a part of your routine and programme, this is when you can check the homework, asking each student a few questions about it.
If there is no homework, this time can be devoted to a short individual conversation with each student. It can be a short revision of the vocabulary, talking about a picture or, if the students are already in one of the primary levels – some reading practice with flashcards or a few questions about any material covered in class. We often use it for practice with ‘Tell me about…’ with the use of a picture.
When the students get used to the first part (entering the room), you can add the second element and make sure that the students already sitting in the classroom are occupied, too. They can either play a simple guessing game if this game has been practised in class and if they have been given a set of flashcards. They can also play some games on the phone or the tablet, for example to practise reading with phonics. Again, they have to first to try it under your close supervision, to get used to taking turns etc.
Why we love it
It helps to introduce the order from the very start of the lesson since the kids are not waiting in the classroom and the teacher’s arrival is not an interruption of something that they are doing.
It is obvious who is responsible for the students during that time, the teacher’s take-over is clearly marked. It might not be as obvious if the kids enter the room during the break or before the teacher, especially if the teacher wants or has to spend the break time outside of the classroom, for whatever the reason.
The parents are of a great help in the beginning of the course, they can help explain what the kids are supposed to do, they can help with the name etc.
This part of the lesson is a fantastic opportunity for the 1-1 conversation with each child. Regardless of whether the teacher uses this time to check the homework or to ask and answer questions or to read, they are giving each child all their attention (almost all, the eyes at the back of the teacher’s head are watching the kids already in the room, of course:-) and they can check the progress and language use.
For the parents, this is a wonderful opportunity to find out how their children are interacting in English, without the parents’ supervision and this is how they can, indirectly find out about their child’s progress, before every single lesson if they wish to do so.
For the parents, this is also a chance to find out how the homework handouts or materials are used, what questions the teacher asks and how much language can be generated out of a page that, to the untrained eye, looks like a simple colouring page. If they want to and they have have the time, they can later use this knowledge to practise English at home.
In the beginning, when the children are just getting used to the new routine or if they are really young, this part of the lesson can be kept short, later it can be made longer. Similarly, in the begining, the T leads the activity but, later on, the kids can ask each other at least some of the questions, too.
I have been using this technique for about six years now. My first ever group for which this has been created (because there were ten of them and we hardly ever got to talk 1-1 in class), now in the third year of primary, still line up to chat with me on entering the room. I have been using it with my pre-primary students, too, groups and individuals, too. The parents always wait in the hallway, at the back of the line and they always wait to hear how their children talk to me. If they leave the school, it is only after their kids have walked into the classroom. They always wait and not because they don’t trust us/me but because they are curious and want to know how it goes.
Meet Ela, a newly qualified, inexperienced VYL/YL teacher, from Poland, who has just completed her CELTA course and who is about to start a new chapter of her life, as a teacher of English.
Ela is lucky. She is starting not only one but two new jobs next week and both will involve working with very little people. One is in her hometown and it will be face-to-face, the other one online, in China. Ela is a bit nervous, because it is a new job and because she has never really worked with kids before. There will be some induction or orientation at both places but it is only to take place next week.
She is also lucky because there is still some time left AND she has got access to more than just google. Her teacher training centre is in her hometown so she can just walk in and do a bit of research and reading in the library there. She hasn’t even started to teach and she already has lots and lots (and lots) of questions.
What about the L1 for example, the students’ mother tongue? Should the teacher use the L1 in class? Or outside of class? Should the kids been allowed to use L1 in class? Should they only use English? Should the teacher know the students’ first language?
Ela is a newly qualified teacher and so her way of compiling a reading list is not a perfect one but here some of the ideas that she has come across…
Herbert Puchta and Karen Elliott, Activities For Very Young Learners
This publication is a compendium of activities and ideas for the classroom but it includes a brief introduction with some of the principles that should be taken into account while working with the pre-school children. Puchta claims there that the knowledge of the L1 on the C2 level is absolutely necessary in order to help clarify any problems with comprehension as well as to assist the children in case a problem occurs.
What does Ela think now? Well, she is grateful for all the practical advice on how to avoid using the L1 in class but, at the same time, feels like she is doing something wrong or even illicit. After all, she was offered this job in China and not one person ever asked any questions about her level of Chinese. Then, she is thinking of her best friend, Kasia, who left for Japan and taught kids there, and Anya who landed in South Korea…her CELTA tutor who used to teach in Mexico and one of her CELTA peers, Jessie, who worked in Poland and that none of them spoke the langauge of the country where they worked and definitely not on a C2 level. Not even on an A2 level, to be honest. Ela is confused.
Opal Dunn, Introducing English to Young Children: Spoken Language
No, scratch that. Ela only thought she was confused earlier. Now she really is, after having gone through a few pages of the Opal Dunn’s publication.
First of all, it is because she has found out that children cannot bond with a monolingual teacher (that is a teacher who does not speak the children’s L1) and that they might get disappointed and frustrated. It does not bode well for that online job in China or for any other future positions abroad but at least that’s some good news for the groups she is going to teach in her hometown.
The rest, however, is a bit more difficult to digest because translation, at the same time, must be and mustn’t be used in the classroom. ‘Only English’ should be one of the rules but the teacher should explain it both in English and in L1. The same can be done whenever a new concept is introduced but should be done quickly and in a different voice.
There is also the issue of the kids translating from one langauge to the other. It should at the same time be encouraged (‘as being able to translate is a skill that needs to be encouraged’ p. 134) and discouraged as kids might not tune into the English version waiting for translation (‘the habit to translate should be broken’ p. 136).
Ela is beyond confused. She wishes she had stopped reading on page 134. Or that she had only limited her reading to page 136. Too late!
Vanessa Reilly and Sheila M. Ward, Very Young Learners
Reilly and Ward’s publication is the oldest resource available on the market devoted solely to teaching VYL and for some time it was the only published resource for the teachers who work with the pre-primary children.
Probably the most important line that Ela finds there is the following quote: ‘if we tell the children that they can only speak in English, it is as good as telling them to be quiet’ (p.5), followed by the list of reasons to accept the L1 in the classroom and some practical ideas on how to avoid using it and how to gradually replace it with English.
Ela is somewhat relieved to have found a note that the attitude to the mother tongue in the EFL/ESL classroom might depend on the country and the particular school’s policy. She thinks that perhaps that might, at least to some extent, explain the fact that she and her colleagues were hired to teach despite the lack of knowledge of the children’s L1, although, the authors here, just like everyone else she has read so far, seem to assume that all the teachers working with YL and VYL speak the children’s mother tongue.
Ela is, admittedly, more peaceful now, although she still does not quite understand she even got the job if the L1 proficiency is such an important requirement.
Sandie Mourão and Gail Ellis, Teaching English to Pre-Primary Children
Ela might not know it yet but she is really lucky: as a newly qualified teacher, at the very beginning of her career, she had a chance to read this particular book.
The authors outline ten principles of teaching English in the early years and the principle number 2 refers to L1: ‘Children will sometimes use their home / school language when learning English, which is viewed as part of the natural process of language aquisition and evidence of learning’ (p. 214) and they provide a list of situations in which both the teacher and the students might feel the need to resort to the L1 in the EFL context. Ela takes notes as she might need this knowledge to understand what is going on in her classroom. She especially likes the questions for self-reflection, such as ‘Why and how did I use the L1?’, ‘Could I have done it differently?‘ (p.215) or, as seen from the child’s perspective ‘What steps did I take to help the child move from L1 to English‘ (p.215).
Elat is happy, she finally feels like she has learnt something. She is not as nervous as she used to be. There is only one question that has been left unaswered and that refers to al these teachers who teach preschoolers without speaking their L1. They exist and Ela is one of them. Only now, she is too excited and she only wants to go on reading. This is where we are going to leave her now… Enter the Dragon (teacher/trainer), me with only a few facts from the VYL kingdom with a few summarising comments.
At the moment, there are altogether 4 volumes devoted to teaching pre-schoolers. Reilly and Ward published their compendium in 1997 and it took twenty years (as in 20, as in two decades) for another title to appear on the market in 2017 when Puchta and Elliott came out. All that despite the fact that this area of the market has been growing in strength all this time (Garton and Copland, 2018).
The latest addition, by Sandie Mourao and Gail Ellis has just been released and it willl take some time for it to make it to all the libraries, teacher training courses reading lists, bookshops so it might be that some newly qualified teachers will be walking into their first lessons without having read it. But the good thing is – the book existis and it is available. The newly qualified VYL and YL teachers, the VYL and YL novices, the Elas of today are indeed lucky. They have a lot at their disposal and a lot more than the Elas of five or ten years ago.
Even in the areas that are and have been ‘hot’, ‘popular’ and well-researched, it takes forever for the findings to permeate into the coursebooks and the mainstream consciousness, let alone areas like ours that is considered ‘a niche’, at least by some. As Sandie Mourão writes (2018) ‘Precious little research involves pre-primary FL learners, so research in any direction would be welcome’. Yes, ‘precious little‘ and ‘any‘…Things have started to change, slowly so it will probably take another twenty years and a few more dedicated teachers and scholars before we have answers to some more of the VYL questions. Those related to the presence of the L1 in the EFL classroom but not only those, of course.
In the meantime, there is still more to come in this series here, some studies that I have come across as well as the findings of my own small scale study on what the VYL teachers think of the L1 and what they do…See you in a bit. Oh, and if you haven’t done it yet, check out the introduction, too!
PS I am really interested in the attitudes of primary and pre-primary teachers to using the kids L1 in class, by the students and by the teachers. This was one of the beliefs that I was researching in my MA dissertation (the post on that coming up in this series). The MA is done (yay) but the research continues so if you have a few minutes to spare and you don’t mind taking part in the survey, please follow the link and answer a few questions here.
Bibliography
Photos courtesy of Юлец
* )W.Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, act II, scene I
O.Dunn (2013), Introducing English to Young Children: Spoken Language, Collins
Garton, S. and F. Copland (eds), (2018), The Routledge Book of Teaching English to Young Learners, Routledge.
S.Mourão and G.Ellis (2020), Teaching English to Pre-Primary Children, Delta Publishing
S.Mourão (2018), Research into teaching of English as a Foreign Language in early childhood and care, In: S. Garton and F. Copland (eds), The Routledge Book of Teaching English to Young Learners, Routledge, p. 425 – 440.
H.Puchta and K.Elliott (2017), Activities for Very Young Learners, Cambridge University Press
V.Reilly and S.M.Ward (1997), Very Young Learners, Oxford University Press
Get the coloured paper ready. The basic photocopying paper will do but for a more sensory experience paper with different thickness, texture or surface.
Cut out a pile of colourful circles, about 3 cm in diameter but if the kids are really small it is better to make them a bit bigger, they will be easier to handle.
Prepare A4 sheets of paper on which you are going to stick things, glue sticks and markers that you can use to draw on your paper.
Choose a circle, glue it onto the paper, decorate it so that it resembles what you want it to resemble. Use simple instructions while demonstrating (‘Glue’ ‘Turn over’ ‘Stick’ ‘Draw). Give out the paper, the glue sticks and the first circle. Monitor.
Proceed with the following circles.
With the older students, it is fun to let the children decide what their circles are. And then learn the new words – whatever they draw.
Don’t forget to talk about your pictures, count all the blue circles and all the butterflies))
Level 1 Pre-Primary : Pets
Why we love it
It is super easy to prepare and to complete.
There is no set duration of the task. It can be kept very simple and short, limited to only three items or extended to six or seven, depending on the age of the students, level, motor skills development.
It can be easily made more or less challenging by grading the level of complexity of the drawings.
It can be adapted to many different topics. I have used it with the topic of shapes (focus: circle), spring (accompanied by the KidsTV123 song ‘In the garden’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCClYcU97PA) and in the beginning of the course with level 1 to practise the first colours.
It helps to develop cognitive skills (perception: noticing the shapes in the world around us, transforming the shapes into things we know etc)
If there is no time to cut out all the circles (or if the teacher has not done many craft activities and wants to start with something not as complicated), a template with circles can be used instead. In this case, the kids will only draw and colour.
Level 1: Pets, no-glue template
Assorted circle-related randomness
Assorted circle-related randomness part 2
Level 1 Pre-primary: Colours (lesson 3 of the course)
Christmas edition (the puppy is here because this is my student’s favourite thing:-)
Should we? Can we? Is it a good idea? Is it going to work? Is it legal? What will the students think? What will the students’ parents think? Have we just so got used to what we have been doing all our life that we don’t even want to consider the benefits of the other approach? Have we been brainwashed enough so that now that idea sounds like a blasphemy?
To be honest, I have no idea and I have no answers. I am setting off on this particular adventure with all the questions in the world and no answers yet, rejoicing the fact that the EFL world has (slowly) started to talk about the use of L1 in the EFL class.
But, although this is a very interesting topic, I would like to seriously narrow it down and focus on, surprise surprise, the presence of L1 when the students are real beginners and about 5 or 7 years old. Or 3. Or 6. Or 8 even. Then the question shifts from ‘Shall we have L1 in class?’ to ‘What do we do about the L1 in class?’, because, whether you want it or not, L1 will be there.
Before we start, I think it is important that I shed a bit of light on my background: I am here as an experienced EFL teacher and a teacher trainer who works in a private language school and who speaks her students’ L1 but who does not use it in front of the kids. In the past I also had a chance to work with young (and younger) kids whose langauge I did not speak at all. These details are factors which, potentially, at least, might have had an impact on my attitude to L1 and its place in the classroom.
This is the opening post to a series that I have been dreaming about for a long time and in which I would like to include not only my experience but also the overview of what our YL gurus think on the subject, the studies carried out so far and what I have found out while researching for my own MA dissertation.
In lieu of an introduction, a few overheard conversations. The text in italics is the translation of the exchange that initially happened in the students’/parents’ L1.
One: overheard in the classroom aka The Kids Want To Talk
T: What happened?
S6: One of my teeth fell out all by itself and the other one, Sasha (brother) pulled out.
T: Your brother?
S6: (He is) three years old. He pulled it out!
T: Oh, no! He is a dentist, yes? The doctor from the teeth? (*)
S6: He put his hand in my mouth and then pulled and.. ((very animated))
T: Oh, so is he strong?
S6: Yes.
T: I think he is.
S1: And I did it all by myself. Because I am big. ()
S6: And I also want to tell you…()
S9: And I want to tell you that I was ill the day before yesterday.
T: I am sorry.
S1: And my brother is ill, too. He does not go to English anymore. Today.
S8: And my Masha (the doll) is ill.
So many stories to tell, about the brothers, sisters, teeth, dogs, cats, dead birds on the path in the park, a bad day at preschool, the upcoming birthdays and grandma’s visit…Kids, preschoolers or primary, love the teacher and want to share their stories. This is exactly how they build the rapport and bond. Yes, it is easy to imagine that, if there are no boundaries, kids could easily spend the entire lesson chatting in L1, without any incentive to at least try to speak English but going for the binary ‘English or nothing at all’ is not an option with the youngest students.
Two: overheard in the classroom aka Let’s Sort Out a Problem
S5: How ((pointing at trousers))?
T: Trousers.
S5: Who is wearing trousers?
S1: Me
S5: But you already said that you were wearing jeans!
S1: Jeans are also trousers.
T: Very good, Sasha. Very good question.
Now, surely, one more reason not to stick to the binary here. It is not just a random conversation (that is useful anyway, see scene one), this is intervention, clarification and sorting things out. This is, actually, useful, potential trouble-shooting. Would we want to ban that, too?
Three: Overheard in the classroom aka We Cherish L1!
S1: Red, please.
T1: English, please.
S1: Red, please.
S2: And I don’t know how to do it.
T: No Russian!
Yes, this is when the blood starts to boil. Russian, Polish, Chinese, French or German, the kids should not be told off for using their first language. This is something that they can do, something that they should be proud of being able to use it and of using it. I do believe that English should never be put in an opposition to the L1, in the same way as homework should never be set as a punishment.
Four: overheard in the hallway: Some Adults (We Don’t Like Very Much)
S1 and S2: (blab together in Russian)
Carers: No, speak English!
Good idea! But how to make it happen if the two kids in question have a range of about 25 words in English, together and I know that for a fact. I have taught them all of these 25 words that they do know at this point, that they do know, collectively. How are they supposed to communicate, in class or in the hallway, with these 25 words? High expectations are good but the task should be achievable, too!
Five: Overheard at the reception aka The Parents
P1: Does the teacher speak Russian?
Self: Yes, she does. Not in class but yes, she knows the language.
P1: But this is not good at all.
P2: Does the teacher speak Russian?
Self: No, she doesn’t. Not very well.
P2: But this is not good at all.
It is not always easy to meet parents’ expectations and to even predict what these are actually going to be. The truth is that if they are introduced to ‘an established’ teacher, and that may not necessarily mean teacher with a lot of experience, only some who has already made a name for themselves, even in the tiniest of circles, then they are more likely not even to ask these questions, at all.
If, however, the teacher is brand new, then, unfortunately, parents will be more curious and more likely to evaluate the teachers’ abilities and skills against some very subjective criteria including the teacher’s nationality, the teacher’s first language, the teacher’s knowledge of L1. Or age, or sex or appearance, too. These criteria are probably the result of the parents’ previous experience as learners or as learners’ parents, the experience which might not always have been positive. They might also result from the exposure to some EFL/ESL urban myths from the 60s in which a five-year-old child picks up an accent from their non-native teacher and is ‘scarred’ for life.
No one-fits-all solutions here. Just like every child requires an individual approach, so does each individual parents. Yes, we win some battles here and we lose some.
Six: Not quite overheard aka the State School
Student 1: Anka, I had my first lesson of English today. My teacher did not say anything in English. She did not say one word of English. In the lesson of English. Not one word. Anka!
This line came from a student who has been in my group for four years and who has just started primary school. I did not know what to say so I kept quiet trying to remain in control of my face, so that it would not reflect in any way the thoughts that were rushing through my head.
The teacher in me thinking that we have made great progress and that, already at 7, my student not only communicates in English but also knows what to expect from a lesson. The teacher trainer in me shedding tears at the methodology and the lesson time used in such a way. The fellow teacher in me sorry for my peer at one of the schools as she will be trying to adapt her lessons to include a gifted and more advanced learner. And, as an adult, suddenly very much worried about my student in a different learning environment and how her teacher is going to treat her.
But, really, a lesson of English without any English? Not even hello? Not even bye-bye?
Seven: Overheard during a workshop aka The Teachers
Teacher 1: But they have very little language. They will not understand the rules of the game so I have to explain the rules first and then we can play.
Teacher 2: What if a child cries? Or if there is a real problem? I can only sort it out in the child’s frist language. They do not have enough English to understand…
Teacher 3: They need to know that I understand what they are saying. They need to feel safe.
Teacher 4: They still think I don’t speak Russian. I don’t want them to lose the motivation to use English in class.
Four teachers, four approaches. I do indentify with all of them, to some extent and I have a few follow-up questions about all of them, too. And you, dear teacher?
I am really interested in the attitudes of primary and pre-primary teachers to using the kids L1 in class, by the students and by the teachers. This was one of the beliefs that I was researching in my MA dissertation (the post on that coming up in this series). The MA is done (yay) but the research continues so if you have a few minutes to spare and you don’t mind taking part in the survey, please follow the link and answer a few questions here.
The next step? The overview of literature. First, the YL gurus. Coming soon!
