#eflkids

How to plan for kids without bending your back backwards. A five-step manual

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This post here is my response to the challenge set by my teacher-friend Michael. Challenge accepted. Let’s go, 5 steps.

Lesson aim

The first-est step. Always.

The session devoted to lesson planning on our YL course is called ‘What do you want teacher?’ and that is for a reason. Making a decision why we enter the room and what we want to achieve by the end of the lesson is key. Is the vocabulary the focus or is it a grammar point? Or any of the skills? What is the context? Do you want to focus on the language or the most important thing on the day is the work we put in developing social skills or building the routine? It might be something suggested by the book or chosen by the school curriculum but not always. And even it is, there is always room for adjustments and adaptation. At the end of the day, there is the teacher and there are the students in the classroom that matters most. The programme and the coursebooks are to be adapted.

After the aim is selected, there are more follow-up decisions to make, namely the selection of the focused task (aka the main productive activity) of the lesson?

That’s it, done. The main thing is done and it probably took about 5 minutes. The next step will be looking for things that will help make it happen.

Books basics

The coursebook and whatever it contains is already partially included in the previous step. Most of the time, this is what we use, for convenience and just because we can. The coursebook is not the enemy of course and there is a lot of useful material. Though, not all of it.

I presume the main activity has already been chosen and the next decision is regarding all the other exercises, activities, audio and visuals that are there (and in the workbook and teacher resource packs) that either match or don’t our aim and our focused task, or, in other words, our A or the lesson and our Z.

The most important thing to remember and the thing that is on constant repeat during our sessions and in my conversations with teachers is: the book is not there for us to follow to the letter and to cover and to include all the exercises.

Things you can repeat

In every lesson for YL there are certain elements that we can and that we should repeat because they help us construct the framework and the routine. They include either the elements of the routine: the hello song, the how do you feel today, the rules revision, the homework check, the goodbye as well the elements that are short-temporarily fixed: the songs we are singing in September, the games we are playing in the unit of toys, the story we are reading in the chapter on the jungle animals. All of these will feature in the lesson over a month. It is good to included them in the plan, keeping them on the side, in order to be able to use them.

The missing bits

Having got that far in the lesson planning, it might be the time to figure out how much time we have already taken out of the lesson time and how much time we already have left. Then, look at all the activities there are in the coursebook, all ready and waiting to be used, and, only if necessary, to replace them with some other activities, from another sources or self-designed.

Most of the time, the coursebook will do the job just fine.

Something for the balance (bits)

What I like to do at the very end, when the lesson is already ready, to have a quick look at everything, to check it for the contents and for the balance and variety

  • the ratio of interaction patterns
  • the ratio of different activities: songs, stories, creative and hard work
  • the ratio of new and familiar
  • the ratio of settlers and stirrers

And, when something is off, I fix it. Done!

Instead of a coda

Here are a few words of wisdom from a grandma teacher and trainer / mentor / observer:

  • we want good lessons to be our everyday but that does not mean that every single lesson needs to be an Oscar-worthy (or a Nobel prize-worthy) unit at the cost of the teacher’s sleep, peace of mind, family life or salary. Yes, I sometimes invest a little bit more into my teaching, in terms of planning, resources and time but, after all these years of experience, I also have lessons that are ‘just regular, no fireworks’.
  • we sometimes plan lessons and as soon as we get to school, out of the blue, we come up with something entirely different and it is the best lesson ever. Yes, that happens, but (here comes a very subjective line), it is the result of all the brainstorming and thinking that has already taken place. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have happened.
  • designing your own activites does not have to take ages and it does even require a teacher to be super creative. I personally find it much easier to prepare something for my lesson from scratch, rather than spend hours of looking through materials and resources to match the needs of my group and then, on having found it, still waste time on adapting it to what we (my kids, my course and our lesson) really need (here you can find some of the posts on material design).
  • our coursebooks have a lot of different resources and pictures among them which can be used in a million different ways with very little effort. A picture is an actitivity and you can read about it here, here and here.
  • in general, being a lazy teacher has a lot of benefits. You can read about it here.
  • here you can find another post about the everyday lesson planning

Happy teaching!

Banksy. Red says: ‘Look!’

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The language

This lesson was a part of our autumn camp, with each day dedicated to a colour. For that reason, in the language part of the day, we worked with the things that are red. We revised and learnt new and we talked about things that we like and we don’t like. We did some literacy work, too.

The artist

I actually have no idea why it has taken so long for me to invite Banksy into our lessons but it was definitely worth the wait because this lesson turned out to be great.

I introduced the artist and showed the kids a few of his works. We also talked about the graffiti that can be art and the graffiti that is just vandalism (as brought up by the kids). Then we looked at the Girl with the Balloon and we talked about its different interpretations, sad or happy, and variations, with the balloon in red and in black.

I decided to present this work from the point of view of the red balloon and how the artist used it for the contrast and to draw our attention to the most important element. We also looked at the same effect that can be achieved in photography. For all of those stages I used a powerpoint. You can access it here.

The art

The task was very simple: white paper, black marker and a drawing of your choice, with one element of it in red. I suggested using a collage for the red but, in the end, most of my students went for the red marker.

I am really in awe with the results. The simplicity of the task and the basic resources gave the kids an opportunity to focus on the theme and the content (because, let’s be honest, sometimes, the resource and the method can be a bit disruptive) and they all chose their own way of dealing with it.

Among all the pictures created on the day, we have one copy of Banksy (with the author’s decision to make it a sad picture), we have a name logo (Halloween-style), a scene from the forest (in two copies because my student finished earlier and wanted to do the same picture on black paper), a map and a cartoon, on red paper.

It was lovely to see how involved my students were and how their creativity was taking flight, with every next step of the process as our lesson proceeded, how they moved from black on white to white on black or from black on white to black on red.

If you are looking for an easy lesson, with minimal resources and lots of opportunities, here is one for you!

Happy teaching!

‘Teacher, did you do your homework?’

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Surprisingly, that is not as random a question as it might seem. Not only because we talk about the adverbs of frequency and my kids ask how often I do mine. I always say ‘Never’, just to make my kids give out the appalled ‘Oh!’ although, really, every day is a homework day because the lessons don’t plan themselves.

But there is more to that. With my older students, I do my homework regulary, especially when it is writing. My letter / story / essay not only serves as a model for my students but it also motivates them to do their homework. We frequently use my writings to learn how to structure the discourse, how to proofread and how to improve it. There is so much to it that I even ran a workshop with the same title a few years ago and, perhaps, a separate post will come out of it, in the future.

I would also like to highlight that, as a teacher, I am all for homework assignments, even with the very young learners, and I have already written about it here. Naturally, if the preschoolers can do their homework, then everyone else can, too and I have just realised that this deserves a post on homework with older learners (mental note #2).

However, today, I would like to write about something else entirely.

Let me tell you about the context

It’s been over a year since I started to work in a slightly different context, a primary school with a bilingual programme (which you can definitely tell just looking at the content here). Last year, in my year 1 group we used to give the kids the homework, once a week, Maths and phonics and we used to keep a journal with my kids, too. I shared the electronic materials with the parents, in order to enable the children to interact witht the content at home. All types of homework were optional, although, of course, I was checking everything that was handed to me and I kept a homework record, just to be able to analyse the situation and to check if there was any connection between the homework done and the progress made. Here is a spoiler: yes, there was.

This year, we decided to change that and to standardise the procedures across all subjects and both departments (English and L1). This year our final, seventh lesson, is a self-study lesson which we devote to additional work in the areas that need that most. I am not sure how the L1 programme teachers make their decisions but I decided to go for flexibility, sometimes it is English, sometimes it is Maths, depending on the day and how the day goes.

Each day we have about 20 minutes (aka one task), the kids work on their own and they are supervised by my T.A. The children work on their own, the task is a written one (at least at this point) and there is always some flexibility and differentation as, naturally, we have a mixed ability group. The task is always an extension of what we have done in class in the morning.

My T.A. always collects the papers and I check and comment on them and give them back on the following day.

What exactly do we do? (aka Examples)

Task type A: Just One More Exercise Like We Did In Class: This is probably the kind of a task that was initially intended for this kind of a lesson. I remember the debates with phrases like ‘what we don’t finish in class’, ‘what we didn’t have time for’ and ‘just some more practice’. This is absolutely very, very useful for the children (more practice!) and for the teacher (easy to prepare) but, admittedly, not the most exciting task type. As I have found out.

Task type B: Find My Mistakes: That is the type of a task that, unlike the one above, I need to write myself. It involves a task that we did in class but there are some mistakes in it. It can be a Maths task (the type we do with Petya and Alisa, our invisible students) that follows on the specific exercise that we already did together with exactly the same procedures and instructions, already completed but with mistakes. The main objective for children is to become a teacher and to check the tasks for potential mistakes. Sometimes all tasks already have a mistake (the easier option), sometimes some items are correct.

It can be an English task, too and in this case the children look for structural mistakes (punctuation or grammar) or factual mistakes, in case the task is based on a song or a story we have covered.

Task type C: Odd One Out or Add Yours: This task type is usually used for English and we used it a lot with vocabulary. So far it has been really handy with all the vocabulary as it allowed for differentation and open-ended exercises or verb phrases or noun phrases as we could practise simple collocations, for example: What goes with this verb: wash: your hands, your face, a book, your shoes. In this particular case, the kids had to find the odd one and, also, add their own option.

Task type D: Make a Task For Miss Anka: This is also a task that is always based on the type of a task we do in class in the morning but in this case, children have to create their own examples for me. It can be a word search or a snake (see photos), it can be their own mini-story or short sentences in English or their own text tasks or examples, for me to solve or to find mistakes. This has become the Number 1 Beloved Task, for all of us. A hit!

Task type E: Miscellaneous: Guess-Related: This is a mix of all tasks, another one of those that I prepare myself and very personalised. It is usually a task for English although it can be Maths, too. We did one when I wrote random sentences about my students (a set of 7 per child) with the adverbs of frequency (‘Sasha always plays computer games’) and children had to read and correct when necessary or give me points for guessing correctly how often they do things. In the Maths lesson on the Roman numerals, I had a set of numbers ‘about me’ and what they mean and the children had to decipher them and match them i.e. the number of meters I can swim = DC and so on.

Why we all just LOVE it?

First of all, I cannot repeat it enough (and in caps): WE ALL LOVE HOMEWORK. I always have, really, but now I am discovering the new levels and reasons for this love but it is also true that my kids love it, too and, when on an ocassion or two, the homework in English did not happen in lesson 7, my kids were simply disappointed. Not to mention that right now we start the day with ‘Miss Anka, did YOU do the homework?’ (or variations: ‘Miss Anka, did you see the homework?’).

Here are the reasons why I love these homework assignments:

  • my students have an opportunity to do ‘something more’ in English or in Maths, which is the idea of the homework itself and the most precious benefit.
  • these tasks were also an opportunity to develop my students’ reading and writing skills and, at this point in the game, these are crucial. We are past the basic phonics stage and the simple sentences stage so whatever they read and write, out of their own accord, is a reason to celebrate.
  • the kids could work in a more independent format, revising everything that they have learnt in the morning, doing it again, moving it to the ‘freer practice’ level, revisiting the task and, in a way, testing themselves
  • many of the tasks gave the kids an opportunity to make decisions and even to be creative and, for that reason, I love checking the homework, to see where the course of the day took them. I can tell you, easily, almost every morning, I get a hearty laughter and my comments are some variation of ‘excellent’ and ‘I love it’.
  • these tasks, by design short, flexible and open-ended, are perfect for mixed-ability groups and very often the students are in charge of how much they choose to do. The instructions include the minimal number of examples or sentences they have to do (adjusted to my ‘weaker’ students) but it is great to see that hardly anyone does just that and many, if not all, complete the entire task prepared. Naturally, ‘every little helps’ and I rejoice every single example completed. This approach, however, takes the pressure off the students and is very motivating in itself.
  • movitation is a huge factor here, as well, and, I’d risk saying that all of the aspects of the format and the task design contribute to it. Some of the children have to leave early (to attend to whatever errands they need to run) but they take the handouts with them and bring them the following day, although it is not obligatory.
  • many of the tasks are teacher-friendly. I prepare them daily and it really does not take a lot of time. The task type A requires no preparation, apart from making copies. Task type D is even better because, usually, it requires bringing only a piece of paper for each student. Task type C is also very simple as it can be a copy of the exercise done before, only with wrong answers and that, for a high-level speaker of English and a relatively competent Maths user, also – a piece of cake. The other two, type C and E are, admittedly, a tad bit more involving, especially the highly personalised type E, but, looking back at the results and the outcome, they are just SO worth it!

Instead of the coda

I am aware of the fact that we have some advantages because of the format in which we work at my school but I decided to share these activities and the whole approach because of the benefits it has brought us and because I believe that many of these task types can be adapted to, say, a more traditional EFL classes of a language school. And bring about the same exciting outcomes.

It’s been only two months of this particular experiment so there is definitely more to come!

Here are some tasks we have done already

English: Task type C: odd one out and add yours

Maths: Task type D: created your own task

English: Task type D: write your own (based on the story we did in class)

Math: Task type E: Guess (Roman numerals and the notes my student took of her potential guesses)

Happy teaching!

One colour, many colours. Teaching English through Art

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The language

The language in this lesson was not quite our priority. We did not introduce any new language items and I really wanted to focus on working with the colour and help the students see the variety of colours at their disposal. We sang the song, talked about how we are and we revised the colours, briefly.

We looked at different colours and their shades to understand that each colour is, in fact, a number of colours. My younger students counted the shades and the older ones had a lot of fun reading the names of the different shades of blue, red and pink. You can find my presentation here.

The artist

In this particular lesson we had a group of artists, to introduce a range of different paintings with one leading colour. We looked at van Gogh’s Starry Night (blue) and Sunflowers (yellow), we had Kandinsky’s Mit und Gegen (red), Levitan’s Forest Gave (green) and Sue Williams’ Pink Pentagon (pink). We called out the main colours in every painting and we called out the contrasting colours, too.

The art

I taught this lesson twice, with my younger group and my older group, with some differences.

The younger kids, pre-K and year 1, were working at a much slower pace. They needed more revision, they took longer to get into the task and they were

Everyone got a strip of paper, a mixing palette and a box of watercolours. The task was to create ten different shades of different colours. I showed them what I created for red at home and we also sat around my table for a moment to see in real time what happens if you mix yellow with brown and yellow with white or black.

They were involved in the task and they kept coming up with more and more unusual combination. Even those few kids who entered the room with ‘I will not paint today’ (there is always someone!) eventually got down to work and started to create. They kept calling me over and over again, to come over to check out the new shade. And we actually managed to get lots of language out of it. They were either telling me what they had mixed or I was trying to guess, judging by the final product.

The older students managed to complete two tasks: creating ten different shades of their chosen colour and then also creating a picture in their chosen colour. Looking at how it was going on, I decided not to speed them up and to focus and mixing the colours.

I think that next time I teach this particular lesson to the older students, I am going to focus more on the language and after creating our ten shades of X, we are going to come up with some interesting names for them. That will require preparing a slightly different page, with some room to write but it looks like a fun activity with a lot of potential. Especially that they already really enjoyed finding out about the official shades of different colours.

Afterwards, we went on to painting a picture with our chosen colour as the main theme. My model made at home was a picture of rowan, to showcase red. The one I did in class was a sunflower ready to bloom, to showcase green. We also talked about focusing on the main colour and choosing something of a different colour for contrast. My students decided to paint pumpkins (orange) and the forest (green).

The exercise of 10 Shades can be used as a warm-up activity to many other lessons. We used in our Turner lesson and in our green lesson, too. I am planning to do a lesson on red and still-life and I will include that element, too.

The funny thing is the mismatch between the actual lesson and how good it was and the photos and creations that we have to show. In case of my younger group, we ended up only with a few ‘dirty’ pieces of paper and nobody would even be able to guess that they were the result of experimentation and creative discovery. I wanted to display them on our noticeboard but what happened was that they were taken away from me, as soon as possible. Meaning? They were dear to the budding artists. As was the lesson, hopefully.

Happy teaching!

‘It’s tricky! It’s tricky!’ Back to school classroom management

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About some ridiculous expectations

Well, it is not my first rodeo and, actually, it might be actually a good point in life to count properly how many rodeos aka Septembers there have been so far (I really don’t know) but, it turned out that I had been a bit naive about what to expect in the classroom on the 3rd of September. Or, in other words, my students managed to suprise me once more! Hooray to that. I suppose)

I knew that my students would come back having forgotten a lot and that we would not be able to pick it up where we left off, not after three months of no-school life. However, naively, I was hoping that they will remember something and that our September life will not involve starting off a brand new blank page. I was wrong!

The funny thing about it is that a few minutes into a lesson that was not necessarily bad but also not my dream come true, I kind of split my attention. There was a part of my brain that was solely responsible for the lesson taking place and the other one stepped back and started to look at the events the way a trainer would, connecting the dots and making mental notes about ‘the things to improve’. That was an interesting experience, I have to say.

This post today will have a format different to every other post in this series. I will try to analyse the things that did not go to plan and the solutions I already decided to put in place.

Things that I liked on the first real day

  • We talked about the things we did on holiday and it was great
  • We kept our Months Improvisation Song and now we are singing about ‘September’, I did my verse and the kids did theirs.
  • We did an introductory reading task and I was really happy with how it went. The kids really wanted to read (already a reason to celebrate) and to find the mistakes in the song.
  • We played our numbers spinner Maths game (‘I want…’) and it was very productive.
  • We made a mural about our favourite things that we will put up on the wall, Our Solar System. We sat together on the floor around a sheet of paper and we went on creating.
  • Even in the first lesson we had a good variety of interaction patterns: whole class, individual work, activities led by kids, collaboration on the project.
  • We have a special board where we keep the plan for the lesson.

Things that I didn’t like on the first real day

  • In one line, the kids were over-stimulated and out of control.
  • It was the first lesson in our new classroom, out of the previous set-up, associated with good habits and routines and there were too many new elements.
  • I allowed the kids to sit the way they wanted, with the friends they wanted to be around.
  • I decided to include the rules revision during the second lesson (for a reason) but I had to pay for that
  • I decided to include one of our favourite Maths games, to balance ‘the new’ with ‘the familiar’ but, I have to admit, there were better solutions, something else than a game would work better.
  • We used some of the favourite songs but I also included a new song, ‘Back to school’ but, in hindsight, I think it was not really necessary. It could have been left for a bit later.

What has changed since the first day aka Solutions

  • Nobody is sitting where they want anymore. This was my plan and I announced it in the first lesson that during the month of September we are going to have a different seating arrangement every single day. I prepared some September vocabulary cards and glued them onto the desks and a set of cards with the same words. Everyone coming into the room picks up one card and then looks for their place to sit. I want to experiment with different seating arrangements (especially that I am still working on the arrangements of the desks, too) and I want to check which combination works the best. There are some dangers involved, some tricky combinations to be avoided at all cost, but I am willing to take that risk, in order to learn. It was only yesterday that I saw a meme or a video on the social media in which teachers were saying that they let everyone to sit the way they want on day 1 specifically in order to find out who shouldn’t sit with whom. Plus we are also going to learn some cool September words)
  • Our rules have not been printed, laminated and displayed on the wall above the board. We have been reading and revising them at the start of every lesson. There are only few, my basic set: I sit nicely, I listen to the teacher, I speak quietly, I raise my friend, we are friends and Russian is beautiful but I speak English here. If we need, we will add to the list.
  • I have also decided to add another poster ‘How are we working today?‘ to help kids understand the different interaction patterns and modes of work. You can see all of them in the poster underneath and these are the terms that I am using to describe what the lesson is going to be about. They also help a lot with giving instructions to particular tasks. The most important differentiation at the moment is the one between ‘follow the teacher step by step’ and ‘you can make your own decisions’.
  • I reinstated the tool that we already abandoned, namely, the final stage of the lesson with the official announcements of the grades for the lesson, for work and for behaviour. We did not quite abandon them because I still needed my notes to add comments to the electronic journal for all my students but making formal announcements of praise and of not-so-good feedback was not necessary at the end of the previous academic year. This is back and it helps to summarise the lesson, to highlight once more the superstar behaviour and to explain why some grades are not very good.
  • We have a new call – response and last we used ;Autum leaves’ (teacher) – ‘falling down’ (students). They have already customised it and some of them respond ‘falling up’, just because it is funny. I need one more of those.
  • We sang a lot of our favourite songs during the other two days and I am planning to keep that trend for another week, without repeating, until we go through everything in our Songbook.
  • With one of my groups, I have put the games on hold for now, we are not ready yet. With the other one, the games are at the end of the lesson plan, in the ‘if time’ section. We need to get back into the school mode, back into the focus, before we start doing something more entertaining.

What’s next?

Not much, just the everyday and helping my adorable monster get back to the proper working mode. We will sing our songs, we will definitely do a story next week. We are still working without our books, rationing resources. We already have the beautiful notebooks, though, so there is a place to keep all the notes. Step by step!

Happy teaching!

‘I am an artist!’ The first Art lesson of the year

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Ha! ‘This was some time a paradox, but now the time gives it proof!‘ as Hamlet would say. Why? Because first I spend time preparing a post about the good first lessons in the Art Explorers world (which, by the way, is here) and then, the start of the academic year comes and my own first lesson, too and what is it that I do? That’s right, I start from scratch and do something else entirely. Because I had an idea, because I found a cool resource and because I really wanted to do it. But it was a good lesson so I am more than happy to share it here!

The language

This was the first lesson of the year and for a variety of reasons, I got both age groups in one lesson, my second graders and the pre-schoolers and year 1 kids, too, all together now, 15 children, 30 hands. Some of them I know very well, some are new to the school and they are of different ages and, naturally, of different level of language skills. Instead of trying to adjust it to any specific level or age, I just went for ‘let’s do what I want and see what happens’.

For that reason, I did not aim for practising any specific language point, not this time anyway.

The artists

The aim of this lesson was to introduce the students to the world of art and to try to understand and to brainstrom ideas of what it is to be an artist. I based this part of the lesson on the powerpoint which you can find here.

  • we looked at what different artists do
  • we tried to define what makes someone an artists, including my ideas and my students’ ideas
  • we looked at what ‘I’ve got an idea’ was for five of the artists: Picasso, Acrimboldo, Malevich, Vlaminck and Klein in the format of ‘everyone says…’ and ‘the artist says…’
  • I also found a funny cartoon based on Marta Alves storybook but we didn’t have to watch it. We will definitely use it in the following week.

The art

The creative activity in this week was based on a very special notebook that I found in my local stationery shop: a sticker paper notebook. I saw it, fell in love with it and decided to use it.

  • I prepared my own stickers berfore the lesson to show the students the finished product
  • I also made one more, simple sticker during the lesson, to walk them through the process: make a decision about the design, draw with a pencil, trace and colour with the markers and cut out, peel it of and stick (this part was optional and the idea was that the kids might also choose to take their stickers home)
  • We brainstormed a few ideas for stickers. ‘You can make what you like. What do you like?’
  • We got down to work.

It went well and, indeed, there was a huge variety of ideas and the kids understood the assignment, they went for expressing themselves. Among the designs there were: stick people, cards, animals, hearts, stars, a rainbow, a sticker bracelet and a beautiful character from one of the favourite cartoons.

Regardless of how big or how intricate the drawings were, they all worked as they can be cut out in many different ways. Even if the picture itself is very small, the sticker can have a form of a square which is easy to handle.

This kind of a task is also perfect for mixed ability groups in terms of motor skills. Some of the students managed to make one sticker, some went on and created more stickers. It also happened that one or two students were picked up by their parents half-way through the lesson and it did not get in the way of the creative process. They simply picked up their sheets and took them home to finish work.

I am really happy with how it all went. The kids liked working on the stickers, as they were both easy and exciting to make. A perfect choice for a new group, too!

Happy teaching!

We don’t need no…enthusiastic teachers. The dangers of enthusiasm

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Do I hear gasps of horror in the audience? Good. That is how I reacted when I said these words out loud, in a conversation with a teacher friend, retelling her some of the ‘recent events’…

Bear with me, dear reader and let’s see if you still gasp at the end of this post. Or maybe I will get you to at least look at the world through my eyes and give me a tiny little nod of agreement…

The ideal teacher?

‘Enthusiastic‘ is this one term that frequently appears on the list of words to describe an ideal teacher. Qin Zhang goes as far as saying that it is ‘generally recognised as one of the most essential and desirable qualities and characteristics of effective teachers‘ as one almost synonymous with energy or passion. What’s more, it is often presented as key to students’ motivation and engagement and, if you look long enough, you can even find advice how to be enthusiastic about what you teach (and in case you need it – use your voice and gestures, never admit that you don’t like your subject or topic or that it is not important). Enthusiasm then – a key factor in teaching.

Or is it?

Reading all these articles made me want to jump up and shout ‘Objection, Your Honour!’

My definition of a teacher, and especially a YL teacher, is slightly different and, surprise surprise, enthusiasm does not feature there as one of the necessary qualities. I put this list together based on years of mentoring and training of teachers who were either novices in general or novice teachers in the early years ESL/ EFL world. I based it on my own experience, the things that worked and the things that didn’t. I read about it, too, of course.

On my list, I have resilience and stamina and a variety of skills, I have resourcefulness and patience, I have creativity, energy and calmness and all three elements mentioned by my gurus such as Sandie Mourao (2018): the level of language, the knowledge of child development and of the appropriate methodology. A YL teacher is also someone who can teacher up or teacher down. But ‘enthusiastic’, well, somehow I didn’t think of including it. Truth be told, only recently did I begin to understand why.

Case studies

To illustrate that, I will use three case studies, from my professional life as a teacher, a trainer, an educational manager in all the contexts, countries and schools where I have worked and, at the same time, in none of them. The stories may have happened but in the way you think, not in the place you can guess and not with the people you know. No identification with actual persons or places is intended or should be inferred.

Case study 1: A senior teacher is asked to prepare a programme for the summer camp session. This senior teacher does not really have a lot of experience in the area and with this age group and, somehow, they do not bother to ask for advice, recommendations or support from more experienced colleagues. They just put it together, as best as they can because they really, really want to and they believe that something’s gotta give.

The programme has more holes than a slab of some Swiss cheese. There are no real ideas, no lesson plans, no support for the teacher or any attention or knowledge of any methodological principles. The only thing that there is – the enthusiasm and the Wow Factor . The camp lags from one day to the other, the teachers are confused and lost and just doing their best. But, because they are dedicated and passionate, they pull it through.

Execution mode: atrocious and unecessarily exhausting.

Aims: met as in: the world did not fall apart.

Case study 2: A teacher orgnises an excursion for her students, to the cafe, to celebrate. It is not a big group of students, there are four adults accompanying the kids, the paperwork is ready. However, the teacher doe not bother to check and to plan the route, there and back, because they are in the city city, not far from the school and the place is reacheable on foot. On the way there and on the way back, the group wanders around, they have to stop a few time to check the google maps, everything takes forever and on the way back, they take yet another shortcut and, to add insult to injury, they are caught in a blizzard.

Execution mode: messy and unnecessarily exhausting.

Aims: met (meaning: the world did not fall apart and there were a lot of lovely photographs)

Case study 3: An adult student stays after a lesson to talk about a relative who would like to work as a teacher. The contacts are exchanged and the potential applicant is advised to get in touch with the recruitment department of the school. She does and only later doe it become obvious that the enthusiastic would-be teacher has not graduated from the university yet, her studies are not even remotely related to education, she has never every taught in any capacity and does not even have any official confirmation of her language level. For all these reasons, naturally, the school does not hire her. However, she is advised to take a language test and consider starting the basic teaching qualification course. The potential applicant does not reply to these in any way and, her relative, the adult student who comes to the following lesson iss obviously disappointed and she tries to plead, with her teacher. ‘But she is so eager to start teaching. She really, really wants to be a teacher of English. It would be a dream come true...’

Execution mode: a great range of mixed feelings.

Aims: not met. I hope this person found her path.

Put the enthusiasm on the back burner!

It is easy to image that all of the directors, all of the managers, all of the parents and all of the trainers would love to see their teachers full of energy, stars in their eyes, joy in their gait, impatient to start doing their favourite thing, teaching! To impart knowledge, to help the kids learn, to help their students grow! That’s absolutely important and I hope that all my teachers, readers, colleagues have a chance to experience it on daily basis, this passion for what you do. I, personally, cannot imagine a life in which you to work without a tiny spark of happiness, just to do something in exchange for the salary. There are lots and lots of things that I do, solely out of pure enthusiasm and there are lots and lots of things that my colleagues and teacher friends do, on daily basis, that are not reimbursed financially.

But.

Enthusiasm cannot be the only resource available to a teacher. If it is and if it is there to cover up and to make up for all the other adjectives (such as organised, supportive, qualified, skilled, realistic, methodologically sane, planned, reasonable and professional), then I would like to make an objection and a strong one, too!

If we were talking about a different profession, nobody would even consider hiring a person to do the job of a doctor, a driver or a hair-dresser if the only thing they had to show for themselves was their enthusiasm or serving a disgusting cake on a pretty plate and claiming a Michelin star or two. It would not be a good idea to organise a festival without checking all of the bits, pieces and options and going for it just because we really, really want to have it.

No because it does not work like that in other areas and we should not have to deal with that in teaching, either.

Personally, I find it very, very tiring, as a teacher, as a trainer and as an educational manager. Mostly, because, in most cases, it translates into mess, confusion, teaching and learning below standard and last minute preparations and fixing problems as we (happily) go along. Perhaps, on my part, it is some kind of professional OCD but I like things to be in order.

This is not a post against enthusiasm and pession. Let’s not take it off the list, let’s just put it on the back burner, please.

Happy teaching!

References

Instructor’s Corner #3: Teaching with Enthusiasm: Engaging Students, Sparking Curiosity, and Jumpstarting Motivation | National Communication Association (natcom.org)

An enthusiastic teacher of English – How I see it now (wordpress.com)

Being an Enthusiastic Teacher – Swansea Academy of Learning and Teaching

What makes teachers enthusiastic: The interplay of positive affect, self-efficacy and job satisfaction – ScienceDirect

Sandie Mourao (2018), Research into the teaching of English as a foreign language in early childhood education and care, In: S.Garton, F.Copeland, The Routledge Handbook of Teaching English to Young Learners, Routledge, p. 429.

Crumbs #81 Making sandwiches aka a different type of Food Art

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Ingredients

  • anything that you want to use to make sandwiches, we used: toast bread, blueberries, cucumbers, carrots, cherry tomatoes, cheese slices
  • a few pictures to get the inspiration from, for yourself and for your students. There are lots of websites with creative sandwiches for kids but I wanted something simple that we could all make and that is why I just looked for illustrations on google. If you are looking for something more intricate, you can have a look here and here.
  • two plates for each child and a small plastic knife
  • we made the sandwiches in our lunch room

Procedures

  • We started with the picture that I created during our previous lesson, my own vegetable print and I asked the kids to guess which vegetables I used in another lesson on the same day (here) and we connected them to the flashcards of vegetables we had on the board. Before the lesson I also put up more flashcards, of all the other items to be used in our sandwiches, and we spend some time working on those, drilling and playing a game.
  • Important: before the lesson, I sent the list of ingredients to my administrators to ask them to buy everything we needed and to inquire with the parents if everything was ok and to check against the allergies that our students might have.
  • I told the kids that we would be making sandwiches and I showed them a few different patterns but I also stressed that everyone would be making their own monsters.
  • We relocated to the lunchroom, washed hands and sat down. The vegetables had already been washed and cut up: cucumbers into julienne and slices, carrots into julienne and slices, cheese into slices. Cherry tomatoes and berries were only washed and dried.
  • I was making my own sandwich, modelling what can be done and my T.A. was bringing plates with more and more veggies. I did my best to encourage the kids to ask for certain vegetables and we did it))
  • At the end, we went through all of the veggies to check that everyone used everything. (“Have you got any carrots?’)
  • Then, we went on to eat!

Why we like it

  • It was the most ideal follow-up of our lesson 1 (vocabulary) and lesson 2 (making print art with vegetables) and, finally, we could eat in class.
  • It was a great way of practising our target vocabulary, practical, hands-on, productive because we really, really used the language.
  • Apart from what I planned for this lesson, namely using the functional language in the context (‘Bread, please’), we also started to sing a new version of the Broccoli Ice-cream, using the combination of the things on the table and then tasting to check what we really think. And, guess what, it turns out that carrot cheese, blueberries cheese and blueberry carrot are all yummy!
  • The kids worked very well together, they reacted well to changing the set-up and the type of an activity. Nobody got overwhelmed or overexcited, they were patient and waited for their turn and they used the langauge. I was really proud of them.
  • Last but not least, we made sandwiches (some kids more than 1) and we ate A LOT of vegetables. I was worried for a while that dry bread might not be the most popular item but I did not want to include any spreads of any kind and it turned out not to be necessary. Actually, during the previous stages of the lesson, I asked whether the kids liked all of the items we had ready and I was lucky – everyone liked everything! But, even if not, they were not required to use or to eat all of the ingredients.
  • As for the creative element, I was laughing a lot during this lesson because my students and their monsters were just amazing and very creative. I showed just a model but I didn’t want them to follow directly in my footsteps. We all looked at our plates and everyone, clearly, had their own idea of what the monster should look like.

Happy teaching!

How we watched the paint dry. Bubble painting! Teaching English through Art

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This was not a typical Art lesson for many reasons. First of all, it was a part of the camp programme, so I had a mixed ability group, with many children who have not created a lot with me. Then, it was an Art lesson that did not involve the Artist of the Day and, also, a lesson which was fully and thoroughly devoted to the process, perhaps more than any other lesson that I taught.

The language

This particular lesson was taught as a part of the summer camp programme which meant a lot more time for all of us, we had one lesson for the language practice and one separate lesson for creation. And one whole lesson for Science and experiments! It was a part of the Black and White day so in our English lesson, we talked about the things that are black and white, we did some acting, we talked about our preferences (Do you prefer a black and white zebra or a colourful zebra? based on the illustrationsI found) and we wrote a poem about our favourite black and white things. We also had a fantastic Science lesson in which we were learning about what the colour black is made of and what the colour white (aka the light) is made of.

The art

Initially, I had a different idea for this lesson and I wanted to create two drawings (black on white and white on black) but we did something like that very recently and I needed something a lot more inspiring.

I did ‘waste’ some time thinking about the ways of making the connection between the colours and the art (something that is one of my favourite things, this kind of a brain-breaker) but, luckily, a few days earlier I was also researching new watercolour techniques and this is how I found a video on Lemon Creation ‘The most relaxing watercolour technique ever!‘. Then it was easy for the grey cells to make a connection: bubbles = white, bubbles = light, bubbles = colours.

I tried and tested the technique on myself, the day before. It helped me to understand the process better and to plan and stage it for the classroom full of kids. Not to mention that I had lots and lots of fun with it, as an adult. A delightful process that I really wanted to share with my kids.

In the classroom, the next day, it went like that:

  • I showed the kids all of the materials (plates, spoons, straws, washing up liquid, watercolours, paper, paintbrushes) and I explained that we are going to make bubble paintings.
  • I showed the kids my creations, already dry and ready for all of us to see the final product.
  • The next step was the list on the board, all the stages with simple verbs, for each of them because, again, this is an activity whose success depends a lot on the careful following in the footsteps of the teacher, one at a time.
  • And, to further underline it, I produced one more picture in real time, with us following the instructions on the board and the kids watching the process, from the beginning until the end. Initially, I wanted to colour the bubbles only with the black paint, in order to keep in line with the theme of the day but I quickly gave up on the idea. Not because it is a bad idea but because adding more and more colour and looking at how they seep into each other and mix and dry was way too much fun to skip it.
  • Giving out cups and straws to all the kids and making out own foam would be a lot of fun but I didn’t want to risk anyone taking a sip of the soapy water by accident (and, mind you, that is very easy, even for an adult, I did it myself while in class, oups) so I decided that there will be only two Foam Makers, myself and my TA.
  • After we have given out resources, put on aprons and prepared the paper, we started to walk around the room with my teacher assistant giving out the foam to kids. At home I used a piece of cardboard but a spoon is a much better solution (Miss Nigina’s idea:-).
  • Children went on to infuse their bubbles with colour and only now and again someone would should ‘Miss Anka, more foam, please!’
  • Some of the kids named their paintings in the same lesson, some decided to leave it for later (‘Miss Anka, I haven’t finished yet’ as my 5 y.o. artist told me).
  • When we came back after the lunch break, we unpeeled all of the pictures, signed them, named them and decided who is taking theirs home and who is keeping theirs on the noticeboard.

If you haven’t figured that out yet from the first 500 words of the post, I am here to tell you that we absolutely enjoyed this activity.

Yet again, we had an opportunity to learn to keep the pace and to follow detailed (but carefully-staged) instructions. We created these beautiful pieces that you can see in the photos and the kids were fully engaged. It is almost difficult to call it ‘painting’, it seems that ‘a show’ would be a more appropriate term as it was a whole performance that we created with the help of the bubbles and the watercolour. Observing how the paint seeps down, through the bubbles, colouring them and then drying and changing slowly…We literally watched the paint dry and it was an absolutely fascinating experience.

It was only after the lesson when I had a chance to look at the photos that we took during the lesson and the kids in all the photos are so focused, so engrossed, so into it…A beauty to behold!

The study in pink that is the title photo of this post was created by my 5 y.o. firestarter who, when ‘forced’, stops plotting how to destroy the world and sits down to paint and ends up putting together the most amazing pieces. Like that one. I have already had a chance to witness it 6 times and every single time it is a wonder.

There many things that can be done with the finished paintings, with the use of markers or colours or even collage and we will definitely be coming back to it! Bubbles for everyone!

Happy teaching!

Hokusai, waves and watercolours!

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8 y.o. artist

The language

This particular lesson was a part of our summer camp programme devoted to colours and that day was dedicated to ‘blue’ and all the blue associations, namely the sky, the water and the peace. For that reason, the language of the lesson was dictated and aligned with everything that we do in the other days of the session: talking about the things that are blue miming and guessing, writing a poem about the colour blue and singing songs of which my favourite one is this one here, from Kiboomers, with a catchy tune and the repetition.

6 y.o. artist

The artist

That particular lesson had a whole party of artists as I wanted the children to see a few different ways of depicting water in Art, with Turner, Hockney, Monet, Levitan and, of course, Hokusai. I live by the river and I have piles of photographs of the water and, as a joke, I decided to include one of my own photographs in the presentation. We looked through all of those, depicting a wild sea, a swimming pool, a pond with lillies, a wave and a river. Very briefly, we talked about the water being either calm or in movement and the children noticed themselves that there were no people in the paintings.

8 y.o. artist

The art

For the creative part of our lesson, I chose Hokusai. He has been on my mind for a while, just waiting for the most opportune moment and this moment came. I also wanted something that my mixed age group would be able to handle and recreate. Calling Hokusai ‘simple’ would be offensive but it is a print, with lots of intricate elements but the power of the water can is really shown by the line and that is something that even the little kids can relate to and to act upon. And they did!

The other thing that I wanted to do in this lesson is the use of a variety of watercolour techniques. It was very tempting to go overboard and experiment on a large scale, using everything we worked with before (a post here), but my students are the moment are still beginners in Art and very young, so I decided to be a clever teacher and I chose only three: crayons and watercolours, salty water and what we called ‘a broken brush’.

Before the lesson, I cut up the paper and all the students got three pieces of paper (A5) which I attached to the tables with the paints scotch. This really helped to set up the activity as it was clear, from the very beginning that we are going to paint three pieces. The size of the paper made it possible as they easily fit on the small table and it was perfect as it would not require too much colouring and painting. Three were a feasible number in one 45-min lesson. We reinforeced that by counting the pieces of paper and matching them to ‘technique 1’, ‘technique 2’ and ‘technique 3’ which I wrote on the board.

At the same time, the most important piece of instruction for this lesson was ‘step by step’ that I kept repeating throughout the lesson. I wanted to make sure that no one will draw on all three pieces at the same time or just destroy the paper. Or anything else that a creative pre-schooler can come up with.

I demonstrated each technique for the kids, step by step and we went on to create. I left the salty water for the very end.

There are the techniques that we use:

  • crayons and watercolours: give out crayons, one per child, a crayon of any colour as it really does not matter and any colour will look good and then colour the picture with watercolours which will not affect the drawing.
  • the broken brush: give out crayons, one per child, draw the wave, proceed with colouring the picture but instead of smooth strokes use the broken paintbrush: pick some paint and make small stamps with the paintbrush, mistreating it and leaving prints similar what a duck would leave. When there are many of them, the wave get a wonderful texture, especially when different colours and shades are used. Even if the prints are done inexpertly, the wave is covered in blotches of colour and it looks lovely, too!
  • salty water: I walked around the room, adding water to the pots that all the kids had (in some cases we had to pour some fresh water as it was very dirty) and I asked them to stir it properly and then we used the water to dampen the paper as it is a wet-on-wet technique and then drawing waves and applying little drops of colour and watching how it spreads beautifully. Here, the crayon can be used, too, to sketch the wave but last week we decided not to.

It was a great lesson and I am very happy with the outcomes. The task was easy enough even for the youngest kids, especially that they had three chances and even if some of them did not feel very confident at the first step and the first wave, they all got a chance to do it again and it was visible how their confidence grew. Technically, it was not complicated so the kids could focus on the creativity and on enjoying the process. Which they really did, both my youngest ones and my oldest ones (that’s 5 and 8 y.o.).

We got a set of amazing pictures for all of them. It was interesting to leave the pictures for the lunchbreak to dry and to come back later to check, together, what changed and what they looked like in the end.

It is the camp so, of course, we had some new children joining the group and it turned out that this kind of a task had a lot of potential for the mixed ability groups, who had done nothing of the kind before and the combination of three techniques helps to build the routine even within one lesson. What’s more, this type of a task works very well for staging and getting the kids to listen, simply because we go ‘step by step’ and doing that is the crucial part of the process. It is good to have this kind of an activity at hand.

Sitting here, thinking that Hokusai was a great choice, for the kids and for the teacher, too! Now, I can dreaming of making a real Hokusai-inspired print. And of writing a few more posts that he accidentally inspired.

Welcome to our gallery!

8 y.o. artist
8 y.o. artist
5 y.o. artist
7 y.o. artist
5 y.o. artist

Happy teaching!