#eflkids

Setting up the routine. Five months into the course

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Welcome to the second leg of the academic year! We can already start dreaming of spring and of the end of the year and, more importantly, January is over and we have returned, more or less successfully.

Please, don’t forget to check our September adventures in the following posts here, here, here and here and our progress in October, here.

Starting the lesson and How do you feel today?

As regards the start of the lesson, very little has changed since December. We still say hello, talk about how we are, about all the toys we have brought and how they feel. Then we sing a song and look at the plan for the lesson.

Songs

The hello song is gone, gone, gone. We have replaced it with a months song and last month it was January, January, to give us additional practice with the names of the months (especially that sometimes we have sung it together with our ‘old’ months song. We sang it every day, at the start of the first lesson and only sometimes did we replace it with our ‘old’ hello song but that is only because my kids loved (as in: LOVED) singing it in the ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary’ style singing ‘bye bye’ instead of every single ‘hello’.

Danny Go is still one of our heroes, mine, too and that is because apart from providing exciting brain breaks, Danny also sings about farms, pyramids, jungles and what not and that means we can always find a relevant Danny, to match our topic in Maths or English. All you need is Danny!

In January we did a lot as regards animals, adjectives, comparatives and superlatives and because of that our playlist included also the following: the Opposites Song which can be turned into a game, with the kids singing the other adjective in a pair of antonyms (especially that there is a little pause in the song, even if you decide not to pause the recording yourself which I only did the first two times), As quiet as a mouse which we have already started to personalise with out own verses and What do you like to do?. This last one, my personal favourite, was only introduced, to give the kids an idea of the concept and the structure of the song. We are going to work on it more in the weeks to come. There is a lot of potential there, for games, for personalisation and for fun.

Rules and classroom language

No major changes here. We still have the same rules, although they needed reinforcement and revision, we still get grades for behaviour and for work in every lesson and we still struggle with not wandering around the room for no reason. However, right now, more frequently than before, kids are getting involved in policing each other and reminding each other that ‘I don’t walk around’. I do that, too, although I am using a simple question: ‘Sasha, are you walking around?’ It works, every other time, basically.

Story

January was not a very long month but we managed to squeeze in a lovely book ‘Who’s for dinner?’ by Claire Freedman and Nick East about very clever farm animals and a (not very clever) fox, with a funny storyline and some bits of the text that my kids could actually read themselves. We also did Eric Carle’s ‘From Head To Toe’ which we read through and through, in a shared reading session and a story that we have in our book about a rattlesnake, a mouse and a clever coyote.

We have been also working on the Past Simple Tense (or the tiny elements of it) and this is how Mr Milk came back to be a part of the everyday life for me and how I introduced him to yet another bunch of kids. Now, at least once a week, sometimes more frequently, we tell stories of everything that Mr Milk does in his life. Or what his friends do, among them Miss Juice and Mr Banana.

Socialising

In terms of socialasing, we have done the following:

  • I am trying to use a range of the interaction patters in class: kids nominate each other, I nominate, too, for the balance, we have done some pairwork, some S vs the class activities (interviews, miming and guessing, shared reading), a lot of whole class (one of my groups especially needs to work on ‘when people speak, I listen’) and some 1-1, too.
  • keep a variety of alternative seating arrangements does wanders to the atmosphere and to the focus. In January we did the following: sitting on the carpet, sitting around the TV on the chairs, regrouping, standing or singing for the songs, sitting or standing in front of the group, leading the game. By the way, I started writing this January post with reading the previous month’s entry only to find out that I was very clever to take notes. Not only because of the blog but because of the everyday classroom life and my poor memory. It turns out that I have already forgotten about ‘sitting in two rows’ for pairwork and how much fun we had with it! I did not use it once in January and I so should have!
  • kids still take turns to help in the classroom although they have the official roles assigned by their Russian programme teacher and because of that, they did fight back a little bit. ‘Miss Anka, but why is Sasha handing out the markers? I am on duty today! I should be doing that!’ I decided not to take that into consideration at all. Mostly because I want to keep my classes independent and because that gives me more flexibility as I do not need to think of the rules introduced by another teacher in my lessons when it is not that relevant. Our class, our rules, routines and traditions.
  • our Christmas garlands and fairy lights are down and the classroom became bare and sad. We will be thinking of new ideas for February. Some kind of a hearts + boys’ things (the holiday coming up) + term break fun garland. I am thinking.
  • Maths for Life lessons with us cooperating and interacting with each other’s work.

Creativity

Our creative projects in January involved:

  • Personalising the songs. We started very slowly with simple ‘Hello song’ that my kids love to sing as a ‘Bye-bye song’ and we have already started coming up with new verses to add to ‘As quiet as a mouse’. There is more to come!
  • Mr Milk and his adventures which we make with a set of past tense verb cards, as a whole group. In the end of the story we decide if it was a good or a bad day for Mr Milk
  • We had another lesson with our invisible student, Petya with us helping him with his English homework. It is our tradition now to follow-up the error correction with a series of mini-role-plays when Petya’s mum (me!) calls the teacher (the kids) to find out how her son is doing. He is not doing great but thanks to him we are practising very simple phone conversations. And it is a lot of fun.
  • We started our Maths for Life series in which we are going to design our shops (posters), then go shopping and do some addition and subtraction to find out how much we have spent and how much change we’ve got back. We had only one round but there is a lot of potential so we are definitely going to repeat it.

Teacher

The biggest challenge for the month of January was the long break we were on, almost two weeks with the bell, the rules and the everyday routine. I was worried what kind of kids will be coming back to school and what to do in order to make sure that we can actually study and focus.

I saw the rules reminder poster on the social media and I decided to adapt it to our context. There are ten rules aka ten challenges and the areas to focus on. As soon as I decide that one of them is already back in life, we mark the challenge as complete. As soon as all ten are done, we are going to be celebrating. I am going to write about it in a separate post.

One of my favourite activies in January involved my Magic Bag full of the most random objects that I brought from home such as: a selection of fruit and veg, a bag of raw pasta, a bag of flour, a tube of toothpaste, a small jar, a stone, a shell, a squishy, you name it. We used it in many lessons: in Maths, to estimate quantity and to check the actual numbers and in English – to describe different objects and their qualities and to practise comparatives. It was a success not only because of its novelty value but because we could touch, shake and sometimes smell the objects and to describe them.

We also wrote our second Milestone tests, with a proper revision / mock test lesson and I am very happy with the results. The kids worked well, they took it seriously and with two exceptions, they did a great job. They were really sitting with their papers and going through the tasks.

I also tested all my kids according to the Cambridge speaking YLE exams in order to have a better idea of the group profile and in order to better track everyone’s progress as these are going to be repeated in March and in May. It was an interesting experience and, again, something that I should / will write about in more detail, one day.

Happy teaching!

Jackson Pollock. How to survive a modern art lesson with kids. Teaching English through Art

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The language

We continue to work on expressing our opinions and on justifying them. Since the Unusual Colours was a huge success with both groups, I decided to continue with a different set of visuals. We revised all the basic structures to express opinions, we looked at all the pictures in the set with the group and we said what we thought of them and why. As usual, it was great to see the growing confidence and the courage to express your preferences even if they are different from your friend’s or the group.

This time round I went more slowly, pausing after each picture, to share ideas. I was also trying to encourage the kids to produce a little bit more than just ‘I like it’ or ‘I don’t like it’, with questions such as ‘Why?’, ‘How does it make you feel about it?’, ‘What are you thinking about?’ etc.

The artist

Beginning October, my Art classes have been divided into two groups, the younger (pre-school and year 1) and the older (year 2 -4) and the decision to do so was a real game changer because I can adapt the level of the language and the Art input sessions to the age and the language level of the students. Each group has only one lesson a week but they are more meaningful, more focued and more child-friendly.

Because of the holidays and the calendar, the lesson with the older kids comes up first right now and it is also very important and handy. I can prepare for the more group with more advanced language skills, motor skills and with more life expience and do what I really want to do and then just adapt to what my younger kids are able to do. I really like it this way.

In our Jackson Pollock lesson, I introduced the artist of the day (name, country, favourite things) and the fact that he is, most likely, the most renowned modern artist today or, at least, the painter that most people associate with modern art.

Later on, we looked at five of his paintings, in different colours, with different titles, from ‘real’ names (‘Summer’) through ‘Number 5’, to the beautiful ‘Untitled’ and we talked about what we think about them and how they make us feel. In the end, we watched a clip from the video ‘How to paint like Jackson Pollock’ to show the students the real process. I also decided to include a short slot devoted to the main characteristics and I called it ‘What Jackson Pollock would tell us’.

The art

Well, this has to be the first thing to say out loud: Jackson Pollock is a serious logicstical challenge for an Art teacher. Especially if this Art teacher works with young kids and in a room that is a regular classroom which lends its square meters to all the creative activities and then goes back again to being ‘just a classroom’, used and shared with other students and teachers. To be prefectly honest, I am not sure I am entirely happy with how I dealt with it.

Things that need to be taken into consideration are as follows: the technique is a mess-generating one and it requires serious preparations. It is supposed to be done on the floor (which is refreshing and exciting) and the floor needs to be protected. So do the walls, the desks, the chairs and the kids’ clothes, because, surprise surprise, the paint spatter is a powerful force and you will find it in the most unexpected places.

The classroom was almost completely reorganised – the tables and the chairs were put aside, to make room on the floor. I perpared the working station for each of my students (an A3 piece of cardboard, on a much larger piece of newspaper, scotched to the floor) as well as the station with all the paints, brushes, water and tissues. Apart from that we had a semi-circle of chairs in front of the TV where we were to sit during the first, theoretical part of the lesson. We spent here around 20 minutes and later on, we moved to our work stations, to create.

The task was really simple – choose your favourite colours, think what idea you want to convey, take the water and the paints and start creating and experimenting with the technique. This part was great. The kids were trying out different hand movements, they were also observing each other and sharing ideas and opinions. The creativity was slow and a bit inhibited at the beginning but, as we moved on, the kids really got into it. Things were coming together. In the end, we talked about the possible titles for our paintings and how we felt during the entire process. This part was amazing. The paintings were left on shelves to dry overnight and some of my students came on the following day to pick up theirs and to take them home. They did enjoy and they did treasure their creations. Aims – met.

However, I have to admit – these preparations were not enough. The stations were too close to each other, the pieces protecting the floor were too small and, overall, the students’ clothes were not protected. We talked about being careful and respecting the other artists’ space, but I could have done better but mostly because I was lucky, with my older group of only seven students. I am to do the same lesson on Monday, with the younger group and I am working on adapting the ideas and the set-up or, also, entirely giving up on Jackson. I will also be adapting the number of resources used, giving up on the acrylic paints and the guache, because only the watercolours are relatively easy to wash and to clean.

The Pollock lesson – round two. Pre-K and year 1

There were a few things that I had to change for the lesson with the younger kids.

  • I took over a much bigger space on the floor, with the smaller pieces of cardboard (A4) on much bigger pieces of newspapers and with much bigger distance between them. I also marked the place on the floor where the kids were supposed to be sitting, to ensure that they are not facing each other but sitting back to back to minimise the paint spatter.
  • I also gave out the painting aprons that we apparently had at the school. However, I had my plan B – bin liners with holes for arms and head.
  • I was more selective as regards the types of paints, limiting them to watercolours only. Watercolours lend themselves to splashing and spattering, too if more water is added. Acrylic and guache paints are more thicker and more difficult to wash. What is more, a box of watercolours is a box of watercolours, with each child working on their own, at their station, without the need to get up, walk around and exchange jars with friends. Hence – fewer opportunities for stepping into splashes and dirty footprints around the room.
  • I am happy to say that it all worked very well!
  • Apart from that, I have to say that, somehow, my little students were somehow more open-minded and ready to dive into the modern art world. They were eager to discuss what they could see in the paintings I showed them and I really could not calm them down here. They wanted to talk and talk, although, because of their level of language, they could do it in English and in L1. They were also very eager to come up with titles for their own creations. These were really artistic discussions. I was really proud of them and some of these paintings are just precious!

Happy teaching!

Is it bigger? Is it smaller? Teaching comparatives to young learners

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A new series!

Welcome to the new series on the blog! Teaching grammar to young learners is one of my passions, especially that the students are getting younger and younger and / or the context is changing and you find yourself faced with a challenge of coming up with ideas to engage, to present and to practise with people who are still not really ready to deal with abstract terms and the target language goes beyond the easy-peasy bits of ‘is’ is for one cat and ‘are’ is for many (naturally accompanied by gestures and flashcards).

I have been interested in that area for some time already and I have written about before (please check the other emails in that category) but in the recent months, this has been especially present in my life. This year I am teaching in a school with a bilingual programme, and I am a teacher both of the BNC and of the ESL to a mixed ability group and on a random given Monday I may need to teach past simple or comparatives who students who are not the A1 level yet.

Hence this series. I will simply be sharing ideas that I have created or adapted for my students and, naturally, the activities that have worked well. Let’s get started. Comparatives first!

The context at hand

This year I am teaching two classes of year 1 (and of year 3 of the British National Curriculum) and I am responsible for their BNC year 3 curriculum as well as their ESL classes. Consequently, we have about one million different aims and the two most important among them are the following: developing the kids’ language skills and realising the aims of the BNC. My students are 6 and 7, they are in their year 1 of the state education. They language levels vary from pre-A1 to early A2. In case you are wondering regarding the aims, bilingual education to non-quite-so-bilingual kids is a different planet and I am only at the start of my journey but the main objective is that we are going to be closer to bilingual when we get to our year 4. It is all a process.

The most practical implication for me as a teacher is that we do not follow a linear curriculum, typical of foreign language learning and, that, for example comparatives and, subsequently, superlatives, is our target language in the fifth month of our year 1. As one of the examples. That, in turn, means that I am teaching my very young kids some advanced grammar points and I am trying to do it the best I can. I am hoping that some of these ideas will be useful to my fellow teachers out there.

Ideas for teaching and practising comparative forms

Presentation

  • My students already know a range of adjectives, because we have learnt lots of emotions, adjectives to describe characters and also adjectives to describe objects. My main aim of it was to give the kids a range of vocabulary which we can use in telling stories, retelling stories and describing pictures, all a part of my storytelling campaign. However, it was absolutely necessary to choose a very narrow range for the grammar presentation stage of the lesson and for me it was ‘bigger’ and ‘smaller’, leaving behind, for now, the other short adjectives, the long adjectives, superlatives or the irregular adjectives. For now. As soon as we become familiar with one, we will move onto the other. For example, in one of the exercises, I decided to ‘smuggle’ longer and shorter, just to see how the kids react.
  • We revised all the adjectives and we had a short slot in which we described animals. I was showing some images and asking students ‘Is it big or small?’. All this time these two words were written on the board.
  • Afterwards, I stood right in front of the board and added, in a different colour, -er, to our words, changing them into ‘bigger’ and ‘smaller’ and then I uncovered it, faked surprise and asked ‘What happened here? What’s this?’ and I elicited the letters, asking the kids to read the new words. Afterwards, I demonstrated with these flashcards aiming at showing the difference between ‘big’ and ‘bigger’ and, naturally, ‘small’ and ‘smaller’ using a set of flashcards. It could go along the following lines: ‘Is the tiger big or small?’ ‘It’s big’. ‘Yes, it is. But, look, the elephant is BIGGER’. The same was done for small, with a mouse and a butterfly. I also used gestures to highlight the meaning. With these two adjectives, I tend to move my hand up, gradually for ‘bigger’ and move it closer to the floor or the table, gradually, for ‘smaller’. We repeated the same conversation about some other animals, trying to elicit the structure from the kids.
  • The next step was putting the key sentence on the board by adding flashcards to our words on the floor, creating a sentence made of visuals and words. The great advantage of this activity is the fact that you can adapt and create the sentences by replacing the flashcards and reading the sentences together. That, actually, will be the first controlled practice activity.

Practice

  • Bigger or smaller?, a guessing game: the teacher holds a pile of flashcards with animals, all the cards face de teacher takes out one card and shows it to the kids. Then the teacher asks ‘Bigger or smaller?’ and the kids make their decision, saying out loud ‘Bigger!’, ‘Smaller!’. Afterwards, the teacher takes out a card at random and the class check. Afterwards, the game continues with another card. The main aim of the game is to drill the key words in a simple way and to reinforce the idea. It can also be done with number flashcards or with school objects flashcards.
  • Who is bigger?, a simple movement activity in which the students compare themselves, in pairs, and the class decide who out of the two is bigger. The aim is to produce simple sentences, to personalise the target langauge and to involve the whole group, because, of course, only the students in the classroom are able to tell who, in fact, is different. It might be a good idea to think about the careful pairing of the students, choosing those who get on with each other or are friends to minimise the negative impact of ‘being smaller’. I also like to pair myself up with the kids and to highlight that they are going to grow bigger and bigger and bigger (one more chance to use the target language!). I have also ducked or sat on the floor, as a joke, so that the child could be bigger than me, at least for a moment.
  • Magic Bag, an object description game that we have already used in our classes. This time, however, the kids put their hands into the bag to describe the object they are holding but this time they do it twice. In the end, they have to objects they have to compare using ‘bigger’ and ‘smaller’ or any other adjectives at the later stages of this unit.
  • Who is bigger? Who is smaller?, a simple flashcard games whose main aim was to get the students to produce full sentences with bigger and smaller in a more active way. The game starts with the teacher taking out a card with an animal and letting each student take one, too and to keep it secret for now. The teacher reveals the card and says ‘I am a dog. I am small. Who is bigger? Who is smaller?’. The kids take turns, to reveal their animals and to produce the sentence. At the same time, they get up and take their place on the left of the teacher (if they are smaller) or on the right (if they are a bigger animal). In the end of the round, all the kids stand in line, at the board, lined up, from the smallest to the biggest animal. Since they take turns they can produce all the relevant sentences, i.e. ‘I am bigger than a dog. I am smaller than a tiger’ and so on. We play this game a few rounds. It might be necessary to give out one card per pair of students if the group is big.
  • Draw it!, a reading and drawing activity that I created to give the students a chance to reinforce the idea of the concept behind comparatives and to check understanding. The only thing that is necessary for this game is a piece of paper (or a notebook) and markers and crayons and a handout which you can find here. The paper is printed (only one copy) and cut up, all the cards end up in a bag or in a box. The kids take turns to take one of the cards, they read the sentence, a few times and everyone is drawing a relevant picture. The teacher monitors. The game can be later develop into a more SS-centred activity, as soon as the kids ready. In this adaptation, the key structure is written on the board: _____is bigger than_____ and _______is smaller than ______ and the kids themselves take turn to dicatate a sentence to draw.
  • What is bigger?, a reading and writing activity, also on a higher level in which I wanted to encourage a more creative and a more productive approach to the target language. You can find the handout here. This was the first more advanced activity which we did together, with a whole set of different adjectives at the same time. And the kids were ready! Everyone got their copy of the handout and they were supposed to trace the comparatives and then to create their own sentences with their own choices.
  • Wordwall activities were included in these lessons, too, to give us a chance to practice the target language. Here are some of those that I used: missing words (only bigger and smaller, I had to help read the sentences), let’s compare (either using only the basic bigger and smaller but also to give the kids a chance to use more complex structures, if they are ready, this btw is an activity that I found in the community resources on wordwall and adapted), and a simple set of cards to play ‘Bigger or smaller’ but on the screen.

All of that, on top of whatever you have in your coursebooks. The next steps will be: adding more of the short adjectives and then, eventually, the long adjectives, too. But, as they say, that is a story for another day…

Happy teaching!

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Natalia Goncharova’s lesson about colours. Teaching English through Art

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https://arthive.com/

The language

January is our month of colours, chosen this way to balance up the monochromatic landscape outside the window. At the moment, due to the combination of various factors, calendards and timetables, I get to teach every lesson first with my older group and then to repeat it and to re-do it with the younger kids. This, in itself, is a fascinating set-up for experiments and reflection. The activity with the unusual colour was created for my little ones but it was such a success that I decided to do it again with my older group, too. It was a success and my older and more advanced children were even more involved and more capable of taking part in a discussion and expressing their views on pink teddy bears, brown unicorns and pink chocolate. This was the main language activity in this lesson. The older group were using a wider range of structures, including ‘I really like’, ‘I really don’t like’, ‘I love’ and ‘I hate’ and they could explain why they felt this way.

Because of that I am going to repeat it, once more, with a different set of images in this coming week.

‘Monet & Architecture’ will reveal Claude Monet’s works at London (architecturaldigest.in)

The artist

This week, we invited not one but two artists to lead us through the world of colour and this decision was made specifically with the art project I planned for us for the day and that, in turn, was the result of these creators’ artistic decisions.

My main idea was to show the students how the same object can be painted with different colours and how the selection of the colours can affect our perception of the painting and our emotions. Or, in other words, why would an artist choose specific colours to paint.

Our first artist of the day was Claude Monet and his cathedral, the other Natalia Goncharova and her peacock, or rather, two peacocks because Natalia Sergeevna created more than one and that was exactly what we needed. We looked at the two peacocks and answered a few questions: ‘What colours can you see?’, ‘Do you like this peacock? Why?’, ‘How does it make you feel?’, ‘Why did she choose such colours?’, ‘Which one do you like more?’. We compared the paintings with the photos of the cathedral and of the bird.

In general, the colourful peacock was a favourite although some of my students mentioned that there are too many colours and they are too loud. The black-and-brown peacock was noone’s favourite as very thin, very sad and a bit scary.

We needed these artists also because their colour decisions were rooted in two different sources – the sun itself and the artist’s conscious decision and it is the second approach that we were getting ready to use in our art.

https://arthive.com/
https://arthive.com/

The art

The task was very simple and it came as a natural follow-up of the activities in the first half of the lesson: choose a simple object and paint it twice, using a different set of colours to represent two different ideas or emotions.

To demonstrate how it can be done, in an even more direct and straightforward way, I showed the students the pictures that I created – a flower that I decided to paint using my happy colours, such as pink, green and blue and to paint the same flower using the colours that make me angry (orange, purple and yellow). You can see it above. Below – everything that my students created last Wednesday.

Before we started, we also brought back our earlier project, namely Andy Warhol and Chebourashka that I wrote about here. The previous activity had a character in it and it was, perhaps, easier to associated it with a set of emotions whereas this time round I wanted everyone to be a little bit more open-minded and, at the same time, to focus on the emotions and colours, rather than on looking at the world through the character. However, I did not limit them in any choice and, as a result, some of them decided to choose two different items to paint or to even give up on the shapes and focus entirely on the colours.

It is exciting to see that they paired up their beloved shapes and characters with the colours they love and, in the same vein, they made a decision to combine their less preferred colours with the characters they just don’t like. It seems your beloved goose could just not be painted in the colours you have a strong dislike for.

The kids made conscious decisions regarding the colours and while they were painting, we were discussing their choices and, in the end, the final outcome, too. And it was a real discussion, to a large extent in L2, in some cases also in L1.

This last piece here is special in many ways because we had a new student join our group and try his hand at creativity for the first time. He got the idea and the was happy to experiment with the colours and images and it turns out that his favourite combination is a cat in pink because this is his favourite colour and because ‘Boys like pink, too!’. He is one of the epitome of the cool kid and the would be alpha male in our class so I was surprised and in awe that he dived in and took to everything that we do in our classes. And, even more so, he enjoyed it.

Happy teaching!

Storytelling for primary. Ideas for the follow-up activities.

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The way that only the freezing winter sunsets can be

Storytelling and storybooks in the primary classroom

Welcome to one more of my obsessions: the story in the classroom, be it a story from the coursebook, a video, a storybook or even a thing that I invent myself, just to sell my ‘product‘. A story is not only the type of an activity that we introduce because of its many benefits or because we want to prepare our students for the YL Cambridge exams but also because the story can be a way and the means of developing the young children’s language skills, reading and writing, speaking and listening but also their grammar and vocabulary.

I have been using stories for ages and I am not exaggerating when I say that this is one of my favourite teaching tools and different storybooks characters, Marvin, Barry, Pete the Cat or Splat the Cat or Peppa, are like my best mates.

‘What’s new?‘, one could ask.

In this academic year (four months so far), I have been involved in teaching the British National Curriculum, KS 3 to my two wonderful groups who are an amazing but mixed bunch, especially when it comes to their actual English skills. One of my main aims is developing my students reading and writing skills, preferably fast (yes, yes, I know, nothing happens fast) while working with a very mixed ability group, ranging from complete beginners to A1+ children. Stories have been one of the many ways of doing and I decided to share a few examples of what we have done, hoping that they can serve as a source of inspiration, for all kinds of classes, EFL or ESL.

The general idea

The way these five stories were used in the primary classroom follow the same pattern

  • pre-book: looking at the cover of the book, reading the title, introducing the main character, asking some questions about it, trying to predict the story, introducing and practising the key vocabulary.
  • while-book: reading / watching the story, sometimes with pauses to check understanding, sometimes to involve the kids through gestures, sometimes through the phrases, if they are used repeatedly.
  • post-book: a variety of activities related to the content of the story or to the grammar or vocabulary of the week in which the story was introduced.

And this is when the post starts to make more sense, I hope, because I am going to share here five different stories and five story-related, follow-up activities that I used in the last few months.

Hen’s pens and Let’s practise vocabulary!

Hen’s pens is a story, one in the series published by Usborne, a lovely resource with the Ted in a red bed, Fat Cat on a mat and Big Pig on a dig. I usually use them a bit later, with slightly more advanced students, in shared reading sessions (and there probably should be a post about that) but this time, I wanted to introduce a longer story, a video story and a rhyming story, specifically to have kids practise noticing rhymes.

In the follow-up of the story, we completed a very simple reading task, in which we put the words into pairs by colour-coding them and then using the chart to practise reading. You will have also notice a colouring page in the handout. This was an additional task for the kids, only for those who like colouring.

Pete the Cat and Let’s speak!

Pete the Cat is very famous in the EFL circles and the story about rocking in the school shoes is an absolute hit. This is my personal way of teaching Present Continuous ever since I have seen the video for the first time and this year, not quite for the first time, I used it also to introduce the school vocabulary, verbs and places.

In our lesson, apart from watching, singing, miming and even re-enacting Pete’s day at school, we also followed up with a speaking activity in which the kids had to create their own sentences in the Present Continuous. They had the main verb forms, mostly taken from the story, accompanied by visuals to support speaking (in most cases, the kids were unable to read yet) and their task was to finish the sentence by drawing something. ‘I am eating…a pizza, an apple, a cookie, a banana’, according to their preferences. Later on we compared our sentences, creating our own day at school. The handout served as preparation for speaking.

Again, those children who were interested, were given a second handout to colour.

Marvin Gets Mad and Let’s practise grammar!

Marvin is, no doubt, one of my favourite characters and he’s been present in my classroom for about fifteen years now (wow!). ‘Marvin Gets Mad’ by Joseph Theobald is a great story for feelings and for learning about controlling emotions but this time round I decided to use it to reinforce the grammar behind the Present Continuous.

In the follow-up task, which was quite a stretch from the plot of the original story but it was exactly what we needed to practise the Present Continuous and to reinforce the idea of the suffix -ing. The kids had to add the suffix to all the sentences and then read them and match them to the pictures of a particular sheep.

Zog and Let’s take some notes!

Zog by Julia Donaldson was a good lesson, too. We focused on revising the body parts but we also did a lot as regards the language practice, as regards the structures we already learnt (‘I can…fly, catch a princess, breathe fire) and a few structures that were used repeatedly in the story (‘What’s the matter?’ ‘I can help you’ ‘Thank you’). While we were going through the story, the children helped me produce all the key language.

After we were done with the story itself, we ‘took notes’ about the story. All the kids got their copy of the handout and we went on through it: tracing the lines, reading the lines and completing them with our ideas. As usual, some of the lines are actually very restricted (‘Zog is a dragon’), some are more open-ended (‘He can…fly, breathe fire, catch a princess, help’), the others – even more. (‘He is…green, big, small, happy, sad, scared’). The final two lines are for tracing and for circling, depending on whether you liked the story or not. This time I included a small picture of Zog for everyone and some kids took time to colour it after they were done with writing.

Ling and her proud memory and Let’s draw!

Ling is a girl from one of the stories in our coursebook, Global English 3, in a series on memories (a sad memory, a happy memory and a proud memory) and I actually loved teaching all three. The story was quite challenging for my kids in terms of the language and I just wanted a general understanding of the main facts. After we talked about the picture and listened to the story, I did a short Yes / No activity regarding the content. This was followed by a note-taking activity, similar to the one we did with Zog, but it was substantially shorter and more limited in terms of creativity. However, this was only because the real star of the lesson was the drawing activity.

The word ‘proud’ was a new concept to us and I really wanted to make it personal, mostly because it has a huge potential and it is a good word to have at your disposal in the classroom. With the help of my T.A. we explained what it means, we gave examples and suggested some ideas for the kids, based on our shared experiences such as preparing for the Christmas show, doing difficult exercises in class and so on. I showed my students my example (below) and I let them draw.

Admittedly, the lesson (or this project) did not involve a huge lot of language production but it was a beautiful moment, nonetheless. And a very necessary one, too! Some children knew straight away what they were proud of, some others needed to take time to come up with an idea. And they did! Even those who started their search with a desperate ‘I don’t know!’.

My example is below and showing it to my class was another special moment and, guess what, they got the idea straight away! Because when we are doing something very, very difficult in Maths and my students keep raising their hands and everyone wants to give the answer, I am very proud (based on real events:-).

Coda

These are just a few ideas of what can be done in class when a story is involved. One of many ideas!

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #75 Paul and his gran. One more way of approaching the story in the YL classroom.

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Ingredients

  • One of the YLE Cambridge visuals, Movers speaking (4 pictures), Flyers writing (3 pictures) or Flyers speaking (5 pictures). In our case, this time it was Paul and his Granmother from Flyers from the sample tests booklet (volume 2 p. 96), tampered with lightly (see below)
  • A handout created to accompany the visuals, you can download it from here

Procedures

  • Prepare the visuals by covering up the numbers on the pictures and making a copy for each student, cutting these up. Make a copy of the writing handout for each student.
  • Introduce the story: without revealing too much, for examply by telling the kids that they are going to meet a boy and read a story about his day.
  • Give out the visuals, cut up, ask the kids to find out the start of the story (aka picture number 1), talk about this picture with the class. The questions to use might include: Who is it? How old is he / she? What is she / he doing?
  • Tell the kids that this is Paul and his gran (we had different interpretations here but we need grandma for the handout) and their day. Ask the kids to reorder the pictures, check and glue them in the correct order in the notebooks. They number the pictures.
  • Create the story: kids look at all the pictures, in order to be able to construct the whole story and the plot. This can be easily turned into a speaking activity: the teacher makes sentences such as: I can see a boy. Kids answer with: Picture 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, etc. Later on, the students take over by making their own sentences. This can be done as a whole class or in pairs. This is also the time to introduce or to check that all the kids have all the key vocabulary. The kids are not telling the story yet, they are only getting ready, thinking about the characters, their actions and feelings.
  • Write the story: the teacher gives out the handwriting handout, the kids glue it in their notebooks, too. The class go together, picture by picture, they read the sentences and think of their own ways of finishing the sentences. They write the words or they ask the teacher to write the words on the board for them to copy. The teacher monitors and makes sure that everyone is going on at the same pace.
  • Read the story: the groups that I did it with were not very big, only 5 or 6 students, so we could all read our stories out loud and applaud. With the bigger groups, it might be a good idea to put the kids into pairs or smaller groups to read to each other and to applaud. Nonetheless, I still wanted to include this element, purely for the reading practice.

Why we like it

  • I am quite happy with that activity since all the materials worked well in the classroom.
  • The kids enjoyed it. Many of the ideas were the same, especially the feelings but there was also some potential for variety in kids’ answers. I accepted everything, for example ‘Parents are angry’ (picture 5) or ‘Paul is scared’ (picture 4). As we always say: ‘All ideas are good ideas’. In that sense it worked very well as ‘the first story we wrote’. I was very proud of them and they were proud of themselves, too.
  • My students are only 6 and 7 and all of them are in year 1 of primary. Their literacy levels vary and this kind of an activity gave them an opportunity to practise a variety of skills, especially their literacy skills, with more focus on reading and writing. There was enough room for creativity and enough support at the same time. Initially, I was considering including the tracing element but then I decided that it would be too much for one lesson, with five pictures and five short texts to write.
  • There is a lot of potential for adaptation: the number of pictures can be adapted, if you choose to use the Movers speaking resources or the Flyers writing resources. The number of sentences for each picture can also be adapted, extended or cut short. If there is time and if the kids are ready, they can add their own, sixth part and even to draw their own picture.
  • I made sure that everyone had the same order of the pictures for the entire story as my kids are quite young and this was the first time we worked with this kind of a materials. Because of that and because of their literacy levels, they are not yet able to work independently on such a task and I decided to keep it more T-centred and T-led this time. However, for more advanced groups (as regards literacy and independent work), there is a lot more potential. They could tell the story in their own way. If needs be, the writing handout, can also be cut up and rearranged, to match the pictures and their order.
  • One thing that I did not do was to allow creativity as regards the title of the story. We did not focus much on it, I only introduce the brief: Paul and his grandma, but there is so much potential here, especially that the kids are also supposed to learn about a structure of the story and that it includes a title. No harm done, we will be repeating this activity and next time we will write our own titles, too!

Before you go, make sure you have a look at all the other storytelling ideas, here and here.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #74 Christmas a la Andy Warhol

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Ingredients

  • A3 paper, glue and scissors and a stack of newspapers and journals (gardening, furniture, fashion, kids, music, animals)
  • music, for atmoshpere
Andy Warhol’s Christmas Tree

Procedures

  • This lesson in this format was done with my older primary students whose language is on the level of A2 – B1.
  • We started with bringing up Andy Warhol whom we got to know in September (more about this lesson here). As always, it was a pleasure to find out that our Andy Warhol Chebourashka was a very memorable lesson. My students did rememember! We talked about Andy again and especially about his love for Christmas (I do recommend reading about it here).
  • We looked at the Christmas tree he designed and at the technique (collage).
  • Afterwards, I showed all the materials and I started to make my own collage to demonstrate the technique.
  • We looked at the journals and newspapers, leafing through to find the theme. I suggested a few (a colour, an object, a topic) and just allowed the kids to think about it.
  • All this time I was making my own: I drew a big triangle and started glueing the pieces to match my theme (Nature).
  • Kids were working, cutting out their pieces and composing their collages. They were also looking for pieces for their friends. All this time we were having an open class dicussion about different artistic decisions and the bits and pieces that match or do not match the individual collages.
  • In the end, we briefly demonstrated all the trees, together with the title.
  • In order to create a more festive atmosphere, I put on some non-invasive instrumental music, Christmas-themed.
Nature (by the teacher)

Why we like it

  • The collage was a success. The students got really involved perhaps because the activity gave them an opportunity to be creative without requiring any real artistic skills, drawing, sketching or painting which sometimes can be a challenge.
  • It took a while for the students to choose the theme but it is perfectly natural because they needed time to leaf through, to see what is available and to make up their mind and to select something. But I was really happy because it was clear and obvious that they really did make a decision and focused on the colour, one specific item or a general idea to represent. What’s more, I could see that the kids themselves were happy and proud of their choices especially when their pieces were completed.
  • The task became a collaborative one although only by accident. Once it became obvious what everyone was working on, we all started to suggest and to offer pieces that we found in the journals that we were looking for. ‘I’ve got a yellow sofa here. Do you want it?’, ‘There is a princess here. Does anyone need it?’ and so on. It started with the teacher but the kids picked up on it. It is definitely something that I will be introducing purposefully the next time we do a collage.
  • We used the A3 paper but the A4 sheets are also an option and the trees will be easier to fill in as the smaller the paper, the fewer the elements.
  • We started with drawing the triangle on the A3 paper and went on to fill it in with the items. Two of my students did not have enough time (and the chosen elements) to complete the tree in one lesson. We are going to finish next week, we have this opportunity. However, that made me think that it might be a good idea to choose a topic, cut out all the elements and them compile them into a tree, making a conscious decision regarding the size of the tree and opting for a smaller version if time or resources are limited.
  • I presented the idea of a combined technique: a collage and drawing, to fill up the space with own drawings, if needs be, but, in the end, not one of my students decided to use this option this time.
  • The decision to put the background music on was a good one, too. It helped to create the atmosphere and, after a while, kids asked for the permission to put on their favourite songs which was granted and we ended up working and singing together.
  • As regards the language production, a lot was going on because we were chatting throughout the lesson but I have to be honest about one thing – my older group are already a high level, some of them very close to fully communicative in English and even bilingual. That is why I didn’t need to do much to encourage production in the way an EFL teacher would. They wanted to talk and we did, in English. However, there are other options for the lower level and the EFL/ ESL students. I am still to try these in class but off the top of my head, I would go for:presenting the collage with the title, calling out the names of all the elements of the tree (or as many as possible), choosing the character who might like this kind of a tree. I am quite likely to teach the same lesson on Monday next week and, if I do, I will be updating the post soon.
  • We did it in our Art classes but it might be a fun activity for a regular VYL or YL class, perhaps even with teenagers.

Here are some of the Christmas trees my students created:

Yellow. Still in progress.
Dragons
Around the house
Beauty

Happy teaching!

More than drilling, more than flashcards. Teaching vocabulary to young learners.

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It’s been six months now (and four courses) since we introduced the individual consultations to our YL and VYL course and a lot of good has come out of it already for the course, for the trainees and my blog. This post today will be dedicated to one of the course participants, Valentina, who came to the meeting with one question only, namely: ‘I am bored with teaching vocabulary through flashcards and drilling’. This was when I realised that we never really talked about the variety in that area. Hence this post.

Back to the basics…

…or our gurus. For anyone who is not familiar, I would recommend getting hold of Carol Read’s chapter on teaching vocabulary and grammar and all the basic concepts as well as her post in the series of the ABC of Teaching Children in which she highligts the need for the crystal clear meaning, the context as well as opportunites for memorising and for practice.

Carol also offers a lot of ideas for the classroom (as promised) and if you are looking for more, please have a look at the bilbliography where I have left some more interesting links, for inspiration and from two different areas, the teachers of EFL/ESL and just children learning new words. Many of them are quite recent publications so have a look! There is lots and lots to read.

For that reason, also, this post here will focus not on practice activities but on ways of introducing vocabulary to primary and pre-school students, more than just flashcards.

Electronic flashcards

‘Electronic flashcards’ is an umbrella term for a great variety of resources that can be used in the YL classroom. I will try to include here at least the few basic ones

  • Wordwall (wordwall.net), with all its growing number of templates and options. You need to join the community but the membership is free and it gives you access to everything that any member ever created and made public. You can, for example, get access to the whole library that I have created (Azapart). The ability to create resources is only available to the members with subscription but it is cheap and definitely worth it. My favourite resources here to introduce vocabulary include stencil flashcards, cropped images, simple word cards and flashcards or flashcards with the audio.
  • Simple video flashcards of which there are plenty available on youtube, such as offered by Maple Leaf Learning. There are also such products as EFL Kids Videos that present not only vocabulary but also vocabulary + structures.
  • Videos that not only present the new vocabulary but that also offer an option of a game, for example places in the city from Smile and Learn where you get a presentation and a guessing game, ‘What is it?’ games from Fun Kids English or drawing – guessing games from Games4ESL.

Sounds

This might be a more obvious resource when it comes to some topics, such as animals, pets, farm or jungle but it is definitely a lot more potential here. Sounds can be also used to introduce the vocabulary of transportation, places in the city, instruments, Present Continuous or everyday activities and objects, a day in sounds or even weather.

It needs to be mentioned that these materials were not created as educational materials with a specific aim to match the content of one coursebook or another and they are not used to replace the official published materials. They only help to introduce the topic and the idea in an interesting way, with at least some of the items that we are required to cover according to the curriculum.

Gestures

I am a huge fun of using gestures in the classroom. The gesture is king after all! For a good few years now, whenever we introduce new vocabulary we add gestures to it, to help clarify the meaning but also to give the children one more channel that might help them remember and recall the meaning of these new words. This kind of miming can be upgraded to include a lot more speaking (see: a post here) and the children can be involved and invited to come up with their own gestures for certain phrases and express themselves in that way, too! It is not only for the youngest of the youngest. Once we introduced, even my 8 – 10 A2 year-olds loved working with this form of expression.

Realia

Like in the case of sounds, realia would be something that naturally springs to mind when we talk about teaching school objects, food or classroom vocabulary and, perhaps, if you have any access to any friendly children who are willing to share their collection, perhaps also to teach toys, transport or even animals. The other topics seem to be impossible. Or do they?

I think my realia creativity had a chance to skyrocket during the pandemic while we were all stuck at home and with a very limited access to all those beautiful things that we would normally use. A blessing in disguise?

My solution is relatively un-revolutionary and is based on using symbols, items that we agree stand for our chosen concepts. Here are some examples:

  • rooms in the house: a spoon = the kitchen, a pair of socks = the bedroom, a remote = the living room, a key = the hall, a toothbrush = the bathroom
  • weather: gloves = it is snowing, sunglasses = it is sunny, a cap = it is warm, a kite = it is windy, an umbrella = it is raining, a scarf = it is cold
  • school subjects: a tshirt = PE, a mouse = IT, paints = Art, counting sticks = Maths, dictionary = English, a book = Russian, a magnet (from abroad) = Geography, a paper crown or a photo of a king = History etc
  • party aka characters: a star = a sheriff, a crown = a prince / a princess, a red nose = a clown, a witch’s hat = a witch, a flower = a gardener, a plastic stetoscope = a doctor etc
  • seasons: just lots of things, clothes and accessories which we use in winter, spring, autumn and summer
  • family: accessories that different memebers of the family might have, a car = a brother, a doll – a sister, a newspaper = daddy, wool = grandma etc.
  • body: accessories and objects which we use with different body parts: glasses: a nose and ears and eyes, socks = feet and toes, a spoon = a hand and fingers. The confusion might be even beneficial here because we will be repeating the words a number of times.
  • free time and verbs: different objects and accessories that we use, for example: a pen = to write, a ball = to play, a spoon = to eat etc.

Song

In a majority (almost certain here) of our coursebooks songs are introduced as a means of practising and revising vocabulary and grammar but this does not have to always be the case, not when we are in charge.

Since I discovered the existance of the amazing Pete the Cat who is rocking in his school shoes, I have not taught the places in the school (and Present Continuous) in a different way. The song is beautiful, fun and very catchy and the video illustrates the idea of both the vocabulary and the tense in such an obvious way that I am not even looking for any alternatives. We start with the song, we enjoy the music, the video and Pete and only later, we move on to flashcards, drilling and all the other practice activities.

Here are some more examples of songs that can be used in the same way

E pronto? E pronto!

Story

Whatever we do with songs, it can be done with a story. A video, a storybook or storycards can be the starting point in a vocabulary lesson. Here are my favourite storybooks to teach vocabulary:

  • ‘Elmer’ by David McKee to teach jungle animals
  • ‘Marvin Gets Angry’ by Joseph Theobald to teach emotions
  • ‘Cat’s Colours’ by Airlie Anderson to each colours
  • ‘A Very Hungry Caterpillar’ by Eric Carle to teach food
  • ‘Zob’ by Julia Donaldson to teach helth problems

To name just a few. Introducing them will give you a ready made context and it will be a pleasure for the kids to get back to the story over a series of lessons and to be more and more involved in reading and retelling the story. That is a brand new level of the sense of achievement and of the meaningful lessons.

Posters

Admittedly, in the past, a few years ago or in the previous editions of the coursebooks, posters were a more frequent quest. They are not as common today although different schools produce their own posters and so do publishing houses, although not necessarily in connection with a particular title. For that reason, I will extend the definition of poster to ‘any large size visual with a variety of elements’ in order to be able to include any silly pictures, clip art creations to be found on google (really!) or the picture wordlists as these absolute beauties available on the CUP website for Starters, Movers and Flyers exam preparation (but not exclusive to these).

I am a huge fan of using visuals in the classroom and I am proud to say that I have come up with a plethora of ideas for language practice. You can find them in two posts: All you need is…a picture. They can be displayed on screens or interactive whiteboards or even printed and laminated.

As regards vocabulary introduction, however, here are some ideas:

  • labelling the items in the picture together with the kids
  • covering some parts of the pictures with the post-it notes, to elicit from kids (It is a city. What can we see here?) and then to uncover the picture step by step while introducing the equivalents of the words the kids provide, in English
  • covering some parts of the picture with the post-it notes, to uncover them step by step while clarifying the meaning of the words and including elements of drilling
  • covering some parts of the picture with the post-it notes, to play ‘What’s missing?’ (although this slowly moves towards controlled practice / drilling)
  • pointing at two objects in the picture and calling out a name for the kids to recognise. Here, the teacher can use hands (Left! Right!) or, if it is too confusing, two markers of different colours (Blue! Red!), a fun exercise for the auditory practice and word recognition.

Coda

All of the activities mentioned above can be used during the practice stage and they are not to replace flashcards and drilling but to supplement or replace them and to introduce a bit of variety and a breath of fresh air, for the students and for the kids.

The choice will depend on the age and level of the students and, naturally, on the specific set of vocabulary.

Happy teaching!

Bibliography

Carol Read (2007), 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom, Macmillan

Carol Read (2011), ABC of Teaching Children, V is for Vocabulary here.

How to teach vocabulary: 5 fun and easy ideas (2020) from Begin Learning.

17 ways for kids to learn new vocabulary (2020) from Imagination Soup.

Kids and vocabulary (2011?) from British Council, Teaching English.

How to teach vocabulary. Twinkl’s super seven-step guide (2023) from Twinkl.

6 Science-based tips for teaching your kids vocabulary…the fun way (2022) from Maya Smart.

5 fun ideas to make vocabulary jump out of the page for young learners (2021) from CUP.

30 meaningful vocabulary activities for every grade (2023) from We Are Teachers.

Teacher up, dear teacher!

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This is the second episode in my Made-up Phrasal Verb series which deals with the different aspects of being a teacher who works with kids. The first one is devoted to stepping out of the shoe of a Miss/Mr Serious Teacher in order to become a human in the classroom, who, first and foremost, cares for the child’s well-being and who takes care of the whole child, which sometimes means putting some (or all?) of the methodology principles on the back burner. You can find the post here.

As it often happens, right after I wrote the post I had an opportunity to ‘practise what you preach’. One of my little students got terribly upset about something she didn’t manage to and right after the class ended, she crawled under her desk and, as a result, I spent some quality time on the floor, in my freshly-washed jeans, under the desk, just hanging out and keeping her company in that difficult moment, until she calmed down. All things considered, it was the most useful thing that I did as a teacher last week…Teachering down full time!

But teachering down is the solution for some of the days and for some of the situations. Sometimes, the teacher needs to do the contrary, to be the real teacher and even more than that. Hence this post.

Teacher up!

Like many of teachers, I follow the social media in order to keep my ears to the ground and to find inspiration for teaching. Then, there are activities that my colleagues and teacher friends share and those that my trainees bring to the course, too. Up until a year ago, there was also the monthly intake of the ‘things I saw in the lessons I observed’ but at the moment, I observe less frequently. Nonetheless, there is a steady inflow of ideas or, in other words, lots of food for thought.

Statistically speaking, a lot of brilliance that can be taken into the classroom directly or after some minor adaptation and it is just great! And if you have any doubts, think about the teacher’s life ten or even twenty years ago when googling ‘ideas for a snowman craft for kindergarten was not an option. Nor was raking through your favourite and trusted bloggers’ accounts for insights. Or sharing a story about a horrible day at school to get a few virtual supportive pats on the shoulder. How did we even live back then?

At the same time, the amount of the seemingly educational material out there is just worrying. There are so many ideas that, at a glance, look like something that would work well, that, on closer inspection turn out to be only ‘the Instagram teaching’, high on the WOW factor, and ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’ low on methodology and appropriacy as regards the child in the classroom.

Looking at these, the trainer’s eyebrow raises and the teacher’s muscles twitch. And a plethora of questions floods the mind of both. Why did you think it was a good idea for a group of preschoolers? What is the aim for that activity and how is it even connected to everything else in the lesson? Is it in any way appropriate? Generative? Safe? Is it in any way methodologically justifiable? Is there anything to it apart from the WOW materials and WOW photographs that you will be able to post on the social media or send to parents?

Entering the classroom full of pre-school or primary school students, we assume many roles. We become in loco parentis, sometimes a mix of a nanny and a baby-sitter, sometimes more of a governess or a nurse, sometimes a coach, sometimes a witch, sometimes an actor. But, despite all that, first and foremost, we enter the classrooms as teachers.

Teachers who have clear aims for the lesson, linguistic, personal and child development aims, teachers who have thought of the lesson as a whole and all of the puzzles in it, teachers who selected activities and materials with a full awareness of the children’s needs and abilities. There is nothing that ‘just happens to be there’ and even if there is some fluff, it is a well-thought-out and justified fluff that also has a clear aim.

It is a happy coincidence that the first post and these ponderings came at the same time as a series of posts from @abc_academia_ (Katerina Balaganskaya) and @ginger_teacher_efl (Evgeniya Kiseleva) and their project ELT Expert Hub, especially the one about the need for the teachers to focus on good quality continual professional development (see the link in the bibliography). This is all came together. Enthusiasm is great, passion is a must-have, great ideas are precious, optimism and energy in a human make the world go round but, first and foremost, in the classroom, we are teachers. And Michael, a teacher friend, kept sharing the ideas he came across.

Examples? Yes, please. Here are three.

When you are reading them, please remember about my background and context: I am a teacher and a teacher trainer, I work with pre-schoolers and primary school children, who come in groups, possibly fifteen at a time and for most of my students, English is a foreign language whereas for some it is becoming their second language. With some students we have only 2 academic hours of class a week, with some of them we have a lot more but it is in response to a more demanding curriculum. None of my students has a bilingual background or a full-time exposure to English at home. The time in class is precious.

Craft (but NOT for craft’s sake!)

If you are looking for reasons why craft should (and must) be included in the lessons for primary and pre-primary students, you have come to the right place. The best place, I could even risk saying. I love craft at home, I love craft in my classroom and I have already spent a considerable part of my life trying to convince teachers to be a little bit more excited about it. You can read about five reasons of using it in the classroom here and why craft is so important in the VYL world here.

BUT.

Regardless of how much kids love craft activities and of how passionate teachers might be about them, not everything is a lesson-friendly idea and not everything is feasible. Even in a lesson with pre-schoolers, the choice has to be made in connection with and following the methodological principles of teaching English. We are teachers and we walk into classrooms to develop linguistic skills, first and foremost. We need a language aim, we need language production, we need staging and the coherence with the rest of the lesson, the rest of unit and the curriculum. It cannot be ‘just something that we will do’, just something to kill the lesson time, to keep the kids occupied and that will make them go ‘WOW’.

As an example I decided to use the ideas from the video that I found on youtube, on the Gathered Makes channel, here. I actually love all of the ideas presented here but not one of them is a craft that would would work in the language classroom. The tissue paper wreath is pretty and it would really look good on the door or on the window but preparing them would take a painfully large portion of the lesson and it does not offer any opportunities for language production, not even as regards the functional language. A huge part of the task is repetitive and involves sticking on the green tissue and a lot of it so the kids would not be required to ask for different colours or different resources. This would, naturally, lead to a lot L1 in the classroom and, potentially, to some unwanted behaviour. You cannot even ‘talk about’ the different elements of the wreath because it is all just green. The finished product cannot be used in any speaking activity either.

Button candy canes are perfect for the fine motor skills development but I would not want to give out pieces of wire to a group of children, even with a teacher assistant and I would need lots and lots of buttons for the whole group. I am afraid, the little fingers would need help and assistance in the final stage, with tying and fitting in the candy canes and that would simply not work. What’s more, no communicative purpose here and that is one more big disadvantage.

Paper plate Christmas trees look so pretty and they require only the basic resources (the little pompons could be replaced with paint or stickers) but, again, the process is too complicated for a group of primary and pre-primary students. I love the trick with the paper clip here, to keep hold the tree in shape until the glue sets (although I would still use a stapler because I have some serious glue trust issues) but even in the video the child needed the adult’s help with the shaping of the tree. Exactly the same thing would happen in the classroom, and that could mean one pair of two adult and skilled hands AND eight or ten pairs of little hands in need. I have already tried a WOW Christmas tree craft and I simply have to say no here.

Lolly stick snowflakes. No, sorry. Glitter does not enter my classroom. It is probably the single resource that I personally hate. No matter how hard you try and how careful you are, it is tricky to use, it is accidents-prone and it stays with you forever, on the tables, on the body, on the clothes, everywhere. Even if you are using the glitter sticks. And that’s on top of all the other reasons, similar to those mentioned above.

Easy paper decorations are, indeed, easy and fun, as a way of transforming a 2-D shape into a 3-D shape. There is a little bit of cutting (5 circles for a child in the group) and I am not against cutting up things in large quantities to prepare for a lesson but I do when this helps me get lots and lots of language from the children in the proces (for example here). Here, this aim would be difficult to meet. I am not sure about the staging here as painting of the 3-D finished product would be just too messy and, potentially, too frustrating as it would involve holding a half-painted piece and getting fingers dirty and destroying what already has been done.

As mentioned above, I do love all the craft activities but the effort made, the potential complications and the potential for language and the kids’ safety and well-being are absolutely crucial to be taken into consideration. The WOW effect or the pretty photos on the social media cannot be the driving force behind the decision that a teacher makes to include or not to include something in the lesson plan.

If you are looking for any ideas how to plan craft lessons, please have a look at this blog (Chapter: Craft) where I share the ideas from the classroom, tried and tested. I would also like to recommend MadFox which is Carol Read’s creation and six word manual to the principles of craft activities in the classroom. You can read more about it 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom.

Games. Because educational fun is important

‘Fun’ is one of the most popular words added to titles in education. ‘Young children learn through play’ is probably one of the first things that you will hear in different courses, workshops and trainings devoted to teaching children. It is true, of course, and it applies not only to languages but to all the other skills. This makes our lives much easier and it helps to get the kids interested and keep them involved in the tasks that, at a glace, might be less exciting or those that might involve some hard work. For that reason, only this week, I have decided to teach subtraction to 100 through colouring dictation, through puzzle and through a bunch of reindeer with a serious problem. That is why we have been developing our reading skills through jigsaw puzzles and through Petya, my new invisible student who needed help with his English and that is why I made up a chant about classroom rules. Yes, in a way I was a marketing specialist and an advertising expert, I wanted to sell my product. I did.

In one line: games are good, we need them.

And here is a game that a teacher played with a group of kids in kindergarten. If we had an observation report with the certain standards to observe and to meet, the observer would certainly be able to tick the box: game. Yes, indeed, the teacher prepared a game for the lesson. And that would be all.

Naturally, that is only a small part of the entire lesson and there is no way of knowing what happened before or after and what the aim for the lesson was. However, judging only by this short video, there are quite a few areas for this teacher to work on. It is very difficult why this particular activity was even included in the lesson and what its aims could possibly be. There are no linguistic aims as the kids only do some counting and they use only one colour (orange), only one student is involved at a time while everyone else is watching and it is impossible to figure out whether there were even any child development aims. To be perfectly honest, none of the children taking part seem to be enjoying it and some are even forced to be in, despite their intentions.

If we had to describe the game for someone who did not watch the video, we would have to say that ‘the teacher brings one of the children into the circle, to blow up a balloon and to let the air out right into the children’s ear while the other children are watching and laughing’ and that really turns the category of the activity from a game into ‘a game’. If I had been the observer and the assessor of this lesson, the comments section on the lesson plan or the obervation report would simply say: ‘Please, don’t do this again‘.

A few years ago, there was this tendency at the YL conferences that I happened to attend. Everyone seemed to be criticising the idea of fun in the classroom and replacing it with some other, more serious, methodology-worthy words such as ‘enjoyment’, ‘motivation’ or ‘pleasure’. Maybe it was a trend, maybe just a coincidence but I did not like it. I am up for fun in the classroom, although, for my own personal use and for this blog, I have coined the term: educational fun, to differentiate it from the carefree merry-making.

There is no denying that this carefree merry-making is very necessary in life but since we are teachers, we are obliged (oh-o, the serious words have entered the building) to ensure that we happens in the lesson is deeply rooted in the methodology and child development knowledge that is not only there ‘because because’. Maybe it is true that ‘girls just wanna have fun’ but teachers want to have fun and they also want to smuggle something more while doing it.

To continue with the advertising metaphor from a few paragraphs above, I did have fun but I also had a real product to offer and to promote: a set of classroom rules, a pile of sums and lots and lots of sentences to read and to improve. My students would have done them anyway, we would have to, basically, but it was easier and more pleasant because we did it through and with fun.

Project. What’s love got to do with it?

Here is one more example of the educational path to hell that is paved with very good intentions and the social media teaching that has nothing to do with real classroom methodology but that is extremely photogenic and has ‘WOW’ written all over it. I give you: a CLIL / STEM project devoted to the moon phases.

This is a real example of an activity that one of my teacher friends, Michael, was asked to do with his group and that he happily shared with me, having his own human-adult-fatherly reservations about it. As with the craft activities above, I have nothing against the activity per se but taking it into a classroom full of kids is something that I fail to imagine.

Food allergies aside and the fact that some parents might simply not approve of teachers dishing out sugar portions in class (as, presumably such issues would be dealt with beforehand), there are a few other things that might turn this seemingly amazing and wonderfully appealing project into a complete disaster.

  • somebody needs to buy Oreos and in a situation when a school struggles with providing scissors, glue, paper, plasticine and markers, asking for Oreos is just not worth it and might simply not happen. Purchasing them by the teacher is out of the question.
  • separating the cookies into two even halves, without breaking them and with the cream staying politely on only one of the sides is…well, I don’t know. It’s been years since I played this way and not with Oreos but with my delicious local equivalent and I just don’t remember. Anyway, we separated them for fun. Our main aim was consumption and we would devour them regardless of how much cream there was on either side. At best, no one can guarantee that all the Oreos for all the kids will comply.
  • shaping the cream into the required shape to reflect the phases of the moon is not easy either and it does require something close to surgical precision. And a tool of some sorts (a popsicle stick).
  • you are allowed to eat the final product and, hopefully, there is time to talk about the changes and to admire the work done but, ideally, there has to be a lot more Oreos than the number of students x 4 Oreos. Otherwise, we are going to be the cruel people to have the kids work on the cookies, touching them, smelling them but without eating them for a long time and it is a guarantee that not all the kids will be able to stay strong. In the lesson that my friend was asked to teach, the cookies did not last and the model was never made. Either the kids were too hungry or the smell of the cookies too strong, they could not resist. The resources were eaten before the completion of the project. And, to be perfectly honest, I do get it. As an adult, I would struggle myself and I would be tempted to nibble. Or to do a full-on Cookie Monster.

Perhaps it is a fun project to do and a great way of learning about the phases of the moon. For me as a teacher and as a trainer, there are simply too many ‘but’s’ that make it simply not worth the effort. Especially, that there are plenty of other, less high-maintenance and less high-risk and more methodology- and teacher-friendly replacements that can be done with paper, paints, plasticine or ping-pong balls, craft activities and projects that would be more beneficial for the kids.

Coda

We are teachers. We think about the activities that we bring to class.

We are teachers. We respect the parents who trust us with their children and who pay for our teaching skills and the educational process that we provide.

We are teachers. We walk into the classroom with clear lesson aims, linguistic, child development and personal aims, too.

We are teachers. We want to have fun but not for fun’s sake.

We are teachers. First and foremost, we are teachers.

Happy teaching!

Bibliography

Carol Read, 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom, 2007, Macmillan Education

ELT Expert Hub, Evgeniya Kiseleva and Ekaterina Balaganskaya, Teachers’ CPD. https://t.me/eltexperthub

Crumbs #73 Winter, winter and cheering up Mr Levitan

by

This is a double lesson, actually. Right now my Art Class has been divided into two, the younger and the older. Sometimes they take part in the same project, graded to their level, sometimes the project takes two different directions. This is what happened to Isaac Levitan this week. Here are all the ingredients and all the activities. Feel free to mix and match as you see fit.

Raised Salt Paintings. Santa. No watercolours.
Raised Salt Paintings. With watercolours.

Ingredients

  • Winter vocabulary: we used the following Art Winter, as the theme for the entire month.
  • A recording of Vivaldi’s winter, the first few minutes.
  • The winter scene craft: glue, scissors, pencil and paper: one big square for the box, green for the trees, white for snowman, colourful for presents and white tissue for the snow. I was considering the following version here but it was too complex for my kids. Instead I recycled what I did last year. You can read about it here.
  • The raised salt painting: pencil, cardboard, pvc glue, salt, watercolours. You can see the tutorial here.
  • And, of course, a few of the copies of the winter wonderland according to Isaac Levitan.
March by Isaac Levitan

Procedures

  • The lesson for the younger kids started with the vocabulary introduction and practice. We did a bit of drilling and some miming. We are going to be working on these in the weeks to come. So far we have only used the simplest ‘it is’ and ‘they are’ but I am hoping to take it further as regards description (It is big / small. It is hot / cold) and Present Continuous (Santa is running, reindeer are jumping) and hopefully towards picture description.
  • With the older kids, I wanted to introduce a new element, namely music. I told them about Vivaldi and his ‘Four Seasons’ and then we listened to the first two minutes of ‘Winter’. The kids were asked to listen and to think about their associations with the music. Afterwards, in the open class discussion, we talked about their impressions (Do you like the music? Vivaldi thought that it show what winter is like. Do you agree with his vision?).
  • Afterwards, we introduced the Artist of the Day and both groups looked at a few examples of the winter landscapes painted by Levitan. As usual, we talked about our impressions (Do you like it? Is it sad / happy? What colours can you see?)
  • Next, I presented the finished product to the kids. I showed them how the winter scene can be changed by adding kids’ toys, with whatever the kids had on their tables and in their bags.
  • With the older group, I showed the kids the final product and showed all the materials needed to complete the task.
  • We made the scene in the following stages: drawing and cutting out the snowman, drawing and cutting out two Christmas trees (aka triangles), drawing and cutting out the presents (aka squares). We prepared the pyramid (cut and glue) and started glueing in the figures. The task finished with tearing up the tissue to glue it on the floor.
  • The older kids were given a complete freedom as regards the choice of the design. I prepared a snowflake but they were more interested in representing their favourite things in this drawing, and I allowed for that. We did everything in a few simple stages: giving out the cardboard, drawing the design in pencil, covering the lines with the glue, sprinkling it with salt, using watercolours to add colour and leaving them to dry.
Four Different Wonderlands
The Salt Box
An Artist at Work

Why we like it

  • Both lessons were successful and, again, we managed to combine English, creativity and some interesting techniques. I used two different approaches with both age groups but I am actually very curious how the younger ones might react to Vivaldi and what kind of winter wonderland my older students might create. There is the following week, so who knows? And, naturally, when my little kids saw the drying salt paintings on the window sill, they immediately started to demand that we do it, too so we will have to. I have already promised.
  • The winter wonderland is relatively easy to prepare. To make it more achievable for my younger kids, some of whom are preschoolers, I prepared and folded the squares before the lesson. All of the parts of the picture are simple shapes (circles, squares and triangles) and, if the kids are ready, they can add the little elements themselves or just draw them with a pencil, for example the ribbons on presents. We didn’t do it but snowflakes can be added to the picture, too, for example with a white marker or a pencil. That has to be done before assembling the pyramid, though, otherwise it is a bit tricky to draw on and it can be destroyed by accident.
  • I was demonstrating the activity, step by step and we took our time, to make sure that everyone could finish their cutting, before moving on. If the kids are younger, the task can be made much simpler by limiting the number of trees, the teacher preparing a simple snowman cut-out beforehand. If the kids are ready, Santa or the reindeer can be added to it.
  • The raised salt painting was a lot of fun to create. No matter what you draw, the colours seeping through the salt make it all look amazing.
  • The process is easy to stage and to manage as the teacher gives out and collects materials needed for every stage and kids themselves can grade it to their level by drawing something very basic or something more intricate. They drew their favourite animals, they wrote their names or prepared signs with their favourite things.
  • There is a danger that the salt will make it a bit messy but if you have a big box, a bit bigger than the size of carboard you are using, everything will be great. With the older kids, we used paper plates, from which we took the salt and where it shook off the excess. Please don’t remember that it is not a good idea to touch the paint and the salt, turning the paper upside down and gently patting on it will make the excess salt fall off without destroying the picture.
  • The watercolours can be added before the glue dries which makes it all feasible within a lesson time. The pictures can be left to dry overnight and taken home or put up on the following day.
  • Upd: I did the activity with the younger kids, too and I simply loved how teacher friendly it is. Because of the number of the materials needed and the process, the activity practically stages itself.: cardboard and pencils for everyone, pencils away, glue for everyone, glue away, salt for the kids, one by one (I did use a big box! See the photos.), watercolours for everyone, watercolours away.
  • The finished product (especially if done on the recycled carboard) looks like gingerbread cookies. So pretty!
  • I really liked how the older kids interacted with the art and the artist. I have a very creative group and some independent kids who already have developed a taste for Warhol and Malevich. For that reason, I was a bit worried that they might find Levitan, well, boring and too unimaginative. However, that’s not what happened. My kids were stunned that a painting so realistic could even be created and some of them came up to the screen to check and to confirm that it was, indeed, a painting and not just a photo.
  • I was also very happy that we added music to our lesson. They listened with interest and they were involved in the discussion later on, sharing their views, although, actually, they did not agree with Vivaldi’s interpretation of the winter-themed music. Apparently, it is too energetic and too loud and winter requires peace and silence. I will be experimenting with adding music to our lessons. The younger group first, with Vivaldi himself, and then some other tunes for the older group, too. I hope that, eventually, we will be able to find someone who wrote the good winter music that matches my students’ tastes. I will be very curious to find out who that is, because I, myself, love Vivaldi’s winter.
Raised salt paintings
Raised salt paintings

Happy teaching!