#eflteacher

Rewards charts and young learners

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This is not going to be a post on the advantages and disadvantages of using a rewards’ chart in the EFL classroom. If you are interested in one or the other, please, scroll down to the bibliography with some pieces to read.

Instead, I am going to tell you a story about a period of six years of using a rewards chart with my kids, successfully and where it has got me. Or where it got us. Consider it a case study.

The group

There are eight of us, in the group, one of me, two boys and five girls and at this point (January 2021), we are in our sixth level together. On the one hand, it is a bit scary, that so much time has passed and so quickly, too, on the other hand – six levels together, pretty much with the same children, from the first words, literally, to Movers.

The first rewards chart

Once upon a time, when my kids were still very very young, in our first year together, the day came when I realised that I needed a rewards chart, badly, with a set of rules and a system.

To be honest, it was a bit of a heartbreak and it did feel like a total defeat. Until then, I had never (as in: NEVER) had to resort to it with children so young. Not once in my entire teaching career (of 10+ years). Rewards charts were for the primary and teens, not for the babies. Sigh.

I was thinking and pondering and wondering, approaching it with a lot of trepidation (in Polish we say: to come up to something like a dog to a hedgehog) and really, stubbornly, putting off the D-day. But, the group was a big one, with ten kids, some of whom were six, some of whom were barely three and they were just rowdy (even for my standards) and ‘my traditional methods’ (or whatever they were back then) were just not working. As in: at all.

Reluctantly and very un-enthusiastically, I took a deep breath and introduced changes: a set of rules and a rewards chart.

The class rules: How to.

  • Think of your group, the kids sitting in your classroom. What are they struggling with? What is the unwanted behaviour right here, right now? Choose the most important three behaviours that you would like to eliminate. There is no point in constructing a set of ten commandments as there will be too many to revise, to remember and to focus on.
  • Formulate the rules and try not to use negatives. ‘Sit nicely’ sounds much better and is more positive than ‘Don’t run’.
  • Yes, there might be situations when a clearly formulated ‘Don’t‘ is the only solution. In the group that I am describing here, we did have some issues that the kids decided to resolve with fighting so for some time, this was our rule number 1.
  • In general, it would be better to refrain from using imperatives altogether and go for full sentences, for example, instead of ‘Sit nicely’ we were using ‘I sit nicely’, together with ‘I don’t run’, ‘I listen to the teacher’, ‘I don’t fight’. These are great language models and, over time, they become a part of everything that the kids can say, even early on, in the first year of primary or pre-primary. Investing in the rules is also investing in the language.
  • Think how you will introduce the rules. I prepared A4 flashcards, with the rule written down (for me to remember and to be consistent and for the kids, to expose them to the written word, although, of course, back then they were not able to read these), with an appropriate picture (thank you, clip art) and with an accompanying gesture for each of them.
  • The first time I introduced them slowly, using the gestures, drawing the kids attention to the pictures and repeating the rules a few times. They did get the idea pretty quickly. After all, they learnt how to behave and how not to behave. After all, they are familiar with the concept of rules. They are rules in the kindergarten, in the art classes, at the swimming pool. Naturally, there will be some in their English class, too.
  • How was I sure that they did understand? Because, of course, one brave volunteer quickly translated them into Russian and all the kids started to discuss the rules. I went over the rules a few times and I encouraged the kids to repeat the gestures.
  • Put the posters up, in a place where everyone can see them. In my case, the best place for that was the door, on the classroom side:-)
  • Revise the rules in the beginning of every lesson. I would go over the rules, ‘reading’ them out loud, while pointing at the sentences and later, once more, I would ICQ everyone, this time with gestures. ‘Do we sit nicely?‘ ‘Do we fight?‘ and so on.
  • Keep an eye on your students and when a rule becomes redundant (because, hey, it worked and your students’ behaviour has improved), change it or replace it with something that is necessary and relevant at the moment.
  • In our case, in the first year, after a while we could replace ‘I don’t fight‘ with a very general but also very broad ‘I am a good friend‘ which we used to signal that we basically behave well because a good friend will not fight, will not take someone else’s pencils or books, will not say unkind things about other children and will not always try to go first and so on.
  • It is also good to have a rule that models and acknowledges the behaviour that is even better than good, something exceptional that we all should strive for. In our case, it was the rule number 4 ‘I am fantastic‘ which I chose because it sounds similar to its Russian equivalent and it is a positive word.
  • Make sure that you refer to the rules throughout the lesson, to remind the students about them when you notice some examples of the unwanted behaviour. I do it using a question form, while using the gesture or pointing at the posters, for example ‘Are you a good friend?‘, ‘Are you fantastic?‘, ‘Are you sitting nicely?‘

The rewards’ chart. How to. A case study.

  • I decided not to use the board as it was too far away from our little circle and I did not want to get up and walk away from the kids a few times during the lesson as it would be too disruptive. Instead, I got a clipboard and prepared a table with their names, written in different colours and accompanied by little icons, ten different ones, so that the kids, who were pre-literate at the time, could recognise their names easily. I put the table into a plastic sleeve, sealed it and pronto. Laminating it would do the job, too. I used a whiteboard marker and so I could easily clean it and re-use it in the following lesson. I was also able to carry it around the classroom.
  • A few times during the lesson, I would take out the chart and check out, with all the kids, asking everyone the same question ‘Are you fantastic?’ (or any other question relevant to our rules, but this one was the most common one) and, if they answered ‘yes’, I would add one more star to the chart, next to their names.
  • Naturally, if the student did seriously ‘misbehave’ (inverted commas here because it really does happen rarely), first would come a warning and then, possibly, if that didn’t work – a tiny little bit of a star might get erased. Which happened on a few occasions and usually the warning itself was enough.
  • In the beginning, I did do it after every single stage and almost after every single activity. It did take time but it was worth it. With time, I was able to cut down on the frequency and the number of stars, extending the length of the stage that could earn them a star.
  • Eventually, we got to the point when each child would get only one star at the beginning of the lesson. It was their job to make sure that it stays whole until the end of the lesson.
  • There was also a point, in year two, when we started to invest more time into our stars because at the same time, we started to talk about other people, and the stars gave us a perfect opportunity to do just that, ‘My star is…’, ‘My star has got…’ and, of course, it was then even more important to keep all the stars intact.
  • It is also very important to remember that the kids should be given an opportunity to get better and to be acknowledged when their behaviour improves. It should not be a problem since the teacher is in charge of when the new stars are awarded.
  • Also, whenever we ask the question ‘Are you fantastic?’, I always start from the well-behaved students, mainly in order to give the ‘not-so-fantasic’ ones a chance to calm down and to think about life so that, when it is their turn, they could be ready to be fantastic, too.
  • ‘Are you fantastic?’ is a very powerful question in itself, too. On the one hand, it serves as a reminder of our aim and our rule (‘We are fantastic’), on the other hand, it is another chance for the students to confirm that they are fantastic AND to make a conscious decision and to make a promise that yes, they will be, from now on, even if there have been a few issues with it.
  • Eventually, by the time we got to our level 3, the rewards chart became almost completely unnecessary. We had the rules on the wall (a new classroom) and I still kept the rewards chart grid at the ready but I would only take it out and use it, when someone needed a reminder that we are, in fact, fantastic. Which, in year 3, happened perhaps once a month.
A slightly different rewards chart or What the kids care about

Today aka the Outcomes

Today, in our 6th year together, we have long forgotten about the rewards’ chart and the rules. My students are now seven, eight and nine and, after all this time, it is no longer necessary to keep such a strict routine and such an elaborate system. The last time we did come close to anything resembling a rewards chart was a collage (an example of which you can see in the photo above), which we made on our Miro board, at the end of each lesson. Everyone could choose an image, google or icons, that they wanted to add. This, in a way, was some kind of a reward for everyone.

Looking back, I think it was a good decision, to introduce the chart and the rules all these years ago and even a better decision to ‘waste’ time on drawing all these stars and asking all these questions. And, dear teacher, if you worry that it takes six years to reap what you sow, don’t. The effort made and the time spent did start to pay off already after a few weeks.

I cannot guarantee that we are going to stay in that bliss forever (fingers crossed that I don’t jinx it with this post) but so far, so good.

My kids have never been very quiet (apparently it’s because I am loud, I am told) but they do behave. Today, after all these years, we all know what is OK and what is not. Most of the time, that is.

They have become more talkative and for that reason a new ‘poster’ appeared on the noticeboard. ‘When I speak, people listen. When people speak, I listen’. It works. Especially that we did specify that by ‘people’ I mean both, teachers and students present in the classroom.

On some days, I have to bring Pasha, our invisible student, one some days I call them using their first name, in full, and their patronymic, sometimes I have to use my serious face but that’s it. I want to believe that it all started with a simple rewards chart a long, long time ago…

Happy teaching!

Something else to read

  1. Rewards charts: how to use them to change the child behaviour at raisingchildren.net.au
  2. Are rewards charts actually bad for our kids? at healthymummy.com
  3. Why you shouldn’t reward kids all the time? at sleepingshouldbeeasy.com
  4. Rewards for kids: Maybe all they want is time? at kiddycharts.com
  5. 20 classroom rewards to get students motivated at englishteaching101.com

Bête-noire aka my least favourite conversations.

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Let me introduce you, dear readers. This is my Bête-Noire, a tiny little bundle of unhappiness.

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Most of the time, it is fast asleep, lying peacefully somewhere in the attics of my heart, covered in dust bunnies. Until, all of a sudden, it is rudely awaken because I find myself in the middle of one of the following conversations…

And that’s not everything. There’s more, lots more. Sometimes there are no (silly) questions but what happens is a rather intensive listening / lip watching event, in order to evaluate my presumably low level of proficiency in English or to detect some serious issues with pronunciation which, potentially at least, could justify the VYL-ness or YL-ness of me.

Why? Who knows.

The funniest thing is that, usually, it is not the parents, the students themselves, the HR or the admin of the schools but our own EFL nation, the fellow teachers, the colleagues who initiate these threads in the conversation. And it is not even the trolling on the social media or remarks whispered behind one’s back, no! More often than not, these are the things that people just throw right into your face…They have just met you, you have just been introduced, they don’t know a single thing about you, apart from ‘Anka, I teach VYL and YL‘ and yet, here we go…

Although, really, it would be very easy to turn the tables and start asking questions such as those ‘What?! You are NOT teaching YL?’ or ‘So you only teach (insert any non-YL area of ELF)? Doesn’t it get extremely boring and repetitive?‘

Only of course, I would not do any such thing. Because it is rude and/or unnecessary…And, no, I do not want everyone to be passionate about teaching children. We all have our own preferences and areas of expertise, things that we like and things that we hate, things that we are amazing at and things we’d rather not do.

Guess what? People choose to teach kids.

It is 2021. Out there, in the big, wide world, there are fully-educated, native speakers or non-native speakers teachers of English, male and female, mums and non-mums, private language school teachers and state school teachers who choose to focus on and to specialise in teaching English to children.

Because it is… more interesting, exciting, creative, inspiring, rewarding, fun…Despite the fact that ‘you can’t really have a conversation with them‘ or despite the fact that ‘you can’t ever teach Present Perfect Continuous Passive‘.

Even as I type these words, I can see a long list of names, my friends, colleagues, mentors, trainees who I have had a chance to meet and to work with, people who are amazing professionals, able to work with any level and any age group but who have found their true calling in working with the youngest of the EFL learners.

Many of them have already build their professional portfolio and, on the way, have grown a thicker skin. Comments and questions, as those quoted above, annoying as they are, will not really cause much damage to the system. ‘Sticks and stones can break my bones...’and all that. These teachers will be able to come unscathed by casually mentioning the years in the classroom, the feedback from their students or parents or maybe also a DELTA, an MA degree, Cambridge exams passed, IELTS bands received, publications, conference presentations and what not. Thus signalling that there are some alternative conversations to be had. With some alternative interlocutors, perhaps.

These experienced teachers I am not concerned about. They are and they will be fine. More than fine, in fact.

What worries me is that somewhere out there, there are novice YL teachers or newly-qualified teachers or, indeed, some would-be teachers, having been exposed to this kind of narrow-mindedness, will get into thinking that an English teacher first of all has to choose only one area of specialism and that a choice between ‘a teacher of English to adults/exams/IELTS/Business’ and ‘a teacher of English to YL’ is also a choice between qualifications, professionalism, respect and the lack of them. Which it is not.

Dear colleagues, dear amazing VYL and YL teachers! Thank you for being in the world! Thank you for your enthusiasm, dedication, ideas, creativity and energy. Thank you for caring.

And don’t forget – you rock!

Happy teaching!

P.S. What a rant, hey?:-) If you want to read some more positive notes on being a VYL teacher, check out this post on the hidden perks of working with the little people.

New kids on the block. Teens joining a group mid-year.

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Tuscan Flying Beauties

A post inspired by a reader. Thank you @kids.in.english.

Where the inspiration came from

It was ten years ago. I was standing at the board, looking at my students working on a task,all of them, working hard, involved, a teacher’s dream, and yet…To my right – the bunch that had been in my group for the past two or three years, to my left – the three new students who had just joined us and in the middle – a beautiful wall, invisible but sturdy and getting thicker by the minute. They were not aggressive verbally or otherwise, they did not do anything mean, there was no bullying. They simply decided that they do not like each other. The ‘old’ kids – because they did not want any invaders, they ‘new’ kids – because they did not feel welcome.

I did not like it at all. I was looking at them (yes, a little bit annoyed because we had everything figured out) thinking ‘Not on my shift, people. Na-ah’. Today I would like to share some of the tricks that I applied and have been applying since then in the new-teen-in-the-group scenario.

Ideas for building and re-building a group

  • Change the seating arrangements during the first month or the first six – eight lessons with the new students. The main aim here is to enable everyone in the group to work with everyone else. It has to be initiated (or ‘forced’ if you prefer) by the teacher because the students will be acting as a group and might not have enough courage to break ranks in order to befriend the new students or to venture out and try to join the cool kids. It is a good idea to explain to students why this is done (‘we need to get to know each other’) and give them a specific time limit so that they know when they will be able to go back to sitting with whom they want. Even if, initially, the students do not like the hassle and the uncertainty that it introduces, they have a deadline and they know when things go ‘back to normal’. The burden is easier to bear.
  • Frequently group and regroup the students for activities and use a tool that will be completely arbitrary. These can be for example re-usable cards with the students’ names that are kept in a box or in a bag. Before the activity, the teacher (or even better – one of the students) simply picks out cards randomly and this is how pairs and teams are formed. This way, it is simply fair, impersonal and, every single time, there is a high probability that student A might end up working with their best friend. If they are lucky. Again, the burden is easier to bear. Both of these tactics will also help the teacher establish how the students work in different set-ups. It will be more important in case of the new students
  • It is a good always but especially during those ‘first’ days or weeks to include activities which promote team-work and cooperation, such as smaller or larger scale projects, ideally in every lesson. The students will be already mixed, the new with the old and it is quite likely that they will want to share the responsibility for the task and they will want to complete it. This will be their excuse, the teacher asked them and they are just completing the task, without losing the face since working with the new partner is not their own choice.
  • While cooperation works well, competitive games are even more effective. If the students have their favourite games, they obviously like to play and win. Since they will be put in mixed groups, the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ students together, they will be put in a situation in which they might have to cooperate with ‘a new friend’ to compete against ‘an old friend’. Of course, these two elements, the competitive and the cooperative, should complement each other and balance each other. Some of my favourite games include ‘the game of five’ and ‘stop!’
  • When we start working with a new group, some getting to know each other activities are in order. Here, however, the situation is a bit tricky. If there are three or four new students in the group, then we can easily use some of those. When only one student joins the existing group, it might not work that well. The majority of the group already know each other very well so they will not be motivated in taking part in it. What’s more, it will be rather obvious why it is added to the lesson and the new student might be accidentally put in the spotlight. Not to mention that if a few students join the group, separately, it would mean including these activities in a few lessons in a row and the students might be even less motivated to take part in them.
  • Instead, an activity in which the students can express themselves and share personal information is a much better solution. It can be, for example, ‘Who is X?‘, a task in which students would have to match the names of all the students in the group to a set of sentences (in any structure that is the topic of the lesson). If it is the Present Simple then the sentences describe daily routines ( X never does homework, X always wakes up early on Saturday), if it is the future then the sentences describe future predictions (X will live abroad, X will become famous, X will travel to Spain) etc. During the feedback, students will be mingling and confirming and justifying the sentences about themselves. The task that I really like to use for that is the United Buddy Bears art project but this one is a bit more difficult to add to any lesson in any level at any point when the new student joins the group. But not impossible))

If you have been in a similar situation and you have some great tips and tricks up your sleeve, please share them with the rest of us in the comments box! Thank you!

Happy teaching!

What can EFL teachers learn from speech therapists?

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Even only looking at the blog here, it is easy to figure out that I am passionate (or, well, let’s be honest: ‘obsessed’) about maximising production in young and very young children and I am constantly on the look-out for new techqniues, resources and activities that can help the youngest of my students produce more and more language.

This is how a few months ago I found Saffira Mattfield, who is a speech therapist from Australia (@onlinespeechie) and who uses colourful semantics with her students to encourage them to produce more language, in full sentences. I have started using it and promoting it here on the blog, too.

Then, a few days ago, while searching for silly pictures that I could include in my lessons, I have found Allison Fors and her blog. Allison (@speech.allisonfos) is a speech therapist from California who creates resources for speech therapy (some are free, some can be purchased at a small fee) and who writes a lot about different techqniues used by therapists, parents and teachers that lead to enabling the little children to speak more and speak better.

If you think about it, EFL teachers and speech therapists have a lot in common. The context is different but the age group is the same: preschoolers and the aim is the same: get them to talk.

For example, when it comes to picture scenes, Allison suggests using them:

  • to have a conversation about the picture
  • to work on vocabulary sets as all the picture scenes have a theme ie the beach, in the kitchen, etc.
  • to work on verbs and Present Continuous as all the picture scenes usually involve a group of characters involved in different activities
  • to practise asking and answering Wh-questions
  • to practise prepositions, nouns and pronouns, directions and inferences.

Among some other ideas that I have found on her blog are using blank comics in speech therapy, using short videos or sensory play. Of course, the very young beginner learners of English as a foreign language, will not be able to produce as much language as the L1 speakers but lots of ideas that could be adapted to our needs.

Another source of inspiration can be Carmen Perez and her blog, although it is in Spanish so a little bit more difficult to access.

Perhaps this ia a new area to research and to be inspired by for us, too? What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

Happy teaching!

A to Z of homework for Very Young Learners***

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What a wonderful book this is, The Worst Alphabet Book Ever, by Raj Haldar and Chris Carpenter. In a way, it has inspired this post here, on all things related to homework for pre-primary EFL students.

Mine is a very messy alphabet, with some letters in, some letters missing, all of them in a very un-alphabetical order…

The Worst Alphabet Book Ever

S is for ‘Should we even think of setting homework for preschoolers?’

Some of the arguments against:

  • Kids are too young
  • It is too much pressure, too early. They will grow up, start school and then they will have to really learn what it means to be a student.
  • Kids forget to do the homework.
  • Parents forget to do the homework.
  • Parents may not speak English well enough to help with the homework task.
  • Parents work and are essentially too busy to deal with the homework tasks.

Some of the arguments for:

  • We are teaching the kids English but we are also teaching them how to be a student. Doing the homework and taking responsibility is a part of that process.
  • It has to be the homework task that is appropriate for the students’ age (2 – 6 years old) and level of English (pre-A1) so also something that non-English speaking parents will be able to do and something that will not take a lot of time
  • Certain procedures for setting the homework and checking the homework should apply to ensure that the tasks are not a hassle for the parents or the children
  • Homework is a wonderful way of creating a link between different lessons

So the short answer to the question in the heading would be ‘Yes, we definitely should’.

The Worst Alphabet Book Ever

E is for the extended exposure and R is for results

This is one more argument in favour of the VYL homework, so important in fact that it is going to have its own paragraph here.

Usually, pre-primary students who learn English as a foreign language have a very limited exposure to the language as they come to class twice a week for 45 minutes or, in some cases, for only 45 minutes once a week. That is not a lot but it is enough to get good results if the time in class is spent well. Or, if there is an opportunity to extend this English exposure time by homework tasks.

In practice, in might mean only the additional five or ten minutes or fifteen minutes per week but it will be the important link that will provide some additional practice between the lessons, which will be very beneficial for the children and it will help to recycle and keep up the language from Tuesday to Thursday and, even more importantly, from Thursday to Tuesday.

As it happens, a few years ago, me and my colleague-teacher, Anya (hello Anya!), we had a chance to be a part of a very informal and very small scale classroom research or an accidental experiment. We both worked with the same levels onsite (at one of our IH schools in Moscow) and, at the same time, offsite (at one of the kindergartens). All the kids were amazing, very bright and a pleasure to teach. They had the same teachers and they were following the same programme and yet, we realised that the onsite students were making more progress. We tried to analyse the situation and the only difference between the groups that we could put a finger on was the fact that our offsite groups were not getting any homework, according to the arrangements with the client.

Then, there were my other groups, a few years ago, that all of a sudden started to make lots of progress and, surprisingly enough, we did not have to devote so much time to drilling and practising the new vocabulary, right after it was introduced.

Normally, the first two lessons with the new material were filled with a lot basic games whose aim was to provide the exposure and the controlled practice before we would move onto more complex vocabulary games and introducing structures. Until, that is, I noticed that all this drilling was not necessary and, in most cases, already in the second lesson the children were using the new vocabulary with a lot of confidence. What it did look like in class, of course, were my students’ faces quickly losing interest in ‘just’ repeating the words with voices and emotions and, even, random comments (or, shall we say, feedback) muttered, here and there, ‘Да, мы уже все это знаем...’ (‘We already know all that...’)

I would never complain about that, we could move on and do the more interesting and challenging things but it took me a while that it was connected to the additional practice opportunities that the parents were providing at home. Just because they wanted to.

The Worst Alphabet Book Ever

P is for the parents

It is not a secret that in case of all the young learners or non-adult groups, the parents are the third party involved in the process and, one way or another, they will have to be included because, really, they are our clients, not the students themsevels. This is particularly true in case of the pre-school groups, mainly because children are very young and if we want to make the learning process effective, with homework or without it, we will be dealing with parents, too. Even more so, we need parents to make it all work.

Parents always want the best for their children but many of them are also taking their first steps in the EFL world, this time through their children. They might have had different previous learning experience (their own or of their kids’), they might have different expectations and aims that might not always coincide with ours, with our previous teaching experience or with our school’s policy. That means that we cannot take things for granted and that we should always talk to the parents, to explain what we do and why we do it. That applies to the homework tasks, too.

Some parents might really not be able to spend time with their children, some might choose to spend the time they have in other ways, not working on the English homework and we should accept and respect that. However, there are also parents for whom the English homework will not be so much of a burden but rather an opportunity to do something together in English. We can help them by showing them what can be done at home and the actual homework task is the first step here.

The Worst Alphabet Book Ever

N is for nuts and bolts

Here are some things to take into consideration

  • The homework should be short. Our students are still two or three or five and will not be able to remain seated for a long period of time, in class or at home.
  • It should be easy to complete, too. The students are still two or three or five and tasks that are very complex cognitively will not be appropriate for them.
  • However, the fact that the task looks like a simple colouring page (see below) does not mean that it is just colouring because the actual physical task will be connected with the language produced that is presented and practised in class with the teacher, practised at home with the parents and then practised again, with the teacher, during the homework check in the following lesson.
  • Ideally, the homework task should be consistent, in form and in content, with the focused task completed in class. This way, we do not only provide additional practice of the vocabulary and structures that we currently work on but we also ensure that the students will know how to complete the task because the instructions are the same, for the focused task and for the homework task. Of course, that is not always possible but it is a good aim to set for yourself while lesson planning.
  • For that reason, the longer I work, the more convinced I become that in an ideal set-up, I would rather work with a coursebook only, without any activity book whatsoever, in order to give myself the flexibility to match and to better combine the programme, the focused task and the homework task. This is, of course, only my very subjective view and I am aware of the fact that it would not be everyone’s choice.
  • The task should be set in class, with the students. After all, these are the ones who are learning to be responsible for the task. For the teacher and the students this is, yet another opportunity for practice. The teacher can bring another copy of the handout or the book and do the task together with the students.
  • The homework task should be explained to the parents, too, because, they will have to remember to take the task out and to complete it before the following lesson. There are different ways of doing it. The teacher can explain the task after the lesson, alone or with the help of the students, the administration of the school can be asked for help, too. Some teachers like to leave the notes about the homework on the door of the classroom and, nowadays, we all have the whatsapp groups which we can use to communicate with the parents, too.
  • The homework checking is a part of the routine and another opportunity to practise the language and to talk to students, one on one, as they walk into the classroom (more about the line-up routines here). In the past, I used to reward my students with stickers for the homework but I stopped doing that when I realised that not everyone does or brings their homework and that is precisely because mum or dad or granny forgot…Now, I only acknowledge the hard work with smileys, suns, flowers, ‘Fantastic!’ and ‘Excellent’ and I keep a spare handout, my homework or any visual in order to be able to have a little chat also with those students who are without a homework task on the day.
The Worst Alphabet Book Ever

B is for the basic homework tasks

Here are some of the staple food tasks that work well as homework tasks. All of these were created using the miro board. These are not actual handouts but only sample tasks in each type.

a) colouring: task: students colour the objects and produce simple sentences ie ‘The apple is green’ or ‘It’s a green apple). This kind of a task is especially appropriate after the new vocabulary has been introduced and colours can and should be revised throughout the course.

*****

b) drill: task: students look at the the sequence of words, name them, using a single word or a sentence and make a decision what should be the final word. This is also a task appropriate in the beginning of the unit. Here, some students might choose to colour the picture but that is not obligatory.

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c) odd one out: task: students name all the objects in the sequence and decide which one does not match the others. We usually use very simple langauge here for example: Goodbye, cat.

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d) matching: task: students look for the same objects in both columns and connect them with a line. This is also a task more appropriate for the beginning of the unit and for younger students, too. The older students can complete it, too, but in their case it would be a good idea to encourage the kids to produce a full sentence.

*****

e) finish the sentece: task: students try to build simple sentences by naming the elements of it represented by visuals or symbols and by choosing one of the elements.

*****

f) categorise: task: depending on the language, students can categorise the objects into those that they like or don’t like, big or small, animals that can fly or swim or even words beginning with the same sound if you have started working on developing literacy skills. They can either colour or circle different categories with different colours, at the same time producing the target language.

*****

g) count: task: students look at the picture and count all the apples, bananas, kiwis and nuts, they write the number.

*****

h) maze: task: students trace different lines in order to produce the required sentence, for example ‘I’ve got a doll’ and similar. Again, thanks to the fact that all elements of the sentence are represented visually, an activity like that is going to support maximising production, here full sentences.

*****

i) collage: task: in class, students make sentences about mum, dad, grandma (my mummy likes apples) glueing simple pictures in the appropriate part of the handout. All the leftover pictures are given out as homework. Students glue them onto the handout and produce similar sentences but now about brother / sister, grandpa or friends.

A is for the alternatives

Normally, the homework task is set as a handout (or in the activity book) but the pandemic and the lockdown of 2020 has changed everyone’s way of looking at homework and, fortunately or unfortunately, it has closed some doors but it has opened some others. During the lockdown, not all the studnets had access to a printer so sending out homework for the parents to print and complete was not always possible. What is more, not all the students even had coursebooks and so these could not always be used as the basis for homework tasks.

W is for Wordwall

This website has been a real revelation and a milestone in tasks for age groups of students but especially for my pre-primary studnets. Wordwall is available for everyone and free in its basic version. Anyone can register and gain access to all the tasks and games that have been created by the community and made public. These games can be used in class and shared with the parents to play on any device available at home. Another advantage is that each of the tasks or games is available in a few different formats (or ‘templates) which means that the parents (or the teachers) can still practise the same set of vocabulary or structures but in a slightly different game.

If you are willing to invest a small sum of money, you can choose your own plan and start creating your own activities to match the programme or the curriculum of your group or school, too.

Here are some examples of the games that I have created for my pre-primary students

a) Let’s count, created for the students who were in the beginning of level 1

b) Categorising, created for level 2 students (farm animals which can fly, swim, run, jump)

c) Tell me about this picture, created for my level 3 students to practise opposite adjectives.

All of these we played in class, first and then the same or a similar task was shared with the parents.

L is for homemade listening tasks

These are lightly more complex but a real lockdown revelation for my primary and pre-primary classes. You can read more about them here.

Happy teaching!

P.S. All the samples of activities were created using the images on Miro and all the in-text photos come from the same wonderful book, P is for Pterodactyl, The Worst Alphabet Book Ever by Raj Haldar and Chris Carpenter and illustrations by Maria Tina Beddia from Sourcebook Jabberwocky, which by the way can be (and will be) used with my teens. More on that later:-)

*** This post was based on the talk I gave at the 2020 IH YL Conference.

P.S. A request!

It is very simple.

I would like to know a tiny little bit more about my readers. There are so many of you, popping in here, again and again, and the numbers of visitors and visits are going up and make my heart sweel with joy. But I realised I don’t know anything about my readers and I would love to know, a tiny little bit more.

Hence the survey.

In defense of paper, In defense of magic. Storybooks in the EFL classroom.

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Once upon a time, there was a world in which children were developing their reading skills, imagination and creativity with storybooks read by mum at bedtime.

Then, the Wicked Witch of the West came and replaced all the books with apps, tablets and games. The Wicked Witch of the West said that it is all easy, available, accessible. All the parents and all the teachers applauded. The books lay forgotten and deteriorating, and a few years later, the time came when one of the dinosaur teachers by accident said ‘open your books’ in class and a little Masha raised her hand in the first row to ask ‘What is a book, Miss?’

Luckily, we are not there yet and, hopefully, we will never be. Of course, the pandemic was / is / has been a huge challenge for us in that department but, nonetheless, I do continue to stand proud in defence of paper and in defence of magic.

May this very post to be the introduction and the directory to everything that using storybooks in the classroom can be.

One thing that it definitely is not, is just opening the storybook and reading it out loud. This is what it can be.

One. Baby steps

At the start of the level 1 of any pre-primary or primary course, the kids are real beginners, they have no language, no structures and no vocabulary. It would be rather optimistic to hope that a teacher is going to be able to use a story with all its richness. However, that is also not a reason NOT to include them in your lesson plans. After all, storybooks are something that the little kids are familiar with, they know what dealing with them involves and that they are part of life. For that reason, they can and they should be used with children.

  • Simple vocabulary revision with a different tool: the teacher points out at pictures in the book and calls out the colours, counts them, asks if they are big or small, if the children are happy or sad, if the students already know this vocabulary. This might happen only at the level of the colour (It’s green) and not necessarily with the actual noun (It’s a green fish), although, admittedly, there is some potential here, too, to learn the new vocabulary through storybooks
  • Simple functional language practice: Hello Pete, Goodbye Pete in the first lessons with the book and then according to what the students know.
  • Storybook reading-related language: something that will be introduced gradually but that will come in handy throughout the course, for example ‘It’s story time!’, ‘Sit down’ ‘Are you ready?’ ‘Turn the page’ ‘Do you like the story?’

Two. Role-play

This way of using a storybook will involve the students a little bit more as they will be retelling the story together with the teacher, as soon as they become more familiar with it. Naturally, not all the stories will lend themselves to this activity, only those that include some repetitive language, even if it is only one phrase. Stories that can be used here can involve

  • Dear Zoo (‘I wrote to the zoo to send me a pet’)
  • Where’s my baby? (‘Is this your baby, Mrs Monster?’)
  • We’re going on the bear hunt (‘We’re going on a bear hunt, we’re gonna catch a big one. Oh, what a beautiful day. We’re not scared’)
  • Any other story in which you might want to implement a structure that the kids might already know or that they might benefit from knowing, even if, originally, it is not in the story. For example, ‘…., Senor Croc’ is a storybook for kids in Spanish about the birthday party of the main character Mr Croc, by introducing the following ‘Let’s’ (Let’s open the presents, Let’s dance, Let’s eat the cake)

Three. Vocabulary practice

The storybooks are there and we can use them and the beautiful story and illustrations in any way we want. The story is not really read but told, with the language graded to the level and needs of the particular group.

Most frequently I choose the storybooks to go with the vocabulary that study in the unit. This way, the children can participate in telling the story and continue working on the vocabulary that they are learning. It will start with producing single words but it can lead to producing

  • How to lose a lemur – to teach and revise transport
  • Dear Zoo – to teach and revise animals
  • Julia Donaldson’s The Smartest Giant in Town – to teach and practise clothes
  • Go Away Big Green Monster – to teach and revise body parts
  • Marvin Gets Mad – to teach and revise emotions and verbs

Four. More vocabulary practice

Taking one more step in that direction, any storybook can be used to teach, to revise and to practise any vocabulary, even if it does not feature explicitly in the storybook.

The first storybook that I have used in that way was the traditional story ‘The Three Goats Gruff’. The story is lovely all by itself but I have been using it to practise and to revise the food vocabulary. Only in my version of the story, every time one of the goats tries to cross the bridge and the troll attempts to eat it, they always have some food on them and they try to buy themselves out by asking ‘Troll, do you like bananas?’, which, of course, the troll never accepts.

Five. Storytelling without storybooks?

Absolutely! For example, because you realise that your own precious copy of Dear Zoo has been misplaced / lost / stolen only a few minutes before the lesson in which you want to use it…You do not give up, naturally, you only wander around the school, find a few flashcards and a box. As an experience it is unpleasant and stressful but, in the end, you realise that, hey, a storybook itself is just a tool and a story can be told without it. And it is lots of fun.

Another sources of inspiration for that kind of approach to storytelling, can be a series of storytelling videos produced in the 90s by the Brazilian TV Cultura. This example here is in Portuguese is a story about a crocodile, a grasshopper and a spider, with a scotch dispenser starring as the spider, a pair of scissors as the crocodile and a table tennis ball as grasshopper.  

This kind of pretend-play with the use of the everyday objects or toys is something that children do in L1 as well and it can easily be implemented in our EFL lessons, too.

Six. I can read!

This is a big moment for the teacher and the student when they can finally take an active part in the proper reading of the story. For that reason, the storybook should be carefully chosen.

  • ‘Bear on a bike’ is easy enough because the whole story is told through illustrations and single words or short phrases, some of which are also repeated. ‘Apple, pear, orange, bear’ follows a similar pattern
  • ‘Llama, llama, red pajama’ includes rhymes and some parts of it are easy enough for the primary beginner students to deal with
  • Graded readers and phonics stories that were specifically created for beginner readers

Seven. Storybooks for everyone!

A few years ago, at the IH YL Conference in Rome, Beverly Whithall from IH Braga gave a fantastic seminar on using storybooks with teenagers and adults. The older students, because of their maturity and the level English, can properly appreciate the story, its language, plot and illustrations and every story can be a starting point to a discussion. Just imagine a typical literature lesson that you had in school, when you are looking not only at the story itself but also at the bigger picture. Seen from that angle

  • Rhinos Don’t Eat Pancakes is really a story about a family and about loneliness
  • Elmer is a one big question of whether one should be like the everyone else
  • Giraffes Can’t Dance is about bullying
  • Up and Down is whether we should always follow our dreams

Questions

  • How to choose a storybook? It might be a good idea to start with the classics but also to keep your eyes open while visiting bookshops and browsing, to find out more about the beautiful world of the storybooks and to learn more about how they can be used in the lesson.
  • How long can I use the same storybook? Well, definitely more than once and as long as the students are interested. It might be a good idea to put the book away for some time and then return to it, letting the students choose which book they want to read or ‘read’
  • How do I adapt the language? Like with all the lesson planning, for any kind of an activity, choose the aim first (functional language, structures, vocabulary practice, revision or introduction) and them adapt the book to help you meet that aim. The gestures, the visuals, the voice and the universal story magic will help children to understand. Translation will not be necessary.
  • Do I need to include storybooks in every lesson? It is not absolutely necessary, it is like the other tools and techniques, they are definitely beneficial for the children but there is no absolute must to have them in every lesson. More likely than not, with time, you will see the positive impact of storytelling on the students, on the classroom management and on yourself and it is for that reason that you will want to include them in every lesson or almost in every lesson.
  • How do I start? Slowly! Practice makes perfect.

Tips and techniques

  • Let the children look at the story, all or some of the pictures, before you start telling the story, unless, of course, there is some big surprise in the end which should not be revealed too soon.
  • This demonstration can be done in silence or the teacher can point at certain pictures and elicit the words from the students.
  • While telling the story, point at the crucial elements in the illustration and pause to elicit the language from the children.
  • If the kids are already familiar with the story, start telling it with mistakes and wait for the children to correct you. They are going to love it.
  • Include gestures and physical actions that will accompany your story. This will help children first to understand the story and then to retell it and to really remember the language.
  • If possible, use some prompts such as realia (toys, plastic food, clothes), flashcards or mini-flashcards.
  • If possible, try to recreate the atmosphere of the story by preparing a soundtrack i.e. the jungle sounds for story set in the jungle, the beach sounds for the stories set by the sea etc.
  • Don’t forget to use your voice, this is the teacher’s most important and powerful tool.
  • Get ready and rehearse, think how you are going to position yourself, how you are going to hold the book, where the children are going to say.
  • If you are not using the original story, try to remember what changes you have introduced in order to be able to retell the story in more or less the same way every time you are using it
  • The storybook is never used in one lesson only. It is only in lesson two or three, when the students are already familiar with the story and with the language, that they can really enjoy it and participate in it fully.

Happy teaching!

We want more. We ALWAYS want more! Maximising language production

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Here is my favourite character who would be a perfect amabassador for ‘We want more‘, my professional obsession (you might have noticed:-) and some of my favourite solutions for the classroom.

Trick number 1: The language

Regardless of what coursebook is used or what curriculum is followed, there are certain language items that can be included even in the pre-primary programme that will enable children to communicate and produce more language.

Some of these language items include:

  • descriptive adjectives, such as big – small, long – short, happy – sad, beautiful – ugly, serious – funny, old – new, etc. Introducing them in opposites will make it easier for the students to understand and to remember
  • simple linkers, introduced gradually, starting with ‘and’ (‘blue and green’, ‘cats and dogs’, ‘I like bananas and apples’), then moving on to ‘because’ ( starting with ‘I am happy because it is sunny’) and perhaps even ‘but’ (‘I like dancing but I don’t like dancing with a bear’, like in the song from Super Simple Songs).
  • introduce Present Continuous, because it will be easy to play with it in all the miming games and it will come in very handy while describing pictures and telling stories.
  • talking about other people. Personalisation is very important while learning language, not only with the little ones, but it is also a good idea to start introducing other people and the language we need to talk about them such as ‘she/he is / has got / can / likes’

Trick number 2: The freedom of speech

This freedom of speech has got very little with the civil rights. It is all about the degree of freedom that the students are given or, in other words, about the scaffolding and the support that are slowly removed in order not to limit the students and to enable them to choose what they want to talk about.

One way of doing it is shifting from closed yes/no questions towards more open-ended questions. ‘What do you like to eat?’ is more likely to generate more language that only ‘Do you like bananas?’ which will lead to one-word answers or maybe even only gestures. ‘Tell me about‘ will be a lot more generative.

Using this approach while working with illustrations, pictures or any kind of visuals will give students the opportunity to choose for themselves what to talk about. And it is quite likely that they will pick the topics (elements or aspects of the picture) that they are either more interested in, have more knowledge of or are better prepared to discuss. In any case, more language is likely to be generated.

Examples or real activities? Here you are:

Pairs is a speaking activity that uses a simple material of a set of pictures. The students put them in pairs, in any way they want. They also have to justify their choice. In case of the younger learners, this principle can be the colour (‘Panda and zebra. They are black and white’) but kids can also choose any other reason for that, like ‘Zebra and horse, they have 4 legs’ or ‘Bear and deer. They live in the forest’.

This activity can be also used with the older students who are given a list of words and have to put them in pairs, according the knowledge and the language they have.

Below you can see the end of the game with my pre-primary student. It started off slowly, with simple sentences about the colours that the animals have in common but as the activity progressed, the categories changed, too and we have here an example of animals that have a long tail (a lizard and a monkey), animals that live in the forest (a bear, a fox and a deer) or animals that like meat (a tiger and a lion).

This is the final product of our Pairs activity, using the visuals on Miro

Tell me about is another activity that uses a visual, for example a set of pictures with animals or a picture scene. Students choose an element for their peers to describe, for example Tell me about this boy’ and it is easy to imagine the variety of responses that these can generate. Students can choose to talk they boy’s clothes, feelings or actions.

Trick number 3: The appropriate activities and materials

Our students do what we want them to do. It is assumed so, precisely because we are teachers and they are students. The roles have been assigned once and for all. The question to ask yourself, though, is Would they really want to do it, if they had a choice? Is there anything in the task itself that would encourage them to? Or not.

Certainly, it does not meant that all those less-exciting-but-crucial activities will be renounced forever, because even though they are not always fun from the point of view of our students, they might still be necessary and useful, but it is an interesting aspect to start taking into consideration while lesson planning.

Here a few activities that use that principle

Yes or no? This is an activity that also uses visuals as the basis. In the first stages of the activity, the teacher describes the picture using very simple structure ‘I can see’ when some of the sentences are true and some are false. Students listen to the sentences and correct the sentences. In case of the pre-primary students, this is likely to be one-word production but with time, they are learning to respond in full sentences. Later on, when the students are familiar with the format of the activity, they are invited to take a leading role in the activity, also producing true or false sentences about the picture for the teacher and their peers to correct.

Kids love the game because they can correct the teacher’s mistake and they are allowed to create their own un-true sentences about the pictures and to try to trick the teacher. I have used it both with primary and pre-primary students. The younger kids, naturally, needed more time to adjust and to start producing full sentences, in the beginning they would only provide the key information, for example the colour or the number of objects but, eventually, they were comfortable enough with producing full sentences. At approximately the same time, they were ready to lead the game, too. The older, primary students could make this transition within a lesson.

This is how we were telling our own version of ‘Pete the Cat. I’m rocking in my school shoes’ using the visuals on Miro

Storytelling for pre-primary is based on picture description. Here, the easily available materials might involve the stories from the coursebooks for pre-primary, retelling together any other story used in class or even any of the materials in the YLE Starters materials. In this case storytelling is scaled down to simple picture description, in the appropriate sequence.

Storytelling for primary can also use the visuals but it can be more challenging with the use of storydice or a storytelling treasure hunt (see here)

The lion and the kitten is a simple boardgame that has been very helpful in encouraging the students to produce the language. It was created and used with the online 1-1 pre-primary students. The game does not use a dice. Instead the students can choose the box where they want to go next and in each round, they have to talk about one of the pictures hidden under the yellow, orange and blue diamonds. In the beginning the sentences are very simple and focus on simple vocabulary (‘It’s mommy‘), later on these can be exchanged for a more detailed description (‘Mommy is happy‘ or ‘Mommy is dancing‘) and even further extended with the use of ‘because’ (‘Mommy is dancing because she is happy’) or in any other way that is within the children’s linguistic ability.

This game gives children a lot of freedom and almost a guaranteed victory. The cards can be changed easily, especially in the online format, and even if not, new sentences can be made every time the game is played. With a group of children, a dice would probably have to be used.

This is the board for our boardgame, also created using the visuals available on Miro.

Are you in the park? is a simple guessing game turned into a role-play. Each student has a city plan (since this was the language that we were working at the time) and three stickers which they glue somewhere ‘in the city’. They keep their picture secret and they try to guess where their partner is at the time.

Student A: Are you at the bank / park / market?

Student B: Yes, I am / No, I am not.

After a while, they can ask for help.

Student A: Please help me.

Student B: I can see…I can hear…I can smell….

Student A: You are…

Initially, the stickers were introduce only to prevent the kids from ‘cheating’ but they absolutely loved having random leftover stickers all over the place. In the first lesson we play, it was pirates, in the second one, it was farm. They laughed a lot about having little pigs and chicks all over their cities. The other incentive was the opportunity to imagine and to describe the places from the angle of what they saw, heard and smelled in different places in the city. The kids had the full control over the game and they were making the decision themselves when to move to the second stage.

For some more tricks, please see my other posts: the discourse clock, pairwork for preschoolers or using ambiguity to get the students to talk.

Happy teaching!

ALL the reasons to use a song

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This post started with a line, one of those things that one says, casually, in a conversation with a teacher or at a conference. ‘There are many reasons to use a song…’ , I said and my brain, always ready for this kind of a challenge, took over. ‘How many? Can you count?’

I accepted the challenge. I have found sixty. For now:-). Not all of them are mine, of course but since this post is meant for teachers, not researchers and since I am on some kind of an academic holiday, no proper referencing. This time. All the inspiration sources and the follow-up reading below.

Now, fasten your seatbelts and let’s go! 3…2…1…

We are using songs with the primary and pre-primary EFL learners because:

  • Kids like them
  • They are a part of the kids’ world, regardless of the language.
  • They help to reduce stress.
  • Songs create a positive atmosphere.
  • They can help set the context of the lesson.
  • The kids don’t care if the teacher does not have a really beautiful voice but they care about a teacher who does not really sing.
  • Singing and music are present in many areas of our everyday life.
  • They can be used differently, depending on the day and how the children feel – to calm them down, to cheer them up, to wake them up.
  • They can be used to develop motor skills, gross motor skills (jumping, dancing, skipping) and fine motor skills (finger play).
  • They lead to personalisation for example by choosing favourite songs and expressing opinion on songs.

  • Using different types of music develops children’s musical taste.
  • They provide the exposure to the target language.
  • They help to remember the vocabulary and structures
  • They help with pronunciation, rhythm and intonation.
  • And with the early literacy development, by developing the ear, rhymes recognition.
  • They use a natural language
  • The traditional rhymes, chants and songs carry the culture of the country.
  • Songs are an opportunity for expression.
  • They help memory development.
  • Singing games usually involve a group or a team and so they help to develop social skills.

  • They can be used to develop turn-taking and other social skills.
  • They can help the kids to settle in the lesson and in the L2 environment.
  • It is something that we do together, it helps to unite the kids after they have taken part in pair-work, team work or individual activities.
  • They are a nice change of pace in the lesson, a punctuation mark.
  • They are an easy-to-use stirrer.
  • They are an easy-to-use settler.
  • They give the lesson a frame (Hello song, How are you chant, Did you do your homework chant, storytime song, table time).
  • They help the kids to move from one stage of the lesson to the other.
  • They help to create a community.
  • They help to take the language out of the classroom. The kids can sing the songs at home, in the car, on holiday.

  • They are one of the few tools that help to involve a variety of learning channels: auditory (because we listen and we say), visual (because we can use flashcards to help kids remember the lyrics) and kinesthetic (because every song can be and should be accompanied by gestures)
  • Thanks to music they remember the language better
  • They are the first step language production; a song is basically a lot of discourse with some music.
  • They are great for beginners, children can participate in a song, even if only through the gestures.
  • They are great for shy students; singing is not scary if you do it in a crowd.
  • They help to create routine and balance the ration of the new (material, songs, activities) and the familiar (all the favourite songs).
  • Kids learn how to make decisions – choosing which song to sing next.
  • They can be used as an activity timer (you have one song to finish colouring)
  • Songs often tell a story this way creating the context for the language.
  • They can be used to introduce new vocabulary and structures.

  • They are great for recycling vocabulary.
  • They can be used as background music during craft activities, to encourage the kids to sing rather than just chat in L1.
  • Songs and chants can be used to give instructions.
  • They can be used during any stage of the lesson.
  • They can be used to get the students’ attention.
  • They are easy to use and do not require a lot of preparation.
  • There are plenty of songs to choose from.
  • It is easy to make up your song or chant that can be used for one specific reason.
  • They contribute to the variety of resources used in the lesson.
  • They can contribute to the development of the cognitive skills, such as attention and focus.

  • Children learn to take responsibility for the lesson and to lead by choosing the songs to sing.
  • Songs can lead to creativity in the language. Once the song become familiar, they can be the stepping stone to creating own versions of them.
  • They can ‘just be sung’ or they can become the theme of the lesson, if accompanied by the vocabulary introduction, craft, story.
  • Singing a song can be a reward for good behaviour or special achievement.
  • Some songs can contribute to learning other subjects such as art, maths, science etc.
  • Parents like when their children sing so songs might be used during parents’ days, end-of-year performances.
  • They help to motivate the kids to learn the language.
  • They give the kids the sense of achievement, as even after a few lessons, they can feel like the speak the language, because they can sing the songs or recite a rhyme.
  • Learning through songs is fun and memorable.
  • Because, finally, adults, also get an excuse to sing!

It looks like, for now at least, all the reasons to use a song = 60 reasons to use a song. If you have any more ideas to add to this list, please let me know in the comments!

And may the VYL and YL classrooms be alive with the sound of music, like this or like this!

If you want to learn how to move from singing a song to a discourse, have a look at the earlier article on How to un-sing a song.

If you are new to teaching and you are not sure where to start

Happy teaching!

#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#*#

References

Jo Budden, 2009, British Council Blog, Using music and songs

Alex Case (2019) Why and how to use songs with young children,

Alex Case (2008) 15 Criteria for a good kindergarten English song

Children and music: Benefits of Music in Child Development, Bright Horizons,

Sue Clarke, Kids and songs,

Yvette Coyle and Remei Gomez Garcia (2014), Using songs to enhance L2 vocabulary acquisition in preschool children, ELT Journal, 68/3

Nihada Delibelovic Dzanic, Alisa Peijic, The effect of using songs on young learners and their motivation for learning English, 2016, NETSOL, An Interdisciplinary Journal, 1 (2),

Dovlatova, M. 2015, the role of songs in learning English, Young Scientist, 10 (90),

ESL songs for kids and teens (2019),

Opal Dunn (2012), Introducing English to Young Children: Spoken Language, Harper Collins Publications

Larry M Lynch, 9 reasons why you should use songs to teach EFL

Lin Marsh, Why song and dance are essential for children’s development, 2015

Carmen Fonseca Mora (2000), Foreign Language Acquisition and memory singing, ELT Journal, 54/2, p. 146 – 152

Sandie Mourao, Gail Ellis, Teaching English To pre-primary children, Delta Publishing

Carol Read (2007), 500 Activities for the primary classroom, Macmillan books for teachers.

Devon Thagard, 2011, Why the songs should be used more in the Young Learners classroom

Elaine Winter, Why Music Matters in the early childhood classroom, 2017

Crumbs #7: Line up, everybody!

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Today about a little and very un-revolutionary change in the routine that has, nonetheless, made a huge difference to my VYL and YL classes.

Instructions

  • Make sure the door to your classroom is closed and that the children wait for the lesson outside.
  • When it is the time to start, come out and line them up, perhaps with the parents’ help in the beginning, until they get used to the new routine
  • Wait for them to be ready, say hello to everyone and count together how many students are present
  • Say hello to the first student, ask how they are, let them into the classroom, wait until they book the books and bags away, choose their seat and sit down.
  • Let the second student in.
  • If setting homework is a part of your routine and programme, this is when you can check the homework, asking each student a few questions about it.
  • If there is no homework, this time can be devoted to a short individual conversation with each student. It can be a short revision of the vocabulary, talking about a picture or, if the students are already in one of the primary levels – some reading practice with flashcards or a few questions about any material covered in class. We often use it for practice with ‘Tell me about…’ with the use of a picture.
  • When the students get used to the first part (entering the room), you can add the second element and make sure that the students already sitting in the classroom are occupied, too. They can either play a simple guessing game if this game has been practised in class and if they have been given a set of flashcards. They can also play some games on the phone or the tablet, for example to practise reading with phonics. Again, they have to first to try it under your close supervision, to get used to taking turns etc.

Why we love it

  • It helps to introduce the order from the very start of the lesson since the kids are not waiting in the classroom and the teacher’s arrival is not an interruption of something that they are doing.
  • It is obvious who is responsible for the students during that time, the teacher’s take-over is clearly marked. It might not be as obvious if the kids enter the room during the break or before the teacher, especially if the teacher wants or has to spend the break time outside of the classroom, for whatever the reason.
  • The parents are of a great help in the beginning of the course, they can help explain what the kids are supposed to do, they can help with the name etc.
  • This part of the lesson is a fantastic opportunity for the 1-1 conversation with each child. Regardless of whether the teacher uses this time to check the homework or to ask and answer questions or to read, they are giving each child all their attention (almost all, the eyes at the back of the teacher’s head are watching the kids already in the room, of course:-) and they can check the progress and language use.
  • For the parents, this is a wonderful opportunity to find out how their children are interacting in English, without the parents’ supervision and this is how they can, indirectly find out about their child’s progress, before every single lesson if they wish to do so.
  • For the parents, this is also a chance to find out how the homework handouts or materials are used, what questions the teacher asks and how much language can be generated out of a page that, to the untrained eye, looks like a simple colouring page. If they want to and they have have the time, they can later use this knowledge to practise English at home.
  • In the beginning, when the children are just getting used to the new routine or if they are really young, this part of the lesson can be kept short, later it can be made longer. Similarly, in the begining, the T leads the activity but, later on, the kids can ask each other at least some of the questions, too.
  • I have been using this technique for about six years now. My first ever group for which this has been created (because there were ten of them and we hardly ever got to talk 1-1 in class), now in the third year of primary, still line up to chat with me on entering the room. I have been using it with my pre-primary students, too, groups and individuals, too. The parents always wait in the hallway, at the back of the line and they always wait to hear how their children talk to me. If they leave the school, it is only after their kids have walked into the classroom. They always wait and not because they don’t trust us/me but because they are curious and want to know how it goes.

Happy teaching!

A piece of cake. The everyday lesson planning: Pre-schoolers

by
photo courtesy of Юлец

Welcome to my classroom. I will take you through the lesson planning for one of my preschool groups. They have just started to learn English, they are four and they come to us only once a week.

This was our lesson number 5 and I taught it last week, just one of the lessons, without any fireworks or magic, just what we do. The only thing that was different was me taking notes and photos every step of the way. The planning took about twenty minutes (plus photocopying and preparing the classroom).

This IS how I plan and it was only a few months ago, while talking to a friend and a colleague (insert virtual hugs to Vita), I realised that if I had to pick up a metaphor for my approach to lesson planning, I would go for a cake: I figure out what I want (the visualisation of the amazing piece of baked goods, just a second before you cut it up to serve) and then I come up with all the ingredients to buy, all the equipment to prepare and all the steps to take to get there. Just like while making a cake.

Welcome to my lesson, step by step. Get ready for a lot of I’s!

Step 1: Getting started

An A4 piece of paper is where I always start. A single piece of paper and a few colourful markers. I use the same approach to planning for all my lessons, regardless of how old the students are or what their level, but for pre-schoolers it is especially important.

Leafing through the pages is not necessary and, let’s be honest, not recommended or even impossible when simultaneously you are managing a group of four- or five-year-olds. The lesson plan is always on the wall. It is relatively simple and thanks to the big font, the structure and the colour-coding, I can read it, even from the other end of the classroom. Sometimes, I take it around with me and pin it in the other corner of the room, all that depending on the activity. If for example we are doing something completely new, for the students or for me, my notes for this particular activity are a lot more detailed.

Step 2: The framework

This is the typical framework that I use for all my pre-primary groups and individual students. The lesson is divided into the three main slots, regardless of how long the lesson is. As a result, the length of each third varies and it can last 20 minutes in one real hour class, 15 minutes in one academic hour class or even 10 or 5 minutes in the shorter online classes that lasted 30 or 15 minutes respectively. As with any lesson planning, assigning time slots should be only approximate because a) anything can happen b) we adapt our and the coursebook authors’ ideas to what actually happens in a particular lesson. To be honest, if I were to give up one lesson plan / lesson ingredient / craftsmanship element, timing would be the first one to go.

I start from the scratch in every lesson although I have been playing with the idea of improving the approach – printing the template, half-filled in with all these elements that are constant, then laminating it and using whiteboard markers to plan to minimise the time expenditure and the workload but I have never got round to it. Not yet, anyway.

Step 3: The aim

I start with the lesson aim. I mean, we all do, in a more or less conscious way. Only about a year ago, though, I started to force myself to verbally formulate the aim of each lesson and to write it down. The results of that little, non-time-consuming teaching habit have been nothing short of amazing.

I know most of the coursebooks that I am / we are teaching with very well, I have gone through most of them once at least and I have my favourite activities and solutions and so on and, of course, at the bottom of my brain, I know why I do this or that. But, having to actually think about a particular group and a particular lesson, on a particular day and having to say it out loud has made a bit difference and has made me more aware of what I do and why.

But there is more to it, too. There have been a few occasions over this year when I really wanted to include something to supplement the coursebook, a game, a song you find or an idea you wake up, include it at all cost, just because the idea seemed very appealing. On those few occasions, the lesson aim got skipped or left for the very end of the lesson planning, as if by accident.

Only it was not by accident. Because when I got to the point when I was ‘just’ supposed to summarise it in the lesson plan, I simply could not. It did not come together because the lesson, at this point, was just a collection of activities, without any real focus or an obvious outcome. All these lesson plans were redone and the activities reconsidered.

For that reason, now I always put the lesson aim at the top of the page, as my frame, my spotlight, my runway. A clear lesson aim also helps to reflect on what happened in class afterwards.

In this particular lesson, I wanted my students to start talking about emotions. They had already been exposed to the three key words (happy, sad, angry) and their symbolic representations but without actually producing much. In this particular lesson, I wanted to try to take it a bit further, to the production stage, ideally in the form of a full sentence ‘I’m happy / I’m sad / I’m angry’.

To be honest, ideally, this is what should have been written on the page ‘I’m happy/ I’m sad / I’m angry’ but it got compressed to only three words, mainly because I have taught the lesson a few times already and it would be a full sentence by default. Just to prove that the lesson plan was for the lesson itself and not for ‘publication’.

Stage 4: I will always love you

This is the easy thing. The first and the last block, in brown, are the admin bits, with the students entering and leaving the classroom.

We line up in front of the classroom, count how many people are present, we say hello officially and we check the homework (more on that kind of a hello routine soon to come!) and we sing our goodbye song and choose stickers, get homework and choose the stickers before everyone goes home. These never change, although sometimes I only send the homework through the WhatsApp group or explain it directly to the parents. This was a standard lesson, though.

The other element that always appears at that point are all the songs and chants to be sung in class. These depend on the topic of the lesson and later on, the students can sometimes decide which one we are going to sing. This group here is at the very beginning of their English adventure so for the sake of establishing the routine and because we only know a few songs, we sing all of them in every lesson.

Songs work here as some kind of punctuation marks and during the lesson, we basically sail from one song to the other. It helps to ensure the balance between settlers and stirrers or songs offer at least a tiny little bit of a change of a pace and an opportunity to move but they also help to ensure that there are periods of the lesson when we all do something together so it helps to keep the balance of different interaction patterns (whole class vs individual work, pair work or taking turns).

Step 5: The centrepiece

At this point, I am adding the main activity, our focused task during which we are set to make the lollipop puppets with our three emotions (plus colours and some functional language). I have done this activity in that format a few times and for that reason there are no detailed instructions, the staging is already in the blood.

Another thing that appears at the time is the storybook. At this point in the course, we use storybooks only as supplementary material to revise and to reinforce the target language from the lesson and this is how Pete the Cat helped us. We revised the colours and emotions only using a different resource.

Step 6: The familiar

The next step is adding the other elements of our routine. These are not as constant as the hello or goodbye routine but not as changeable as the focused task or the target language practice.

Since it is the beginning of the course, there is not much to pick out from or to revise and since we are still working on building our routines and I try not to add too many new elements, not to overwhelm the kids.

Our revision activity has been the same for all this time: we count up to ten on fingers, we count the people present, boys and girls and teachers and we count other things, in this lesson dinosaurs, in this lesson in a book and our plastic toys.

Our music and movement has been pretty much the same from the beginning of the course and it is only now that the kids are properly enjoying the activities. This applies to the songs and the magic bag game, in which we use plastic fruit. They don’t know the fruit names so at this point we only focus on their colours (‘It’s green’).

As for our How are you today part, the plan was to do it in the traditional way but with the introduction of the finished product. I thought that this might help the kids become aware of what this toy is and how to use it (pick one and place it in front of our face, while saying ‘I’m happy’). By the time we’d get to making our own lollipops, they would already be familiar with them. It would also help with giving the instructions.

Step 7: The key elements

The things to add now, will be the details of working with the target language and with the revised language, in order to ensure that they best contribute to the completion of the focused task.

What I did plan, however, was the colours practice with a variety of activities: not quite in the order in which we did them. The main and the new one here was ‘open/close’ also known as ‘what’s missing’, a memory game and the most challenging activity here (as it involves cognitive skills and language production, focus). Everything else was either a preparation for that or a supplementary game, which can but may not be used, in the end. I like to make a list like that to prepare myself for their different moods, participation and involvement levels, etc. Having a list of potential games which we can play, without any major changes to the materials set or the seating arrangement I found it to be quite useful.

The fish game here acted as my potential plan Z, only if we have time. In the end, I used it later in the lesson, instead of the magic bag activity since they were both quite similar (students taking turn to perform an individual task with a motor skills development focus and colour revision.

In this lesson, the connection between the focused task and the target language practice is not as strong but that is because it is only the lesson 5 in level 1. Thinking about it now, after the lesson, I think that, ideally, I should have included some additional activity to combine numbers and colours, for example in the form of colourful happy, sad and angry faces, that we could categorise by emotion, count etc. So see, there is always a way to improve things)))

Ready!

The lesson plan is ready. Perhaps now, looking at it, in its full, finished glory, it is easier to see why I do not include any timings. The framework itself outlines the time slots for each stage of the lesson, alongside their aims, although they are not articulated clearly and they are the following:

Column A: the introduction to the lesson, hello and revision, the aim: settling in, duration: about 20 minutes.

Column B: working on the target language, the aim: presentation, practice and production, in varying ratios, depending on whether it is the beginning of the ‘unit’ or the end of it, duration: about 20 minutes.

Column C: production, the aim: production, with the hope of more freer practice and spontaneous production, although, of course not during the first few lessons of the level 1 course.

Looking back

The lesson went well and, apart from the few things mentioned already, I did not really have to change anything else. Not that it would be a very bad thing to do. Regardless of what has been planned, the thing that matters most is a group of the little people who are sitting in the classroom, how many of them there are, how advanced they are, how they are feeling on the day. Flexibility, first and foremost. And then – the reflection bit. Because we can always make things better.

If you are new to teaching pre-schoolers, have a look at my post about the first VYL lesson survival kit.

Happy teaching!