#eflteacher Archives - Page 3 of 23 - Funky Socks & Dragons

Erik Bulatov. A word that is also a picture

June 29, 2024 by Anka Zapart

Even today, after a few days have passed since the day of the lesson, and with other lessons that have happened in-between, I am still simply, well, euphoric, about the lesson I taught and about the art we created. Cloud number 9.

I saw Bulatov in an exhibition more than ten years ago and, my oh my, what an inspiration he was. Really, I cannot think of anyone who had an impact comparable to him. And he stayed with me. For days on end did I draw letters and tried to make them work together. I even turned one of the pictures into a pillow case, in black and white.

A few weeks ago, I got to see his exhibition again and, once more, it was a blast, in every possible way and, naturally, I made an instant decision that we would do it in class, sooner or later.

The artist and the concept

It was with a real pleasure that I got to tell my students that our Artist of the Day is a contemporary artist who is almost 91 years old and who still lives in our city. They got really excited about it.

However, before we looked at Bulatov’s works, I wanted a proper lead-in. It seemed crucial to me that my students start to use the words as images, to have them look beyond the letters and to see the bigger picture. In order to do that I decided to use two tools or two tricks and I am so happy that what I came up with worked wonders.

The first, really easy exercise was to look at the colour words and to read them as words and as colours. There are plenty of resources that talk about the Stroop effect and pleny of resources to use: the online game, the article, the quiz video. I used a super simple visual, like this one here. The kids loved the challenge and I was having fun with them, quietly celebrating the fact that reading (all of a sudden) is an easy-peasy task for my almost-year-2 students.

For the following stage, I used my own illustrations of some of the Portuguese words which you can see the photographs. My students don’t speak Portuguese and I wanted to have them try to guess what they might mean just looking at the visuals. And they did so well here! Preparing those visuals took some time but I loved this kind of a homework and it made for a lovely evening for me. I chose ‘o sapo’, ‘a casa’, ‘o amor’ and ‘os olhos’ (without articles) simply because I had an idea for the illustration and I knew that my students will know these words in English. Obviously, any other words can be used and any other language that is appropriate in the context. I have already decided that when I teach this lesson again, I will use a wider range of words and a wider range of langauges.

At this point it was already obvious for the kids that words are more than ‘just words’ and we were ready to look at what Erik Bulatov created. I chose only five of the paintings. We looked at them and we briefly analysed why these particular words were presented in such a way. The main idea for this lesson was the sentence that I repeated a few times during the lesson and the one that is also the topic of that post: a word is also a picture.

The language

The language input was minimal in this lesson as we only talked about the different words that the kids could use. As an example, I suggested using their names, animals, food, emotions and professions (the theme of our summer camp). The kids had time to think about it (as we were getting ready for the creative part, bringing water, getting on the aprons, giving out paints and brushes) and when they were ready, I wrote all the words they suggested on the board.

I was considering showing them a few examples of the English words that were also turned into images such as a few variations of ‘love’, ‘a cat’ and ‘a dog’ but I decided not to put them up, just to see what the students can come up themselves.

It is worth mentioning, however, that, depending the language input can be extended and there is a lot of potential for combining this lesson with a lesson on animals, colours, seasons or fruit and vegetables. I will definitely be going back to it and I am already excited about it. I want to be perfectly honest here, though. I focused on the artistic part because we are at the summer camp at the moment and there are separate English and Art lessons and, hooray, we have more time for English and for Art. Our Art lesson, however, was done entirely in English.

The art

We used very basic materials: pencils and watercolours. We didn’t even have any real watercolour paper, because we ran out and we had to use the regular photocopying sheets. Not the best choice, but it didn’t stop us from creating.

I gave out the paper and pencils and we started to design our words. It is a good idea to keep a few spare pages of scrap paper for the kids to practice because it might be a bit complicated to get to the ‘acceptable’ level of quality of the letters or the picture, even with a good general idea, this does not happen naturally. I experienced that myself with my ‘casa’ picture and I was just so happy that I kept the drafts because I could show the kids that only practice makes perfect. Next time we are going to create Bulatov, I am also going to include different versions of his paintings that I saw at the exhibitions, either sketches (if they are at all available) or the same painting with various approches to the composition, size of letters or colours that I know exist. They will be a wonderful lesson into the creative process. Actually, here is another great idea for a lesson for me and for us, from the sketch to the masterpiece…Soon, I promise, soon!

After the sketches were ready and the kids were happy with them, we started to paint. That’s it. The only thing to follow will be only my admiration, love, excitement, awe and multiple rounds of applause and high-fives. My kids did great.

Here is what went well / very well / amazingly well:

We went smoothly from the main idea, to Bulatov’s paintings and to our own creations
The kids did great, many of them knew straight away what idea they want to depict and they just went for it. They worked very well, they were focused and motivated. Many finished their first original idea and went on creating.
Designing the ideal visual was not easy for all the kids and not all of them got there from the first time. Keeping the additional sheets of paper was a good idea, showing my failed attempts was a good idea, too, and it did help some of the kids. I was really proud of those who got upset at the begininng but decided to go on and created real masterpieces.
It was interesting to work with this particular group of kids because they were a new bunch, a mix of my students and some new children who joined us only for those two weeks. All of them, however, apart from one, were new to the artistic activity, unlike everyone who took part in our regular Art Explorers activities that I normally write about here. And it was such a joy to teach them and to take them into the world of creativity.
We used the simplest resources, the pencil and the watercolours, but I have already started to wonder what else we could use. Perhaps gouache, perhaps acrylic paints or maybe a mix of techniques, paints and a collage, with the newspaper cut-outs…So many things to think about!

The only thing left now is to invite you to admire what my amazing artists have created!

Happy teaching!

The unsung heroes of the YL/ VYL classroom. Volume 2

June 22, 2024 by Anka Zapart

This is the second post in the series and the link between them is the painter’s scotch that already futured in the first post but that is still one of my top 5 things in my bag. And here are some more…

The alphabet

We started the academic year with ‘Aa is for apple’ in our handwriting booklets and we spent the first three months on meticulous handwriting exercises. When we got to Zz and we were more or less familiar with the whole set of letters, I would write all of them on the top of the board for the kids to copy. I know that there are a lot of posters available on the market (and my school prints their own, too), but I just didn’t like them as they did not match my set of requirements: big letters, handwriting, font matching what we have been using and some visual representation, too, to help make them a little bit less abstract. With the visuals that we already know instead of some randomness such as ‘N – nest’, ‘Q – quilt’, ‘S – sparrow’, ‘Y – yak’ or even ‘X – xylopohone’ that are either very rare, well beyond the A1 level, not child-friendly or just vile (yes, I am talking about the xylophone that has the randomest pronunciaction of ‘x’ ever).

I made my own. I made two, one for 1A and one for 1B. The only thing necessary was an A1 piece of cardboard, a marker and a set of stickers.

It has spent the second half of the year on the walls of our classrooms and we used it as a reference point in all our writing exercises. The kids used it on their own and I used it, too, to direct them towards the correct letter. ‘Dd is for dog! Look!’. All in all, it helped us made huge progress with our literacy skills. No more than that but so much!

The chalk markers

When I found the Treasure of the Year, I was looking for something else entirely. I was getting ready for the Art classes, White on Black, googling for black drawing paper and white pencils. I found them and the lesson was great (you can read about it here) but what I also found the Solution of the Year and the Teacher’s Love of the Year: the chalk markers.

The thing is for the previous six months I had been forced to use the traditional blackboard and the traditional chalk and I hated every single moment of it, after all my educational like in the Polish state schools, fourteens years as a student and five as a teacher; hatred from the very bottom of my heart, because of the dry hands, because of the chalk dust on your clothes and because of the cloth. And then I found the chalk markers that I had not even known existed!

They are beyond amazing. They last a few weeks, they are just markers and they are quite thin so it is a dream to be writing with them and you can be very accurate and produce intricate letters and drawings. And they erase easily!

The trolley

I spent about three weeks of the academic year being miserable. I had two groups and two classrooms and the whole day was about moving from one to the other, together with everything that I needed in my teaching life: markers, toys, flashcards, cards, stamps, schoolbag, thermos, notebook, my magic wand, glue, craft paper, pencils…Most of the time wasting on it the entire length of the break. Every single time, every single day. The classrooms are door to door but, still, it meant making a few rounds, a few times a day. It’s not that I did not have a place to keep my things in either of these classrooms, I did, but it was still impossible to have two separate sets of cards, two separate sets of puppets, two separate sets of markers for the whole class.

The misery lasted almost a month until I had enough and I looked for solutions. I used to use boxes and baskets in the past, with my preschoolers but these would not work in these new circumstances. This is how I got my trolley, four metal shelves of happiness on wheels. Each shelf has its own theme and I keep there, going from the top: markers, flashcards and storybooks and puppets, cards, packets small scrap paper cards and handmade cards.

It is super easy to move from one classroom to the other or to roll it around the classroom while handing out boxes with markers. It is light so my students can help with it and they love doing it. They actually love to pretend play being flight attendants and giving out things. It made my life much easier.

One more thing! That trolley is getting me one step closer to becoming a Real Babushka!

The cupboards

One thing that I definitely had a chance to find out about myself is that I am thoroughly obsessed with order. It might have something to do with some form of OCD because mess and disorder makes me very unhappy. In the past, I must have lived in some kind of an ignorance but that’s because I was not obliged to share the classroom with another teacher on permanent basis. Until September 2023.

This was when I realised that I am deeply unhappy with the disorder on the table, on the cupbards, on the window sills and on the shelves. This was when I understood that I like my classroom near to empty, without all of these toys, games, books and (omg) candy that children have a full and unrestricted access to, which, of course, has a detrimental impact on the general classroom management. Alas, when you have to share, you just share and try to live to tell the story.

The cupboards made it possible and because there are two that I have got, I can be easy-going with how I organise the shelves and what I put things. In one word, I have room for everything. One full cupboard is filled with books, workbooks and notebooks and the other is my beloved Art cupboard, with all my resources, treasures, aprons and jars. They are all located at the back of the classroom and sometimes, when I teach, I like to glance at one or the other and smile. Peace and quiet, law and order in my resources.

The markers

There are many stationary items in the primary classroom, pencils, pens, crayons, coloured pencils but ‘Nothing compares to you’ is what I would sing to my boxes of markers. I think, perhaps, it might be because of the hours spent in the young learners’ and very young learners’ classroom or, in other words, because of the hours spent with people who are learning to hold a writing tool and people who are learning to use it to write their first words.

On behalf of my students, I prefer them to everything else, because, first of all, they are much easier to handle for an inexperienced hand, much easier to hold, requiring less muscle power to hold and to produce a line, very often much thicker and much lighter than anything else. Not to mention that because of the colours and the excitement of using them, they make the difficult and tiresome task of writing a tiny little bit more appealing and motivating.

We use them throughout the year to colour and, also, in the beginning of the year to write. I cannot really say exactly when we stop and switch to pencils and pens as it varies, from year to year but that is our general procedure.

Happy teaching!

Materials May: stone painting!

June 22, 2024 by Anka Zapart

The language

This was the last episode in our series of Materials in May. The language input was a revision and limited to colours, emotions and animals which was also consistent with the vocabulary that featured in the photos I found online to inspire my students. Which, of course, means that the vocabulary can be adapted, adjusted and selected to match the topic that you are planning to focus on or the topic that the stone painting is supposed to accompany.

The artist

Since our main character was stone, I decided to choose a group Artist of the Day and look at the artistic creations across the centuries made specifically of stone (or, rather, different variations of it) such as the Sphinx of Giza, the Easter Islands monuments, Nike, the Greek goddess and Moscow lions, among others. The great thing about it was that many of these, the kids were already familiar with and they could relate to them on a slightly different level, for example, because they had a lot to share, although most of the time this was done in Russian, rather than in the target langauge.

The art

The art part was very simple and straightforward. We started with looking at a great variety of stone paintings that can be found online, with different smileys, fish, dogs, cats, elephants and what not. The kids were told that they would be able to paint whatever their want.

We proceeded to choosing the stones and handing out pieces of paper and pencils as we were to design our drawings. We traced our stones on the paper and spent some time trying to figure out the best picture or pattern for our stones. I tried to encourage them to be inspired by the shape, especially that we had stones of two different sources.

A word here on the stones themselves. They came from two main sources. Some of them were the ‘pretty’ craft stones, round and polished and I bought them in a craft store. The others were more organic, collected by me in the neighbourhood. These are irregular, ragged, rough but also more inspiring. I washed all of them with soap and hot water. In the end, they were left in a bowl with hot water, in order to sanitise them as much as possible.

When our designs were ready, we put on the aprons and started painting. Our paints were on a big table in the middle of the classroom so that all the kids could share all the resources. We used two types of the acrylic paints, I had some basic colours (but in lovely, rich shades) and some pearl colours (in other shades, as it happened). A part of the fun on the day was mixing of both in order to get the best of both. I am not sure if it can be seen in the photographs but it really worked out very well.

As for the design, as I said before, the kids had a free hand and they chose whatever they wanted. We had some smileys, we had some ‘favourite things’ such as the horses, the geese and Picachu, we also had some ‘magic stones’, which were only coloured and decorated. Because the acrylic paint dries relatively quickly, some of my students managed to decorate both sides of the stones.

I had the black markers ready for the follow-up decorating as it is also an option, especially useful for all the tiny elements of the drawing or the tracing, but it turned out not be necessary in the end. As with all the materials lessons in May, I announced that we would be leaving our creations to dry overnight but, guess what, that also didn’t happen. Almost everyone insisted on taking their stones home asap. I barely had time to take any photos. I suppose that means that the lesson was a success.

Happy teaching!

Upside down and inside out. How to dismantle a traditional EFL curriculum and how to spend a year disregarding the CEFR

June 15, 2024 by Anka Zapart

(Or an English teacher reflects on the academic year that has just finished.)

This is the third of the posts in the series of the Reflective Teacher that I promised myself to celebrate the end of the school year. Here you can find me reminiscing on the life of an Art teacher. Here you will find the unexpected memoirs of a Maths teacher and here (because they also secretly belong in the series) – a whole set of notes of a teacher trying to introduce law and order in Year 1.

But, first and foremost, I am a teacher of English, working hard to give the students in my classroom the tools, the imagination and the courage to speak a language. And from that point of view, this year has been a very interesting experience for an English teacher, too.

Something old…

Well, there is a lot of that!

I have been teaching English to primary for many, many years now. I know how to do it and I love doing it, really. Vocabulary, grammar, communication skills, functional language, reading, writing, a is for apple (a a apple), learning how to be a student, learning how to be a member of a community, routine, pairwork, all of that, all at once. It makes your head spin, a little bit, of coure, but then, all of a sudden, it all starts coming together and it feels great.

Introducing all the letters of the alphabet, staring our handwriting booklet, phonics stage 1, stage 2, stage 3, the first song, the first test, the first spontaneous production case, the first storybook. I have jumped through all these hoops with many generations of my students and successfully so and this year we have done it together once more.

The only thing that was different was the fact that I had a lot more time in a week and we could set aside a lot more time for practice. And that, apart from English and the ESL classes, my kids were getting a lot more exposure and practice from the History lessons, from Maths, Science, PE, Art and the break times, too. Every little helps!

Something new…

Do you still remember the title of this post? If not, please scroll up to refresh. Why? Because this is the image that I have in my head when I think of English in this academic year, here goes:

a beautifully constructed framework of the CEFR, with all the levels and their detailed descriptions, skills, grammar and vocabulary, in a sequence, neat and tidy, like a set of puzzles forming one beautiful picture, now scattered on the floor, all over the place and it is not even possible to understand what it was that they showed in the first place…

That is exactly what happened this year and that is all due to the context in which I was teaching, namely my bilingual primary school, with a group of students who were in their year 1 of education but according to the curriculum and age, in their year 3 of the BNC. And who, naturally, were a very mixed bunch as regards their L2 language skills. A very mixed bunch indeed.

Because of that we made a decision to adapt the programme and the plan and divide the children into level-appropriate ESL groups so that they all could learn and take their English to another level and, alongside that, we would teach the English and develop the skills according to the BNC. All in all, it has worked well. The kids were tested throughout the year, both as regards the reading and writing skills (milestone tests) and speaking (Cambridge YLE) and they all made progress. Hooray.

However, all of that meant that I had to forget about what the basics, the CEFR. First of all, because, from the very beginning I had pre-A1, A1, A2 and A2+ and everyone in-between sitting in my classroom. Outcomes: forget about using one single set of materials.

Second of all, we were to follow the curriculum of the year 3 of the BNC and even if we made amendments (as we did), this was nothing in any way related to the CEFR, as regards the structures or the vocabulary and we had to at least make an attempt at combining the English curriculum with our ESL curriculum. Outcomes: adapt, adjust and do your job, feeling just a little bit anxious, with the safety blanket gone.

Last but not least, I had my bunch in the classroom and in the school, for many hours a day and it was my task to make the most of it and to give them a chance and the tools to communicate in English as much as possible and that means (or it might mean) not going nicely from one level of CEFR to the other. I have already written about it earlier, in my storytelling campaign posts here, and this year I definitely had a chance to research it more and to gain even more experience.

Some of the things that meant for us:

introducing lots and lots of verbs, the everyday verbs (to talk about what we do in the classroom), the story verbs (in order to read and to tell stories), the hobby verbs (to talk about what we like to do)
introducing lots and lots of adjectives, to describe emotions and feelings (to talk about ourselves and to talk about the emotions in stories), to describe objects (all the Maths, History, Science lessons because of the comparatives and superlatives used in all of the subjects)
introducing structures when we needed them: Present Continuous (to describe what we are doing in the classroom, to manage the kids, to tell stories and to describe pictures), comparatives and superlatives (the BNC)
introducing some elements of the word formation (some negative prefixes, gerund, er for jobs) because of the requirements of the BNC
introducing the elements of the three basic tenses (the Present Simple, the Past Simple and will) to give the kids a chance to express themselves, to talk about the weekend on Monday and to talk about the things to do on holiday
learn a huge pile of words from way beyond our A2 level and not in some topical sets but because we either needed them in our phonics practice and it was ok to learn them because they were all 7-year-old-friendly words (with such treasures as: feather, together, trophy, sloth, gate, cube, arrow, pillow among them) or because we needed them for our English, History or Science lessons.
introduce a pile of useful phrases, way beyond our A2 level, through stories, just because we needed them in the everyday. ‘It’s impossible!’, ‘Let’s try!’, ‘You’re too loud!’, ‘Just a little bit more!’, ‘I’ve got an idea!’…

Something borrowed, something blue!

Two things that it led to is that we have actually learnt and we have made huge progress over the year, despite this being the first year of learning English for some of my kids and it meant learning some complicated vocabulary and grammar at the age of seven. The other thing it meant for me only was staying somewhat shell-shocked and puzzled at the fact that I have turned the CEFR upside down and inside out and I lived to tell the story…

I am not sure if, with this post, I really want to promote getting rid of the CEFR. Quite the contrary, I appreciate it being a part of our life, as a teacher and an assessor or an examiner. But it is not the only thing that matters and, sometimes, experimenting and playing with it or just blatantly going around it, that is the best idea EVER! Especially that the CEFR itself is one thing and the way the structures or vocabulary items are included and organised in our coursebooks, that is a completely diferent thing.

It’s been years now since I started to introduce lots of verbs, lots of adjectives and the Present Continuous in my VYL classes. This year was the first one in which I brought some elements of the Past Simple and the future will to my young beginners, just so we could talk about the everyday in a meaningful and natural way. And I am very happy with the results. Hooray to that!

Happy teaching!

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.

Setting up the routine. Nine months into the course aka The end of Year 1!

June 7, 2024 by Anka Zapart

Starting the lesson

We have had the same routine for a few months now and it’s been going pretty well. The kids just loved sharing everything about their new toys and things related (lipsticks, brushes, water bottles, notebooks, candy and what not). Some of them also started to tell me about all the presents the parents would buy them. The more language, the better!

Songs

In May we did a lot of singing of our Seasons Song because this was the song we chose for our presentation for the end of the year show. The kids really liked and they loved singing it, without any help from me. We also continued to sing our ‘May May’ improvisation song. Which was mostly about how tired we are, how much we are looking forward to the summer, holidays and birthdays. We also did a few summer songs, What do you like to do in the summer? and the song from the last unit of Superminds 1 (Let’s go to the sea).

Rules and classroom language

After a very rough April, the kids calmed down and everything fell into place, more or less. We worked hard, we were focused (most of the time), we wrote all the tests but we also had a lot of fun because the really difficult and challenging topics finished and the fun units started, for example measurement in Maths and our body in English and ESL. These are the topics that lend themselves to hands-on learning and I think that also had an impact on the way the kids reacted. In a way, having survived multiplication and division, we could finally relax a bit and have some more educational fun.

Story

In May we did a great story from our coursebook, a traditional story from Turkey, ‘A fair solution’ and we really enjoyed it. We also watched a short story as part of our lessons ‘At the doctor’s’. The one I really like is the one from New Tiger 2.

Now I am looking at the story summary of the month and it looks just very disappointing, only two stories, barely 2. I think I am going to comfort myself with the fact that we have made up for it with our project activities…

Socialising

We have been doing our best as regards social skills. There were times when we had to deal with different issues, still, but we are trying.

We did lots and lots of pairwork in the role-plays (At the doctor’s)
We took part in quite a few whole class projects and I was really happy to see that the kids were working together and thinking of the whole team, like, for instance, in our ‘I can smell’ project in which we were testing our noses and recognising the smell of mint, lavender, some fruit etc and in which the success of the activity depended on the individual team members’ efforts (‘Please smell but don’t say it out loud yet!’). It worked!
Both of my groups tried to play a competitive game (‘But you know that one team is going to lose, yes?’) and one of the groups even asked for the more competitive version. They won, in the end, but I was so proud of them because they were willing to take a risk. It was a good first time and they really were a proper team)
One of the acid tests of the strength of the group was a day and a week with some trial students. I was really curious how the class would react and after the initial five minutes of rolling the eyes, they just got over it and welcomed the new kids and we all worked together.
It also helped that we all worked together to prepare the end-of-year show. The kids did their whole performance in Russian, a dance routine and we also prepared our song. That was a nice opportunity for bonding.

Creativity

May was definitely an Above Standard as regards creativity and I am very happy with it. Just as well we had something to balance the heavy duty test and test preparation lessons!

We experimented with different codes in history and we tried to write our names and silly messages in the Julius Cesar’s code, the Morse code and the number code.
We worked a lot with our bodies and experimented with different senses. We played the game of I can see (guessing what might be in the pictures), we tested our noses with a variety of smells. We made a fruit salad and guessed the fruit while eating the salad with our eyes closes. We also learned how to measure a pulse and we tested how our heart behaves when we sit, walk and jump. And this last bit was my excuse to play Song 2 by Blur in class.
We made the X-ray photos of different organs. I mean, not the real photos but a cool craft that I designed. I really need to write about it, eventually!
We learned about healt problems and illnesses and we had LOTS of fun role-playing it! The secret? A set of basic structures on the board AND a pile of post-it notes for the kids to write notes and prescriptions. Nothing like the notes scribbled on the small pieces of paper, followed by a signature and the card peeled off in a quick movement to give to the ‘patient’…
In Maths we did all types of measurement, size, weight, volume…That meant a series of lessons that involved estimate and measurement and checking and us walking around the room with a meter, looking for the information about the volume on the packaging of different things, trying to guess how heavy our possessions are and measuring random volumes of water in the bathroom.

Teacher

I have been a tired teacher in May, a very tired teacher, in fact. All the testing, preparation, end-of-year festivities, reports, presents, good-bye letters, that was A LOT. Especially that, as an Art teacher, I also took it upon myself to have the craziest month in a year with a wide range of materials for my mandalas, salt dough creations, dreamcatchers and stone painting…Rarely was there a day in May when I would walk to school with just a schoolbag…No. There always had to be bag, too, with all the precious junk.

I managed to test everyone again according to the YLE Cambridge standards and everyone (everyone!!!) made progress. Hooray to that!

And then the kids wrote the tests, I did tear up now and again while checking them (because yes, they did great), I prepared 22 goodbye letters and small presents, I clapped a lot during both shows and then they just left. Some of them are still at school, taking part in our summer programme but many left and I know that some of them are moving, changing schools and what not and not coming back. And I had to say good-bye.

‘I am not coming back, miss Anka’.
‘I know. You are fantastic. Don’t forget that!’
‘Я постараюсь. (I’ll try)’

Did I tear up on the spot? No, I am 100. I can, most of the time, control the emotions. Did it ruin my mood for about a week? Yes, it did. It most certainly did.

But we have had a great year, autumn, winter, spring and summer. We started the year with ‘Aa is for apple’ and ‘I can count to 20!’ and now my kids read and write and do multiplication and fractions and they ALL speak much better English than they did in September. I am proud and I will be keeping my fingers crossed for all of them. And, of course, I hope to see them again, in my classroom or just somewhere, in the city.

Happy teaching!

P.S. Please make sure you have a look at our development since September!

P.S. A request!

It is very simple.

Hence the survey.

From the life of an Art teacher…

June 15, 2024June 1, 2024 by Anka Zapart

This is the first of the three posts that I have promised myself as a reward for this academic year to reflect the three main directions in which my professional life took me in this academic year. With my transition into the bilingual primary school as the year 1 (or year 3 of the British National Curriculum), I have become a full-time Art teacher, a full-time Maths teacher and a full-time English teacher. All of these things I have done before and yet, all of them turned out to have some surprises for me and, as a result, all became new chapters, with new discoveries, new knowledge and new skills. Which only proves that there is ALWAYS some room for improvement.

Something old!

I am not new to teaching Art and teaching English through Art. Even before I moved to Newton, I had been teaching English through Art for two years, with BKC and with the Fun Art Kids at the Moscow Museum of Multimedia Art, both online and offline. Not to mention all of these years when I pestered my young learners and teens and adults with Art in our EFL lessons.

I have already managed to share ideas and experience in an article published in the MET and a session at the YL IH Conference as well as some workshops at my school and lots (and lots and lots) of posts here on this blog. One of the most popular articles was written in November 2021, almost three years ago, and even then I already knew what I was talking about.

However, and I say it with full responsibilty for every word, it was only in September 2023, with the Art Explorers at Newton, that I really became an Art teacher.

Something new!

This has been a year full of artistic adventures.

One of the most important things and one of the biggest changes, in comparison with the previous year, is that I am the one completely in charge of the whole programme. I do not have any external artistic curriculum to follow and I am not bound by any linguistic curriculum either. That is a huge responsibility, of course, but it also a source of power because it gives you all the freedom you want and may need. The only limitation is the time, these 45 minutes of a lesson that I need to fit everything in.

In the beginning of the year we had two lessons a week but it wasn’t working well, with a huge span of the age and the actual numbers of kids in the classroom. It was very difficult to run two the activities on two different levels of motor skills and two different level of linguistic skills and to constantly have to find a way of creating something that both my 5-year-olds and my 10-year-olds could do and benefit from. Plus, for the teacher, two different activities a week…it’s not impossible only extremely exhausting. Luckily, we were able to adapt the timetable. The younger group, pre-school and year 1, started to attend on Mondays, the older group, the years 2 – 4, on Wednesdays.

The raised salt pictures lesson and My Favourite Box

Because of that I could teach the same lesson twice (always an advantage, not only because of the lesson planning time) and I was able to adjust the levels of challenge, artistic, linguistic, cognitive, motor, to both levels. And it was a joy to see it work. The younger kids could focus on the vocabulary and grammar practice, the older could be involved in a real debate, in L2.

It was also interesting for me to teach these two same lessons in a different order. Because of the calendar and random holidays along the way, sometimes I started the new lesson in the younger group and then had to adapt it to the older one and the other way round. That was an interesting experience, from the point of view of methodology.

Not to mention the difference in the reception that different artists and techniques got. All (as in: every single one) of my students are amazing but it was interesting to see that, naturally, my older group were more capable in terms of their motor skills and more critical and willing to challenge ideas, because of their language skills. However, my younger kids were definitely more open to all the new things and all the lessons on contemporary art were a proper blast with them.

It is almost ridiculous how much my students have grown, as artists. They have not only had a chance to interact with different artists and to experiment with a great variety of materials and techniques but also got better at manging time and materials. May is a completely different month in terms of the Mess At the End Of an Art Class. And they have become more sophisticated and skilled at expressing themselves through Art. What started as an exercise in recreating the teacher’s model, led to kids observing, managing the technique and just creating their own masterpieces with whatever was at hand on the day. It was fun to watch them get excited at the announcement that the topic of the day was ‘What You Want’, as it was with at least some of the new technique. It was also fun to have them try to convince me to let them interpret the topic and to see them negotiate that. Apart from that, thanks to one OK lesson in February, I got to see how much they have developed and how much they have progress, way beyond just a regular craft activity. They even figured out how we roll in our Art classes (see the plan below).

A lesson plan, by one of my students. 100% accurate

Thanks to my Art classes I also started to create more. On the one hand, it was because I needed to experiment with all the materials, techniques and styles in order to show the children where we were going with things. I did that before. This year, however, I discovered that I really like painting and that it calms me down. I got myself a sketchbook and I started to paint, keeping kind of a visual diary and checking out how I can express how I feel though images. A new thing for me because I am the human of a word (or I have been so far). I don’t show these to anyone, although, I really like some of them. And painting is my new zen.

I love planning my Art classes, combining the language, the artist and the tools. I love coming up with a theme for the month and research Art to find exactly what I need. Naturally, over this year, I have learnt a lot about the artists that I had never heard before. I love introducing these artists and my favourite artists to my students. This year we have had a visit from the biggest and the lesser known, the world Art creators and the Russian artists, the legends and our contemporaries. Andy Warhol, Kasimir Malevich, Shantell Martin, Natalia Goncharova, Ilya Mashkov, Yves Klein, Pablo Picasso, Marisa Dube. We learnt about the alternative techniques, we have worked with a whole wide range of materials, from watercolours, to seeds and everything in between.

I wish I could try to choose my favourite lesson this year. That is simply impossible. Instead I will attempt a top ten, instead, in no specific order.

the figurative and non-figurative art
the miniature art
Shantell Martin and black on white
Ilya Mashkova and the still-life
Jackson Pollock lesson
Kandinsky, about sounds and colours
A heart! Experimenting with watercolours
Dreamcatchers!
Mandalas!
Yves Klein and the rollers

One of the coolest moment this year was in March when I got to curate a retrospective of our Art Explorers on the walls in our school. I have some works stashed at school, some pieces stashed at home although, the best ones, were already taken home by the proud artists. Still, showing a great selection of them on the walls of the school made me realise how much we have achieved. The kids were also beyond excited to see their pieces displayed. Am I dreaming now of a proper exhibition in a real hall? Of course I am!

Something borrowed, something blue!

Something borrowed is easy as all my lessons are based on the amazing creations by artists from around the world, from our contemporaries and from the days of yore. It is something that all the kids in the world should be given the access to, in order to learn about the different ways of looking at things and of expressing your emotions, learning how to do something new and becoming more confident about what you have to say. One of the most important lessons that I got to teach them was the one about the artists independence (‘You are the artist. If you call it a sunset, it is the sunset’) and another about the different ways of perceiving the world (‘You are the artist. If you decide that the apples are purple, they are going to be purple’).

My something blue is going to be the next academic year. I am hoping to continue to run the programme and I am already looking forward to all the new artists and all the new techniques. Some of my current students are going to continue with us so I cannot just repeat the programme. And just as well. ‘There is such a lot of world to see’. As the song goes (‘Moon river’).

Happy teaching!

P.S. A request!

It is very simple.

Hence the survey.

The things we will do! Teaching the future form to kids

May 25, 2024 by Anka Zapart

Well, that was bound to happen! We have done the past simple and now we start every Monday’s lesson with talking about our weekends and it was just a matter of time for the future to enter our lives.

Presentation

For the context of the presentation I chose our classroom and ourselves. We already know Present Continuous to describe current events.

We started with talking about what everyone is doing and since my year 1 are creative it is never just a limited set of boring sentences, for examples, ‘I am sitting’ or ‘I am looking at the board’. There is at least one person who is doing something out of the ordinary and memorable. Sigh.

While the kids were talking, I was taking notes on the board, using their names and the 3rd singular. After the exercise was completed, we read all the sentences together.

Then I wrote the word next and a sentence about myself, for example: ‘Miss Anka is talking to her students now. Next, she will have lunch.’ The kids know the school timetable and it is obvious what will happen next, at least some things and that is what makes the context obvious and clear to everyone.

Practice

What will they do next? We were in the middle of the insects unit and that is why I decided to choose this particular context for our first focused task in the lesson. It followed the pattern of the previous activity in the presentation stage, only this time with bugs.
What will happen next? A very simple, visuals-based activity, in which the students make simple sentences trying to predict what will happen next. The only trick and the challenge is to look for appropriate, funny or intriguing pictures.
Dice games. Based on the success of these activities in the past tense lessons, I decided to repeat them here, with the future tense context. We did the dice game #1 with kids rolling the dice to produce their own sentences and to ask their partner (‘I will eat pasta. And you?’) and the other one, the dice #2 to ask the questions (“Will you go to school tomorrow?’). Depending on the day of the week, we adapted the context, choosing either ‘later today’, ‘tomorrow’ or ‘at the weekend’.
What will you do at the weekend? This is another activity that was introduced to mirror the activities we do for the past tense. This one we usually do on the last day of the week, which for me is Thursday, and we play a ball game to talk about the near future. I write the starter sentence, for example ‘I will go to…’ and throw the ball to kids encouraging them to produce a sentence. We play a few rounds, depending on the time and the focus. The ball is always in the classroom so it is very easy to add this activity to all of our activities of the day, regardless of the subject.
‘What’s the missing word?’ is another one of our favourite games that we have used before, reading and choosing the missing word. This particular activity also includes the ‘What about you?’ bit which also encourages the children to react to what one of the students is saying.
Prediction. It is not one specific activity but something that can be used with every story we do or even in an experiment done in class and we have already had a chance to put it to practice a few times already. I still have to write the target structure on the board, to encourage production but will is slowly becoming a part of our everyday conversations.
I haven’t done it yet but this very topic is begging for another Dr Seuss, ‘Oh, the places you’ll go!’…

Happy teaching!

It is very simple.

Hence the survey.

Crumbs #79 15 words. One more way to stage a storytelling lesson

May 25, 2024May 25, 2024 by Anka Zapart

Ingredients

A story that you are supposed to teach, anything from the Movers (Reading and Writing, part 5) and up, just to highlight the length. I prepared it for a story, ‘A fair solution’, from Global English 3 by CUP.
A set of the key words and phrases, a mix of the new vocabulary that needs to be pretaught and the phrases or words that are important for the story. Here are the cards I used.
A set of pictures that accompany the story. They will be available with any YLE Cambridge materials. I had three in my coursebook, too.

Procedures

We started with going over the vocabulary and phrases, checking understanding, drilling a bit, asking extension questions (for example: When Miss Anka says ‘Oh, we have a big test today!’, what can you say?’ (‘It’s not fair!) etc. Some of these phrases were completely new, some of them we had learnt already. I tried to include both because 15 new items would be too much. I tried to also include not only single words but phrases that feature (or might feature) in the story and that were important for it.
We started with the title of the story. I wrote it on the board and made sure that all the elements were clear. I tried to encourage the kids to guess what the story might be about, a story of this title and a story with all these words and phrases. This part was done in both langauges, L1 and L2.
In the meantime, I prepared a visual representation of all the words on the board, with 15 numbers and a symbol for each phrase or word. We went through them before the next step and a few more times during the entire storytelling lesson. I have a double English and having these on the board was a perfect solution for a quick revision activity after the break.
The next step was the pictures. I showed them one by one, on different slides of the powerpoint and we answered two questions. While we were looking at the slides, one by one, the kids were asked to look and answer the same question: Can you see our new words?, encouraging the kids to call out the words and phrases that might be associated with the visuals. When we finished, I repeated the question from the previous stage: What do you think the story is about?
The next step was reading the story. This is the story from our coursebook but since the majority of my students are still not quite able to read a longer text all by themselves, I read it out loud, adding voices, emotions and intonation. With one of the groups, we did this in the circle on the carpet, with the other we sat at the tables and the kids were looking again at the pictures at the screen. In the past I also experimented with kids following the text in their own books. At this point, I like to experiment and mix and match with this stage of the process, for the sake of variety and to find out what is most effective with developing readers.
At the end, we had a quick round of the general comprehension questions. We used a set of questions that are quite generic and can be repeated with any and all the stories in the world: Why did X do that? Why did the X say that? (here we can go back to some of the phrases from the set introduced / revised in the beginning), Was X clever / silly / funny / happy / sad? Why is the story called: XXX? Did you like it? Why? Who is your favourite character?
We went back to our tables to do the proper comprehension task and the reading / writing task. I put together a summary of the story in seven sentences which the students had to reorder and a simple writing task, expressing opinion and personalisation. You can find the task here.
To finish, we looked again at the words – symbols that were still on the board. I asked the kids to take turns to retell the story using these words, asking the same question: ‘Why was this in the story?’. The kids were coming up to the board, making a sentence about a story and erase the word/phrase, until we ran out of them.

Why we like it

The main aim of the story was the development of the literacy skills and to get the kids better prepared for dealing with a longer text. As I mentioned before, my students (the majority of them) are not ready yet to be given a text of that length (around 3 pages) to ‘just read’, hence all the adaptations. The short text that was our comprehension task was something that everyone could deal with so this is when my kids got to work individually on their reading skills.
My other aim was the development of the speaking skills and we did a lot of that, especially with the final activity and with the prediction tasks. The kids still used some L1 as they simply don’t have all the vocabulary and structures to express their ideas, especially when they start fantasising what the story could be about but they produced a lot of L2, talking about emotions and qualities and making simple sentences in the past simple.
There weren’t many opportunities to turn this particular story into a real experience but we tried. The sound of the coins is an important part of it so I took out my wallet to shake it and to make some noise (‘I can hear it’) and when the story talked about different smells of food, I also encouraged the kids to come up with different ideas for their favourite smells. In one of the groups, the kids also got involved into a debate about the silly things that we shouldn’t pay at school, like the water or the smile of the teacher etc, which gave me an idea that this could be a fun and interesting way of taking the story moral out of the story and into the real life. Next time:-)
I am especially happy with the set of words (and the title of this post) that created a lovely framework for the whole lesson and gave us lots of opportunity to produce the language, before, while and after the story itself. We are definitely going to use that one again.

Happy teaching!

P.S. A request!

It is very simple.

Hence the survey.

Materials May: Dreamcatchers! Our first Native American Art lesson

May 25, 2024May 25, 2024 by Anka Zapart

This lesson has been on my mind for a loooooong time. Perhaps, on some level, the whole theme for the month’s theme was somehow fueled by the fact that I wanted to make some dreamcatchers.

The most challenging part in the lesson planning here was figuring out the logistics and the techniques and their adaptation for the use in the young learners Art class. There are the professional level videos, there are the adaptations with the use of paper plates or wooden sticks. There is also this one, that I found just now, just for inspiration for you all. The problem was that they did not match what I already had in my head: I needed a simple solution for the frame and I needed a simple weave that my kids would be able to deal with. From the very start I excluded the option of using any metal frames, I wanted our dreamcatchers to be as natural and organic as possible.

To sort out this problem and to get inspired, I simply went for a walk to see what my neighbourhood can offer, a real naturalist wondering along the river. And I found a solution thanks to the birch tree spinney (a word I learnt today:)) that I have here. It turns out that birch twigs are strong enough and flexible enough after lying for a few days on the ground and can be used for dreamcatchers. Mother Nature helped out! NB I only collected those twigs that were lying on the ground. No tree was harmed during the making of this art.

The artists

The lesson itself started with the presentation of the art piece that I made at home. We talked about its literal meaning which I explained with clip art and we talked about its origin as the artefacts produced by the members of different tribes in the USA and Canada. We talked a bit about the symbolism, just a little bit (my kids are quite young so we can focus only on the simple concepts but if you have more time, you can find a lot of material here) and we had two guest artists.

Our first guest was Marisa Dube, an Algonquin and Mohawk, an artist from Ontario, who specialises in making beautiful dreamcatchers in the traditional way. The other artist is Janet Echelman that you may know from her Ted Talk, who created a huge Dream Catcher in 2017 in California. I do recommend watching the video with the dreamcatcher in action!

The language

As with all the lessons in May, the language input is minimal and limited to the materials we use in class on the day. This week it was the following set: twigs, beads, feathers, ribbons, string, PVA glue, glitter markers and shells. This set can be adapted, depending on what is available. We went through the cards and through the contents of my bag and started to appear on the table.

The art

Making a dreamcatcher involves a detailed plan for the pre-, while- and post-production stages. Here is how we did it

Pre-production

I went for a walk and brought enough twigs for all my kids. It was absolutely necessary to check and to confirm that they were flexible enough to be formed into circles.
I created the circles (aka the frames) by bending them into circles and tying them with twine. I also wound a piece of twine around each frame because I knew that we would not have enough time to do that in class although it is an easy task and my kids would be able to complete it all by themselves.
I also decided to wash the twigs, just in case, I washed them with the cold water and hang them on the balcony to dry. We are in the summer, a streak of beautiful sunny days and that was easy to do. Plus, an unexpected olfactory bonus came out of it, the circles started to give out the smell, a mix of twine and twigs, very pleasant. The kids commented on that in class.

While-production

I gave out the frames and the kids could choose the first material they wanted to use, the ribbons and or the twine. Initially, I wanted to give out long piece of each but that didn’t work out very well, it turned out to be to difficult to managed. I should have thought of that (!!!) but we were able to adapt on the spot. I showed the kids how the cobweb can be made more easily by simply tying a piece of string (or ribbon) across the frame, tying it down on both ends to the frame and cutting off the ends. This way the kids are in charge, they can use three or five ribbons, making their cobweb as simple or as complex as they choose. My youngest pre-schoolers needed some help with tying, especially in the beginning so that is definitely something to thing about. Next time I am doing it with the pre-school group, I am going to include just a warm-up stage, tying ribbons around pencils or sticks, just to practise.
The second step was attaching the hanging strings which called the tails and the feathers. The students picked up two of three of each and tied them at the bottom of the dreamcatcher.
The third step was the decoration of the dreamcatcher. I decided to simply glue the beads and the shells with the PVA. I tested the method: it is enough to put a large blob of the glue on the frame covered with the twine or on the ribbons in the cobweb and to leave it to dry for a few hours. The glue will hold the shells and beads and it will become transparent.
Then, as the final touch, the dreamcatchers can be decorated with the glitter markers and carefully transferred to the window sill for drying.

Why we liked it

As all the classes and creations in May, this was a lovely journey of discovery, as regards the technique, the materials and the Native American culture, too. Some of the students were a bit withdrawn because of the seemingly high level of complexity of the task but we went quickly from ‘I can’t do it!’ to ‘Look, miss Anka!’. I am not going to lie, this is the greatest outcome ever!
It was amazing to observe, again, how different students interpreted the task and personalised their dreamcatchers. We all had the same set materials but some students decided to make the cobweb thicker, some others went just for two strings. Some used the twine, some opted for the colourful ribbons. Some prefered the shells, the others really liked the beads. Some used only the organic materials, some couldn’t help but add some glitter. One of my students decided to tie a ribbon, too and it looked great so she added some more, too! Some of my kids aslo found a way of weaving the shells into the twine on the frame and that looks really pretty, too!
All of the dreamcatchers were left on the window sill to dry and this time I had no difficulty convincing kids to agree to part with their creations. Perhaps it was due to the fact that it was our third Materials May lesson and we have already done it before. However, as soon as we arrived at the school on Tuesday morning, after or even before the first lesson, they kept coming to enquire if they were ready to be taken away. And they were really, really happy with the final product. One of my little ones said, to himself or to the class, ‘Finally I will stop getting the nightmares!’
There are many ways of making this task a lot more challenging and the more tempting of them is the option of the beads heddled onto the twine or the string which would make the cobweb really pretty. I managed to do it with mine but it was not easy and I didn’t have a thinner twine. If the kids are old enough, they can also try weaving the cobweb in a more conventional dreamcatcher way. The older kids could also potentially use a more reliable glue or perhaps a glue gun. I didn’t want to bring those into the classroom but that is an option that will help you speed up the whole process.
Admittedly, the activity involved some preparation on the part of the teacher, some more than usual and I understand that not everyone will have enough energy and time to get involved in that. However, it was all SO worth it! Everyone was fully involved, they personalised their work and they considered it important. And their dreamcatchers just make me go ‘Awnn!’ Just have a look yourself!

Happy teaching!

P.S. A request!

It is very simple.

Hence the survey.

Materials May and Mandalas!

May 19, 2024May 18, 2024 by Anka Zapart

I was looking for the inspration for our final month of Art. I did not start this year with a curriculum for all nine months, although probably, that would have been the recommended and adult course of action. Instead, I spent all these months just getting a theme for September, October, November…

Then came May and I needed something different, something interesting and something that starts with the letter M, just like this month.

The artists

This was an important part of the lesson to give the kids a chance to understand what a mandala is and many different techniques there are to create it. I focused on the simplest and the most basic and straighforward meaning of a mandala representing the Earth.

We looked at three different artists who are famous for their mandalas and the materials they used because I also wanted to have a representation of a variety of tools. That is why we looked at Jamie Locke who carves her mandalas, Damien Hirst who composes his out of butterflies (I still cannot get over the fact that these are real butterflies) and Stephen Meakin who painted his.

The language

Only after we looked at the artists, did we go through the language for the day, namely all of the materials to be used in class and, as usual, we used the wordwall cards. The cards and the vocabulary have been consistent with what I found at home and in my local supermarket and consistent with all the materials that I wanted to use. That is why have here beautifully green mungo beans and orange lentils.

I am aware of the fact that these are not the most commonly used words, especially by beginners but I did not want to extend the langauge slot because making a mandala takes time and we have only 45 minutes at our disposal.

The art

Mandalas are beyond beautiful and, esentially, very easy to make, albeit time-consuming. As regards materials, you only need a lot of PVA kids glue (I tried to use the regular glue stick but it is not that effective), cardboard (as the regular paper will not be able to keep up with the large amount of glue) and the seeds of your choice.

As usual, we prepared the working stations on kids’ separate desks and all of the materials were placed in boxes and in bags on the table at the front of the classroom. I also had a few separated containters (deep lids from plastic boxes). The students were told to come up, choose their material, one at a time, and either take the chosen box to their table or to take some of the material into a separate lid to move them around the room. We put on our aprons and I gave our small paintbrushes in order to move the pieces around to avoid touching the glue, as much as possible. I also gave a long, serious and boring speech in both languages about not eating anything on the table. ‘This is not food, these are materials right now. We don’t eat the materials’ could be the summary.

The actual making of the mandala is super easy and, apart from showing the children the one I made at home, I also started another one in the classroom. There are three easy steps: attaching the paper to the table with painter’s scotch, squeezing out a large blob of glue and smearing it in a circle and starting the mandala from the centre, going out and around. If necessary, another layer of glue might be added as it dries out and another layer might be added at the end of the of the process, especially for the big bits, such as the pasta pieces. The PVA glue dries beautifully and it becomes transparent, without destroying the picture.

We left ours to dry on the window sill and on the following day, I put them up in the polly pockets and kids took them home.

Why we loved it?

Just like the tiny pictures, this activity does wonders for developing focus and concentration. Everyone stayed focused, everyone stayed silent and they were just working beautifully.
It is also a lovely task to develop cooperation skills because even though we had a selection of materials and boxes, the kids still had to wait, to share, to negotiate and I am very happy to say it went well.
The task involves a lot of self-control as, despite the fact that all of these were hard, raw and not very tasty grains, some of my students were still asking for the permission to eat them, just to try. One of the boys even left the room because he knew he wouldn’t be able to resist but then he came back and worked well, only talking about eating our materials. I am trying to say that I was happy that I waited with such a task until the end of the year, when we had already our routines and rules developed and in place. I would not recommend doing it in September or until the group is ready for it.
The kids loved the work, too and, as you can see in the photos, the majority of them went for a traditional mandala, some decided to create chaos which is also beautifully represented in the world. Some of my Super Artistic Stars went for their signature items such as the rabbit and the goose or the cat which Alex, laboriously, constructed out of the buckwheat pieces. We had a few flowers, too.
This was one of the rare cases when I did not plan on displaying the art on the wall and all kids took their pieces home. I was worried that on the wall, unsupervised, the pieces might be picked up by some of the students and consumed. I really didn’t want to risk that and we do not have closed cases in our school in which the mandalas could be safely displayed. Plus, of course, everyone wanted to take their creations home, as soon as possible.
I was thinking of the ESL / EFL classes in which this kind of craft could be used and here are some of the ideas (although I feel obliged to mention that I have not used them in class myself, not in that format): a lesson on the natural world, a space lesson craft, with everyone creating their own planet, a lesson on big numbers in which we could count all the pieces used and, in a Science lesson – on grains and seeds.

The realistic representation of the world in a mandala

Happy teaching!

P.S. A request!

It is very simple.

Hence the survey.