#eflteacher

Things we did! Kids and the Past Simple.

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The context at hand

If you have read this (relatively new) series before, you know that this year I am teaching in a slightly different context and that, beginning September, I said goodbye to the traditional EFL curriculum and the CEFR. On some days, it really does make my head spin, for example when I catch myself suddenly in the lesson on the prefixes im- and un- (but we really need ‘It’s impossible!’) or teaching the infinitive of purpose (but, it is a lovely and generative structure and the kids love using it and making silly sentences with it). On some other days, I gasp and I am in awe at my kids producing the language.

This was exactly the case with the Past Simple. I just wanted my kids to have it at their disposal, even if only for understanding. The Past Simple accounts for only (‘only’) 20% of the everyday use but it features heavily in our coursebook and in many of the stories we read or watch and, with time, there will be even more of it. So we started.

Wacky Wednesday Project

Presentation

First and foremost, I needed a proper context, something that definitely did belong in the past and something that we would want to talk about. My first attempt was the New Year’s break but somehow, when we got back, there was too much to share and too much to focus on. I decided to try again after a random weekend and then reinforced it right after the winter term break.

The presentation was very simple. I chose ten basic and most frequently used verbs, both regular and irregular such as: I went, I ate, I drank, I played, I rode, I listened, I watched, I liked, I played, I got. I prepared a very simple poster, in colour, with the pairs of verbs and we just tried to make some sentences to describe our weekend. The clarification was rididulously basic ‘I drink coffee’ – we do it everyday and ‘I drank coffee yesterday, on Sunday’. I also added an example in Russian, to show that we do the same in their first language, we change the verb form to signal that something has happened. We read the verbs, drilled a little bit and that’s it. I decided not to burden the kids with the differentiation between the regular or irregular verbs.

Since then, during the first lesson of the week, we have started to use these to talk about our Saturday and Sunday as we do until this day. I write a set of verbs on the board, usually up to 7, and everyone has to choose at least 4 to talk about the things they did at the weekend. About two or three weeks ago to all these ‘I went, I ate, I drank, I liked’, I added ‘I didn’t’ to broaden the scope for the kids. This way we get a chance to share the stories of our weekends and in the appropriate verb forms. Some of my students choose only the required four but some start their stories with ‘Can I talk about everything?’ and yes, of course, they can!

It was only this week that we started the topic ‘properly’. I added more verbs to the list and we started practising in a more focused way. See below for the activities that we have done so far.

Our story based on the Flyers materials

Practice

  • Matching the verbs forms using the wordwall game
  • Reading the crazy sentences on wordwall. It is fun to give the correct answer but we are also having lots of fun with reading all the incorrect versions, with the easier version (choosing the correct verb) and the more challenging one (choosing between the present simple and past simple).
  • Mr Milk and his day. We use Mr Milk and all his friends, Mr Banana, Mr Apple, Miss Umbrella, Mr Juice and many more, to tell simple stories. Children take turns to make simple sentences with the verb forms that I show and this is how we tell the whole story. In the end, we decide if it was a good day or a bad day. I have made cards, double-sided, with the basic form and a symbol to help the kids remember the meaning and the past tense form on the back but the electronic cards can be used, too.
  • The idea of Mr Milk was also used in the boardgame that I put together. Every student could talk about Mr Milk or they could choose their own character. We played the game and talked about their days using the verbs on the board.
  • Tell me about yesterday, a simple dice game. The kids played in pairs, they had to roll the dice, choose one of the two verbs (I wanted include as many as possible, hence the double set) and make a sentence, crazy or not crazy, and address their partner, for example ‘I ate a pizza. And you?’ and compare their days this way, If there is time, the kids can change partners once or twice and to continue the game.
  • A song ‘Oh what a week‘, from Superminds / Quickminds 3 by CUP. We looked at the pictures and described the actions, we listend to the song for fun and afterwards, we listen again to number the pictures and we found all the past verb forms in the lyrics, to practise reading and to facilitate the singing / reading in the future. We have been singing the song since and, in a few days, we will also write our own version.
  • Storytelling #1, based on the Flyers materials. I have used the Charlie story before and I have written about it here but this time Charlie was just a warmer for us. I pointed at the pictures on the screen and gave the kids sentence starters with the verbs for them to complete.
  • Storytelling #2, based on another set of Flyers materials. We looked at the pictures and prepared a list of words that we can see in the pictures. Kids were brainstoriming the ideas and I was writing them down on the board, in groups: people, places, emotions, objects and actions. Every word got its own number for the future reference. When kids need a word and ask for it, for example ‘Miss Anka, where is ‘students’?’, I can simply reply ‘It’s number 4’ and everything gets much easier. I printed the materials (see above), cut them up, stapled them together in booklets and gave them out, one per student. They we got down to writing our own versions of the story.
  • Storytelling #3 and the amazing Wacky Wednesday by Dr Seuss. It was a perfect choice for our classes because it includes some past tense, my kids love the idea of ‘wacky’ (or ‘crazy’) days, stories and ideas and we could actually do it on a Thursday which was a nice coincidence. We read the story because we have it in our library, I was reading and the kids were pointing at the wacky things in the pictures and we also tried to talk about these. The story is available also in a video format. In the end, we made notes in our notebooks about own own Wacky Wednesdays, writing only about three things: I saw, I went to, I ate.
  • What did you do at the weekend? This is how we start our everyday Monday lessons. I write on the board a few verbs in the past tense (I went to, I ate, I drank, I bought, I played, I saw, I rode, I watched, I made, I didn’t) and each child has to choose four things to tell us about their weekend, at least 4. We also added ‘Me, too!’ to react to whatever the kids are retelling and to involve the rest of the class. Our most recent addition is one question. I initially planned it as my question to the person who is talking but the kids suggested taking it further so right now I ask one question to the speaker AND the speaker asks me one question, too.

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. Seven months into the course

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Starting the lesson

This is the part of the lesson that is always the same: we say hello, we talk about how we are and we introduce the new students aka all the new toys that the kids have brought to school that day. It is a lot of fun to see how they are getting better at it and how much smoother it is now, compared to what it used to be a few months ago.

Songs

Our song writing at the beginning of the lesson is getting better and better. We started with the official versions of the song, ‘March, March’, but it went on for only a week or two and then it took a new direction. Nowadays, we sing two versions of it. The first one could be labelled as ‘my favourite month’ and some kids sing a verse about Christmas and Santa coming (presents, presents!) or about their favourite month. The second one is just a long and musical answer to a question ‘How do you feel today?’ and everyone is becoming more and more creative. This is definitely one of my favourite parts of the lesson these days and we usually have six or seven variations. And the language that is coming out of it! I am over the moon!

Another song that we started to sing in March is another hit from Super Simple Song, The Seasons Song. It is not a very new song, it was published a year ago but I have just found it while I was looking for something about spring. I love it. The lyrics are great and not so easy and the music is uplifting, a perfect song for the morning. We have been singing it for about a week now but soon I would like us to write our own versions of the song. I am hoping there will be different things that we can sing and love about the spring, not only the flowers…

Rules and classroom language

I have come up across an interesting problem related to rules and classroom management and I am now in the middle of considering all the implications and the steps I will have to take to sort it out.

I have realised that for some of my students our interactive lessons, so different to their ‘typical’ national curriculum classes and the approach of their national curriculum teachers have given an idea that the English lessons are not serious and that, for example, they don’t need to think about the rules that much or that they can simply op out of the activities as they would opt out of a game…I am not sure what it means yet but I know that I need to do something and introduce some changes. More on that later.

Story

We did a lot of storytelling in March. We were practising jobs and that is why we watched an episode of Steve and Maggie and turned it into a role-play. We also read and listened to our first story in verse from our coursebook, Lenny, Jenny and the Jumperoo. The story was quite long but the kids were really involved and with all the illustrations and proper staging, we made it into a good lesson.

And, after the success of the Wocket in the Pocket (which we also read again in a shared reading session), I decided that we are ready for the Green Eggs and Ham. We read it together, properly and it was a lot of fun. Our copy is a collection of five or six Dr Seuss’ stories and once my kids saw the other ones, they immediately made a plan for the next few weeks and the order in which we will read them all. I think we can say that Dr Seuss will be a frequent guest in our lessons!

Socialising

We kept working on our class friendships. We have done a lot of pairwork (surveys with different partners), we have played bamboozle, ‘Tell me’ and Wordwall Quiz, as one big team, collecting the points for our class. We have done a few ball games and we have even tried some Maths multiplication boardgames. The kids also had a chance to cooperate with each other during the treasure hunt activities as they could choose to work in pairs or small teams.

Creativity

Since our February was not the most creative on months, I tried to make up for it in March:

  • we wrote a lot of songs and this way we produced a lot of langauge
  • we read a poem and we wrote our first poem in English
  • one of the topics in March was ‘Inventions’ and we created our own inventions
  • we had a great lesson about Alfonso Pomodoro, a ghost and we used his interview with Miss Viola as a model for our own interviews with characters and we role-played these later.
  • we acted out our versions of the Steve and Maggie conversation from the video

Teacher

It has been a good month. We did our third milestones test in Maths and English and it was just great to see that so many of my students got excellent results. Although, all of them worked hard and I am proud of every single one of them! It is really a pleasure to look at how they work and get better and I even had to write a whole post about it!

A few months ago we started our dear diary project and some of the kids still continue writing and I get so much pleasure from reading them and replying. Especially when they give the notebook to me, then pester me to read it straight away and keep asking whether I have already replied or not and then they get their answer, read it as soon as possible and try to reply within the same day. We ARE communicating!

We have just started division in Maths and we are about to start unit 6 on Dinosaurs in English! Exciting!

Also, I bumped into Santa and managed to get out of him a pile of handwriting erasable notebooks and this is why I could give my kids the most amazing present that, within minutes, they started to use to write, in English and in Russian, to draw, to create stories, to take notes, to calculate Maths…

Happy teaching!

Five ways of encouraging kids to get involved in a task, Maths and more

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So, apart from being a teacher of English, a teacher of Art, a teacher of Science (occasionally), I am also (drum roll) a teacher of Maths, year 1 of primary (or Key Stage 3).

I am aware that perhaps not too many of my readers have Maths on their daily timetable but I decided to share these ideas nonetheless. It is because they are all rooted in the different ways of encouraging children to get involved in the activities that are challenging, tiresome and not always easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.

For myself I simply wanted to leave a note and a record of the things we do, for future reference. On the other hand, I know that all of these activities have a lot of potential for the regular and the beloved ESL, for grammar and vocabulary practice or reading.

Treasure Hunt is a task that I have used many times over the years. It takes some time to prepare and to set it up, especially the first time, but once you do it and once everyone figures out the rules and procedures, it is a great task that my students have always loved and asked for if we stopped doing it for a while. The main idea of the task is that we go around the school, look for all the tasks hidden there and we solve them. Once all of them are completed, everyone returns to the classroom to check the answers. In the past, we used to collect new words, solve crossword puzzles with clues around the school. We used to look for answers to the quiz or instructions how to colour the picture. This year, we use it mostly for Maths, solving different addition, subtraction and multiplication tasks.

Usually, we go out as the whole class but this kind of a treasure hunt can be easily turned into a running dictation, with kids working in pair, one of them running, one – taking notes of the answers. This works especially well with really big groups.

As many as you can: most of my kids are huge fans of Maths and they approach the tasks with mountains of motivation. To be honest, I don’t really understand it, since my brain does not really feel happy around numbers and prefers words, languages and visual arts. But, I can almost risk saying it, my kids’ enthusiasm is infectious, so, in fact, I like teaching Maths.

‘As many as you can’ is one more task type that we do in class. It is super simple, it involves an A4 page of exercises that the kids work on individually. There is only specific rule and that is: everyone is allowed to do as many as they want or can.

I love this task because for the kids, it is an opportunity to approach a task without a lot of pressure and it works very well with a mixed ability group and for me it is an opportunity to see how well each and individual student feels about a particular topic. True, sometimes, the external factors get into the way and the number of exercises is affected by the kids’ mood or the levels of tiredness but, overall, it is a good indicator of how well everyone has learnt and how well they have assimilated the particular topic.

Oh, Petya: Petya is one of our invisible students and having him works very well in ‘find the mistakes and correct them’ tasks which we usually do at the end of the unit. I have already written about him before and you can find the post here.

Jigsaw puzzle is another idea that I have been using in our Maths tasks to encourage the children to go through the task from the beginning until the end. It is very easy to prepare because you basically need a page with the Maths tasks and another colouring picture (in the theme of the month, like Halloween or Easter). The colouring picture is cut up into pieces, into a number that corresponds to the number of tasks and they are put into separate envelopes. As soon as the kids complete one of the tasks, they can come up to the board, open the relevant envelope and take out one jigsaw puzzle. I also like to put the correct answer on the envelope, to give the kids a chance to also check their answers. Once all the exercises are complete, the kids put the jigsaw puzzles into a picture and we glue these into out notebooks. The pictures can be coloured in the end, as an option.

Password, password! is a variation of the previous task – we collect tokens for every exercise completed, only in this case, these are letters that, together, a part of a password. Kids work on their tasks, invidually but they take turns to come to the board to solve a task and to uncover one of the letters. This task works wonders for bonding and building the class community. Just like the colouring page, the password can be adapted in any way that fits the theme of the month, the number of the exercises or the number the kids in the class.

One of the first passwords that we did this year was: ‘We love Maths and we are fantastic!‘ I wrote it on the board, with the numbers for each letter and I used hyphens to break the sentence into words. But it can be anything!

Well, is it something that you could use in your lessons? Please let me know!

Happy teaching!

Yves Klein. Take two. Printing and roller work.

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The man who can’t see the sun

Somehow, in this academic year, in our Art Explorers adventure, the days are filled with some ‘firsts’. Now and then, and more frequently that I would expect it to happen, we bump into something that we have never done before and something that we are trying for the first time and that we are experimenting with. I love it!

This time round, we experienced a mini-series of the same artist over two consecutive lessons. It is not that Monsieur Yves is such an inspiring artist that we simply had to give him a double Art slot. I mean, he is amazing and I am so happy that I have discovered him for myself and for my students but, surely, there have been many Great Artists that, theoretically, at least, should have been granted with that privilege, Malevich, Goncharova, Warhol or Picasso…A simple coincidence, that’s all it was. I got the amazing set of rollers and stamps but only in time for my older group, the younger kids on Mondays missed their chance. Since we had so much fun with the rollers, I simply decided to let everyone help! Then and only then, did it turn out later that Yves Klein himself loved using different tools…What a coincidence!

The Power of four elements

The language

The language stayed the same and we had a lot of time with the spinner and the verbs (you can read about them here) and, to be perfectly honest, the langauge input was kept short on purpose.

The artist

We just got back to the previous class and looked at some of his paintings again and I told the students that, apart from using the beautiful blue and painting with different body parts, Yves also used a variety of different rollers, stamps and other tools and that it is exactly what we would do.

Colourful frame

The art

The room was set up exactly the way we did last week, with the round table in the centre of the U-set of desks and it was basically our palette (have been covered in paper and painter scotched over before). I showed the students all of the tools and how they can be used. Because it was the last lesson in the series, I was also able to look back at the works created before. My special focus was this one, created by one of my older students because it combines pencil drawing, a variety of prints and a great roller work.

After that, we just got down to work and, in one line, it was just amazing.

Kids really enjoyed working with a new tool and experimenting with everything they had to offer. It was a good idea to cover the palette table with paper because it was the first place to try out rollers and stamps. This is also were they were mixing the colours to get new shades and colours. They were very careful and conscious while choosing the tools and combining them with the paints. We were talking about the process, a little bit in English and mostly in L1 and thanks to that I could see how their ideas were taking shape. That was precious. Or so I thought. Until the artists started to come up with the titles for their work. They did all of that in Russian and I helped them translate but hey, look at them, they are amazing…What is more, they were not created instantly. The kids really did put some work into creating them. Some students made a decision and then, upon more consideration, they changed their mind and came up with even a better, more suitable option. I was speechless and I continue to be. Why? Just look at the photos!

A worrying house

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #78 Making our own songs with kids.

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A paintbrush, that took us all by surprise with how beautifully it caught and preserved the paint. We all kept staring at it for a few minutes, in admiration.

I have already written a lot about things to do with songs. Here you can find a post about the steps to take to properly un-sing a song and to make the language your spoken language and another one on creating your own songs for the use in the YL classroom.

Today, I would like to share with you a project that we have been a part of for the past two months and that I am hoping will continue until the end of the academic year: our own month song.

Ingredients

  • a song and a melody that will be used as a model, in my case it was January Song from Sing Play Create.
  • a group of kids and a teacher to manage
  • optionally: an audio of the melody, ours was Frere Jacques, it was easy to find.

Procedures

  • First, a story: Our lessons in December, with my year 1 kids, started with different Christmas songs as we had already abandoned the regular Hello songs somewhere in December. When January arrived, I wanted to devote a part of the lesson to a chat about things that we do in that month. And to introduce that slot, I was looking for a song. I found it and quite easily and it was perfect – short, call and response style and with a relatively simple melody. We sang this song throughout the entire month. Then, February came and I started to look for a song that we could sing. I did not find anything that would work for us, something easy and short, without too many cultural references that are not at this point relevant. I didn’t find anything that I could use. I decided we are going to create our own.
  • In the first lesson of February, I explained to my students the song situation and encouraged them to think about our own song. They made a real effort and we ended up with a song in 1 a and a slightly different song in 1b. I wrote the songs on the board and we photographed the board. Every day, at the beginning of the first lesson, I would take out my phone and start singing for the kids to repeat. Some of the phrases were familiar to kids, the others I helped to translate.
  • We repeated the procedure in March and ended up with two verses in both groups that we sang for a week.
  • The next step was of course the kids’ versions. I did not prepare them for that in any way and on one of the days, I simply asked: Does anyone have an idea for a new song? And they did. Right now we do it every lesson and there are always some kids who are willing to share their ideas.

Why we love it

  • The song is a perfect choice for creative singing (and speaking). It has got a simple melody which we already know very well. The song follows the pattern of call – response so whatever idea the leader comes up with, the group responds, by simply repeating the line.
  • The lines are short, easy to create and to repeat even for beginner children. It is an advantage, too that the verses of the song follow two patters: either a simple phrase or a short sentence so pretty much anything can be used. Some of the verses we created were like that: ‘March, March’ (only two words repeated), ‘Make snowmen’ (an imperative), ‘Birds and bees are flying’ (present continuous), ‘Flowers grow’ (present simple), ‘We are very tired’ (personalised sentences with the verb to be).
  • Some of my kids have an idea but they don’t have the language and that works, too. They sing the first line, in Russian, and I respond with the equivalent in English. It also helps with some verses that are not appropriate but are, at the same time, a result of my students experimenting with the language. We have had a few cases of a line like that appearing as a call and me replying with ‘La la la’ or with ‘Sasha is not singing’, to signal that some things are not be accepted.
  • Kids love this part of the lesson and, on a typical day, we have about 4 or 5 verses, sometimes more, sometimes fewer. Some of the kids sing the verses, some prefer to say them already and it all works.
  • I am just overjoyed because they are producing the langauge and in this previous week, we have seen an interesting new trend or even two. Some kids (following my example) started to create songs about how they feel on the day (‘March, March. Sunny day. I am very happy. But I want to sleep’) which is their extended and musical answer to ‘How do you feel today?’. Some children sang a song about their favourite month (usually related to their birthday). We had also a few crazy versions of snow in July and another Christmas in the summer. One way or another – lots and lots of language creativity.
  • Another thing that makes me really happy is that this creative activity appeals not only to my stronger students but also to some of my struggling students and, in general, is great for mixed ability groups. It is easy to create your song, for example by changing one or two words in the verses that your teacher or friend sang. That’s easy to do. Plus, all students are creative, even my beginner beginners. They have an idea and they want to share and since some of the ideas are shared every day, they stay. My student Sasha came up with the idea of a sick rainbow two weeks ago and now he remembers himself and encourages us to sing ‘The rainbow is sick’. We do.
  • Last but not least, this is our little tradition, our routine, something that we do as a community. And that makes it precious, too!

I am quite curious what is going to happen to this project in April and in May. It is already good and exciting and worthy of sharing but who knows what else is there for us…I will definitely be writing about it in the future!

Happy teaching!

Guess what happened at work? Or the things that YL teachers live for.

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A suggestion from a student that we should add a ‘Danny Go!’ song to our lesson, written by my student, in his first year of learning English.

Time to admit it, we are a strange breed!

First of all, our work stories are not really glamorous. There are no celebrities in them, no events that make the news, no interesting places and no brand names. Speaking from experience here, in comparison with the copywriters, marketing experts, nurses and doctors, engineers and accountants in my life who also come back home and share theirs. What teachers bring from school are the tales of behaviour issues, funny quotes, developmental stories, getting things right and getting things wrong.

And then even as teachers…a while ago, I met a friend whom I hadn’t seen for a while and we were catching up on life and work and all things related. I shared my adventures and my recent and relatively short-lived (thank heavens) period of revisiting adult EFL. My friend was at the same time in awe and taken aback. ‘In awe’ happened because this year added a nice few pretty-looking lines to my resume as the weight that would come with the names of international banks and IT companies or with the noble and serious sectors of the high levels, Business or Financial English. ‘Taken aback’ came about as a result of my attitude, a tired ‘Yeah, whatever’ that turned into bored or openly dismissive as the conversation went on. Apparently, I should have been very excited and proud.

It is not that I did not enjoy these lessons or that I did not do a good job or that I was not grateful for the enthusiasm with which my students came to class. I did and very much so (you can read it about here) but that was nothing special, just the everyday.

Take baking, for example. If you bake and if you have been baking for some time, a batch of cookies or a batch of brownie is not a holiday, it is a must. It doesn’t mean that you will eat delicious cookies every single time, things go wrong, of course, but more often than not, if you take out your flour, soda, sugar and chocolate out, you can expect that at the end of the road, there will be good cookies. You have this experience, nothing to celebrate and nothing to write home about.

Same with teaching. After all these years, putting together a good lesson for an exam class or for a C1 group is kind of a must, not a special event. And yes, the respectable clients add a layer of fine veneer to the whole experience or, if we are to go on with the baking metaphor, a layer of icing but that’s it. And, really, students are just students and everyone deserves a good lesson, a top-notch businessman, an bank CEO or a five-year old boy.

That is why there is no special pride or excitement. It is a job well done. Still, it is only a job.

Teaching kids is not only a job.

It is also a job but it is not only that. It cannot be only a job when you are not only teaching your subject, whatever it is, but you are also taking part in bringing up the little human and helping them to understand the world, to learn how to function in it and how to interact with the rest of it that is not you. It cannot be ‘only a job’ when you are surrounded by the stories of these lives, the joys and the dramas and when whatever you are planning to do in class might be affected by everything that happened out of the lesson time and that simply because the little people cannot yet disassociate. It is not only a job when you get to sing and jump to the songs or to get your own hands dirty practising for the art classes.

The things that make me gasp, the things that make me get excited.

  • My kids doing a pair-work activity: it can be a very simple activity, just a ‘guess my flashcard’ game that involves nothing but reciting all the words from the set, until you get the right now. All the exciting elements, like asking a full question, taking notes of the answers or repeating the activity with a new partner, they come later. But to see them work on their own, keeping the conversation going and moving from point A to point B of the activity, this is precious. Introducing it is a process, it does not just happen, it does not happen overnight and introducing it takes time, a few lessons, weeks or months, depending on the child’s age. But it is possible and it is beautiful. When it finally happens, it is yours and can be used forever and ever. Here you can find a post about my experiment and a controlled and conscious way of introducing pairwork with my pre-school group. A successful one, too!
  • My kids creating their own songs and producing the language because of a song: I realised (and not such a long time ago) that I introduce some songs only because they contain a pretty chunk of the language, hoping that soon (or even sooner), these structures will become a part of what we can say. A good example here can be ‘What’s your favourite colour?’ by Super Simple Song. It is my favourite colour song, not because it is the easiest (that would be just ‘I can sing a rainbow‘, because that is, mostly, just a list of the words, ideal for a beginner group) but because it includes a very good question ‘What’s your favourite?’ and a very good answer ‘I like’ which, when mastered, can be used with any topic. I love singing and my kids love singing (not everyone loves the same songs, of course) and I say that right now, six months into the course, singing and creating our songs based on what we have sung already is one of our favourite activities. Right now, we have a habit of creating a song for the month and many version of it and we also love creating our own versions of all the other songs we sing. Here you can find a post from four years ago about un-singing the song. We still do it!
  • My kids beginning to do their task truly independently: What I mean by that is the shift and the huge stepping stone from doing a task, in the coursebook, workbook or any handout, step by step, led by the teacher, not copying the teacher’s answers but taking the exercise or the task in small bites, moving on together as a group of individuals, waiting for everyone to a situation when the teacher sets the task and everyone does it at their own pace and in their own way, choosing for example parts of the exercise that they deal with. It is always a big day for me and it is a sign that kids are becoming more independent learners. The expert is right next to them but they don’t need the support that much. Why? Because their zone of proximal development has expanded a little bit! Hooray!
  • My kids making decisions: I cannot tell you how many times, in this academic year, I have used the phrase: ‘It is your decision’ in response to anything that my students did, said or asked, as regards their English, Maths or Art lessons or any actions in class or during the breaks. I actually started to wonder if they know the phrase or if they can produce it as I always use English and Russian when we talk about it…It is necessary to include opportunities to make decisions but it is also necessary to develop the awareness of the fact that some things belong in the category ‘we do it, I cannot opt out’, such as tests. It is an interesting process and I am getting a lot of joy out of it. And pride.
  • My kids improving their literacy skills: The literacy skills and their development are probably the greatest challenge of the first year of English in primary but at the same time, they are the source of the greatest joy, passion, hype, reward and happiness. Firstly, because it is a long-term process and you can enjoy bits and pieces of it throughout the entire year, every single lesson and in many different variations: blending and segmenting, writing your own name in English, checking out our alphabet poster for reference, shared reading, looking at the materials and reading things themselves, just before they saw them, not because we were actually doing it, applying the phonemic awareness that they already have, choosing to write anything in English, especially when not induced by the lesson and the teacher and so on and so forth…Or, because they are able to, they proceed with the task independently (see point 3).

The life outside of the classroom

You can easily imagine that all these stories would not be enjoyed as much by anyone who is not a teacher. I am visualising me coming back home, meeting friends or getting in touch with my brother and sharing the story from this week:

‘Guess what happened today in class? Sasha wanted us to sing ‘Danny Go!’ in class and he asked to add it to the lesson plan. And he wrote it himself, almost 100% correctly! Look at the photo! (see: above). He only started to learn English with us in September! And now he writes all two words and I only help him letters, he writes them from memory!’

I think it is fair to say that the response would be, most likely, a polite smile or a nod, or, if the people are used to these kind of stories, maybe even a funny meme. Only a fellow YL teacher would appreciate it more. Or the readers on the blog, perhaps. It is all good. These are the stories that I bring from work.

What about you? What are the things that make you happy in the classroom? Please share in the comments!

Happy teaching!

Yves Klein and we don’t want one colour!

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The language

Bearing in mind the artist and his approach to painting, I decided to choose the body as the focus for this lesson (and probably for the few lessons to come, too, although this still needs to be confirmed). For that reason, we have introduced and revised the body parts using the wordwall cards and then we played one of my favourite movement games: Shake your nose! It can be played with a dice and a list of six verbs or with an online spinner. The teacher needs to introduce and demonstrate the verbs. Afterwards, they spin the wheel, read the verb and choose the body part to perform the action. Naturally, the kids take over as soon as they are ready and ask the whole class to perform the silly actions: shake your nose, clap your feet, move your mouth and what not. Of course, everyone’s favourite is ‘freeze’:-)

‘Rabbit’

The artist

I have found Yves Klein only recently, while looking for something else entirely, and when I did, I was surprised, taken aback and mesmerized, all at the same time. Mesmerized – because he is just amazing, surprised – because I had never heard of him and taken aback – because Yves could be (or could have been) the inspiration for one of my favourite sci-fi characters from Alistair Reynolds’ Zima Blue. And I did NOT know that…

Anyway, Yves was introduced with this one photograph because it encapsulate everything we need to know about him, his favourite method and his favourite colour, all at once. We looked at a few examples of what Yves Klein created and we also talked about anthropometry but, because of the age of my students, we limited that to ‘painting with different body parts’ and ‘painting with things’. We did not look at any of the performances. That was enough to spark an interest and they kept asking questions, trying to imagine what the process would look like.

The kids got really interested in the blue rectangle and started to compare it with Malevich’s black square (I taught them well). Sasha, who wildly fights the idea of copying (which I am trying to convince her to think of as ‘inspiration’) asked: ‘Who was first, this Klein or Malevich?’. ‘Malevich’, I said. She rolled her eyes and commented ‘Plagiarism!’…

10 Things to Know about Yves Klein – Artsper Magazine
10 Things to Know about Yves Klein – Artsper Magazine

The art

Initially, the task looked very simple: try to become Yves, for one lesson and to prepare a monochrome picture, using only hands and fingers but all that started to change in the classroom, because I decided to read the room and adjust.

The classroom set-up needed a small adjustment in order to faciliate work. Our tables stand in one big U, with a lot of room in the centre. I brought an IKEA kids table, covered it with paper and decided that that would be our pallete, with four sections for the colours and for more room for mixing the colours. The kids were told to move withing the U, going from the round table to their work stations. This worked very well. We could use one set of paints, everyone was on the move and since the table was in the centre, the kids pretty much avoided bumping into each other and invading each other’s space. We had tissues on the ready but they were also allowed to go out to the nearby bathroom to wash the hands when necessary. We used the aprons to protect the clothes.

‘Different colours’

The younger kids were working only with their hands because it was only later that I bought a set of kiddies sponge rollers and stamps. I brought them to my Wednesday lesson, for the older students and these had a much wider scope of an opportunity to become Yves for a day, who also used a variety of rollers in his work.

One thing that I did not take into consideration (silly teacher!) was the fact that a new material in the classroom will have its own implications. First of all, my students really got excited about trying out what can be done with finger paints and with rollers and stamps. It is perfectly natural, you get a new toy, you want to play with it and see what it can do. Showing a new tool and setting boundaries in the way it is used is just unreasonable! That’s what I learnt last week.

‘Fox’

The other, related, thing is that I found sets of finger paints of only four colours, they had amazing shades. Blue was the most beautiful baby blue, green was more emerald than just simple green and the red one was something between ruby and light brick and they all looked very tempting. When I took the colours, a few students asked the same question, both in the younger and the older group: ‘Do we have to use only one colour?’ and they were so sad about it, that I really did not have the guts in me to go monochrome. I said that monochrome was recommended but that they could use whatever they wanted. The funny thing is that the kids did like the shade of the Klein’s blue and the whole approach to painting but, when it came to their own creations, they still wanted to be able to use all of them.

The lesson was a success (unless you want to consider the abandoning of the monochrome as a distaster, which I don’t). The kids got really involved into their interaction with the new tool and the new technique and it was great to see how they were experimenting and making their decisions as regards the task interpretation.

‘Without a title’

In the younger group, the students decided to ‘simply’ paint using fingers and hands, some used prints trying to compose a painting out of them. Many of my kids focused on experimenting with mixing the colours and interpreting the outcomes. The older students were more decisive regarding the topic of their paintings, once again depicting their favourite theme, a goose, a rabbit and a fox, in a new way. In both groups, many students created more than one picture because once we started, the ideas came flowing (here you will find another post, when we played with the younger group with all the stamps).

I used the finger paints but in a more limited capacity, only to write letters or to use dots, this was the first, fully-fledged lesson and I have to say – I loved the material. Not only does it wash easily, it is is very liquidy and flowing so it can be used in many ways. It is also perfect for printing as it dries very quickly and it can be combined with drawings or stickers and collage within the same lesson. Lots of potential there and we will definitely be coming back.

‘Goose’

There is a little post scriptum to this post here! Don’t forget to check it out!

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #77 Steve and Maggie, from a video to a game!

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Ingredients

  • a series of lessons on professions for the primary school kids
  • a video from the Steve and Maggie channel
  • a set of cards or flashcards with different jobs

Procedures

  • Before we got to watch the video and to play the game, we went through a series of 4 lessons that were devoted to professions. During these lessons we inlcuded activities such as: introducing the vocabulary, matching the jobs with different accessories, miming the jobs, separate words and sentences in Present Continuous (‘A teacher is jumping in the toilet’), categorising the jobs and interviewing each other (‘Do you want to be a teacher?’), talking about what we want to be and don’t want to be, introducing a song, and even starting a project about one Alfonso Pomodoro (more on that later).
  • In order to make sure that we have some variety of resources and approaches, I also introduced a video from Steve and Maggie. I used it before because it is a nice story that includes a few jobs and some ideas why they are good or bad or easy or difficult and it can serve as a background for a whole range of activities.
  • This time round (and for the first time, too), I decided to use the video as a framework for a role-play. I wrote the mini-script on the board with ‘a Steve’ (‘I don’t want to be a teacher’, ‘Look, I am a doctor. I can…’ ‘I don’t want to be a doctor!’) and ‘a Maggie’ (‘OK. Abracadabra!’ and ‘5 minutes later’) and we read it together.
  • It was the first time we did any sort of a role-play with my students in year 1 and that is why I decided to do it as a whole class, with two students being involved at a time. I had only 5 students on the day and that is why it was possible. I modelled the game first and then the students were joining the pair of actors. Kids took out cards from the pile, at random, and acted based on that.
  • Each round involved two students and they had a go at three jobs with ‘Steve’ getting bored with all three jobs and deciding what he (or she) wants to be in the end. I have a mixed ability group but the stronger students could actually come up with some things that a profession can do as well as with a problem that would put them off. Some kids focused only on choosing the jobs and limiting themselves to ‘I don’t want to be a doctor. It is difficult!’

Why we like it

  • The game worked well. Even in its minimal version, it gave us an opportunity to practise the key phrases, ‘I want to be a teacher’ and ‘I don’t want to be a teacher’ as well as the jobs, both in speaking and reading.
  • The video created a great, easy-to-follow framework for our game and it was not necessary to create the context, the story did it for us.
  • It worked well in a mixed ability group because we could extend and minimise the amount of language
  • It was done as a whole class activity, with only two kids involved at a time but I am hoping that in the future we will be able to repeat it, in pairs or small teams.
  • It gave the kids an opportunity to be creative, not only while talking about why certains jobs and good or complicated but in choosing what they want to be in the end (‘I want to be a blogger’ or ‘I want to be a girl’ or ‘I want to be a student!’). One of my students also decided to use the card three times in three different rounds becuase ‘I want to be a judge!’.
  • We had fun and the element of surprise kept the kids in the audience interested. We laughed a lot!

Happy teaching!

Monochrome March: White on black! Teaching English through Art

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I have been carrying this idea with me and in me for a very long time. I am a huge fan of black and white and I knew it would be something that I would love to do. I was just waiting for the appropriate time. Our February was dedicated to Fruit and that is partly why, on approaching the month of March, I thought that, yes, following the good principles of alliteration, we are going to have a Monochrome March.

I am developing as an Art teacher, too (well, hopefully) so for the past three months, I have been doing my montly lesson planning, choosing the artists and materials/ techniques to cover. The teacher trainer in me is happy, nodding with approval. That works. Our monochrome series will have four episodes. This one is actually the second one.

The language

As regards the language, I decided that in the month of March, we are not going to focus on any specific vocabulary topic, but, instead, we are going to develop different ways of expressing opinion. With the younger group, that meant learning and practising the set of basic adjectives to express opinion (It’s a good / very good / bad / very bad / crazy / interesting / boring / fantastic / terrible) idea. I have chosen these particular ones to echo the phrases we used with my year 1 kids in our English lessons. I am hoping that they will benefit from that additional practice opportunity and that my pre-schoolers in the Art group will pick up on some of them. These are also the phrases that we will be able to use during other lessons, of course.

The artists

Yes! This week we were visited by a whole big group of artists including Malevich, Goncharova, Picasso, Georgia O’Keeffe and Victor Vassarely or, in other words, some of those who created some paintings in black and white, some of whom we already met before.

This stage was pretty straightforward – we looked at the paintings and shared our opinions. This stage was also relatively short because I wanted to save enough time for the creative part.

The art

This was the most important part of the lesson since we were to interact and to create with a new resource and a new technique.

First of all, I showed the students the resources: black paper for sketching, white pencils, chalk markers and blending stump pencils. I also demonstrated how to use them.

Afterwards, we did something for the first time in our class – I gave out the drawing materials and a small piece of the paper and I asked the kids just to play with them, to see how they work, how they draw, how much pressure you need to apply, how easily it smuges and so on, just to get the feel of the new tool.

Only then did I announce the topic of the drawing and that was: Draw what you want! My students were a little bit surprised and a little bit overwhelmed by that approach so that was something interesting to see and, definitely, something to reflect on. After a while, however, they took to work. I showed them what I created, a heart on the background of different patterns, and I explained that this was my choice just because I wanted to play with the tool and to experiment with how it works. I also demonstrated a slide with some patterns that they might use but I highlighted that they could really do whatever they wanted.

And what did they want? My older students chose to draw their favourite things so we got the white-on-black eddition of the rabbit, the goose, the cats, the still life and they were more creative with the experiments and trying out different options that the chalk pencils and markers offered. They were very excited with the shading options and the glow they managed to create. They chatted (in English) about the outcomes. Some of the pieces were not finished but, I suppose, it is something to take into consideration and to accept, especially with all the new techniques.

My younger were also creative but their creativity went in the direction of creating plot and background for their pictures. Many of them drew a bunch of monochromatic figures, which can be traced to a heart and I am still wondering if they were inspired by the heart that I brought. What is even more important is that they told me of everything that their pictures stood for and these were real stories! Yes, they were told in kids’ L1 as there is not enough language yet but they were such rich plots! Just look at the cowboys attacking the city or the hearts arriving to defend another group of heroes!

Many of the students created more than just one picture and it was lovely to see how their imagination was taking off, with every next picture bouncing ideas off the previous one. I really did think I would run out of paper!

All in all, I am very happy with the lesson. The new resource and the new technique worked well and we will definitely go back to it one day. The experimentation stage worked well and it helped us understand the basics of the resource. It was also interesting to see that the size of the paper also had an impact on the drawing. Some of the A6 pictures are just precious and this inspired me to look into this part of the process more. A lesson on the impact of the space, working with A3 and A6 at the same time? Well, it is a fresh idea, it needs to bubble for some time on the back burner of the brain.

As regards the language, it was not the most productive of our classes but it was a beautiful opportunity for the kids to express themselves artistically. I am just wondering if I can use them to tell stories in the other classes. They are so rich, so beautiful that it would be a shame not to! I am thinking.

Happy teaching!

Setting up the routine. Six months into the course

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It has already happened! A few days ago, in the middle of a lesson, I suddenly realised that we are closer to the end of the game called the academic year and that one is now allowed to rejoice (‘Hurray! Almost there!’) and to panic a tiny little bit (‘Oh, my, do we even have enough time to finish everything?’), too.

The month of February has finished and it is the time to reflect on everything that is going on in the classroom. Please don’t forget to check the previous episodes in the series here.

Starting the lesson

This is the part of the lesson that is always the same: we say hello, we talk about how we are and we introduce the new students aka all the new toys that the kids have brought to school that day. The toys are usually well-behaved and they also want to share how they feel (= more production). After the longer weekends or the term-break we have also added another extension to share what we did. For that we use a few of the past verb forms that we know (I went, I ate, I saw, I liked, I didn’t) and we share our ideas.

The interesting thing is that on some days the kids also asked to repeat this stage of the lesson after the lunch break and it happened twice on rather difficult and emotional days. Somehow, everyone wanted to share how miserable and sad and tired they were. We did and I would like to think that calling out those emotions and validating them helped everyone a tiny little bit.

Songs

We still continue to sing As quiet as a mouse and What do you like to do? but our favourite thing about them is not the songs themselves but our variations and ideas. I absolutely love that they take so much pleasure in being creative and some verses are simply precious (‘I am as hungry as a dragon. Miss Anka, you’d better run away’) and even my not-so-strong and not-so-brave students take part.

I wanted to have a replacement for the January song but because I simply did not find anything interesting and fitting, we just wrote out own songs, with both my groups. We used the melody of Frere Jacques and with the help of the kids, we put the four verses together (‘February (x2). Make snowmen (x2). Spring is coming soon (x2) And holidays! (x2)’) and it quickly turned out that we have more ideas than we could fit in one verse so after singing the first part, we started to come up with more and more. This was easy, especially that the song follows the pattern of call and answer so it was very easy for the kids to lead it, too. We have even recorded a video for the parents.

Oh, I almost forgot, there is also Mr Jack Hartman who helps us practice multiplication tables (and here you can find a recent post on the songs that I use to get the kids to move)

Rules and classroom language

No major changes here and, guess what, walking around the room, is still the biggest vice and challenge and, surprise, surprise, we are still working on getting our 10th star. Two months in and we are still trying.

Story

February was a great month for storytelling. First of all, we had a story in our coursebook, about the Fox, the Mouse and the Rattlesnake. a traditional story. The kids really liked it and we had a great lesson.

We also did Dr Seuss ‘There is wocket in my pocket’ which my kids helped to read. I caught them red-handed a few times later on, as they took my copy off the trolley and went on to read themselves during the break. We also did a great story ‘Impossible‘ by Tracey Corderoy and Tony Neal.I did adapt the story a bit but I loved the message and the fact that the story gave us a chance to practise reacting to different ideas with ‘It’s impossible!’ and ‘Let’s try!’. It is also a great story to practise the words related to the natural world.

Then, there was also Norman, the Slug with no shell by Sue Hendra! I have almost forgotten about him!

February was also the month of the term break and that, for some of our students, meant a week of emotions which we did through storytelling. Here I am sharing some of the ideas from this week.

Socialising

February was a bumpy month. On the one hand, we had a few birthday parties and it was lovely for the kids to celebrate together, to eat together and to socialise. On the other hand, somehow, there have been different issues related to being friends, respecting or not respecting classmates, getting upset about little things, liking and not liking people.

Because of that we had a few ‘conversations’ which I led in the L1 in which everyone took part, shared ideas and we tried to arrive at some conclusions. We have also been doing a lot of pairwork with different partners. Pairing up did not always go smoothly (see the issues above) so that is why I announced that partners in round 1 and 2 are asigned by the teacher and in the final round everyone would be able to work with their best friend. That seemed to help a little bit. We have also done a few activities in which the whole class was cooperating such as a drawing running dictation and even a round of bamboozle which we played with points in a less competitive way, with the whole class collecting the points (and with some of the power-ups switched off). That worked, even with my Sasha who has zero immunity to anything mildly resembling a competition. I was really proud of them.

The other group also managed to play a few rounds of noughts and crosses and it went very well, apart from one minor meltdown which was not quite due to the game itself but due to a mistake that occurred in one of the teams). I was really happy because we managed to practise reading the key vocabulary and I will be able to use the game in the future, too. At least with one of the groups.

Creativity

Looking back, it seems that our February was not very creating, on the whole but we did some things:

  • we wrote a lot of songs and this way we produced a lot of langauge,
  • every camp lesson and our Art Explorers was pure creation
  • we made St Valentine’s Day cards
  • in February we had another lesson of running drawing dictation and we created beautiful pictures in our notebooks based on the notes-directions that we found around the school
  • our Norman lesson was followed up by a creative activity, making a poster with more ideas for shells for Norman

All in all, however, I am not happy with how little we did to express ourselves. A mental note taken, I (and we!) will be catching up on that in March!

Teacher

My favourite teaching memories from the month of February will definitely include everything related to storytelling. All of these were memorable lessons and I was happy that my students were so involved. A series of the most precious moments, no doubt! I also really liked (and still do) our song creations and that’s because my little students are producing the target language, they are having fun and, they are snowballing while doing that, reaching into their vocabulary like into pockets full of treasures, to pick out some gems. And the songs they make up are funny so we laugh a lot!

Apart from that, although February / March is still too early for such grandiose comments, I can see the progress my kids have made since September. Last week, I prepared an activity, a simple reading and writing task of four pieces and I was planning to do it step-by-step, led and guided by the teacher. That turned out to be completely unnecessary. The kids started and just went on, each at their own pace and order. I was walking around the room, monitoring and trying not to show how touched and proud I was. They were just reading and writing, something that was not possible a month ago. Another beautiful moment in a teacher’s life.

Happy teaching!