Two weeks ago I was invited to present at the monthly meeting of the Teacher – Mentor Learning Community which was founded by Anna Kashcheeva who, over the years, has been my fellow teacher, ADOS, trainer, my trainee and my trainer and supervisor. Oh, what a lovely list))
I prepared a session on laziness, one of my professional passions. The session went well, the audience were amazing and I got a lot of positive feedback. We were not recording but the presentation was followed up by a post on the community’s blog and you can find it here. Once you get there, don’t forget to have a look at all the other posts and materials.
It is actually funny that this particular post makes an appearance as only the third one in the series, although it should definitely be the Number One as I do it with my youngest students and with the lowest levels. That is the Beginning of Discourse.
Ingredients
A set of cards with some opinions or statements. These are some of those that I put together for this exercise: 4 Magic words (used with my A2 primary kids), I can speak (prepared for my A2+ juniors) or just a set of topics (used with my B2 teens and adults).
With my offline groups we also use a dice with a linker assigned to each number (i.e. 1 = but, 2 = because, 3 = for example, 4 = and, 5 = so, 6 = or)
A model sentence for presentation, i.e. It is raining.
Procedure
Presentation starts with the model sentence on the board or on the screen and the teacher introducing different linkers with different follow-up sentences, for instance ‘It is raining…’ ‘…because it is November’, ‘…but I am going to the park’, ‘…so I am not going to the park’, ‘…and it is cold’ and so on, for the kids to understand the meaning of the linkers and the differences between them. Depending on the age, the number of linkers can be limited to the most basic ones i.e. because, and, but. The others will be added later.
Controlled practice: kids try to come up with their onw follow-up ideas, still working with the same model sentence and different linkers. This is done together, as a whole class, for the teacher to be able to monitor closely.
A slightly freer controlled practice activity can go towards students using a selection of other simple sentences.
Freer practice is the first activity that is done in pairs or small groups. If this is an online class, one of the students opens the cards, reads one of the sentences. The other student chooses the linker to use and only then the first student continues the sentence. Afterwards they swap. If this is an offline class, the kids work with pairs and with a pile of cards with these sentences and they use the dice to decide which linker to use. The dice is also an opportunity to award points as the number is not only the linker they should use but also the number of points they get in this round.
Why we like it
It is definitely one of the activities (or topics) that, for me, personally, are the breakthrough and the first step in the transition from the baby English, pre-A and A1 level towards more linguistic freedom and fluency. Instead of ‘I like apples’, we get ‘I like apples because they are yummy’ or ‘I like apples but I don’t like pears’ or, even the simplest ‘I like apples and bananas’.
First of all, it leads to more production since the students are producing two sentences instead of one in the form of a complex sentence and they get more power as regards the profile and the angle of the message. It is not only ‘I like apples’ and it can develop this into ‘I like apples but only fruit. I don’t like the apple pie or the juice’, ‘I like apples so I buy them every week’, ‘I like apples but I didn’t like them when I was a child’ and ‘I like apples but my brother likes watermelon’ taking the entire conversation towards providing details, comparing the present and the past or including other subjects in it.
Naturally, sometimes these basic and more complex linkers are included in the coursebooks and they do include great practice activities. However, I like to introduce it early in the game, when the students are ready, regardless of the curriculum. This set of activities allows for a lot of flexibility and it is easy to use with a variety of levels, age groups and topics.
I have started including all the key words in the name of the activity for the sake of my online kids working in the breakout rooms, only partially supervised. When we practice in the common room, I leave the key words on the side of the screen or in the chat, for the kids to remember. It is a little bit more challenging in the breakout rooms. But, with the key words in the name, the kids can still see it even in the breakout room. The teacher only need to work a bit on developing the habit on remembering about them and on paying attention to them.
The student or the dice making decisions about the linking word to use makes it a bit more challenging but also a bit more fun. It is also a guarantee that a wider range of linkers will be used, rather than ‘but’ or ‘and’ in every single round.
The main sentence can be further extended if we ask students to produce not one but two or three sentences or if the other student is required to comment on what they have heard.
This is one more of those activities that is not ‘a real grammar / vocabulary topic’ that is introduced in the coursebook with all the follow-up activities. It is not. It is closer to an activitiy that helps to broaden the horizons and let the students look in a slightly different way at the language they are producing while speaking. It is not only a set of words that you blurt out because you understand the question that was asked and that you have an opinion you want to share. Instead, you take a moment (a very, very short one), one breath and organise the words that are the come out. One of the activities has already been published here on the blog, about One-minute essays. This is the second one in this mini-series.
Ingredients
A list of sentence adverbs
A story to create a context, any story will do. Once I used the short Alternative Math, once I used the stories of Tom Denniss and Helen Skelton. Once I simply referred to Harry Potter. It can also be any text or any listening that is included in the coursebooks.
Some practice exercises or simply, things to talk about. I normally use either these wordwall cards What would you rather do? or a set of opinions that I use in a variety of different activities.
Procedures
Introduce the idea: I normally use a set of sentences, related to the topic, i.e. Harry went to Hogwarts, Harry grew up in the house of his uncle Vernon, Harry was given the Marauders’ Map. Afterwards we add to these a few different sentence adverbs and we discuss how it changes the meaning of the sentence and how much more of weight they add to the original sentence. ‘Harry grew up in the house of his uncle Vernon’ is just a simple sentence, without any emotional gravity but once we start adding the adverbs, each of these sentence becomes a story, for example ‘Sadly, Harry grew up in the house of his uncle Vernon’ or ‘Fortunately, Harry grew up in the house of his uncle Vernon’ which can lead to a discussion on why Dumbledore made this kind of a decision.
We practise in the same way with all the other model sentences.
Practice activity number 1: a freer discussion, in pairs or in teams, about the context of the story in which students try to make their own sentences, with the sentence adverbs of their choice.
Practice activity number 2: a follow-up exercise. In the What would you rather do in which the students choose their own option, they provide justification for it and do a lot of speaking. However, it is necessary to start their discourse with the sentence adverb of their choice.
Later on, in all the other lessons, the students are encouraged to use these whenever appripriate and, hopefully, in a more natural way.
Why we like it
This whole idea and the series started in my teenage classroom (of course!) but I have also smuggled it into my lessons with adults. Successfully smuggled, it had to be added. It is probably more necessary with the exam classes but it can (and it should) be used in the general English classes.
Regarding the levels, as usual, I am experimenting on my teens who are now in their B2 but I have also been using it with my A2+ onwards students, even with some of my C1 adults who have been struggling with the spoken discourse organisation.
It worked well in class on the day but I have also noticed a long-term impact, like with the other activities of this kind. It has worked as a switch in the way of thinking. And now, when we are starting some other activities, in regular lessons or before the progress tests or exams, it only takes a quick reminder that these tools we already have at our disposal.
It was great to see how the students’ contributions became more beautiful and better organised. It was also great to see the change in their attitude and how, with this little and silly exercise, they becamore more aware of the opportunities that this particular tool gives them. They have become more aware and more powerful speakers. They have become more organised speakers.
A set of topics. We have used a set of wordwall cards. You can find them here.
A timer, more or less formal and strict, depending on the group.
Students divided into pairs.
A list of the linking words typical for an essay, more or less extensive, depending on the group
Procedures
Teacher presents the framework of the one minute spoken essay and the four stages: introduction, arguments to support one side, arguments to support the other side, conclusion as well as the introductory phrases. The basic set of these included: Nowadays, On the one hand, On the other hand, All in all
Teacher models the activity: chosing the topic, expressing opinion following the framework and using the key structures. Students time the teacher and signal when 1 minute is up. Afterwords they react with their opinion.
Students go into the breakout rooms and continue in the same way.
Why we like it
I used this activity first with my teens, as part of the preparation for the essay writing, the first serious essay ever. I wanted them to practise expressing their opinion in a certain format and I wanted to encourage them to use a variety of appropriate cohesive devices which were introduced in the coursebook. It was a much more extensive list than the one provided here.
Later on, I used it also with my adult groups as a an opportunity and a tool to work on shaping the discourse, at this point – without the follow-up of the written essay.
The activity is generative as student A has a chance to produce a mini discourse and communicative as student B also has a chance to react and to provide additional arguments to support their partner’s ideas or disagree with them.
The main aim of the activity is the development of the speaking skills but the students are also required to listen, in order to be able to contribute their arguments in the follow-up stage. I am hoping that, in the long run, it will lead to students managing their spoken contributions much more effectively.
It is a very flexible activity. It can be used as a warmer or as an end-of-class activity. It can be also extended into a proper activity. The length of each discourse can be kept at one minute or it can be extended to two or three minutes. The topics can be varied, as in the set above, or they can be associated with one specific topic and it can be used as an opportunity to generate ideas for the essay that the students will be writing later on.
Here you can find one of similar discourse development tricks.
I found the photograph first but then it turned out that it is a whole post with a video tutorial, too. Have a look at the Art Projects for Kids! Which, by the way, is a cool website that I will be visiting in the future!
The language
This is the second module of our course and I decided that I need to start introducing some of the natural world vocabulary, in order to be a little bit better prepared to talk about the artists to come. The first introductory set is rather modest and it includes: the sky, the grass, trees, mountains, houses, the river, flowers and leaves. We have also used this module as an opportunity to revise colours and numbers and to introduce the first two adjectives (big and small). Finally, we started to talk about what ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’.
The artist
Our artist of the day who introduced all of that to us was Isaac Illich Levitan, the love of my childhood and my first artist ever. The album of his works is one of the very few books that I remember from my early childhood (apart from the storybooks, of course). It was there, on the shelf and I did spend hours on the carpet, leafing through it, back and forth, making up stories taking place among the birch trees, by the river, in the forests and in some ‘Sokolniki park’ which I found out about long before I set my foot in it. This, by the way, was also one of my first encounters with the foreing languages as the book was in Russian, English, French and German and these were my first exercises in comparative linguistics. At the age of 5 and 6.
Leviatan’s was what you might call a cameo appearance because I did not want to overwhelm the kids. We looked at the four seasons, looked for the new words in the paintings (‘Can you see a house?) and talked about the colours. We also started to sing ‘What’s your favourite season?’. Not a lot, but Isaac is definitely coming back, with the arrival of the winter and then the spring and the summer. With him, there will be Vivaldi, which would have been a perfect companion but I simply forgot about his existence. I am already looking forward to our winter-themed lessons.
Levitan in our ‘gallery’
The craft
try to make the leaf at home to figure out how complex it might be and how much time we will require, think about the stages
use the leaves throughout the lesson ie while revising colours and numbers or practising ‘I like / I don’t like’
check that the kids have all the materials necessary: a piece of paper, crayons, watercolours and water
draw the outline of the leaf veins, and patterns with crayons. It is ok to use the same colour but the final product is more interesting if different colours are used. I was considering introducing different patterns to make it more structured but, in the end, decided not to. We will introduce them on some other occasion, with Kandinsky, for example. If possible, I would use special paper for watercolours but in the online world it is not quite possible. Regular photocopying paper works well, too.
colour the leaf with the watercolours. It might be a good idea to start with the brighter colours and, for the sake of staging, ‘dictate’ which colour to use, leaving the kids a decision which section of the leaf to colour. The lines drawn with crayons will not be covered by the paint and they will be still visible and it is not really necessary to be too careful with painting. Not staying within the lines or even letting the colours seep or even leak into each other create a much more interesting effect. I haven’t really encouraged my kids to create a very ‘messy-on-purpose’ picture (not yet, anyway) but I am very reckless with how I use my paints, to show the kids that it’s ok.
finish with showing the leaves, call out the colours, talk about whose leaves we like.
I have cut out my leaves to be able to use them more easily and I was planning on telling the parents that the kids can do it after the lesson, when the paints dry completely. If I still had my classroom, I would put them up on the window.
Dedicated to Monsieur Alexander (6 y.o.) and Mademoiselle Victoria (3 y.o.) with big thanks for reminding me how important riddles are even if you speak the languagevery well.
Why? Because you simply must!
Riddles are an opportunity to develop focus and listening skills: you are required to listen until the very end as all the elements of the riddle are important and they can help you figure out what the answer is.
Riddles help to develop cognitive skills while you are guessing as you are required to put together different pieces of information, to understand, to synthesise and to analyse.
Riddles help to develop cognitive skills even more when you are creating your own riddle as you are required to apply and to evaluate the information you providing to make the riddle challenging and achievable at the same time.
Riddles are something that we use and enjoy in our L1, from the early childhoodand it is only natural that we will try to bring them into our EFL lessons, with kids and with adults.
Riddles help develop creativity.
Riddles are fun and they create plenty of opportunities for bonding, in a pair or a group.
Riddles, in L1, help the kids develop the awareness about how the language works, how the hidden meanings, the homophones, the collocations and this can also be transferred, at least partially, into the EFL or the ESL
It is obvious that the context of the EFL and the ESL does not always allow for the riddles and their benefits to be used fully and completely even if only due to the limitations of the language level which, in case of some of the young learners, might be as low as A1. This does not mean that they cannot be used. On the contrary, they can be introduced from early on.
Riddles, regardless of the context, are an opportunity for the students to speak and to produce a mini-discourse.
In the EFL/ESL classes, it is relatively easy to choose the vocabulary range and the structures for the students, depending on the level and the topic. This range can be easily extended.
How to? Riddles in the EFL classroom
The simplest version of the game can be played with preschoolers and we usually start simply with guessing ‘the secret word’ which is the card that the teacher and then the students choose and hold close to their chest and the class are guessing. This version is used to introduce the very idea of the riddles. When the kids have become more familiar with the format, the level of challange can be raised and the production maximised by asking the kids to describe the card they are holding in the simplest of way i.e. with the colour, operating within the colours of the objects on the flashcards used (‘It is green‘ or ‘It is green and red‘). With time, more adjectives can be added (‘It is big’, ‘It is small’), the categories (‘It is a toy’, ‘It is a pet’) or even opinions (‘I like it’, ‘I don’t like it’). There is a post devoted to one of the ways of dealing with riddles with the youngest learners. You can find it here.
The primary (or the more advanced pre-primary) students can start adding simple categories in their discourse (‘It’s a toy’, ‘It’s an animal’, ‘It’s in the schoolbag’) and start describing the word using the relevant structures. For example, with food, we use the following four: ‘It is cold’, ‘It is hot’, ‘You eat it’, ‘You drink it’) and these are the structures that the students know and will need anyway and these particular four can be supported by a relevant gesture. The same goes for the animal riddles set: ‘It is big’, ‘It is small’, ‘It can run’, ‘It can fly’, ‘It can swim’. I also like to add ‘I like it’ and ‘I don’t like it’ even though it does not quite provide enough information for the children to guess the object as the class may simply not know what one of us thinks about it, it gives the student making a riddle an opportunity to express opinion and to make it all more personalised. With the youngest students the teacher can assist production in the beginning by asking questions such as ‘Is it hot or cold?’ or ‘Can it swim, fly or run?’. This set of structures can be developed and extended depending on the students’ age and level.
As regards the more advanced and older students, the riddles can be made more extensive and more resembling the riddles that the adults and kids play in English as their L1 or the riddles they play with their L1 with the use of simple homonimes or homophones, a wider range of vocabulary or structures or complexity for example by making a list of words not to use when to describe a certain word, describing it with associations (i.e. kids, fun, outside to describe the word ‘playground’), with metaphors (i.e. ‘It is the brain of the computer’ for ‘hard drive’ or ‘It is the opposite of a mountain’ for ‘a cave’) or, even, by a mixture of these (‘Tell me what it is and tell me what it’s not’)
As regards the material and the support for the teacher one of the following can be used: flashcards, mini-flashcards, a page from the book with words and words and images, a poster, a set of wordwall cards, a list of words.
All the letters of the alphabet written in one or two columns, with some space to write, next to each letter
Procedures
The teacher divides the students into pairs or teams and gives out the paper with the letters of the alphabet or asks the kids to write these down.
Step 1: The teacher announces the topic i.e. Clothes and asks the kids write one word (or phrase) for each letter of the alphabet or, more realistically, for as many letters as they can. The teacher gives an example. Ideally, the teacher creates her/his own list in order to have a set of words to model the other stages of the activity.
The teacher sets the time limit (i.e. 5 minutes for the younger kids and 3 minutes for the older kids). It might be a good idea to use a song instead and after the song finishes, the activity does, too.
The kids work in teams and make a list of the words within the vocabulary set. After the time is up, the teacher stops the game.
Step 2: The kids exchange the lists and count the words or phrases which their friends have managed to write within the set time limit. The teacher writes the results for each team on the board.
Step 3: The teams read the words on the lists and choose: the most interesting word, the most unusual word, the funniest word, three words you also have, three words you don’t have, any word you don’t understand or remember etc. The teams work in pairs and find out why their partners put these words on the list. If possible, the kids exchange the lists with another team and repeat the procedure once or twice.
Why we like it
For the students it is a great opportunity to revise and recycle vocabulary. All the beginner levels aside, even when the main lesson aim is to introduce and to practise new vocabulary, chances are the kids have already learnt, heard, used or seen some of the words. After all, the vocabulary sets are repeated and extended from level to level, not to mention that most kids have more than one source of English in their lives: the state school, the language school, a private teacher, brothers, sisters, parents, videos on youtube, cartoons, stories, computer games online…This game is one of the easy ways of revising all this vocabulary to prepare for ‘something new’
For all the reasons mentioned above, it is an absolute necessity for the teacher to find out how much the kids already know as regards a certain area in order to do a very focused (if a very contained) needs’ analysis and to adjust the volume, the level and the intensity of the new material presentation later in the lesson
It is very easy and requires no preparation whatsoever.
It helps to improve the students’ self-confidence because it gives them an opportunity to see how much they know already.
It can be used with any set of vocabulary, either thematic (i.e. clothes, food, animals) or content-related (i.e. the words necessary to describe a picture, the words used in a certain text or a listening task, a video)
The final task can be easily adapted i.e. choose 5 words to describe yourself, choose 5 words to use in a story or in a dialogue, choose 5 and describe them for your partners to guess, use a dictionary to find the words or structures for the missing letters, compare the lists with your friends to find the words or the structures for the missing letters, use the words to describe a photograph, use the words to talk about your day today etc.
This post, like many others, starts in the classroom…
The thought falls on my head out of nowhere.
We are playing the game with the first conditional. There are only four of them, on the day, in-between the holidays, so we don’t even bother to go into the breakout rooms, we are playing together. It is not even a real game, either. Someone starts a sentence, someone else, called out, thinks of an ending, action – reaction, a situation – consequences. And they are just producing. Coming up with great ideas, some of the sentences just down to earth and realistic, some of them, as we call them, ‘creative’, just for laughs. And so we laugh out loud. A trainer in me suddenly realises that the lesson plan (if there had been a formal lesson plan) should include not only the traditional elements, like the staging and ‘the teacher will’ and ‘the students will’. The trainer in me realised that it might be worth considering to include a laughing fit and the necessary calming down part in the timing, in the assumptions and the potential problems and solutions…We laugh a lot with my kids.
Unavoidably, I realise, I get those constant flashbacks, those mini-trips into the past and I am looking at my students, today already 10 and 9 (or 8 and 7, still, some of them) and I remember how we walked into the classroom together, for the first time, me on my toes, all eyes, all ears, and them cautiously taking every step and every action. I do remember how we learned to say ‘Hello’ for the first time with some of them and how we first said that we don’t like broccoli ice-cream (except for Nadia, my little rebel). How I used to need lots of miming and scaffolding and modelling, with every single activity and how they’d start with single words, then move to phrases and to sentences.
And I, who was present, 99% of the time, over those seven years, I cannot believe my own eyes and my own ears now, how they throw the language at me, storytelling, or using the Present Perfect in free speech. Or the first conditional.
What does it mean for a teacher to continue for an extended period of time? What does it mean for the business? How does the methodology change? Does it change at all? What do the parents think? And, last but not least, perhaps it would be better to change the teacher once in a while?
This post will be very personal. This post will be very emotional. But I would like to look at it from the other points of view, too, thinking like a trainer, thinking like a methodology expert and, also, inevitably, thinking like a teacher and like a human, too.
In order to make it a bit more objective and more like a research, I asked my teacher friends for help. This post was written with the help, support and contributions from my amazing colleagues: Ekaterina Balaganskaya, Nadezhda Bukina, Marina Borisova and Tatiana Kistanova. Thank you!!!
Are you still up for such an adventure? Follow me.
Over to…ateacher trainer
You know your students very well, in every aspect, including the interests, their motivation, the family situation, the strengths, the areas that need improvement, the interaction patterns that they favour, their best friends in and outside of the group, their favourite activities and games, their role in the group. This helps a lot with lesson planning, shaping up and choosing the activities and, later on, in class, with managing the activities, the lesson time and the interaction patterns.
Giving instructions is much easier, after a while. The students know you very well, too, that they are almost able to read your mind and to react to any, even those less formal hints and clues. Quite likely before you give them.
You need to be creative because after a while, your students might get bored with the activities you usually use. This might not sound like something positive because it means that you are at risk of running out of anything that you normally keep up your sleeve in terms of games, classroom management techniques or ways of checking homework, for example, but I would like to see it a more positive light. Working with a long-term group can be a wonderful catalyst for your creativity and, as a result, there are more new games, classroom management techniques and ways of checking homework!!!
It is perfectly natural that with any new group, a teacher strives to build up the comfort zone in order to ensure the conditions for the effective teaching and learning. However, once that comfort zone is created (and after a few years with a group it is likely to be a very stable comfort zone, a very cozy and safe ZPD, hello Leo Vygotsky), the teacher can start dreaming of venturing out and trying out new things on a much more advanced level. Not only a new game to practise vocabulary but a new approach that you may have heard about such as introducing a new approach to storytelling after you have found out about PEPELT, setting up journals with your students, just because you read that one research article or just taking your lifelong passion for teaching English through another level. Or, actually, you might even want to start a blog at one point. An experimenter is, I believe, one of the most important teacher roles!
Teaching long-term, you are moving on, together with your students and that means changing and adapting the approaches and techqniues to match them to needs of the kids who are growing up. With time, kids are becoming more mature and more capable of producing the language and dealing with more and more complex tasks. They say that a rolling stone gathers no moss and the same can be said about teachers who are growing and developing with their students. Sure, some of that can be achieved within one year, but there is definitely a lot more potential for the changes and the evolutions if the learning process takes a bit longer than just one season.
My colleagues also mentioned the impact on the learning process and the very shaping of the curriculum as it was adapted to the particular needs of the students. Instead of just following the book (or the curriculum whichever form it came in), as might be the case with a less involved teacher (although, of course, I am not implying that working with a group for a season only equals lower quality service), with a longer term group a teacher is able to introduce a circular / spiral curriculum, introduced to the world by Bruner and to me be Ekaterina, with the teacher returning and revising the crucial elements of the language, regardless of what the coursebook or the pacing schedule says. For example, working on the past simple (served in manageable chunks) from the beginning of the year instead of waiting until April when that topic appears in the book. This was Ekaterina’s example and I realised that we have been doing the same with my kids, simply because I wanted us to have the language (or some bites of it) for us to be able to talk about the weekend and the holidays and the day at school. Tatiana also mentioned it as one of the key benefits as knowing the group helps the teacher set the pace that will be most appropriate for this particular bunch of children.
Over to… a manager
Students staying for a few years are basically yourreturning customers, your loyal customers and your dream come true. As they would be in any other area. They come back, month after month and year after year and they make the world go round, basically.
What’s more, these students are also likely to bring in other students, their friends, brothers, sisters, cousins or even parents, to join your groups or the other groups at the school. Since there has been a positive experience in the family, so to speak, these are also likely to stay.
The fact that you have worked out the patterns and the procedures of managing the finances, the group, the assessment or the festivities, will mean that these will be easier to implement.
This will be a huge advantage, should there be any changes to adapt to, even those unexpected and unplanned, as in case of the pandemic. Perhaps that was not the case in all the countries and with all the groups and students but, in my experience, many of those that went online, smoothly, were the long-term students and groups and they basically trusted their teacher to transfer online or, later on, to study in the hybrid classroom.
That also means that a strong bond and trust will be built and the parents will be more likely to accept any changes or even any complications such as the need to move online, the need to change the timetable, the need to make up for the class or to run the lesson online, or even, to have a cover class.
Staying with ‘the old’ teacher might also be easier for the parents which was a very important point made by Ekaterina. Parents are busy, they might not be able to devote a huge amount of time to looking for a new teacher, a new school or a new group and they might also worry that their child would not fit in the new set-up. Some parents fear that due to the previous negative experience, either with the school, the group or even the teacher’s professional competence. Staying is easier.
Over to… a teacher
The first one to mention here will be the enormous sense of achievement that a teacher can get from working with a group for an extended period of time and the opportunity to observe and to assess the same students, not only from September to May, from the beginning to the end of the level but over the years, from pre-A to A2 or even further.
Teaching a group over any longer period of time provides the teacher with plenty of opporunities and a lot of data for formative assessment, as pointed out by Ekaterina. It will apply to all the language skills as well as vocabulary and grammar, accuracy and fluency. Let’s take the past simple as an example. There will be the series of lessons devoted to the topic, a series of lessons per level or coursebook even, and the students might do well in these lessons. However, it will be up to the teacher to track whether and how accurately the students use it to describe the past events in free speech, recalling the events of the day at school or retelling a story. The aims of these two activities are not the freer grammar practice per se but, for example, settling in and checking understanding after a reading skills development stage. It might (and it will!) take a considerable period of time for the students to finally assimilate the structure and to start using it freely and correctly. I have also noticed in my teaching that with time I tend to prioritise formative assessment over summative assessment but this is a new discovery and I need some time to think about it before I write about. A new post? Who knows)
Creating a positive atmosphe in the classroom, creating the environment that will be beneficial for learning, learning about your students and their needs is something that we, as teachers, do regardless, but there is something special in the connection that you build with a group over the years. You accompany them in their lives outside of the classroom, all the good marks and bad marks, all the competitions, holidays and birthdays. You get to meet their parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters and all the pets. You take part in the important family events, such as the births of baby brothers and sisters or even those more traumatic events like an illness or a death of a family member and, whether you want it or not, you bond. To an outsider it might sound strange but there must be a reason why so many teachers refer to their students as ‘my children‘ or, sometimes, when in a non-teaching environment, ‘my educational children’.
Then, there is the pride in all their achievements and progress that they are making. Going back and reminiscing about all the milestones, all the firsts is a truly wonderful journey for a teacher to take: the first lesson ever, the first time we made full sentences, the first time we started to create in English, the first letters scribbled, the first story we did and the first time they asked to be allowed to take over the story reading, the first test, the first real grammar lesson, the first ‘OMG, I cannot stop them from chattering away‘ day or every time they took an exam, Starters, Movers, Flyers, KET, PET, FCE or, finally, also, CAE.
Over to…a human
‘If you meet with the same people twice a week for 8 – 10 years, you can’t help loving them‘ (Marina)
‘It’s a joy to see them grow, to see the progress and the results. Develop relationships and see them enter a new age group‘ (Nadezhda)
‘The best thing about it was that I knew them and they knew me, the rapport was strong‘ (Tatiana)
‘When I was moving a country, they were devastated. Luckily, we could continue our lessons online‘ (Ekaterina)
The group is a community. Ekaterina mentioned that the kids in the group she has been teaching for seven years became friends outside the group and that they all meet offline when that is possible, even go out for pizza or to a museum. Even when those outside events are not possible, the group can celebrate together either because they get a Christmas-themed lesson or because they all bring snack and have a little party at the end of the lesson. Even if it is an online lesson.
It is interesting that the personal preferences work both ways and that the resistance to change the teacher might come from the students, too, as you will see in the stories for teachers that I share in the paragraph below and that, as Marina highlighted, the fact that some students stay with you (and, of course, not all of them will) is based also on their personal preferences and attachement to the teacher. Staying for longer may be seen as a result not some intertia, the inability or laziness to find a new teacher, but, simply, a conscious decision on the part of the parents and the students.
Or on the part of the teacher, too. As pointed out by Tatiana, it might be related to the teacher’s own personality, if the long-term connections are important for them, as humans. Or, it might be the impact of the context in which they are working as the changes, imposed or not, are more likely to take place in different educational institutions whereas the teachers who work freelance would probably be in favour of keeping the students, unless, of course, it is impossible due to any external circumstances.
As for me, personally, well, I love what I do. Yes, there are sometimes duties, tasks or even groups that I am not entirely wildly excited about but, overall, I enter the classroom, online or offline, with joy and looking forward to the lesson. And one of the reasons for that are my students and, especially, my educational children aka my adorable monsters. It is thanks to them that I have blossomed as a creator, as a teacher and as a trainer. It is thanks to them that I was able to cope with the strains of the lockdown and it is thanks to them that ‘I am stillstanding‘, as Elton John might put it, when the world is what it is right now.
At the beginning of the pandemic, when we were about to transition online and change our EFL lives forever, I remember how I felt about the big unknown and how, pretty quickly, it became apparent, that no matter what (really, no matter what) we are what we are, a small (and a bit loud) community and that we had had enough experience of each other worked out and accumulated and that we can take it elsewhere. I remember one morning, just before the lessons were about to start (the first real lesson, not the free online trial and getting to know each other with zoom) how I felt the panic creep over. But I also remember the thought: ‘Hold on, they are my kids. That’s is. We will just do it, under slightly different circumstances‘. And, guess what? We did.
A change would do you good?The other side of the coin
Because, of course, there is one! Changing the teacher might be beneficial! On the one hand, as Nadezhda mentioned, the teachers themselves might feel the impact of the long-term interaction, some form of material fatigue, and in such a case a change is more than welcome. In such cases a change of a teacher might be the solution. A new teacher means new methods, new approaches, a different sense of humour…
Sometimes this ‘tiredness’ and the call for a change may come from the fact that students are growing and transitioning into another age group and the students might welcome a more official confirmation or recognition of that process. Perhaps, the change of a teacher might do the job here. If, for example, it is Mr Alexander is the teenage groups’ teacher then him taking over the group from taught so far by Miss Carolina is going to be some form of a rite of passage.
However, it needs to be mentioned, it is not as straightforward as it might seem. First and foremost, the students may not want to change the teacher at all and, in such cases, it is enough to tweak the format or the routine a bit. Then it might be that the outside circumstances change and they sort the problem out. Ekaterina shared her story of one of her groups with whom she started to consider the possible change of a teacher as the kids’ growing up and changing into teenagers resulted in some discipline issues and, as a result, the lessons not being as effective as they previously had been. However, here, the problem sorted itself out – due to the pandemic the class was transferred online and it turned out that the physical separatation (or the space and the own territory that the students gained) was the only thing that the group needed. They still continue with Ekaterina as their teacher.
This brought my own group to mind. The kids were still in pre-school, year 3, when we were asked to give our cosy kiddies classroom to a younger group. We moved and the most surprising thing was that it turned out to be an important stepping stone for the students. ‘We are real students now!’, they kept repeating and back then I was just listening to them and giggling inside that the big desks and big chairs can make anyone so excited. Today, when I look back at it, it seems to be this perfect moment in the life of a group when a change was needed. And it did take place, although, yes, without changing the teacher.
The most important thing to consider here is how thestudents can benefit from the new circumstances. Marina brought it up, too and, Ekaterina gave a perfect example from the British schools. In the schools her children attend, there is an obligatory change of a teacher every year, with Miss Elena only teaching the 4th-grades, Mr Peter only working with the 6th graders and so on. The system was introduced in the school to ensure fairness. This way, all the children get a change to work with all the teachers throughout their school life and the is no chance that, due to some ‘preferences’, class 4A only gets ‘the best teachers’. Not to mention that this must contribute a lot to bonding and building of the community as little Pasha will know all the teachers personally and all the teachers, after a while, will have had Pasha in their classrooms.
The end is the beginning is the end…
The most interesting thing is that, from among the teachers who waved back at me and wanted to chat about the long-term teaching of a group, there was nobody who would be a strong proponent of the Change the Teacher Every Year approach. Can it be considered a sign? I have no idea but, if, by any chance, there is anyone among my readers who has had an experience with it, please, pretty please, get in touch, I would love to talk to you!
None, almost. In some cases, it might be necessary to write some of the ideas on the board, to serve as an inspiration. See procedures
Procedures
Students work in pairs. They share their ideas. If there is time, the students can change partners and repeat the activity. To round up, students share some of the information they have found out about.
This stage is always present, in each lesson, and it takes about 10 minutes. We keep the same variant for about a month and then we choose a new one.
All the variants (so far)
Verbs: the teacher writes on the board all the basic verbs in the past tense: I went to, I saw, I ate, I drank, I talked to…about…, I watched, I played, I bought, I wrote, I didn’t…The kids choose 5 and they build simple sentences about their day, week or weekend. I like to start it with my students even before we officially cover the Past Tense (as soon as they are ready to differentiate between the present / the past form of the verbs) and it really does help the kids to practise and to remember the verb forms.
Did you go…: a variation of the activity described above. The teacher puts the question form and the short answers on the board. The kids work in pairs and ask each other questions. The student who provides answers uses ‘I did’ and ‘I didn’t’ but they are also requested to give a brief explanation (because…)
Tell meabout your day: the teacher writes the name of the activity and a list of topics which can be also elicited from the students. The regular set might include: the weather, the school, the teachers, my best friend, lunch, getting around, marks, tests, pets, brothers and sisters, homework etc. The students work in pairs and they have to choose three topics to talk about. They take turns to share stories about their day and they follow-up each story with a question.
The B-words: this one is a slight variation of the above, only here the teacher writes a selection of words starting with a certain letter as the list for the students to choose from and to be inspired by. Some of the words might be completely random but they also encourage the kids to produce the language. Later on, the students can choose the letter of the day and then can also help make the list of the words, too.
This is how I felt today: in this variation the teacher puts up the words to describe emotions and feelings. The list can be a simple one (happy, sad, angry, sleepy, hungry, tired, bored) and then it can be extended to include more interesting ones, too (confused, excited, chatty, exhausted). Again, the students choose 3 or 5 of them to describe their day.
Superheroes: this time the list on the board is made of names of superheroes, famous people as well as characters from books and films, for example Superman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, Chebourashka, Winnie-the-Pooh, Santa etc. The students are supposed to think of their day from the point of view of these characters and describe it talking about how they felt. ‘I felt like Superman because I got three good marks today’*)
The superlatives: the teacher writes on the board a list of superlatives (the best, the worst, the funniest, the tasties, the most difficult, the easiest). The students choose 3 or 5 of them and use them to describe their day, for example: The best thing was that I had only three lessons etc.
Why we like it
A stage of that kind is absolutely necessary as the time for the students to settle in
This is also when they learn how to communicate without any preparation and outside of any set-up frameworks since each day might be different and each day may involve a different set of verbs and nouns
At the same time, it is an opportunity to practice the past tenses or the perfect tenses as for many of the students, many events repeat themselves (going to school, writing tests, having a good day or a bad day etc)
It is a fantasic opportunity for the group to bond, to share the great things that happened during the day or to vent about all the disasters that they had to deal with, the tests, the teachers, the piles of homework
To be continued. Soon. We are quite likely to get very bored with what we are doing at the moment…
Happy teaching!
*) My favourite so far! It is amazing how my students come up with their own metaphors and associations, both the teenage group and the kids. Here are a few quotes: ‘I felt like Chebourashka because I was a bit confused’, ‘I feel like Robinson Cruzoe because I am locked up at home now’, ‘I feel like Masha from Masha and Medved because I am a bit crazy today’, ‘I felt like Santa because it was my friend’s birthday and I had a present for him’, ‘I feel like Superman because I did all my homework really fast’…
A set of sentences with the key structure. In our case these were random (as in: not a part of a story or a discourse) sentences with let and make, in the present tense and in the past. I wrote them myself (ten of each), although any set of sentences included in typical gap fill activities that often feature in our coursebooks would do.
The sentences were typed up, printed and cut up into strips. In order to manage them better, I printed the make sentences on the white paper and the let sentences on the yellow paper.
Students work in pairs or groups of three. One of the students picks up a card, reads the sentence in silence and comes up with a short story to illustrate the sentence. The student should not really use the key verb and as few of the other words from the original sentence as possible.
The other student(s) listen and reproduce the orignal sentence.
The game continues. In our case, the students played in the teams of three first with the first set of the sentences and then with the other set.
Why we like it
Very little preparation.
It can be also SS-generated, if one more stage is introduced (every student writes three sentences with ‘make’ and three senteces with ‘let’), afterwards these sentences are dealt among the teams /pairs.
It is easy to adapt. It can involve one, two or a selection of the target langauge structures.
It is an opportunity to extend the grammar practice and to make it more productive.
The students have a chance to practise grammar as well as develop their listening skills and their speaking skills.
The kids produce mini-stories which can include both narrative and dialogue. Their main aim is to convey the idea of the grammar structure to make it possible for their peers to reproduce.
The mini-stories help to create the context for the grammar and can make it more meaningful and memorable.
It is an activity that gives the teacher lots of freedom, it can be stopped at any given point, after a certain number of rounds or minutes.
Apart from the target langauge, the students get some practise in key word transformation and paraphrasing, without any specific exam focus.
I used it with my B1 teens but I am considering how it can be adapted to the needs of my primary A2 kids, too.
