#kidscanspeak

Crumbs # 32 Online stickers with a twist

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Ingredients

  • Miro board or a word document
  • Kids and their ideas

Procedures

  • We prepare the document, write the date
  • One of the students chooses the theme of the day i.e. The Chameloeon Day (not a real holiday, although it could be. There are plenty of ideas to find here.
  • The kids take turns to choose their favourite variation, as featured in the picture above: the cake chamelon, the black chameleon, the artistic chameleon, the Christmas chameleon, the cute chameleon, the police chameleon, the robot chameleon and the lamp chameleon.
  • The teacher opens the google search and keys in the requested phrase. The student who suggested the specific variation chooses their favourite picture (i.e. line one, number 2).
  • The teacher copies and pastes the chosen picture, then pdfs the whole collage as soon as it is ready. The collage is then sent out to parents via Whatsapp.
  • (!!!!!) For the purpose of protecting the kids from the inappropriate images that google might display, especially when the unusual combinations are made, I key in the requested phrase first and only then share the screen with the kids as some of the images might be too scary, explicit or simply not always appropriate for all ages.

Why we like it

  • It is fun.
  • The kids love it. They ask about the stickers (we don’t always use them in every lesson) and they remind me to send them to the parents in the end.
  • It is a great way of finishing a lesson.
  • It is a great way of building a community, especially if you keep your stickers throughout the year. With my group, we still have some of the stickers we found during the first stages of the pandemic in spring 2020 and we had a lot of fun finding them, looking through them and remembering whose they were and why.
  • It gives us a chance to practise some of the computer language in contex (go / scroll down, go / scroll up, stop, I’d like …)
  • It offers some opportunity to practise describing objects in a detailed way (it is the big one, the small, the one with the green nose etc), especially the adjectives.
  • We can create, express ourselves and express opinion on what other people choose.
  • My advertising people tell me that this is something that you do while researching and brainstorming new ideas, too, in order to ensure that yours is, indeed, a fresh solution that no one has ever thought of. So, in a way, my kids are also getting ready for the market research, too!
This is one of our pandemic 2020 stickers)

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #29 How do you feel today? The alternatives

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From the series: The Beautiful Life

Ingredients

  • 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 me about 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’…

Staging for VYL teachers. A crash course

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Disclaimers: I have chosen to use Discover with Dex by Macmillan in this exercise here due to a few reasons: I have had a chance to work with it, it is one of the recently published coursebooks and there are some sample pages available online on the CUP website and so I am not at risk of any copyright infrigements here. This is not in any way a criticism of the activities and instructions included in the original material. I just wanted to recreate what I would normally do in this lesson. For that reason, I have decided to do one more thing that I never do and that is plan the entire lesson without consulting the teachers’ book or checking what is there (I really struggle with reading all types of manuals). I left it until after I was done with the whole post. See the last paragraph. It was my conscious decision not to supplement the coursebook activities with any songs, stories or videos or even electronic games such as wordwall, although, of course, I do that in my lessons. I wanted to keep the most basic version of the lesson.

Details: Discover with Dex, Macmillan, level 1, unit 1, page 7.

The original activities can be found in the sample on page 8 as well as in the TB, on the same website, page 11.

Ready? Steady? Go!

Pre-book

  • Introduction and revision of the vocabulary: simple flashcard games, realia (ie putting post-it notes with numbers on the realia, T: calls out the numbers, Kids: name the item), or realia and flashcards (ie matching the relevant flashcard with the item in the classroom by putting the flashcard on the relevant object) Why? Because students need enough exposure to the target language and enough practice, controlled or freer, so that they are ready to complete the task in the coursebook.
  • Movement games: using gestures at least for some of the objects (chair – sitting down, table – putting arms on the table, sticker – peeling off and sticking, book – opening the book and reading, pencil – a gesture for writing something carefully, crayon – a gesture for colouring in), puzzle, Puzzle Run – copy the flashcards and cut them up into the jigsaw puzzles (ie two pieces, perhaps three if the kids are older), keep one piece of each in the classroom, leave the rest out and place them around the classroom or the hallway, depending on the location. Pick out one piece, say ‘What is it? It’s a….’ and elicit the rest from the kids (‘a pencil’), ask one of the kids to look around the classroom and look for the missing piece of the puzzle. When they bring it, put the pieces together, elicit the question and the answer, drill. The question and answer can be easily turned into a chant, by adding rhythmical clapping. The roles can be nicely divided, too, with the teacher asking the question and the children replying or the other way round. For instance, if that is the first lesson with this structure, the kids can only repeat the question, it will be the same line over and over again. Why? Becuase the kids have been sitting for quite some time and they will need a stirrer to get rid of the energy that has accumulated so far and to prepare them for a serious settler aka the focused task.

While-book

  • Funky envelope: this is one of my favourite tools ever and it seems perfect for this activity. It will keep the kids curious, it will create an opportunity to practise the target language and it will create a link between the flascard games and the activity in the coursebook. The teacher continues using the same structure, What is it? It’s a… Why? Because this kind of an activity will prepare the students for the format of the task they are going to be asked to complete as part of the focused task.
  • Open the book (teacher only): the teacher opens the coursebook (or displays it on the screen / the interactive whiteboard) and calls out the names of the objects in the top row, using the key structure again. Why? Because this way the chances are that the students will remain focused on the task and on the instructions. There is only one thing to look at (the book that the teacher is holding or demonstrating), no other books, no other pages in the students’ books etc.
  • Model: still with only the teacher’s book open, the teacher completes the first part of the activity. The teacher points at the first circle and asks ‘What is it?’, students answer ‘It’s a chair’. The teacher says: ‘Let’s take a red pencil’ and colours the chair in the circle and draws the line. The teacher repeats the question – answer again, pointing at the pictures ‘What is it?’ ‘It’s a chair’. Why? Because the kids need to see how to complete the task, step by step. Verbal instructions only are not going to be as effective and through looking at the task is completed, the children will understand better what they are to do in the following stage.
  • Open the books (students): the kids open their books. The teacher asks again, give out the red pencils / crayons to all the students, monitors. When the kids are ready, the teacher collects all the pencils and they all repeat the exchange again: point to the circle – What’s this? – It’s table – trace the line – point to the picture of the table. Why? This is for everyone the controlled practice task, repeating the teacher’s actions in their own coursebooks.
  • What’s this? It’s a crayon: repeat the procedure with the crayon and a new colour. The teacher gives out and collects the pencils or crayons after each round and elicits the question – answer. It might be a good idea to let the kids choose the colour of the pencil / crayon for each round. Why? By adding the element of the different colours and by pencils being given out and collected by the teacher in each round, the teacher ensures that the task is paced properly, that all the students complete the task and that everyone stays on the ball throughout that stage of the lesson.
  • Done! the teacher draws a star or a smile to signal that the task has been completed successfully. The kids close their books. Why? Because it helps the kids to understand that the task has been finished.

Post-book

  • Riddles: it will be a bit of a stretch from the original context but the structure can be used to play riddles, too. The teacher chooses a flashcard, keeps it hidden and asks ‘What is it?’, the kids make their sentences trying to guess the card. It might be necessary for the teacher to model first and provide the first few incorrect guesses to give the children an idea, for example ‘It’s a pencil’ – ‘No’, ‘It’s a sticker’ – ‘No’, ‘It’s a table’ – ‘Yes!’. Naturally, after a few rounds led by the teacher, the kids take turns to lead the game. Why? At this point, with a lot of exposure and practice, the kids should be able to take part in a game when they have to produce the langauge freely.
  • Pelmanism: in order to play this game, the teacher needs to prepare a set of flashcards, set A: the regular flashcards, with the objects fully seen and set B: either stencils of the objects or parts of the objects (like in the coursebook), matching or, the simplest set and the easiest to prepare: two sets of the regular flashcards printed in two different colours. Actually, with pre-school or primary students, I always use colour-coded sets as it makes it easier to set the game and to handle the materials. The students play together, led by the teacher. The kids take turns to uncover the cards and to find a match. Every single time they ask the question and answer it (What’s this? It’s a pencil). If they have a pair, they put it away. Why? This is another game that creates an appropriate setting for the use of the key question and answer. If the game is played together, without counting points, it is appropriate also for the youngest students.
  • Happy birthday to you: it is a silly game that we sometimes play as part of the new vocabulary practice and here it would be yet another way of providing another opportunity to practice the key structure within the appropriate context. The kids have to sit in a circle and you need to have a set of flashcards. First, to model the activity, the teacher chooses one card, keeps it secret, face down and gives it to the student on the left. This student passes it to their friend and so on until the card makes it back to the teacher. Then, the teacher takes another card and yet another one and the cards start circulating, all of them face down. The teacher start singing ‘Happy Birthday’ and at one point, the teacher stops abruptly. The teacher then asks ‘What’s this?’ and all the kids turn their cards over and tell everyone what they’ve got ‘It’s a sticker’, ‘It’s a pencil’ etc. Then, they play another round. If there are enough flashcards for all the kids, then, naturally, all the students will describe their flashcard. If, however, there are fewer, then the activity is easier to manage and the kids who end up without a flashcard, they can say ‘Oups’ and it is fun, too as the teacher is the one to manage the song and to make sure that different children get a chance to say ‘Oups’ during the game. Why? There are opportunities for the natural use of the key structure as it is a mystery and the game can be stopped at any moment which will be quite a useful feature at the end of the lesson, when the kids are naturally more tired and less likely to remain focused for a longer period of time.

Question to ask yourself while planning:

  • What is the aim of the lesson? Even if it is not a formally assessed lesson, it is a good idea to formulate it for yourself, even if only verbally. Why are you and the kids entering the classroom on the day? What would you like them to achieve as regards the language, the social skills, the motor skills or any other area?
  • How does the coursebook material help you meet these aims? What would you have to add or to adapt?
  • How much language are the students going to produce? Are there any ways of maximising production?
  • Will your students (those who are in your group, your student Misha, Peter, Tommy and Andy) be able to complete these tasks? Will they like them? Apart from the fact that you are the teacher (the one asking them to do things) and they are the students (they listen and follow), is there anything in the task and the materials that will get them involved?
  • How are you going to prepare the students for the task? What activities will you prepare to introduce and to revise the vocabulary and the structure? Is there anything that you can do to prepare them for the format of the task, too?

And now I am actually going to read the teacher’s book…

  • There is a different TL (Can you see? Yes, I can) which could be used very naturally in the classroom. At the same time, this is not the TL that is introduced and practised in the unit (Have you got? Yes, I have. No, I haven’t). We might argue which structure would be more useful for the students (Can you see? or ‘What is it?’) and both have got their benefits and it is up to the teacher whether to follow the book and what to supplement it with.
  • The teacher’s book suggest a slightly different procedure and there is a nice variety of structures introduced and practised (Can you see? What is it? What’s missing? Is it a…? Where is the other chair?). It is great to see a lot of natural language used during the lesson but since all of my students are EFL learners with a limited exposure of one or two real hours per week, I would want to focus the language practise and production and work on one structure at a time. Although, of course, the teacher would be creating a proper language environment, without limiting their own production to this one specific structure only.
  • I am afraid I would not use the original task with colouring the magnified objects to match the real objects. The chair and the crayon are easy but the book and the pencil would involve more than one colour and would take a bit longer than I would like to spend on that activity.
  • The same goes for the personalisation task. Most of my students are too young to draw such complicated pictures so I would be skipping that one, too. With the older children, I might use it for homework perhaps.
  • There is a great set of the digital resources to accompany the coursebook as well as the wall hanging to go with the flashcards and these could be a lovely addition to the lesson.

Happy teaching!

P.S. Don’t forget to check out the wonderful directory of all the useful things in the VYL world created by Sandy Millin. You can find it here.

Teaching English through Art: Andy Warhol

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Dear reader! I hope you are here because you have been in search of ideas for a lesson on Art and English for primary school children. If so, you are in the right place! I would like to share with you a lesson that I taught a few months ago as a part of my Art Explorers programme. I would like to start with some blowing my own trumpet in an attempt to inspire you and to think ‘I want one of those!‘

Andy Warhol Marilyn Monroe (masterworksfineart.com)

It was a great lesson because…

  • our group of Art Explorers was a mixed-age, a mixed-level and a mixed-ability group, with some pre-A, some A1 and some A2 children and we were all united in art. Everyone was involved, everyone was producing as much as they could and everyone had fun.
  • the kids who took part were the members of five different groups at the school and it was the first time they had a chance to interact with each other, in English.
  • the children had a chance to revise and practise English, to find out about Andy Warhol, to talk about feelings, emotions and associations and to exercise their creativity in the craft task.
  • it worked very well as an introduction to our Art Explorers programme
  • it was relatively low-key as regards the preparation and craft materials as we used the simplest things available: a powerpoint, a handout, a few sets of vocabulary flashcards, a few sets of watercolours, paintbrushes and cups.
  • it lasted 60 minutes but it could easily be adapted to 45 or 90 minutes, depending on the needs of the group and the age of the students.
Andy Warhol – Double Mickey Mouse – Catawiki

The lesson, stage by stage

Stage 1: Introduction

We said hello, introduced ourselves and we had a small ‘get to know each other’. Each pair of students got a pile of flashcards (food, toys, sports, colours, animals etc). The students were supposed to pick out one card and to ask each: Do you like…. There was a model question and answers on the board, together with ‘because’ which the older students were already familiar with in order to encourage more developed answers.

Stage 2: Colours and emotions

We revised the emotions and a set of the basic adjectives was displayed on the board as a point of reference. Afterwards, we revised the colours and I introduced the idea of associations. The key word here (‘associations’) is actually quite similar to its counterpart in the kids’ L1 but I decided to use even a simpler structure ‘Green is a happy colour because…’

The kids were put into pairs, for another speaking activity and they were comparing their own associations related to each of the colours. At this point we did not use the flashcards. Instead, eaach pair got a set of markers and they were asked to discuss all the colours in the set. Afterwards we compared our ideas.

Stage 3: The artist of the day

We moved to the TV room to meet the artist of the day. At this point I was using the powerpoint which you can find in the attachments.

First of all we looked at the photo of Andy and the kids said as much as they could, about his appearance and character. Only later did I introduce him properly, albeit briefly – as artist, from the US, a very creative person.

I showed the kids a few paintings and asked what they thought of them. They were using the simplest structures of ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’ and, in the case of the older and more advanced students, to provide a rationale for their views.

The Campbell soup was especially interesting. First of all, because we compared it to the local brand of ready made food that the kids could relate to and it was a huge surprise that such a usual item can become an artifact. Second of all, this particular painting was how we transitioned into the theme of the day: how the same item, represented in different colours can create different associations.

Stage: The colours and the emotions

We looked at the photograph of Marilyn Monroe and one of the most famous paintings by Andy Warhol and at the similar painting of Mickey Mouse. We worked as a group and we talked about the different emotions related to different versions of Marilyn and Mickey Mouse and how they made us feel. I wanted to keep it open class in order to give the students a chance to hear as many different versions and ideas as possible to show them that the same painting can generate a great variety of emotions.

Stage: Let’s create

I told the kids that we are going to try to express our emotions and that we are going to be like Andy Warhol. I added that to Andy, Marilyn and Mickey were important symbols because he was American and that we would use some other symbols. At this point, the kids were already shouting out the name ‘Chebourashka’:-)

We went back to the other classroom. Everyone got a handout (see below) and a pencil or a marker. First, we all decided what feelings and emotions we wanted to represent and we labelled all the sections of the handout.

Afterwards, I gave out the painting materials and we sat down to work. The kids were given time to paint and I was painting my own and monitoring and chatting to the kids and asking the follow-up questions.

Stage: Tell me about your Chebourashka

The kids worked in pairs and told their partner about their pictures and the emotions they represented and, whenver possible, provided rationale for that. In that particular lesson, we only had enough time to talk to one partner but, in theory, there is a lot more potential and it is more than recommended for the kids to swap pairs and to talk to as many peers as possible.

Stage: Goodbye

We finished the lesson with cleaning up, with a round of stickers and with a song.

@funkysocksanddragons

Materials

The diary of a lazy (VYL) teacher: Five songs that have become games

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‘The hills are alive with the sound of music….’

Hello! My name is Anka and I am here to tell you how to be a lazy teacher. ‘Lazy’ here is to highlight ‘no preparation‘ although that does not mean ‘doing nothing at all‘. That never happens in the pre-school classroom.

All of the songs featured here are the favourites of my students and that is one of the two reasons why we turned them into games. The other one is the fact that all of them contains the most precious structures and an opportunity that I could not just miss.

One disclaimer that needs to be included here (and the most important one here) is that things do not happen overnight and these are not the games that we play in the same lesson in which the songs are introduced. The song games are the freer practice activity, the follow-up, the spontaneous production opportunity and the fun opportunity, yes, but we start playing them strictly only when the kids have become entirely familiar (‘borderline bored’ even) with a song. All due to the age of the students and the way they process songs and the world.

This post will be about our (mine and the kids’) Top Five Songs, those which brought us most fun. If you are interested in the logistics, please have a look at the older post in which I describe the stages of un-singing a song in more detail. You can find it here.

Do you like broccoli ice-cream?

If, by any chance, you are not familiar with the phenomenon of broccoli ice-cream, it is definitely time to catch-up. This is the song that my own personal ‘un-singing’ started with and I have safely say that since I found this song, this has been the only tool I have been using to introduce and to practise ‘Do you like…?’ with both my primary and pre-primary students.

We start with singing and talking about food, we created our own most random, disgusting and delicious, food combinations and then we slowly move towards the non-culinary questions, too.

What do you like to do?

When I was first introducing this song, I was in two minds. On the one hand, the song was very tempting – lots of useful verbs, a beautiful complex sentence with a linking word ‘but’ and lots of fun. On the other hand, my 5 year-old preschoolers, beginners and all these verbs…I could not imagine all of these being pre-taught all together. We would have to have a whole separate unit, flashcards, two weeks of practice and then the song itself. I didn’t want to do that.

And I did not. We turned everything upside down and inside out and we started with just watching the video, for the fun of it and for pleasure. The practice and the speaking, started with these few verbs that we did know already such as ‘dance’, ‘ride a bike’, ‘cook’. They were the main focus and everything else was acquired, bit by bit.

When we create our own ideas for things we like and don’t really like to do, the kids first tend to change only little details, for example ‘I like riding a bike but I don’t like riding a dinosaur’ instead of the original ‘shark’ or to use the ideas from other verses, for example ‘I like reading but I don’t like reading in the air’, instead of ‘upside down’. But the important thing is that they speak and the song helps them produce complex sentences. The really amazing thing happens later on – the more we play, the more creative and original these contributions become.

As a teacher, I am mostly interested in maximising production, of course, but there are some hidden bonuses here. The kids know that it is the creative part of the lesson and they are really looking forward to hearing their friends’ ideas (aka ‘we work on the focus and extending the attention span’), they listen (aka ‘we develop one more skill’) and they react either by just laughing or expressing opinion when their own view on riding dinosaurs or drawing on the moon differs from that of the author (aka ‘we develop interactive skills’).

As quiet as a mouse

As soon as I found this song, I knew that I would be singing it with all my students. After all, conditions are perfect: a yummy piece of a structure that wonderfully lends itself to language games, the theme of the animals, some great adjectives (a most recent obsession of a VYL teacher) and, last but not least, a few music genres that were chosen to represent different animals. What’s not too like here?

I liked it so much that I decided to introduce it ‘just because’, not waiting until the next animal lesson or the next adjectives lesson. Actually, at this point, my ‘advanced’ pre-schoolers got bored with all the hello songs (of which I was informed) and so this has become the new hello song or the piece that we start our lessons with now.

And then we play, making new sentences about the animals (‘as beautiful as a lion’), ourselves (‘as happy as Anka’) and all the impossible and sarcastic combinations (‘as big as a ladybird’ and ‘as little as a giraffe’). With lots and lots of laughter.

I’m rocking in my school shoes

This is the only song in this set that does not come from Super Simple Songs and which we owe to Pete the Cat.

Here, the story took a completely different turn – I did want a module on school (it was the start of the year) and on the Present Continous (which would help us later to get the kids involved in the telling of the stories and in the describing the pictures) and so I wrote it for my kids and the video and the song, of course, were the basis for it.

The contents of the module included: rooms in the school and a set of Present Continous sentences, but the original set from the song was later extended by the set of places which the kids studied before (such as ‘the cafe’, ‘the volcano’, ‘the park’) and the other verbs which we have been using for two years in our movement game. Now they came in very handy.

This particular song is the song that we have modified the most and our key structure, sung and then spoken, went according to the formula ‘what I am doing’ + ‘where’, for example: I am reading in the garden.

What’s your favourite colour?

I have mentioned it before, in one of the previous posts, that I utterly love this song. Not only is it a very dynamic way of practising colours (we sing it, touching and pointing at everything green, blue and yellow around us) and, as such, it can be introduced even with the youngest beginners, but it also has got the advantage of introdcing a superbly generative and adaptable ‘What’s your favourite…‘ together with an equally superbly generative and adaptable (and straightforward) answer ‘I like‘. We sing it first with colours but, as soon as the kids are ready, we start singing (and then talking) about our favourite colours. And then, as we progress through the unit, about our favourite fruit, pets, toys, weather, food and animals. If there is any structure that can be and should be introduced as the first five ones…

In class, I sing the verse for each student, using their name ‘Sasha, Sasha, What’s your favourite colour?’ and Sasha is expected to answer by choosing a flashcard from the pile of colour flashcards as she answers. Which is a procedure that we repeat later on with all the topics. To make it more managable, I have also created a set of special flashcards which have the question on one side and a selection of items in each category on the other side. This way I do not have to keep a huge pile of flashcards from all the categories to practise this question.

With my older students we have managed to take this activity one step further and turn it into a pairwork activity. At this point, we have a beautiful selection of categories (sport, hobbies, lunch, dessert, transport, toys, jungle animals, farm animals, ocean animals) and the kids are good at accepting the flashcard of a tractor to stand for the entire category. We put our ten categories of the day (aka ten flashcards) on the floor, we sit around it in pairs. One child in each pair gets five counting sticks and they ask their chosen five ‘favourite’ questions to their partners and, as they do, they put one stick on the relevant flashcard. After they are done, I collect the sticks, divide them into the packs of five and redistribute and the other child in each pair asks their chosen questions.

As a follow-up, they ask me a question each, as we collect the cards of the floor. A beautiful, personalised pairwork activity that started a long while ago with a Super Simple Song.

What are you waiting from? Have you got a song that you have been singing for a while now and that your kids know very (very) well? Are there any interesting structures that could turn this song into a game? Go on! Use it to maximise production! It will be fun! I guarantee!

Happy teaching!

Wordwall: Top 10 Favourite Activities

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Well, well, well, this is officially my post #100 on the blog and I am in the mood for celebrating. That might take the form of sharing some random numbers (8,280 visits and 5,563 visitors over a year and a half (and mind you, I have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER if it is ‘impressive’, ‘not so good at all’ or just ‘why even bring it up?!’) and pondering over the fact that these have been my 5 most popular posts:

a) Colourful semantics in EFL?

b) The Invisible Student and why you might want to have one

c) The first VYL lesson Survival Kit

d) A to Z of homework for very young learners

e) All you need is a picture

Which means that there is some interest in teaching pre-schoolers, using visuals in class and that Pasha, the invisible student, has become a bit more real, overall.

Apart from that, however, I would also like to take this opportunity to share with you my top 10 wordwall activities that I use with my primary and pre-primary students.

Disclaimer: Wordwall is amazing, no doubt about that, but it is still only a resource, a material. Its main aim is to provide opportunities for the students to produce the language. For that reason, in all of the games (for the lack of a better word) described below there will be always a differentiation between the material (the actual tool created with wordwall formats) and the activity (how we use it in class).

Here we go (in no particular order):

  • Are you scared of?

Materials: Random cards, for example ‘Are you scared of…?‘

Activity: Kids take turns to ask everyone the key question using the cue on the card. All the students in the group answer. The same pattern can be used with any question ie Do you like…? Can you…? Have you got…?

Works well with: primary (they can attempt working in pairs and taking turns to ask a question to their partner only) and pre-primary, individual and groups

  • Tell me about

Materials: Open the box, for example Tell me about this picture (seasons #2)

Activity: Kids play in teams, ask for the box to be open, produce a sentence (or sentences about the picture), win the number of points. The game about seasons is a very simple one, for preschoolers, the one such as this one here, about animals, can generate a lot more language, also with preschoolers and, of course, a lot more with primary.

Works well with: primary and pre-primary (with pre-primary we play T vs the whole class), groups and individial (we play T vs the student).

  • What’s this? Stencils

Materials: Flashcards, double-sided, for example Secret animals. What’s this?

Activity: Kids play in teams, team A asks the question ‘What’s this?’, team B tries to answer. Afterwards the teacher flips the card to check. Depending on the vocabulary kids then say whether they like it or not or try to describe, too.

Works well with: pre-primary, individual and groups, it might be a bit under-challenging for the primary students

  • Which one is correct? Spelling

Materials: Flashcards, double-sided, with visuals and correct and incorrect spelling of the word Places in the city or a quiz with a similar idea, for example this one Superminds 5, Read and choose

Activities: Kids read both versions and choose the correct one. With the flashcards the teacher is flipping the cards back and forth, I use it mostly with my 1-1s. With groups the quiz version works better and it can turn into a proper quiz, with the kids writing the answers down.

Works well with: primary, individual and groups

  • Advanced riddles aka Turn your back

Materials: Random cards, for example Transport Revision.

Activities: Kids work in pairs, one student in each pair has to sit with their back to the TV/ interactive whiteboard, the other is looking at the board. T keeps dealing the cards. The student looking at the screen has to describe the word for their partner to guess. After a certain number of rounds they change. The cards usually have the words on them, too, so it works well with mixed ability groups.

Works well with: primary and teens. I have only tried it with groups.

  • Song support

Materials: Match, for example Pete the Cat, Rocking in my school shoes or As quiet as a mouse

Activity: We use the cards or the matching activity to sing the song, slowly, with pauses, to practise and to revise before the actual video / track. The set such as the one for the ‘As quiet as a mouse’ can be used to start creating own versions of the song as kids have only the animals and they can (if they are ready) to come up with their own adjectives.

Works well with: primary and pre-primary, individual and groups.

  • Story / video comprehension check

Materials: Match to accompany Peppa Pig ‘Fruit Day’ or a quiz to accompany Peppa Pig ‘George is ill’

Activities: We normally learn the vocabulary, get ready for watching the video and then watch it. The games described here are used to check comprehension. The quiz is read by the teacher and the kids answer ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ and correct the incorrect sentences (unless I use the same story with primary who can read it themselves). The matching activity is always accompanied by a structure. It can be a simple ‘Apples are for George’ or a more comples ‘George would like apples’.

Works well with: primary and pre-primary, individual or groups.

  • Memory Game

Materials: Match, for example I am going to the supermarket. I am going to buy bread or any other matching activity consisting of two components.

Activities: The game itself is usually set for homework. We check it together, whole class. Afterwards the kids are divided into pairs and they test each other, for example Student A says: I am going to the supermarket’, student B has to recreate the second half of the sentence. To help the kids a bit, I put up some key words (ie places and main verbs) on the board. The kids change after a few rounds.

Works well with: primary, individual or groups

  • Just questions

Materials: Flashcards or random cards, with full questions or prompts.

Activities: Kids work in pairs and the kids interview each other, reading the questions or prompts of the computer / TV / interactive whiteboard. Afterwards they swap.

Works well with: primary and teens, individual and groups

  • Yes / No

Materials: Radom cards or flashcards for example ‘She’s / He’s wearing’

Activities: Kids look at the cards and listen to the teacher describing the pictures. If the sentence is correct, they say ‘Yes’, if there is a mistake, they reply with ‘No!’ and correct the mistake. Later on, there is a lot of potential for the kids to take turns to lead the game. The older students can work in pairs, too, while looking at the screen / the interactive whiteboard / the TV.

Works well with: primary and pre-primary, individual and groups.

If you are looking for inspiration or ready activity, you can find my profile (Azapart) there. I share all of my activities so there is plenty to choose from, especially if you work with Playway to English and Superminds.

Here you will also find Part 2 of this post and even more ideas for using Wordwall games in your YL classes.

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.

The Storytelling Campaign: Activities

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If you are here, dear read, you have probably already read the first part of this post. If not – here it is.

In this part, I would like to share some practical activities to be used in the VYL and YL lessons to practise adjectives, verbs and Present Continous and to get closer to storytelling, even with the very young or the beginner students.

First steps

Tell me about this picture has quickly become one of our favourite games. We use wordwall Boxes for that. Players take turns to open the box and to describe the picture hidden there. If they complete the task successfully, they get the number of points also hidden in the box. The game can be used to practise both adjectives and Present Continous (or any other language) and the students can be asked to produce one, two or three sentences, depending on their skills and the teacher can keep count of the sentences produced using fingers. The best thing about the game is that the children choose themselves what they want to talk about, much as in the YLE Starters, Flyers and Movers.

Here are some of the sets we have used

  • Animals: I can see a lion. It is big. It is brown. It is beautiful.
  • Present Continous: It is a girl. She is drinking coffee. She is happy.
  • Bedrooms: It is a bedroom. It is big. It is beautiful. I like it.

So far, I have only played it with my 1-1 students (player 1: the student, player 2: the teacher) but I am about to start using it with my groups, too (player 1: the class, player 2: the teacher).

Oups is a game in which students look at the picture (any picture) and listen to the sentences produced by the teacher. When they hear a sentence with a mistake, they should say ‘oups!’ and correct the sentence. In the beginning, they normally react only by producing a single word, replacing the incorrect one but later on, when they get used to it, they can produce full sentences. Even later, it is also possible for the students to lead the game and to produce correct or incorrect sentences for everyone else to listen and to react to.

With the youngest students it is better to limit the range of structures used to something super simple, for example ‘I can see…’, with the older (and more advanced ones), the structures can vary.

This activity can be used in class but it is also a great homework task, as long as you share the picture and record a few sentences and share it with parents.

An example can be found below. The picture was generated using makebeliefscomix.com and the recording can be found here.

makebeliefscomix.com

In my picture…: This is a natural follow-up activity, a little bit more complex and a little bit more challenging. It is based on two pictures that are to be compared. They are not quite the actual YLE Movers or Flyers speaking tasks because these are too detailed and they contain the vocabulary that might be beyond the pre-A student’s level.

What you need is basically two pictures that are connected by the theme i.e. farm, kids in the park, in my bedroom etc and a very simple starter phrase, a proper all-rounder such as ‘I can see’. With 1-1 students, it is very straightforward – one picture for the teacher, the other for the student. With groups, the kids will be working as a group, comparing their picture with the teacher’s. At least in the beginning, before they are ready to work in pairs.

Some examples of pictures that can be used:

These are the pictures I ‘created’ using the tools on the Miro board
www.clipart-library.com and www.clipartpanda.com

The next step will be telling stories using a set of pictures…(Please continue reading:-)

One story, many ideas.

Here is one of the YLE Flyers stories (Flyers TESTS REFERECE), called ‘Charlie and the elephant‘ and some of the ways in which it can be used with pre-school and primary students.

‘Advanced’ preschool students

Step 1: look at the pictures and say what you can see. The kids can use very simple structures, for example ‘I can see…’ or some more complex structures, for example ‘It is a…’, ‘She’s got…’, ‘He’s got…’, ‘She is…’, ‘He is…’.

With 1-1 students, the teacher and the child take turns to describe pictures, with groups we all talk each picture, one by one. It might be a good idea to cover up all the pictures and uncover them progressively, to help the children focus only on one of them at a time.

Step 2: look at the pictures, listen and help me. This is basically an advanced version of Oups, the game I described above, only here a series of pictures is used. Here you can find a recording I created for my students.

Step 3: look at the pictures and help me tell the story, Similar but Different. The teacher first models, telling a story that has a similar framework (a woman, a boy, an animal, some fruit, going away, a show at the end) but which uses different details. Later on, the students tell their own version of the story, with the necessary amount of support from the teacher. The teacher can only start the senteces (‘A woman….’) or create almost an entire sentence with the students filling in only the essential details (‘A boy is eating a….’).

These steps were introduced in three consecutive lessons.

Primary beginner Flyers students

Step 1: Two words: students work in pairs. Each pair gets a copy of the story. Kids look at pictures and together write two things they can see in each of them. The teacher also participates in order to be able to model at each stage of the activity. Students exchange the handouts, in a circle. Each pair gets a new handout and the procedure is repeated: each pair writes two words next to each picture but these have to be two new words. The procedure is repeated until each pair writes their words on every handout.

By that point, each picture is accompanied by a set of words (2 words x the number of pairs). Kids look at the pictures and tell the story using the words they can see. They can be encouraged to cross out the words they have used to make sure that all the words have been used.

Step 2: Two crazy words: we start with retelling the story from the previous lesson, as a class. Then, the teacher shows the students the new handout – the familiar pictures but with two strange words next to each of them. The teacher tells them that these are the words you cannot see in any of the pictures and that now the students will tell the story again but including these words.

It is absolutely necessary to generate some ideas, for the first two pictures, for example. I have added ‘a teacher’ and ‘a monster’ for picture 1 and it went more or less like this: ‘Mmmm, a teacher. Maybe mum is a teacher. Maybe the book is about a teacher. Maybe the book is about a monster. Maybe…’ and I let the kids give some more ideas about these two words.

Afterwards, the students work in pairs, taking turns to retell the story with the new words.

If you are interested and if you would like to see the handouts that we used, you can find them here.

Step 3: Our own story: again, we start with retelling a story, together, as a group. Afterwards the teacher goes through the framework of the story, using a powerpoint presentation, highlightling the main ‘events’ of the story, at the same time eliciting ideas from the class. Then the students are given some silent ‘Thinking Time’ (something that we tried for the very first time and that worked like a dream) during which they prepare their story. Afterwards, they are telling their stories to their partners.

Action stories

One of the tools that will come in handy in and that can be used to accompany the activities mentioned above is the action story or the TPR stories promoted by Herbert Puchta (and Gunther Gerngross) in pretty much all of his coursebooks. They have been included in Playway to English, both editions and in Superminds 1 and 2. I have some vague recollections about the old Join Us series, too. There is a separate publication, Do and Understand: 50 Action Stories for Young Learners which they wrote together and which was published in 1996 (wow!) but which still can be found in libraries and on amazon.co.uk.

The idea behind those is that children, even the youngest ones, can be encouraged to listen to a story and to tell a story, using a multi-channel approach: there is a set of pictures to illustrate the main events and each of these comes with a sentence and a gesture.

Students listen to the story, retell the story using the gestures and, later on, also the sentences and they work with the visuals in the coursebook completing such exercises as listen and order the pictures and, in case of the primary students, read and number the sentences.

More ideas to work with pictures and stories on this blog

Happy teaching!

The Storytelling Campaign

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makebeliefscomix.com

Forgive the grand name, I must have been in the mood for something like that, now I feel like the general Kutuzov himself.

Initially, I was planning to write a post on all the reasons of using stories in class and perhaps I am going to get down to it, eventually but I want to reasearch it properly so bear with me. It will take some time.

If you have not worked with stories much you can have a look at this post here, to look at the basics of using storybooks in the EFL classroom and here at one of the ways of building a lesson around a coursebook story.

Today, however, I would like to tell you about the behind the scenes work – everything that takes place in my VYL and YL classes to ensure that my kids are ready to tell stories.

makebeliefscomix.com

Why bother?

  • To take my students from the receptive skills of storytelling towards the productive storytelling skills and in a more extensive way than just listening to the stories we read and which they help to retell
  • To give them the appropriate tools to enable production (We Want More! (remember?)
  • To unleash their imagination and creativity, step by step, even in pre-school.
makebeliefscomix.com

Step 1: Teaching adjectives

I wouldn’t want to say that the curriculum and the coursebooks we use with VYL or YL do not contain any adjectives at all. Yes, some of them are included but, in my opinion, there is a lot more potential than just the basic ‘happy, sad, angry’ and ‘big and small’. If you think about it, many coursebooks introduce adjectives only when they deal with comparatives and superlatives and, in my humble opionion, even the very young kids understand at least some of the opposites and they can use them to describe things.

For that very reason, the curriculum can be upgraded by adding:

  • more emotions: happy, sad, angry, hungry, thirsty, tired, sleepy, not so good, great, good, OK.
  • more adjectives to describe characters: brave, strong, clever, beautiful, ugly, scared and not scared, fast, slow.
  • adjectives to describe objects and animals: funny, scary, long, short, old, new, clean and dirty.

It is true that it might not always be easy to depict these accurately but we can easily use the children’s growing ability to deal with symbols and all these concepts can be associated and explained with carefully chosen images.

Here you can find some of the vocabulary sets that I use with my pre-school and primary strudents. A very important note: children are not necessarily expected to memorise all of these and to be able to remember both the word and its written form. We stick to the curriculum as regards the tests and assessment but in our classes we use a lot wider vocabulary range than the coursebook suggests.

makebeliefscomix.com

Step 2: Teaching verbs and teaching Present Continous

That is another topic or area which, in my opinion, can significantly contribute to the development of our little students’ storytelling skills but, at the same time, the area that has not really been reflected in the coursebooks. Fair enough, the Present Simple might not be the most essential structure to know. It not introduced explicitly in the pre-school coursebooks (to the best of my knowledge) and in primary it is a structure on the YLE Starters list but in the classroom, this one is introduced in year 2 of primary.

At the same time, this is the structure that can be easily introduced and clarified with gestures, a structure that can be used in the classroom, to clarify instructions or to manage the group and a structure that is very (very, very) useful while describing pictures and, later on, describing pictures which form a story, like in the YLE Movers and Flyers.

As for the content, these are some of the verbs that can be added to the curriculum

  • everyday verbs: get up, eat, drink, brush your teeth, wash your face, get dressed, go to school, go to sleep, play, cook, watch TV, sleep.
  • hobbies and free-time activities: dance, sing, draw, read, write, ride a bike, listen to music, jump, run, swim.
makebeliefscomix.com

Step 3: Teaching the basic linking words

This is probably the most challenging step as it is the most abstract one and cannot be easily represented with flashcards. At the same time, the three basic linking words: and, but and because can be taught in the context.

These are the ideas that I tend to use with my students

  • and: introduced as a follow-up of ‘I like / I don’t like’ to talk about our preferences ie ‘I like apples and bananas and cookies’ and it can be used with quite a few sets of vocabulary such as colours, toys, food, animals, pets, etc.
  • but: introduced through the song ‘What do you like to do‘ by Super Simple Songs
  • because: introduced when we talk about how we feel. We start with a simple ‘I’m good’, ‘I’m happy’ and then we slowly introduce the linking word ‘I’m happy because it is sunny’. The same applies to all the pictures and photographs we discuss.

In all three cases, the introduction starts with the children being exposed to complex sentences linked with three words and getting used to hearing them. Production comes later on, when they are ready.

makebeliefscomix.com

This is the first part of the post.

In part two I am going to share some of the activites we use in class. It’s half-ready)))

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #13: Angelina, our class puppet.

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First steps

I still remember my first ever lesson with pre-schoolers in Moscow. I went in prepared, a whole pile of flashcards, crayons, books, mini-cards at the ready. I wasn’t scared or panicky and the thought that we had to occupy ourselves for only 45 minutes was rather soothing. After all, I did teach in Spain, the group was much bigger and the lessons much longer and yet I survived. In a rather victorious manner.

But then the kids came in, only five of them, they sat down nicely and we started the lesson. And by that I mean ‘I’ started the lesson. They did not give me the register before the lesson, the admin left quickly, the door was closed and the parents were somewhere else. I was on my own.

The kids were sitting nicely, very nicely, just looking at me and absolutely not reacting to my smiles, hellos and communication attempts. They did not respond at all to my ‘silly teacher guessing game’ that I normally (and successfully) use to get the kids to introduce themselves at the beginning of the first lesson. I say my name, pointing at myself and then start with one of the kids (the brave-looking one) and start bombarding them with all the boy’s or girl’s names typical of the country that I can think of until I bump into the right one or until the child reacts to the silliness and introduces themselves.

Only this time, I was getting nowhere. Five pairs of eyes were looking at me, just looking at me and waiting for something else. Something else which I did not have. It did last only a minute or even less, in real life, but it felt like a whole eternity. And I did start to panic.

Luckily, among the rubbish that I did bring to class that day, I had a puppet, Max from Playway to English. And guess what, the kids did not want to talk to me but they were more than happy to converse in Max. In English, straight away, even without any special introductions in L1 and explanations that Max is from England does not speak Russian and so we have to make an effort. That was not necessary, they just wanted to talk to him. We did talk. Yay!

I don’t really like puppets, to be honest.

I don’t and I cannot even explain why.

I am actually good at all the puppet-related skils. I don’t have a problem with putting on voices, making faces and role-playing things with myself for the benefit of the 5-year-old audience. And anything in the classroom can find its own soul and voice, flashcards, masks, pencils.

But, really, I use puppets only in the beginning of the course, with new groups, when we have new students joining an already established group or when we were forced to move our pre-primary classes online.

Dex is then ready to help and Teddy sorts out most of the issues. Children feel more comfortable with something that is soft and pretty and right out of the world that they are familiar with and someone who does silly things and who can make them happy. Teddy and Dex are always at the ready.

However, as soon as we done with the first weeks of the course and we feel comfortable in the classroom, they visit less and less frequently. I don’t miss them but perhaps this is something that I should actually reflect on why we are not using puppets more. But there are exceptions, of course.

Angelina, my superhero

It all started in 2017 because this was the Year of the Rooster and, traditionally, the world filled up with toys, figurines, puppets representing this very animal. One of my friends landed one as a present and decided that my classroom will be the best permanent home for it or, actually, her, because, regardless of the Chinese horoscope, it is a she, a hen, Angelina.

At the time, my youngest group were already very big, already five years old, well-accommodated in the school and in the classroom and definitely beyond the stage when they needed a puppet to ‘feel better’ or ‘to break the ice’.

But I had Angelina and I really wanted to use it and, of course, I did. It was not one of the projects that you start with research and reading that lead to implementing an idea in the classoom to meet some specific aims. Here, we went topsy-turvy. I had a resource, I jumped in at the deep end, without any specific aims, observing, taking notes and reflecting. And learning a lot about working with preschoolers. Here is how Angelina changed my teaching life.

Angelina 1: When puppets listen, kids talk.

Instructions

  • Get a puppet, think of the name, the background, the voice and the movements. Our Angelina, for example, is not quite a puppet, rather ‘a fancy sweets container‘ as she has a big zipped pocket, in her bum (sorry) which I decided not to use it. I do not to put it on my hand. She normally sits in my lap and I hold her by the back, letting her express herself mostly through the head movements. Sometimes, with the use of my other hand, I use Angelina’s wings or wings which are quite dangly. She is, overall, quite expressive for a puppet))
  • Make the puppet a part of the classroom routine. Our Angelina sleeps in her house (this being a rather unappealing plastic bag hanging on the bookshelf). Right after the hello song and hello routine, we wake her up and invite her to join us in the circle. Afterwards, she says goodbye and returns to her house, to continue sleeping.
  • The main aim of Angelina’s visits is to provide an opportunity for freer speaking practice and to encourage the kids to produce the language spontaneously.
  • In practice that means that we ask lots and lots of questions and Angelina is telling us about herself. We start with ‘What’s your name?’, ‘How are you today?’ and ‘What’s your favourite….?’, later moving on to ‘Do you like…?’, ‘Have you got…?’ and ‘Can you…?’, although these are always only ideas and I make sure that all the contributions are welcome. I have not tried telling and retelling stories yet but that might be another option.

Why we love it

  • Angelina (or ‘a puppet’) is a fascinating way of getting the language out of the kids. They start producing the questions because they are really curious about the class puppet’s life and these questions start from the ‘traditional’ questions, often used and heard in class but they quickly become very creative and unexpected.
  • Kids naturally react to what Angelina says and we can use this opportunity to teach them and them a chance to express surprise (‘Wow’), disbelief (‘Really?’) or shock (‘Oh no!’).
  • There is some opportunity for emerging langauge learning, for example ‘wolf’ (things that Angelina is scared of), ‘corn’ (things that Angelina eats) and ‘planet’ (things that Angelina likes) that we might not have learnt otherwise because they do not really feature in our coursebook.
  • It is a woderful opportunity for spontaneous production since with this kind of activities the students are in charge of the content. Naturally, they will not be able to chat freely in English about Angelina (what with being 5, pre-A learners of English, with a limited exposure to L2) but from my perspective (I still teach these same, first Angelina, children, now we are seven and eight and A1 level), this was an important first step that has definitely contributed to my students’ current level of fluency and communicative skills.

Angelina 2: Our class puppet and her diary

Instructions

  • First you need to have had a class puppet for some time for the kids to become familiar with the puppets, their habits and interests. I introduced Angeling in year two and the diary in year three, but it will depend on the group and the children.
  • The teacher starts the journal. I used a sketchbook and filled in the first few pages with Angelina’s adventures. Each of them was a drawing and a sentence.
  • The teacher brings the journal to class. The group look at it together and talk about what they can see in the pictures.
  • After a few weeks, the teacher first explains the whole idea and the logictics to the parents: the kids, in turns, will be taking Angelina and the album home for the weekend and then, when they are ready, they will bring them back, with one more drawing added. In class, we are all going to look at it and talk about it.
  • To lessen the stress of having to draw in the official diary, I have used a template for the main character, an drawing from clip art library that I printer, cut out and glued to a few empty pages. This way we would always create a collage, the drawing of Angelina would be consistent and of a good quality and the students would only work on the scene itself.
  • The kids were only suppsed to write but some of the parents helped and wrote the key sentences.
  • When I introduced the idea, one of my eductional mums said ‘Youa are brave!’ and, I guess, by that she meant that I was risking Angelina getting destoryed, lost, stained or loved so much that she would never want to go back to school…Yes, that is something to take into consideration. The younger students might get too emotionally attached and we would be in trouble. Plus, there are the accidents of the everyday that we cannot predict or prevent. I did think about it and I still wanted to risk. Plus, I had located another copy of Angelina in our accountants’ room and I was ready to ask, bribe or steal, should anything really bad happen to our original SuperHen.
  • ‘Angelina is making cookies’
  • ‘Angelina is having cookies and tea.’

Why we love it

  • The kids loved taking Angelina home to play. Once she came back to school with a boyfriend (who stayed only for a day) but she also encouraged other kids to bring her toys. A parrot called Pepsi attended our lessons regularly, participated eagerly and sometimes asked for her own handout in order to be able to do her own homework. Which, accidentally, was always different from her human’s homework.
  • The project gives the kids a chance to be creative as Angelina can do absolutely anything while visiting. She can go to the park and she can fly to the moon, too.
  • It provides the entire group with a picture to talk about, to discuss and to ask questions about and the best bit is – we never know what it is going to be. As a result, we get yet another chance to use the language tools we have to talk and to learn new vocabulary, too.
  • No Angelina was harmed during the entire project. The kids took this responsibility very seriously and I was really proud of them.

  • ‘Angelina is making a cake’
  • ‘Angelina is on the beach’
  • ‘Angelina is jumping into the swimming pool’

Instead of a coda, another puppet story.

If you think that puppets and class puppets work only with the little kids, I would like you to reconsider.

In the classroom where we study with my older kids, we don’t have any balls and whenever we need to throw things (while playing games) we use soft toys. For that reason, we have a creature called ‘Flying Cow’, which lives on the top shelf, is a very sphere-like toy cow and, yes, it frequently flies.

Despite the fact that the students are well-past the primary age, Flying Cow always gets stroked, squeezed, hugged, patted, or, in other words ‘is shown affection’. Last year, while we were playing, the cow got thrown or caught rather too energetically and, as a result, suffered a tail injury (reads: it just got ripped off).

It was an interesting thing to see that all my seemingly teenage students gasped in horror at the damage done. As if Flying Cow would really be in pain. I did keep a straight face and acted like a good doctor ‘Don’t worry, everything is going to be alright. I’ll take her home and fix it.’ Which was met with relief.

Maybe not only the little kids?:-)

Now, dear teacher, take a careful look around. Is there anyone that could become your Angelina?

Happy teaching!

Bibliography

  1. Carolyn Webster-Stratton, PhD, Tips for Using Puppets to Promote Preschool Children’s Social and Emotional Development, accessed on 6 January 2021, from www.incredibleyears.com
  2. Christine Belifiore, Puppets Talk, Children Listen, accessed on 6 January 2021, from https://teachmag.com/archives/5618
  3. When Puppets Speak, Children Listen, No Strings, TeDxBermuda, accessed on 6 January 2021, from youtube.com
  4. Sandie Mourão and Gail Ellis, Teaching English to Pre-Primary Children, DELTA Teacher Development Series, pp 48 – 51

Crumbs #11: Speaking Circle (aka My favourite part of the lesson)

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Set-up: a set of small chairs in a circle, in one super cozy corner of the classroom. This is where always start the lesson before we move to the serious part of the classroom and the lesson, with big tables, big chairs and coursebooks.

Time: 5 – 10 minutes in the beginning of each lesson

Materials: Angelina, dice and any visuals, especially flashcards, EFL posters (and at the school we do have a big and the most random collection of these from long-forgotten publishers and coursebooks), Starters, Movers and Flyers wordlist picturebooks which you can be easily downloaded (although we are lucky to have a few paper copies, too) and sometimes a whiteboard or a set of mini-whiteboards

Interaction patterns: all the new activities are first tried and tested with the whole group, to support production and to make sure that all students feel comfortable to be creative and to share their ideas. Later on, we split and continue in pairs or in teams.

Here a confession: ideally, of course, all of the interaction should be taking place in pairs to ensure that everyone has a go and produces as much language as possible but it is not what we always do. I have noticed that first of all, the children really do enjoy the whole group discussion, when everyone can contribute and when we do something together. I cannot quite describe it but it is almost palpable, this ‘team spirit’ and it does have a positive impact on them and on the atmosphere in the group. Plus, they are always curious about everyone else’s creative (aka crazy) ideas so they pause to eavesdrop, especially when there are giggles coming up from different parts of the circle. Because of that, we do both, a lot of whole class and a lot of pairwork.

Some of the activities to use in the Speaking Circle:

  • Tell me about that boy: the kids choose a person, an animal, a character or an object in the picture. The kids choose themselves what they want to conversation to be about and what information to include. The basic information usually includes emotions, clothes, activities or location.
  • Yes or no: the kids use the picture as the basis to make true or false sentences about the picture. The other students listen and correct the sentences when necessary.
  • Riddles: the kids describe something in the picture (the colour, the size, the location and the activities) for the others to guess
  • Which one is better?: the kids draw two cards out of the pile (animals, gadgets, food or anything else that we are studying) and they choose which one is better.
  • It’s a pair: the kids look for associations among different objects, people, animals in the set and they have to explain why they have put them together
  • Silly pictures: the kids talk about different silly things they see in the pictures
  • Silly stories: the kids come up with a character and they take turns in coming up with the adventures based on the set of verbs and / or other words that the teacher prepares in advance (displayed on the whiteboard or on the mini-whiteboards).
  • Angelina: the kids chat with the class puppet, ask and answer questions (pre-primary groups)
  • Hello dice: a new variation of the hello circle that can be introduced long before the kids actually study the Past Simple. They roll the dice, once, in turns and talk about their day, starting with the key phrase and we try to encourage including justification (‘School was easy because I have only 4 lessons on Tuesday’) or evaluation (‘I ate soup and it was very yummy’) etc. Sometimes we also play with the imaginary dice which basically means that everyone can choose what they want to talk about. Somehow, then number 6 is the most common choice. Perhaps because it is most generative of all of them and it is fun to say that ‘I didn’t go to Mars’, ‘I didn’t eat a fox’, ‘I didn’t dance in the park’ and what not. Not to mention that they just LOVE rolling the imaginary dice.
I kept it colour-coded to help them navigate among the verbs in the early days of this game.

Why we like it

  • The kids love it
  • They are very creative, they have great ideas and they want to share them
  • By being creative, they also develop their creativity, there are new ideas, new approaches and even more fun
  • Endless opportunities for revising without focusing too much on any specific vocabulary or structures.
  • Some potential for accidental learning and emerging vocabulary (although to make it work properly, I should start keeping track of it)
  • The activities do provide lots of opportunities for spontaneous (or almost spontaneous) language production where the only scaffolding devices are just the resources prepared by the teacher for the day and the langauge that the kids have at their disposal and, in many ways, we are just having a chat, despite being only A1 level.
  • Really, the part of the lesson that I really look forward to, every Tuesday and every Thursday.

Happy teaching!