primaryeflclassroom

Discourse at the age of 5?

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From the series: We want more!

Of course! You can hear kids blabbing in the hallway. To their mums, dads, nannies, friends, school’s security guards, all these never-ending stories of kindergarten adventures, scraps with siblings, birthday parties, visits from gran, new toys, rain in the playground, teeth lost, dead grasshoppers found…

They do it in Russian, of course, but that just proves that they are capable of discourse and that we, teachers, cannot really use the excuse of their age to justify all the one- word exchanges in the classroom.

Of course, they are already fluent users of Russian so they will be able to produce lots more, naturally but this post is not about catching up with the L1 but about what is feasible for the pre-primary students, pre-A1 level with the total of 90 or 120 minutes of exposure to the English language. More than just single word utterances.

I present to you… (drum roll): A discourse clock.

The tool itself is neither very complex or especially revolutionary. It is a just a neater and a more VYL-friendly toy which was created to support the kids in producing the language.

How to?

  • We play a game of riddles
  • Teacher demonstrates: moving the hands around the clock and producing sentences about a secret animal, from 12 o’clock to 12 o’clock. Kids guess the animal.
  • Kids take turns to make sentences about their secret animal for the group to guess.

Why we like it?

  • Moving the hands around makes this taks a little bit more kinaesthetic and it helps to structure the whole discourse by sequencing it and by highlighting all the topics to mention. The clock hands never stop half-way through. They have to make a full circle and they can only make a full circle when the language is produced.
  • The icons offer the visual support for the students and they represent all the language that they should know. But, apart from working as ‘visual reminders’, they can also be used by kids to ask for teacher’s help, by pointing at the word they need to use, without having to resort to their L1.
  • It is ridiculously easy to adapt to different topics and levels of challenge. The most basic animal clock can only include ‘big/small’ and ‘colours’ and more areas can be added to it as the kids progress through the unit or the course.
  • It works in the classroom and online.
  • Eventually, the clock becomes unnecessary and the kids are ready to produce longer stretches of discourse without it.

If you are interested in the topic of language production in pre-schooler, make sure you check out the posts on pairwork in pre-school, using songs, activities based on developing cognitive skills and Colourful Semantics in EFL.

Happy teaching!

Early literacy online: when technology is on your side. Part 1: Reading

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Switching to the online and making it your place could be, in my case, described as flying colours or one step forward two steps back, on different days. Nothing wrong with that, a new reality, transitioning is a part of the game.

But, surprise surprise, I love teaching literacy online!
1. It is easier to get the kids focused.

2. It is easier to keep the whole group on the task.

3. Adapting activities to the requirements of the online classroom is not that difficult.

4. I have been forced to get interested in many apps, online games and programmes that I have, stubbornly, avoided so far.

5. We are improving and are better at reading.

The wonders of the Miro board, any level of literacy skills.

My Big (online) Book of Words: first letter level

It has been our tradition with all the pre-primary groups to start our class Big Book of Words where we collect all the words we know, gluing new cards (word+image) at the end of the unit and choosing a letter to read in every lesson as a part of our class routine. Since we’ve moved online, this little tradition had to be updated, too, but it was quite easy because on the miro board you can pick any image and quickly, too. Whatever word your students bring up, you’ve got it!

Noughts and crosses online: the first letter/sound level

It is one of my favourite games and so no wonder that there must have been a way to adapt it to the needs of early literacy and, then, to the needs of early literacy online.

The advantages are obvious: the older kids are familiar with the game and its rules and it tasks only a moment to prepare, online or off and you can easily focus on the chosen letters or phonics. With the older students in groups we play in teams, the kids choose the box and give a word that starts with that sound/letter. Some of them still struggle, that’s why each box contains not only a letter but also a number. This is what we use to choose.

With the younger kids, we keep the competitive element out, we use a bigger grid and we simply colour it in.

Phonics stories: sentence level

Before the kids get to read for real, they need to practice on simple phonics stories. They are inlcuded in every coursebook, some of them are more interesting, some are less but there is always a way of getting a little bit more of them. After a few rounds of listening and reading the story from the coursebook (‘Mum jumps in the mud with the ducks’) and then words in different order, the teacher does a sort of a ‘substitution drill’, revealing more and more sentences with one different word to really encourage them to read. The key words can be underlined, too.

This activity can be followed up by the students creating their own similar sentences and the teacher typing them up on the whiteboard.

Quizlet quiz: sentence level

Instead of putting single words and images or single words and translations, we use definitions. Students read them together and try to guess what it is. Then we check! To make it more challenging and to turn it into a real quiz, you can ask the kids to write the words and check at the very end, award points.Or not.

True or false: sentence level

It only takes an illustration, one of the pictures in the coursebooks or in the Cambrige YLE Wordlist Picturebook or anything else available online and a set of sentences that the teacher prepares beforehand.

They can be written on post-it notes or have them covered by shapes to be removed, one by one and ask the kids to react to the text. If the sentence is true – they clap their hands, if the sentences is false – they raise a hand.

The activity can be extended into a writing a activity, too. If nothing else, they can type them up into the chat box for the rest of the group to read and react.

Shared reading: text level

Shared reading was one of our favourite activities this year, until we had to move online. Doing it online is a bit challenging since not many storybooks are available online.

Online phonics stories like those from the youtube channel English Singsing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C1qj06xduo&t=104s might be a solution but I have also started to use Barefoot Books, also on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrd0TiER_J0. We use them with the sound switched off and at the lower speed. This and the bouncing ball really helps the kids to focus and to follow the text with ease.

Useful websites

  1. Phonics Bloom https://www.phonicsbloom.com/
  2. Oxford Owl https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/find-a-book/library-page
  3. Starfall https://www.starfall.com/h/ltr-classic/
  4. Reading A – Z https://www.readinga-z.com/phonics/decodable-books/
  5. Kidz Phonics https://www.kizphonics.com/materials/

Crumbs (#2): Cool homework ideas: Make Beliefs Comix

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Instructions

Go to Make Beliefs Comix website (https://www.makebeliefscomix.com)

Click Create Your Comix and just create. There is a range of characters, balloons, prompts, objects, masks and backgrounds…

Save, print, send to your email and share with your students to read at home.

Use it in class in the following lesson. The easiest, no preparation tasks might be simple questions (ie What did the unicorn do? Where did the unicorn go? What was your favourite place? Where would you like to go?) but there is a lot more that can be done.  

We loved it because…

We can focus on practicing what we are learning at the moment and the teacher include all the tricky phrases and the words that no one likes and no one remembers.

We can make it as easy or as difficult and as long or as short as we want.

We can print it, save it on the desktop or send it via email.

We can include our names, our class puppets, jokes and stories and because it is about us, we want to read it.

We finally like to read!

P.S. I tried to make it in class, with my individual students, too but it was too time-consuming. Perhaps there is some potential for students creating their comix on their own, at home but that is something to do in the future.

P.P.S. Make Beliefs Comix has a lot more to offer. Make sure you check out the other bits, too.