#primaryelf

Crumbs #83 Clouds or Working with the vocabulary

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Ingredients:

  • just a set of words that you are working on
  • flashcards, wordcards, a page of the coursebook with all of the vocabulary to be introduced and practise
  • a board to display the category or a powerpoint to display them in an online less

Procedures:

  • Introduce and drill the vocabulary as usual, with flashcards, electronic flashcards or realia
  • When the kids feel comfortable enough with using and prounucing the word, move on to the second part of the presentation / controlled freer practice that this activity is
  • Display the question and ask the students to answer it. When we just get started with this activity or if the group is small, we do it together as a class, later on, the kids do it in pairs for a moment or two.
  • The whole activity is a categorising task, according to the kids’ preferences and opinions.
  • I started doing it with my online students and the questions were presented in the form of colourful clouds on the slides, hence the name of the activity.
  • All of the options that I have come up with and used with my kids include: I like / I don’t like, It’s interesting / it’s boring, I’ve got it / I haven’t got it, It’s made of metal / plastic / paper, It’s easy / it’s difficult, I always and I never, It’s big / small, Tell me more about…

Why we like it?

  • It is a low-key, (almost) no-prep activity.
  • It gives the kids an opportunity to use the new language together with the familiar structures, in a few different ways.
  • It is not quite creative but it is personalised because the students categorise the words according to their ideas and preferences.
  • The lower levels (i.e. pre-A1) can only categorise the words, the higher level kids (from A-1 upwords) can provide a simple justification for their choices.
  • The most productive of them is ‘Tell me about’ but it might not be feasible with all of the topics and vocabulary sets.
  • It is not very challenging so all the students can complete it.

Happy teaching!

Leaves or Thank you, Georgia!

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Teaching English Through Art

The language

If you follow me and read these posts regularly, you already know that every English through Art lesson has three elements and that the most challenging and the most fun part is always combining these three in one short lesson and finding the connection between the English curriculum and the Art.

If you are a thorough reader, you may have also found out that sometimes, when you really (really) want to do something, you may turn the blind eye or the deaf ear to this beautiful equlibrium and just do it. And Georgia’s lesson is a perfect example of that kind of an approach. Why? Because I just wanted an Art lesson.

It doesn’t always have to be that way and if you go back, to my first lesson with leaves (here), you will see that it is a perfect lesson for the beginner learner because what you really need is the colours and it can be beautifully used with just that kind of linguistic input and practice. If your students are in year 1 of pre-primary English.

For my year 3 kids, we used it as an opportunity to bring autumn to class and to close the unit. We worked as usual, revised all of the vocabulary and just had a nice end-of-unit lesson. And then we did Art.

The artist

As you can see in the photographic evidence above, I went to school collecting leaves on the way. I wanted us to have something real to look at and to compare them with the painting. I put the leaves on the big table, before the lesson, and I was not really surprised that as soon as the kids entered, they started to touch them, to look at them and to smell them, just because and despite the fact that they definitely do not belong to the category of a luxurious product, there are literally piles and piles of them absolutely everywhere you look.

But I liked their reaction because it just proved what I knew anyway, that the topic and the task will appeal to them. We looked at some of the leaves, called out their colours and checked if they had only one specific colours or a mix of many.

Then I showed the copy of Georgia O’Keeffe’s leaves on the screen and introduced her briefly and we had a quick voting regarding which leaves kids like more, the real ones or the painting (answer: real or real and painting).

The art

Previously, in my Georgia lesson, we used the old favourite – crayons and watercolours, a perfect combination for that piece and a perfect combination for the first Art lessons. The only problem was that, after the relocation, at the moment, I have absolutely no idea where my collection of kids aprons is and I really didn’t want to just use paints in class without any protection…all these beautiful t-shirts and sweaters that my kids are wearing…

After having spent a whole day with a face of Oscar the Grouch (I call it ‘angry brainstorming’), I finally found a solution! We were to draw the layout of the leaf with the crayon and we were to use the watercolours but to print, with cotton pads! One set of watercolours in the middle of the table, minimal amount of water (and potential spatter) and cotton pads that can be just disposed of. A box of wet tissued to clean the hands. I tried and tested the technique and yet, the cotton pads are perfect for printing and the only problem I encountered (the watercolours get dry pretty quickly and you need to have some supply of water) was solved when I found, in my own bathroom, a tiny bottle sprayer (that never got used for it was meant to be, helping me travel with a tiny amount of tonic or micellar water). Finding it literally made my day.

It was absolutely crucial that we do everything step by step, not only because of this particular activity but because this was our first lesson and I was expecting that the kids might not be ready for a structured approach to art. And I was not disappointed.

As soon as I showed them my picture (‘Look, we have the real leaves, we have the painting and now we are going to make our own…’), I got literally flooded with questions. Imagine, only 4 kids on the day, all of us around the big table, everyone can see everything and then within 1 minute, about a hundred questions like that: Are we going to do it? But can I get the paints? Where are the cotton buds? Will you help me? I don’t know how to draw the leaves? But can I do it the way I want or do we have to draw everything you drew? Can you help me? Where are the paints?

It is at the moments like these that you find out the power and the necessity of the verbs: ‘Stop’, ‘Wait’ and ‘Look’.

Here are the steps:

  • show the finished picture, call out the colours, draw the kids attention that each leaf has its own set of colours, lots of them, just like the real leaves and just like Georgia’s
  • demonstrate the whole process, from start to finish (the resources were ready in the middle of the table but for this stage, I put them away and I was bringing them one by one): step 1: draw the leaf / leaves with a crayon, the wax will help the paint within the lines and it will not seep or get distroyed in contact with water, step 2: put one box of watercolours in the middle of the table, on some scrap paper and spray it with water, step 3: fold a cotton pad, dip it in the paint and stamp, stamp, stamp on the leaf / leaf, step 4: put the used cotton pad into our mini-bin (aka a small bag or box, in the middle of the table), step 5: proceed with another colour
  • give out the paper, an A4 sheet of watercolour paper (or cardboard) and crayons, draw the leaves. With my youngest student we did the piglet follower (хрюшка – повтарюшка) aka I draw a line, you draw a line, I draw a squiggle, you draw a squiggle. Put the crayons away. Wait for everyone.
  • give out the cotton pads, 5 each, sprinkle the paints and start working. Stress that ‘we are working together’ (a gesture here:-)
  • at the end, call out all of the colours everyone has. We can use ‘I’ve got’ so that’s exactly how we did it.

About the lesson

First of all, I was really happy that I decided to introduce Art to my new group. Good decision! They loved it and, after a month of hard work, we really needed ‘something different’.

All of the students completed the task and I loved watching how they were approaching it. My youngest student needed help with the drawing but he did it and his leaves were beautiful. One of my older students, at the very beginning, announced that ‘my leaf is going to be unusual’ and that it was. It reminded me of some tropical flowers, of unusual shapes. The other students made their own artistic decisions and even included ‘The Titanic’. It must have been a very small ship or a very big leaf but they looked amazing.

I am really happy with the adaptation of the teachnique. It was monitorable, with a very little potential for a disaster, easy to execute, easy to clean and generating amazing pictures, too.

So yes, thank you, Georgia!

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #81 3 letters!

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Ingredients:

Almost nothing, only a whiteboard and a marker. And, of course, a set of words that you are planning to practise. In case of all the young learners, they will probably be coming from one vocabulary set i.e. transport, pets, clothes, etc.

Procedures:

  • Teacher revises all of the words from the unit / set, using flashcards or the electronic flashcards.
  • Teacher writes only the three letters of the words, students guess the whole word. The easy version: the first three letters, in the correct order. The more challenging version: any three letters of the word in the order they appear in the word. The super difficult version: any three letters of ther words in a random order.
  • In the early stages of the game / unit, the teacher writes all the other letters of the word before moving on to another item.

Why we like it:

  • It is super easy and it requires no preparation whatsoever.
  • The length of the activity can be adapted to the needs of the lesson.
  • The level of challenge can easily be adjusted to the level of the students, the level of literacy and the level of familiarity with the particular set of words.
  • The game is challenging and it teaches the kids to focus on the accuracy and it helps them practise spelling accurately.
  • With the support of the coursebook or a set of flashcards, the students can play the game in pairs or small teams, with one student setting the task and the rest of the group guessing.
  • The game is fun, it is challenging but also achievable since we are working within one set of vocabulary or theme. It draws the students’ attention to spelling, all of the peculiarities of different words and their spelling.

Teaching children online. Where to start?

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What a teacher’s table looks like after an online lesson in primary…(realia, toys and adjectives)

Instead of a preface

I am writing this post as a response to many of the enquiries that I get from the trainees of the teacher training courses that I have been running for a decade now. Of course, this question rose to popularity with the year 2020, the pandemic and the fact that we have all embraced the online world since.

I have not always been a huge fan of the online education but, like many of my colleagues, I was forced to at least try exisiting in the online classroom over the period of the lockdown in the spring – summer 2020. And, because of how the world has turned to be, since the pandemic I have been spending about one third of my teaching life one: teaching all my young learners online during the pandemic, teaching online and hybrid in the crazy 2020 – 2021 academic year, teaching adults and my teenagers online permanently and teaching pre-schoolers, the regular EFL/ ESL and teaching English through Art, too.

As a result, today, when my teacher trainees ask me about teaching children online, I say: Yes, sure, it is just one of the classrooms that I work in.

This particular post is intended to be a set of ideas and suggestions for teachers who have never worked online and who want to start. These are not all the answers, only how I would get started, with a brand new group of kids. Maybe someone will find it useful)

Before the first lesson

The most important part of the course, before it even starts, would be talking to the parents. What I would like to find out would be:

  • as much as possible about the children as humans: how old they are and what their interests are, how they spend their time and what they like to do
  • as much as possible about the children as learners: whether or not they have learnt English before or interacting with English in any capacity and whether they have had a chance to learn anything online
  • as much as possible about the parents’ expectations regarding learning the language

Depending on the answers to the above questions, the conversation with the parents would have take into consideration to make the lesson successful and effective:

  • the working space for the child. It might be obvious for the parents that the child needs a special place to sit down, i.e. a table and a chair (not the bed or the carpet in the playroom), but a chair that can be moved aside if the movement stage of the lesson comes up. This should be a place that is quiet, away from the TV or the busy living room or the kitchen where the rest of the family hangs out.
  • the set of resources that might be necessary. It can be a list of standard resources that you will be using in every lesson, a notebook, a set of markers or crayons and handouts, all depending on the age of the child, as well as some specific resources needed for the particular lessons.
  • the presence of an adult who will be helping the little student during the lesson and what kind of a support is going to be necessary. With younger children (pre-schoolers), it might be necessary for an adult to be around all the time, although it might be necessary to highlight that the children need to be developing their independence
  • the length of the lesson that will depend on the child’s age and the previous online learning experience. Even if the optimal length is estimated at 45 minutes, it would be recommended to start with a shorter lesson. If the kids have not studied online before, they will not have enough attention span to participate and to focus to make this lesson effective. It is better to start with 20 or 25 minutes and extend it to one academic hour over a few weeks. And, of course, explain it to the parents.
  • the potential resources, the most important being the potential for printing resources at home. If the parents can do that – you will be able to use a little bit more, if not – in that case the lesson will be based only on the electronic resources.

The platform

There are a lot of platforms available and, in the end, everyone chooses something that works for them. It has to be the tool that you know very well and the tool that works in the classroom. I personally like to have a platfrom that lets me share the screen and see the students faces at the same time, that is not very tricky with the sound sharing but I don’t really care about the whiteboard option or the drawing on the screen option for the kids. Just a choice and I know that some teachers use these a lot. For the older primary students studying in groups, I like to have the breakout room option for some of the activities (although, again, that is for the groups only and that is not something to do in the very beginning of the course but something to aspire to).

The resources

Please remember that I am myself a dinosaur and I have always been a lazy teacher or a minimalist teacher (save for the special occasions when I splash out). The same applies to the resources in the online lesson. During the early stages of the pandemic, there has been this panic to find and to incorporate as many platforms, games, resources in the lesson as possible. Basically, every week was THIS NEW THING that you had to learn about and to use with your students. That was overwhelming, to say the least, because the most important thing in the lesson is the teacher and the methodology and the tools, no matter how fancy, cannot replace a good structure and a plan.

For that reason, what you see below, is a very basic list, the things that I am using at the moment but that is not everything out there. That said, I am always on the lookout for the new solutions and new things to inspire me, so feel free to use these ideas and keep your eyes open for more!

  • the coursebook, if applicable, the paper copy for the kids
  • the self-made handouts that I send to students if the parents can print them
  • the mini-flashcards that we prepare with the students, if the parents can print them. Usually, there are four per A4 paper, the parents cut them before the lesson, the kids can colour them, I have my own set and we use them for riddles, for testing each other (T: show the card, S: say the word, then swap the roles), substitution drill with the new structures, What’s my secret word? (guessing which card from the set the T / the S is holding) etc.
  • online games – for the lesson and for the homework or revision.
  • bamboozle games, although for the younger or new students, I start with one team games (‘we are collecting the points for us’) or with severly adapted power-ups list
  • some of the Games to learn English. This is a good example of why it is good to continue checking and searching. I have known this resource for ages but I haven’t used it for a year or so but I visited it last week and so much has changed. There are some new games, focused on a specific structure and the past tense or the prepositions. It definitely feels like a new best friend.
  • traditional (and not so boring) powerpoints which is my homemade online board replacement. I used to use the professional online board but, admittedly, it became simply overwhelming. I use the powerpoints in the same way, T: moves/uncovers the item, S: say things and I like it more because I can organise them by the team, copy them for each student etc.
  • the realia that you have and that the kids have at home. Luckily, with the online world, we are truly blessed, practically everything that we teach in primary and pre-primary kids have at home, toys, clothes, colours, sport equipment and even the pets or the family member. They should be used in the lesson to make the langauge real. It might be a good idea to inform the parents before the lesson what will be used in class, just to make them aware that the kids might be walking around and bringing things and that it is for a reason.
  • the craft resources such as plasticine, coloured paper, glue, scissors, crayons or markers or whatever else you want to use. Craft online is a bit more challenging but not impossible. It might be a good idea to leave it for later in the course when you and the students know each other a bit more and when they understand how the lesson works. Again, the parents need to be notified ahead of time, to prepare the materials or even to check and to confirm that they are available. Of course, if a kid is at home, the coloured paper or the glue are lying around at home but it is always better to confirm ahead of the lesson time.

The lesson

Again, this is the lesson format that works for me and it does not really differ much from what we do in the offline classroom with my students.

Regardless of how long the whole lesson is, I divided into three sections: Revision, New Material / presentation, Practice. They are more or less even, without being to strict with the time slots.

  • A song to get us started, a proper Hello song or just a song that we like.
  • Revision: saying hello, talking how we feel, what we are wearing etc, depending on the age/ level of the child, actually revising the vocabulary, playing some familar and favourite games.
  • New material presentation: in the middle of the lesson, when the kids are already warmed-up but still with enough energy and focus for something new, this is when I introduce the new vocabulary or the new material and when we do some controlled practice, too.
  • Practice: more productive games, more freedom for the kids.
  • Goodbye: a new song, a video, a story, to finish on a high note.

Coda

If you are just starting in the online world, good luck to you! Remember that in many ways, this is a just a new lesson with student or a new group, doing a new thing and in our early years world, it is very rarely that things work from the word go. It is the routine, the repetition and the familiarity that make things look like we want them. Quite frequently, a new activity done for the first time is just like a preview. If something does it work, reflect on why it didn’t and then try to change some things around and do it again.

Make sure you keep in touch with your students’ parents. Feedback is always necessary but it is crucial during the early stages of the new class because apart from building the routine with the student, you are also building the trust with the parents. And it is a process.

Happy teaching!

‘This feeling is a message from my brain!’ Talking about feelings in primary.

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How do you feel today?

Easily, the emotions (and adjectives) have always been a great passion of my professional life. One reason is that they are a little bit unappreciated in the early years EFL world (a personal opinion) and they can make a huge difference in communication, even for the little speakers. The other reason is that they help the kids describe how they feel and, apart from that making them want to talk because they are sharing something personal, that is a precious something for the teacher to know. Having 9 happy preschoolers and 1 angry preschooler in the classroom or having 5 happy, 3 sleepy and 2 sad preschoolers makes a huge different and, whether you want it or not, it will have an impact on your lesson. Basically, it is better to know than not to know, in order to prepar and to adapt, if needs be.

And then we found the song…

It was only last week that, together with my students, we were trying to remember what was our first Hopscotch song. It was, probably, The Fractions Song. What a hit! Itt really (really) helped us get the concept and to memorise the fraction vocabulary. Not to mention the catchy music and the hilarious plot. And when, after about three weeks of listening the song, we found out that each (more recent) song includes bloopers…we were collectively in love.

I had never heard about that channel before so I got down to researching and I found piles and piles of treasures. Some went into the category ‘subjects’ and some, the really delicious bits, into the category ‘oh, my, the langauge we are going to pick up here!’. One of the latter, was the Feelings Song with as many as 56 beautiful adjectives.

Quite a few words, actually, and some of them from the higher CEFR shelves so I decided that we will just sing the song and aim for picking up a few words, such as hangry, disappointed, overwhelmed or inspired.

It was only much later that I decided that the song will fit perfectly in our end-of-year concert as it has a plot, all the emotions have been neatly divided into groups, like almost 5 acts of the play, there is an introduction and a funny ending, too. And a beautiful message. So, having sung and listened to the song for about two months, we took to staging it and really looking into the other words.

A conversation

At this point in the game, we had been starting every single day with a conversation about our emotions. ‘How do you feel today?’ ‘I am…because…’ and to help us with it, we use about twenty different emotions such as angry, sad, sleepy and confused which we have on posters on the walls of our classroom.

I made into two additional lessons in which we learnt and revised the feelings from the song (or most of them, I still decided to skip a few). We went through all of them, clarified the meaning, practised pronunciation and devoted time to talking about our own examples when people might feel disappointed, overwhelmed, angry or inspired.

A self-reflection

I admit, initially, I only wanted something to write. My kids, now in their year 2, when putting letters in the Latin alphabet is no longer scary or tiresome, take pleasure in writing (insert: a little joyful dance that I can actually say this!) and we are now working on writing neatly, without mistakes, remembering about the punctuation marks and spacing. We write the date and the topic and we sometimes take little notes. This is exactly what I wanted to do last Tuesday, just write something neatly. I figured out that it will be a feasible and open-ended task if we all finish the sentences: I always feel…I never feel…I sometimes feel…I rarely feel…

It was amazing how the kids took time to think and to decide how exactly they feel in certain situations.

Showtime!

Somewhere in April, when we started to discuss our plans for the end of the year concert, I realised that this is the song that I want us to do. Initially, I was even considering turning it into a theatre show, with a few acts (one act = one set of emotions) and some conversations in-between, a musical of sorts. But then, the end of the year itself, the tests, the whirlwind of May took over and I decided to scale down. The plan was as such: we are going to sing the entire song and we will present the emotions to the audience as there will be parents and younger kids.

In order to turn it into ‘a video’, we started to prepare illustrations for an emotion or for a pair of emotions. I prepared the cardboard (A4) and the drawing materials, I also wrote the emotions on them, in big letters and I prepared a few examples, to show the kids that the emotions can be illustrated either by the situation (i.e. our ice-cream drops onto the floor = we are disappointed) or the associations (i.e. the rainy day, colour blue, wilted flowers = we are sad). We got down to work.

I think, in the end, we prepared about 40 illustrations and all of them were absolutely brilliant, either because my kids can really draw well or just because it was a fascinating experience to be going through the creative process and the creative decisions with my students. Some emotions were more difficult to draw (I dealt with them), some were really popular and so we ended up having about four pictures illustrating ‘love’.

I put them into groups, as they are in the song, and put them into a chain with coloured paper that had the text of the relevant verse on the back. Two of my more responsible students were assigned as the holders and as the verse would come up, they would pick up the big and beautiful streamer from the floor to present to the audience. And to peek at the lyrics.

The video finishes with the bloopers in which the emotions (represented by a cookie-like creature) are thrown out and up (Attention: don’t keep them in, don’t bottle them up, deal with them!) and we had a few ridiculously funny conversation how we could illustrate that without frightening the parents or the little kids with the year two kids suddenly making the ‘throwing up’ gestures…But we decided to go for the amazing streamers throws that one of my students suggested.

We rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed and my kids actually sang the whole long song, almost entirely from memory and it was a really touching moment, for all of us. Not only because we loved the song and because it was the end of year 2 but also because, while we were singing, it was already obvious that our school was to close down, for ever, and, naturally, we had A LOT OF different emotions to deal with at the time, all of us, kids, teachers and parents.

It was beautiful, it was touching and everyone was amazing. We gave a good show and we created fantastic memories. That is what will matter in the long run.

Happy teaching!

Advertising April: Mayakovsky!

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The language

Because of our chosen piece for this day, I wanted to get the kids into the mode of thinking what they really like. For that reason, we revised the question ‘Do you like…?’ and different ways of answering the question (I like, I love, I don’t like, I really don’t like and I am not sure). The kids were interviewing each other using a set of mixed flashcards, with toys, sports, food and activities. We were also justifying our choices.

The artist

Our Artist of the Day in the third week of April was Vladimir Mayakovsky, a poet. We introduced him (powerpoint here) and looked at a few of his works, trying to locate the product advertised. I also showed the kids our main source of inspiration, the poster with Lilia Bryk, Mayakovsky’s muse and we talked a bit about the style and the use of colour and shapes.

The art

Our task was to prepare an advertising poster in the style of Mayakovsky, our own version of it. This time I prepared one model before the lesson, promoting ‘Create’ and I planned to prepare another one with kids during the lesson. Initially, I wanted to use coloured paper and markers, in a collage layered on the photo of Lilia. That is what I did. My students, however, decided that they had a different approach to the task and they opted for a simple drawing. Only then did I realise that, yet, that could have been a great approach, too and a set of good markers and a black and white photo perfectly lend themselves to the task.

We set to work. During the lesson with the older students, I only had two kids. The task was relatively easy, made even easier with the technique that the children suggested (and to be honest, I think that was their main reason – it was a long, very hot day and they wanted to invest as little of their time as possible) and it might be a perfect choice for the older group.

My approach, the collage, was very enjoyable, too and, personally, I had lots of fun preparing my two pictures and now I am happy because I have two cool pictures to put on the walls.

On Monday, I am going to teach this lesson again, this time with the younger group. I am hoping we are going to enjoy it, too!

Happy teaching!

Advertising April: Great Artists at work. Andy Warhol

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The language

This time, I decided to let the topic and the language lead the way in all the lessons this month. On the one hand, it has already proved to be a great way of revising the structures we know (I like, Do you like, adjectives) and, even more importantly, it will help us aling what we know beautifully with our artists and their ideas.

Andy Warhol and the idea for the lesson (that I owe to my friend, just like this whole idea for the series that was born during a conversation) was that instead of focusing on Andy, we focus on food and creating our amazing combinations of it. No suprise then, that the lesson had to include the amazing ‘Broccoli Ice-cream’ from Super Simple Songs and our own version of it, too, which we created with a set of flashcards. The kids were taking turn to pick out two flashcards randomly from the pile and sing a new version of the story (‘Do you like bananas? Do you like sandwiches? Do you like banana sandwiches?’). And the rest of us reacted.

The artist

‘Miss Anka! It’s him!’ It is precisely when the Art teacher smiles, upon hearing a comment like that! The kids were super excited to see Andy again because most of them have already met him, either in our Chebourashka lessons and our Christmas tree lessons or both.

This time, we invited Andy again, to introduce him as an artist and as a copywriter and the art director, too. As usual, I used a presentation (this one here) to show his advertising portfolio and the kids were calling out the products advertised.

We also looked at all the soup cans, read the flavours and chose our favourite one.

The Magic Soup

The art

I showed the children the template of the Campbell soup can (I got mine from Fine Art Coloring Pages Archives · Art Projects for Kids, Thank you!) and explained that everyone can create their own. We made a list of all the decisions to make: flavour, name, logo, colours. This time I did not prepare my own model (I did not have a template available before the lesson, a rookie mistake) but I decided that this time we will have a chance to brainstorm together and that it might also be a source of inspiration for my students. It also so happened that I had my older / smaller group first so I prepared my soup cans with them and when I already ran the second lesson, with my younger / bigger group, I had lots to show to inspire them and it all worked out just fine.

I was really happy because all the kids could accomplish this task and we had a lot of different types of soup posters and our noticeboard looks like a print by Andy.

The Zombie Version of Campbell’s

All the kids worked very well, also the young ones and most of them had a very clear idea of what they wanted to get from the very beginning. The selection of colours took a bit longer but it was also beautiful to see how they were all coming together.

Not to mention that I love all the final products and, again, I could not but keep repeating ‘Oh, that is a lovely idea!’ My students treasured their creations, too! It was one of those lessons when I had to beg to at least get the permission to photograph the posters because so many of my students just snatched their works to take them home as soon as possible. At least I have the photos!

I was planning to ask the kids to make a list of all the ingredients but, somehow, it did not always work out. Next time, I will have to ask the kids to start with the writing, before we get to create properly.

But look at that! We’ve got some magic soup, some tomato soup, some garlic soup, some sun soup, some octopus soup as well as some darkness soup and some zombie soup. I am happy. I hope that Andy would be happy, too! Just look at all these colours!

One of my creations
The Darkness Soup
The Garlic Soup

Happy teaching!

Just a little bit of Art (in your English classroom)…Erik Bulatov once more!

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This time, I did not teach my regular Art lesson. Last Thursday, in the middle of a regular unit but at the end of the term, with all my kids already tired and looking forward to holidays and with the first properly spring days outside of our windows, I decided to let our hair down and engage into some creative activity as part of our regular English lesson. Yay to great ideas!

The language

This time round Erik Bulatov joined us in our regular English lessons. At the moment, we are in a fanstastic unit ‘Going places’ (Global English, CUP) and we have already revised the transport, learnt some less traditional transport, we did our Big Transport Tournament (choosing the best one, in qualifiers, quarter-, semi- and finals which was basically a lot of speaking) and now we are comparing the transport (‘Are they similar or different?’). We have also worked on the verb ‘to get’ and all its meanings (aka ‘The best verb in the world’).

And then I needed something lighter, more fun and more creative for the last lesson of the term.

The artist

I taught this lesson before, twice, in different ways (the previous posts can be found here and here). I reused the presentation I prepared before even though some of the students have taken part in my Art Explorers lessons already and it worked well.

We talked a little bit about the meaning of words and the meaning of pictures and I introduced the Artist of the Day. We looked at his paintings and the meaning and how Bulatov tried to show his ideas through words and through images.

I have also showed the kids again the images in Portuguese I created for the previous lesson (in the posts mentioned before).

The art

I showed the students the template I prepared, just a simple word TRAVEL in block capital letters and together we brainstormed their own associations with the word. Afterwards, I explained that their task will be to illustrate the word in such a way so as to show the word speak: as a word and as a visual. And that all ideas are good ideas. I gave out the pencils and the markers and they got to work. They were working and I was just supervising and helping with the content as we had to do some research to look for images or for information.

Afterwards we had a short presentation for everyone to see all the ideas (‘This is my poster. I’ve got…because…and…’) and when all of them were done, we also had a feedback session. I wanted to praise everyone together, as a group, apart from all of those individual praises I gave while monitoring and I also wanted to highlight that we had lots and lots of different ideas and that they were all precious. One of the students suggested choosing the best poster but I objected. I explained that all of the posters were great and so different that it is impossible to choose one, the best, they are all great.

Apart from that I also wanted to ask the students for their feedback and whether it was easy or difficult to use the words and images in such a way. This was also a precious part of the lesson.

It is also important to mention that this lesson, untraditionally, was longer as it took more than 1 academic hour that we normally spend on Art in our Art Explorers. I could do it because we had a double English on that day and it was absolutely necessary as only a few of my students are the regular creators and I did notice that these did have a different time management mode and ideas generation mode. The others needed more time to make decisions, to generate ideas and to execute them. Which is something to bear in mind. If it hadn’t been the last day before the term break, we would have created in one lesson and carried out the presentation + feedback on the following day.

The teacher watches and ponders…

Oh, this was one wonderful lesson!

I was really really curious how my regular class would react to the Art content as out of all the students only three or four attend the Art Explorers regularly, all the other ones do not have the chance to stay for the afterschool classes and only some of them attend our term break classes when these take place.

But it went well…I mean, it is a good lesson and, for me as a teacher, it has been tried and tested so I was confident and I knew that great things might come out of it. But the kids took well to it. They were curious about the artist and his paintings, especially that they were in Russian and they were interested and invested in answering the questions I asked.

The brainstorming session, something that we rarely do in the Art Explorers, also helped because it helped the (potentially) less creative students generate ideas or, at least, to see that there is a range of interpretations to choose from. To be honest, some of the kids really surprised me with their ideas and their interpretations as they were fresh and spot-on.

The presentation was a great idea, and again, something we rarely do, because only in our classes we have more time and a relatively even levels of English for everyone to produce and to understand but it was also worth it. I need to think of how to smuggle elements of it into our Art Explorers classes.

My favourite part, however, apart from the creation, was the feedback and all of the comments the kids made. The general consensus was that sometimes it was easy and sometimes it was not to come up with the ideas and to deal with their execution. I really loved the fact that there was such a variety of the interpretations and they the kids had a chance to see everyone else’s angle, too, further broadening their horizons. Some of my favourite ones were the following: travel represented by the sights from around the world, travel represented by things that we need to travel, travel represented by the flags of the countries that the artist likes, travel represented by the flags of the countries that start with the letters t, r, a, v, e and l, travel represented by the travel associations that look like the letters of the word or, even, travel represented by the potential problems which you might encounter while travelling…

The most beautiful line and the one that I will finish this post with was a question from one of my students, one of those cool one, the older ones, the ones who do not attend the regular art classes. It went like that:

‘Are we going to do it again?’

Happy teaching!

A dice story that wasn’t…Crumbs #80 One more way to write a story

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Ingredients

  • the idea this time was taken from Global English 4, with the unit 5 whole focused on storytelling. There is an activity there with a framework to write a story: you roll the dice and choose one of the options for the time of the story, the setting, the characters and the dilemma. This grid gave me the idea for our lesson and it helped me shape the preparation stage to our writing. It can easily be replaced with a much easier vocabulary set, adapted to the level of the students. And a few die.
  • a template
  • my own story to be used as an example

Procedures

  • We started the lesson in our usual way, with hellos, our hello song and an exercise to practise past tense, our main grammar thing this month.
  • We revised the main parts of a story that we would use mentioned above and the dialogue and why we have it in the story (to help us express emotions in a story better)
  • I showed the kids the template written on the board and I read the story I wrote before the lesson using the dice and the framework from the book
  • We put together a few stories, using the same framework, and a variety of set-ups: everyone rolling and contributing one element at a time, everyone contributing an element each, in turns (i.e. 9 different days, 9 different locations etc), each child contributing their own element, without the support of the book etc.
  • Afterwards, we started to work on our own stories. I kept the coursebooks open for the kids to have some sources of support and ideas but even before I managed to finish giving the instructions, some of my kids were asking ‘Can we use our ideas, please?’
  • Everyone had a handout (see above) and we were going step by step, with me modelling and creating my second story on the board and making sure that everyone was on the ball as we went along.
  • In the end, we added the title and signed the story.
  • When the stories were ready, we had a reading session and all of them were read out loud. With one of my groups, I had to suggest three options: a) the story is read by the child, b) the story is read by the teacher, c) the story is read by the teacher only (for the sake of my shiest student). I introduced all the stories and we had a round of applause at the end, for everyone.
  • We haven’t done it yet but I want to type up and print all of the stories for the following issue of our school journal so next week I am going to ask each student to write a short description of the illustration they want the A.I. to create for their story.

Why we like it

  • The dice story was a perfect introduction to the lesson and an ideal idea-generator. I decided to use the coursebook as it is, in order to expose the students to the real un-graded language.
  • It was an easy thing to write (it was short) but it had enough for funny and entertaining stories which my kids’ work proved.
  • By adding two lines of dialogue to the framework in the coursebook, it became even easier and more fun to write and to read.
  • Initially, I planned it as a one-lesson event but seeing how much they benefited from extended practice and preparation, I extended it into two 45-minute classes.
  • All of the kids got really into writing their stories. One of my students literally dragged me into the classroom, from the break, as, in his opinion, I wasn’t walking fast enough and he wanted to start work as soon as possible.
  • All of the stories that were written are great and I am really proud of my students, but there are four or five that are really way above the average, with the funny dialogue and an unexpected ending, a really good piece of work!
  • I am planning to use the dice framework to prepare a similar but simpler sets for the everyday use, for us to tell little stories in the beginning of every lesson while we are still practising the past tense. I am hoping that now the kids will be able to tell these stories in pairs.

Happy teaching!

Spring in year 2 classroom management. Setting up the routine. A series.

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First a few words of introduction…

It has been quite a while since I wrote in the series (the first episode is here, the most recent here). I was travelling in the beginning of March and I couldn’t write and later I just didn’t feel like putting together a piece, just because the schedule said so. I didn’t, I decided to be nice to myself. However, it also made me think that maybe the time has come to change things here a tiny little bit. Even in January and December, half of the post went along the lines of ‘no changes’ and I realised that we (the class) have changed so much that new solutions have to be put into use.

I will still keep notes here, because some of the things we use might be useful for other teachers and I still need this series as a way of reflecting on my teaching and their learning and progress but I will not be on monthly basis.

The routine et al.

All the new tricks I have added and how they work for us:

  • the nicknames we still use although the question I ask now is ‘Am I writing your name or your nickname?’, just to give the students some freedom and flexibility. Those that feel creative on the day can express themselves (and some do a lot of that, our current record is 8 lines of a nickname) and some just use their names, sometimes written in a different colour or with a heart. The other kids are always curious to see who is choosing what each day and sometimes they add detail, help with translation or correct me when I, accidentally, use the wrong nickname or when I use the name instead of the nickname. Which, really, just shows that they are listening and paying attention. And that’s all I want. Plus, it is definitely something that we do together, a feature of our community. When someone comes late to class or when we exchange groups and Class A comes after Class B, they try to guess who chose what as their name.
  • the improvisation song is still with us (and it has been now a year and three months). Sometimes we sing once, sometimes more than once and I love the kids continue to use it to express themselves in English, to talk about emotions, to experiment with different ways of singing certain words and how we started to use it as call – response song whenever there is a question or whenever they just feel like reacting in their own ways (instead of just repeating the verse). More creativity? Yes, please!
  • give your teacher a grade: admittedly, it is not something I do every week but I try to included it once in a while, more or less twice a month. I am trying to use different techniques like leaving notes and grades on the board or preparing cards with specific questions (Was it difficult? Was it interesting? etc).
  • the grades for the week: I still write notes to summarise the performance of the students over the week only now we have a few more categories, although these vary depending on the week. This week, for example, we had: English, Maths, Behaviour, Notebook (we are working on handwriting and neat notes) and Accuracy (a specific task we did in Maths). The kids usually get to see them on Monday and they are still really curious about them. And they care. Sometimes they want to tell everyone what they got, sometimes they check with me or ask additional questions, they always read.
  • new rules were added, too, based on what we have been going through, emotions and lessons, basically the things that seemed like something that we might use in the future. These include ‘Get it together’ (a nice call to action from a song), ‘My feelings are the message from my brain’ (also from a song) and ‘Wait’ (just because we need it, still and desperately, too!).

Story, Socialising and Creativity

All our English classes have been about stories as the whole unit in our book has been devoted to adventures, superheroes, stories, adjectives to describe heroes and we used that opportunity!

We have already finished but we managed to: introduce and properly practise Past Simple, lots of regular and irregular verbs and questions, talk about our yesterdays, we watched and talked about some clips from ‘How to Tame Your Dragon?, we talked about types of stories and why we have narrative and dialogue, we wrote and talked about our favourite stories, we wrote a short story and we read ‘Splat the Cat. The Name of the Game’ because it seems to be a perfect story for us and all the problems we still deal with while playing.

Our story lesson was particularly memorable because we created a few beautiful pieces, we had a reading session in two language, we praised everyone and I want to type up all the stories and turn them into another issue of our school magazine. I will only have to ask the kids to describe what kind of an illustration they would like to have with their story. We will only have to write some description for the kind A.I. to create them. Next week.

We haven’t done any other creative tasks, not properly, but I noticed that kids expressed a lot of interest in the creations that always dry on the window sill after my Art Explorers and I think it might be a sign that I need to think of something like that.

The teacher

I have been a tired teacher in February. I was busy with all the other project (term break camp, conference and the real life errands) but I have had quite a few good moments like realizing that we have really made progress regarding reading and writing and that we have actually learnt how to understand and use fractions and decimals.

The classroom management and bringing up the kids never stops (never never never) but we have made a lot of progress and I know we are going to be fine. It is great to know that while some of my kids keep repeating ‘I don’t like school’ or ‘I want to go home’, they also add, to each other, mostly, ‘I like English, though’ and ‘I really like Maths in English’ so there is some comfort in it, too.

Things to do in March / April

  • another story
  • going back to the more advanced phonics
  • preparation for the YLE Cambridge
  • more pairwork and speaking
  • our garden

Happy teaching!