#primaryelf

My favourite songs aka Where to start if you have never sung before

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This post is dedicated to all the teachers who soon are going to be entering the VYL or YL classrooms for the first time ever and are now wondering how to prepare for that.

Why?

Songs are definitely the resource that a teacher should use while teaching primary or pre-primary. A while ago I have tried to collect all the reasons to sing a song in one post (the full list here) but if you have never sung before in the classroom, here are the five most important reasons

  • songs will help you create a framework for the lesson, something to begin with, something to finish with, some nice punctuation marks in the lesson
  • they will be the easiest way of changing the pace of the lesson. Even if the kids don’t participate fully from the very beginning by singing, the song itself will work as a stirrer (or a settler, if you choose a very calm and peaceful one)
  • they will create an opportunity for the children to participate, at least with movement and gestures and, depending on the song, even with a few words or structures
  • songs are something that we all do together so they will help you ‘unite’ the group after the tasks on which the kids work individually and they will help to create a community
  • you can share them with the parents, to listen at home, this way taking English out of the classroom

Some do’s and don’t’s

Staging a song lesson for pre-primary or primary should, in fact, be a separate post, because there is a great variety of techniques and activties that can be used. For now, I can recommend having a look at this post here as well as the five tips.

  • Listen to the song before the lesson and get ready. Plan how you are going to introduce it. Simply pressing the PLAY button and saying ‘Let’s sing’ is not going to do the job with songs in the EFL / ESL classroom.
  • Play the video. It will really help the kids understand what the song is about.
  • Sometimes they are already in the song and in the video, sometimes not and we have to come up with a set to use with each song. It is something worth investing your time in because the gestures will help the kids understand and remember the lyrics. What’s even more important, especially in the first lesson with a new song – gestures will give the children a real opportunity to participate.
  • Sing yourself, do all the gestures yourself. And with a smile, too! Even if you are the only one and even if the students don’t join you straight away. It is perfectly natural, they need time to get used to the music, the lyrics, the gestures, the rhythm. Plus, you are the leader! If you don’t get involved, why would your students?
  • Share the song with the parents and use it again. A song is never just for one lesson.

My favourite hello songs

Hello. Super Simple Songs – a real hit and a good start, with 6 emotions, including ‘not so good’, to show the kids that it is ok to feel not happy, sometimes.

Hello Song. Fun Kids English – another good one, with monsters, there are actually two parts of it, each with 4 emotions. It is good to have a new version when the kids get bored with the first one.

Hello Song For Kids, The Singing Walrus – I love it because it includes not only the hello questions but also some Present Simple sentences and questions about the everyday school routine (‘Everyday I go to school) and each of them is repeated twice, in the classroom it can be T and then kids. Lots of potential.

Hello Song for Kids, EFL Kids Videos – very simple but very energetic, lots of repetition but also a nice variation of verses sung loudly and quietly. We loved it.

Hello Hello! Can you clap your hands. Super Simple Songs – another simple one with a few movements, perfect if you want to get up and move a bit

My favourite goodbye songs

Goodbye to you! EFL Kids Videos – using the same melody and the same pattern as the hello song from EFL Kids Videos, helps to save the time and works both as ‘something old’ and ‘something new’

Bye Bye Goodbye Super Simple Songs – a kind of a follow-up to the Hello Hello Can you clap your hands, the music is different but the song uses some of the verbs.

Goodbye Song for Kids, The Singing Walrus – this one is a bit more complex, but again, as their hello song, it uses full sentences. Lots of potential.

See you later, aligator, Super Simple Songs – a very short one, includes gestures for alligator and butterfuly and if you want, it can go on forever.

My favourite movement songs

Head, shoulders, knees and toes, Super Simple Songs – everything you may need in your first lessons, just getting up and moving a bit, even if the topic of body parts is scheduled for some other day

Move. Dance Song For Kids. Super Simple Songs – my latest discovery, lots of movement (verbs), a great melody. It can be used partially ie the first three parts of as a whole. It can be also extended if kids have their own ideas.

Jump, Run and Shout. The Singing Walrus – another energetic, rock song with movement. Just like Move, we like to sing it in the beginning of the lesson. It helps to get rid of lots of energy.

The Jellyfish Song. Super Simple Songs – a simple but effective song, very little langauge here, you are going to be pretending that you are jellyfish. Somehow, the kids get a chance to move but also to calm down.

Shake Your Sillies Out. Brain Breaks For Kids. – this is one is for older kids, lots of great ideas here and quite tiring, when used from the beginning until the end, but my kids loved the idea of ‘shaking the sillies out’ or ‘clapping our crazies out’ (very necessary on some days) so we only used the movements, not the song.

My favourite randomness

Open Shut Them, Super Simple Songs – one of my favourite songs ever because it teaches adjectives and opposites (somehow neglected by many of the coursebooks and programmes) and you can easily include gestures. Plus there are four parts of it which means that a new one can be added as soon as necessary. Open Shut Them can almost become a part of the classroom routine for the whole year and later on, the teacher can even extend it by creating own versions.

Hickory Dickory Dock, Super Simple Songs – some counting, some animals and an unexpected ending.

What’s your favourite colour? Super Simple Songs – first of all, it can be inroduced from the beginning of the course (colours), it can be used as a game (to point at different colours in the room as the come up in the song) and, last but not least, it contains a great Q&A set (‘What’s your favourite…?’ ‘I like…’) and it can be turned into a real conversation and easily extended into other topics, as they come up i.e. toys, numbers, pets, letters.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs # 17: New beginnings. Things to do before the lesson.

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They are growing up. My students are no longer the little babies they were when we said our first ‘Hello!’. Six years is a long time, after all. And because they are changing, the lesson is changing, too. I like to think that, in a way, we are growing together.

An example? For five years and five months my students would wait for me outside of the classroom, in a neat line and we would check the homework and have a little chat, 1-1, with them slowly entering the classroom (more about it here). Well, not anymore. Two months ago we stopped. For good.

Because it turned out that, all of a sudden, the kids like to be in the classroom before the lesson. The choose their seats, take out their books, draw on the board or show each what they do in Maths classes at school. They also like to hide to surprise me (if I happen to leave to get some water or flashcards), walk around to inspect what I prepared for the day or just sit down and read they books.

And because over those six years we have managed to establish what’s OK and what’s not OK in terms of behaviour and because they have grown up and become more mature, I just let them do it and take over the classroom during the break. Plus, let’s be honest, they seem to be enjoying it a lot and I just don’t have the heart to forbid them and to continue to impose lining up.

Instead, I had an idea: how about a before-the-lesson activity for the early comers? It turned to be a very good idea indeed!

Ingredients

  • A whiteboard and a set of markers.
  • An activity that can be prepared on the board before the lesson for the students to work on potentially unsupervised (although in real life it differs, depending on whether I can be in the classroom during the break or not)
  • A set of easy instructions written on the board and an example
  • A longer break before the lesson – not obligatory but highly recommended
  • It might be necessary for the teacher to hint that there is something on the board that needs dealing with, at least when this part of the routine is introduced. It is quite likely that the kids would just not approach the board if there are any notes on it.
  • Ghost letters, focus: pronunciation. Students underline the silent letters in the words written on the board
  • Letter snake, focus: reading / writing. Students divide the chain (or a snake of letters) into words. Each snake can be made as challenging as necessary ie only the words themselves, the words with letters-distractors, the words in a sentence.
  • Letter stories, focus: reading/ writing. Students divide the very long chain (or a snake of letters) into words and sentences. I used a different colour for each line of the story and neat breaks between the lines, too, not to overwhelm the kids. Forgot to take a photo:-(
  • To rhyme or not to rhyme, focus: phonemic awareness. Students put the rhyming words into pairs. Again, colour-coding is supposed to be make is a bit more achievable and visually appealing.
  • Messed-up, focus: vocabulary revision. Students put the halves of words together.
  • Angrams (and Secret Messages): These are just silly anagrams which are a nice task, more necessary for the Starters students but fun for everyone. It can be a set of random words, connected by the topic (or not) or sentences, especially if there is an especially important message that the teacher needs to pass on to the students. The message below appeared on the board before the second lesson with the mock Movers test, in an attempt to praise the kids and to motivate them. It worked!

Why we like it

  • Those who come early can wait for the lesson doing something in English.
  • They provide additional practice and revision in different areas and skills: reading, writing, vocabulary, pronunciation
  • Different kids come early on different days so they get to work in different pairs and teams which seems to strengthen the sense of community in the group
  • It seems to have become ‘fashionable’ to arrive early for class (not that it has even been a problem) but it is obvious that they have already developed the habit of walking in and checking what’s on the board
  • The teacher is applying all her creative powers to come up with more and more pre-lesson activities

Happy teaching!

From ‘havoc’ to ‘happiness’. Lesson planning for YL (part 2)

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What can you see in the photograph? Oh how I wish I could hear your thoughts and all your ideas, dear reader!

It does look pretty messy, doesn’t it? This is what I call ‘real life’.

Imagine this, I have just come into the office on the day of the training (which is not quite ready yet, not this one, the week must have been a real hell so although the ideas are there, the presentation itself is NOT, not panicking yet, but the adrenaline levels are already up) and I have just taken ‘everything I need’ out of the bag: books, notes, some copies and A LOT OF FOOD (typical). I am about to start planning. Having looked at what my desk has become, I decide to take a photo of this beautiful mess that soon will (I know it now) turn into a great seminar session.

I have decided to use this photo because it is a pretty accurate visualisation of what happens on some days when I plan my classes and to follow it up with a few words on what happens next and how I get from this havoc to the end-of-the-lesson happiness.

Based on the lesson with my ‘adult’ preschoolers a week ago.

The ‘theory’*)…

Step 1: Make a decision what your main aim is. Try to verbalise it and even write it. It really does wonders for the awareness of what you, as a teacher want from the lesson.

Step 2: Make a decision what your focused task is. ‘Focused task’ is the concept that we use at my school (and have used for at least 15 years) and it refers to the main activity of the lesson in which the students get to produce the language and the activity which is the culmination of the entire lesson. All the activities in the lesson lead to it, to some extent, just like all the roads lead to Rome.

A while ago I realised that this is the approach that I am using in all my lesson planning, for all the age groups, levels, for teaching and for teacher training, too.

Step 3: Consider the materials available (mostly by looking at what the coursebook has to offer) and whether they contribute to your aims and your focused task. If not, you will need to adapt them or design new materials.

Step 4: Think of the activity that is going to be most suitable for your materials. It is like differentiating between a tool and how you are going to use it.

After all, there are plenty things that can be done with a hammer (materials), such as putting in a nail to hang a picture, breaking a window, smashing a walnut open, stirring soup (activities) and so on. Some of them are more or less appropriate, of course. The same applies to the flashcards, boardgames, handouts and what we are going to do with them.

Step 5: Take a moment and go over the activity in order to make decisions about staging. What are going to be your baby steps within the activity? whenever we do something for the first time (regardless of whether it is the first time for me or the students), I like to make an effort to actually write the main stages, even if in a very simple form, a sequence of infinitives.

Step 6: An additional step: a homework task. It might not be always possible or, rather, sometimes it might involve a lot of work as regards material design or adaptation. To put it simply, not every teacher will have enough time or energy every single time, with all the lessons taught in a week but a homework task that is an extension of exactly what happens in the lesson and creates an opportunity to continue practising the same language or structures at home, with parents.

….and the practice. Our lesson last week.

Aim: For the kids to start describing school objects and the objects in the classroom, using full sentences such as ‘It is a blue pencil’, with the focus on colours and some simple adjectives. The kids are 5 and 6 and in the beginning of their third year of EFL.

Focused task: A game in which the kids will be guessing the secret word depicted in the cards, producing full sentences instead of questions as we have done so far. The kids will be saying ‘It is a blue pencil‘, ‘It is a red pencil‘, etc until they produce an accurate description of what is shown in the picture which they cannot see.

Materials: There is nothing in the book that could help to achieve the aim. There is one practice activity but it focuses on reading and the students are only taking their first steps in the world of the early literacy. A decision is made to design the materials. Yay.

The materials are a set of cards, 7×7 cm, with clip art pictures on them, coloured-in by hand. There are three types of cards (a pencil, a schoolbag and a rules) and six variations of each, in six different colours.

The cards must have a specific size for the kids to be able to manipulate them easily. They cannot be too big (the ‘secret’ will be difficult to keep and the regular A5 flashcards might be not comfortable enough for the little hands) and not too small (as they will be too flimsy and are likely to be ‘spilled’). It might be a good idea to keep the cards in an envelope to add one more layer of guarantee that the technical bits don’t get in the way of the successful playing of the game.

There are only three types of cards in order to make it achievable, at least when the game is first introduced. Later on, when the kids feel familiar with the concept of the game, more objects or more colours can be added.

Activity: The activity itself is a simple guessing game of two stages. The teacher chooses one of the cards, keep it secret, say ‘What’s my secret?‘ Stage 1: students guess which of the three objects is depicted on the card. They say ‘It is a ruler’ and so on, until they guess.

Once they do, the teacher confirms and asks the following question ‘What colour is it?‘. Students continue guessing. They produce the sentences such as ‘It’s a blue pencil‘, ‘It’s a green pencil‘, until they guess. To help them remember the full structure, teacher counts the parts of the sentence on her finger.

Staging

  • revise the vocabulary with the regular flashcards
  • show the kids the game cards
  • elicit the full sentences (signal withe the fingers), while flipping through the cards: ‘It is a green schoolbag’, ‘It is a yellow schoolbag’ etc.
  • mix the cards, to choose one and keep it close to the chest
  • say ‘What is it?‘ and peek at the cards, secretly and suggest a possible (wrong) answer.
  • wait for the kids to start guessing.
  • keep showing the fingers and counting parts of the sentence as the students are producing the language, developing the habit of answering in full sentences.
  • confirm when the kids guess the object in the picture, praise the student who guess and all the students
  • say ‘What colour is it?‘, peek at the cards, secretly and suggest a possible (wrong) answer
  • wait for the kids to start guessing.
  • after a round of two, the kids take over – call one of them out and ask them to sit on the teacher’s chair, choose the picture for them (to save time, especially in the first lesson) or let them choose the picture they want to play with but operating the cards yourself. The kids might be able to take over in the first lesson, they might be able to take over only in the following lesson, when the game is played for the second time.
  • encourage the group to make sentences, counting on your fingers, praising the kids, encouraging them to produce full sentences.

Homework

The homework task in this lesson was a simple handout, ‘a sentence maker’ in which the students have to complete the missing parts of the sentences, either by adding the colour (by colouring the box) or the adding the school object (by drawing it). The kids choose their own words. Later on, they ‘read’ their sentences. You can find the basic handout here.

The teacher makes one copy per child and one more to demonstrate the instructions in class. When we did this kind of an activity for the first time, I added the colours myself in line 4 and 5 to make the task straightforward. In the future, they will be given more freedom when they are more familiar with the format and the idea that each part of the sentence is represented by a visual or a symbol.

Did it work? aka ‘Happiness’

You know this moment when you are teaching and you literally want to get up and pat yourself on the shoulder with ‘OMG, you rock’? because you are allowing yourself, simultaneously, to teach and be fully in the lesson but also to be evaluating this lesson as if you had been the observer in the room. And it is actually going on very well?

This was one of these lessons.

The kids loved the guessing game, especially that they were given a chance to lead. The cards and the handout did help me achieve my aims and by the end of the focused task, the kids were producing full sentences, although I had to remind them a lot to use full sentences. It was much better in the second lesson with the same game. The kids were eager to start playing the game and I only had to model once. They were ready to take over and they produced a lot of language.

If you want to read more on the subject, have a look at this post where I share how I approach the everyday lesson planning for preschoolers.

Happy teaching!

*) Inverted commas because it is not a real theory, only a set of daily procedures, verbalised.

Crumbs # 9: Storytelling noughts and crosses

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Today a post about a post about one of my favourite games ever: noughts and crosses. I have written about it already on this blog because I use with illustrations, to practise vocabulary and with my preschoolers, too, to increase production.

Today it is storytelling noughts and crosses!

Instructions

  • Demonstrate or check that all your students know how to play noughts and crosses, in the traditional, non-EFL way. It can be done with one of the stronger students, on the board.
  • Draw an EFL grid of the game, on the board, filling it up with the words you want the students to use. I normally start to use it to tell stories when we get to the lessons with the Past Simple and normally we play the game just to talk about our ‘yesterday’, our ‘last weekend’ or ‘last summer’, not to put too much pressure on the kids and to get them into the habit of using the language. These are some of the grids that we used with my A1 primary, aged 7 – 9. The symbols at the top mean nothing and they just help us identify different grids.
  • Introduce the characters that the kids are going to talk about. One of the unsung heroes of my lessons has been one Mr Milk who has been with us for a good few years* and who has been kind enough to bring some of his friends along. For that reason, figuring out who can be the character is never a problem. Mr Milk always goes first, the others follow suit.
  • Demonstrate how to play the game on the board. This time we have done it: teacher vs the group, represented by one of the students at the board and the whole class participating, choosing the verbs and telling the story.
  • This version of the game is slightly more challenging because you not only have to use the verb. It is very necessary that you also continue a story. Of course, students are allowed to use more than one sentence (yes, please, do!!!) but the key verb (or the key word) is the one that they have to use. These are some of the grids we used this week. As you can see, they are all very basic but hey, that’s what it is, the real classroom life. Sometimes the handouts are pretty and picture perfect, sometimes they are not. Sorry – not sorry.
  • Students play in pairs and they are told to play until the very end, when all the verbs have been used in the story.
  • The teacher monitors and eavesdrop on some of the precious lines created such as ‘Miss Apple ate an apple (a normal one, not a person!)‘ or ‘Miss Umbrella drank the rain‘.
  • In the end, when everybody has finished, the teacher asks some feedback questions, for example ‘Was it a happy story or a sad story?‘, ‘What happened in the end?‘, ‘What was the best part?’ and all the pairs are invited to share something about their stories.
  • Next step is the scores. I usually prepare a few sets, like this one in the photo. One of the students chooses one of the letters and the teacher draws the grid on the board. Students count their points and we write them on the board.
  • We normally play two or three rounds, depending on the time we have.

Why we love it

  • We love Mr Milk and all his friends.
  • We love stories.
  • It takes a few minutes to prepare (High five to all the lazy teachers!)
  • It generates lots and lots of language (High five to production greedy teachers!)
  • It is motivating because of the scoring system but it is not very competitive since we use the most random points sets and you never know what you might get, 1 point or 1 000 000 points.
  • It helps to develp creativity and imagination.
  • It has a lot more potential for developing listening skills (if only one round is played and the kids have to retell the story to the rest of the group) or reading and writing skills, too (if the sets are given for homework and the students are asked to write a short story using the same nine verbs that they have used in class. During the following lessons, the kids can exchange and read their stories, too).

Happy teaching!

*) I have just realised that Mr Milk has been accompanying my teaching life for about twelve years now… And that he might actually deserve his own post. Just a second, please!

Epic fail! or We make mistakes to learn #3

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The rebellion at the age of 7

There were twelve of them, year one. I would come to their school, to teach them for 30 minutes, four times a week, during their siesta break, after they had had their lunch at the school canteen and while their friends and peers were running wild during the remaining part of the break.

Probably, the problems were partly rooted in that very set-up because sometimes the kids were waiting for me in the classroom but sometimes, I had to take them off the playground, interrupting the game and replacing their doing nothing time with yet another lesson, no matter how good, already in a difficult position. This, of course, was something that I had no impact on and could do nothing about it. That was the set-up and that’s what I did deal with.

And overall, very successfully. I loved working with these kids. We did build the routine, they were responsive and, with time, I did learn how to manage their energy and to make the lessons effective. They were the perfectest kids in the world. All went well. Too well.

The Easter Break disaster

Somehow, when we got back in April, after only a week away, everything changed. Until this day I have no idea what actually did happen and I am none the wiser despite the fact that I spent hours discussing the group with my mentor and trainer on the IH CYLT course, the YL advisor and colleagues. It was, literally, as if someone had snatched my lovely students and replaced them with a bunch of wild, rebellious kids that behaved as if the previous seven months had not happened. They just snapped. It was or it felt like a proper rebellion. Imagine a pirate ship, in the middle of the ocean, with the whole crew pretending they had never heard about you being their captain.

I mean, it does happen, especially with the younger kids and especially after a longer break. They do forget the language and the routine and you have to invest a little bit more time in re-establishing yourself in the class. Whatever did happen that year, was a complete disaster, a capital D: D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R.

The recovery

The first lesson, well, it almost did not happen, not according to the definitions of ‘a lesson’ in my dictionary. I focused on surviving. The number of students involved? Two (2): most of the time and zero (0): at times.

Getting ready for the second lesson was like preparing for a battle. I prepared a super cool craft activity, a monkey that could move legs and arms and that we would use to learn and to practice I can with different verbs. The monkey was my ferret. It got some of the kids’ attention and at that point, half of them participated and we had a better (but far from good) lesson.

Over the next few lessons, I had to bend over backwards to come up with more and more supercool-OMG-I-got-to-have-it activities and slowly, over the next two weeks, I got all the kids on board. Back on board. And we did plough through and I was lucky as there were only a few weeks left until the end of the year. Survivable. But we never got back to the state of bliss we had achieved before Easter.

As I have said already, I did discuss this case with many people and no one could offer any solutions and ideas why it would have even taken place. I still do not understand what I had done wrong and really cannot see what I could or would have done differently in the classroom in order to make it better.

But there were things that I could have done outside of the classroom. It was years ago so I am going to presume that this is why I did not think of that back then. I was at the state school, my group was in fact only a half of a class that had studied together, a class that had their own parents and a class that had their own form tutor. Today, I would have asked to talk to their class teacher to find out if there was anything at all that did happen at school but outside of the English hours that could have affected the atmosphere and the behaviour in my classes. Or, I would have asked for her or for the parents’ help to help me resolve that problem.

Lessons to take out of this nightmare?

  • You are not alone. Talk to your boss, mentor, supervisor and collagues. The kids may have other teachers, too and it is a good idea to talk to them. The kids do have parents or carers, too! You are not alone.
  • Don’t give up! It is always easier to start off the right foot than to reintroduce the law and order.

Happy teaching!

And don’t forget to read about the other epic fail stories, for example this one, here.

Epic Fail! or We make mistakes to learn #2

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Two: The rewards chart (sigh)

Once upon a time, there was a young ADOS that was supposed to be observed for the very first time formally by a senior teacher trainer. It was supposed to be an observation with a group of year 1 of primary or, in other words, something that the said ADOS was supposed to be very good at as she had just been appointed to do. It was a small group, four boys that she had been working with for two months. The observation was arranged, the lesson plan was prepared, all good. Only not quite.

Kids during an observed lesson

This is now a hobby of mine, observing how the students behave and react whenever there is an alien element in the classroom. It can be a fellow teacher that has popped in to do some peer observation, or the parents during the open lesson or, of course, an observer during a formal observation. Why? Because anything can happen.

When the group is ‘under control‘, usually nothing happens, the kids treat the additional human as a piece of furniture, almost, they don’t pay attention at all. It must be that the routine is already so strong and the balance so ideal that it cannot be tilted by another human visiting. When these humans are parents, emotions do take over and it can go in many different ways. Either the kids are too excited and want to show off in front of the parents and behave themselves or they do not behave themselves or they are shy and are not there, almost.

There is one more option, too. On the day when the teacher trainer came to observe, my boys decided to put on a show. They were so dedicated to that noble task that I actually did manage to catch them repeatedly glance at the observer, then at me, do something that we would not really want to have and then look again at the observer and at me. I was being played. That was not fun, of course, but I did manage to stay still and more or less in control…apart from the rewards chart thing.

Enter rewards chart.

One of my students, let’s say Sasha, was really not in the mood for anything resembling good behaviour. I did have a rewards chart on the board and I would award smiley faces after each stage of the lesson. All the other students got a smiley face and Sasha got a sad face. Then, the next stage of the lesson took place and the situation repeated itself, a smiley face for everyone and a sad face for Sasha. Then, one more stage and again, all the other students were working, Sasha was not so I had to be consistent (yes) and so everyone got their smiley face and Sasha’s got his third sad face. And that was the end of the game for me. And for Sasha.

At this point, having those three sad faces right next to his name, on the board, for everyone to see was too much for him to handle. I completely lost him. He was not interested in anything at that point (luckily we were close to the end of the lesson) and I just let him be there. Really.

Thank Heavens, we were a few minutes away from the end of the lesson. I was, indeed, saved by the bell.

I did not fail the observation, not formally at least but it still keeps coming back to me, all the little details of it. They come to haunt me, almost like the Ghost in ‘Hamlet’…

The lessons that I have learnt

  • We need a rewards chart (although there are also teachers who oppose to them) but then need to be used not only consistently but also in a clever way
  • It is better to withhold a reward (a smiley face) rather than award a fine / a punishment (a sad face), nobody wants to see their name on display close to sad faces which are also accumulating
  • There must be chance for the student to make up and to catch up with the rest of the group. Here the teacher is in charge so another smiley face can be awarded to everyone when Sasha displays some attempt at working hard. His efforts should be acknowledged (Catch them being good) or else it is going nowhere and there is nothing that can be done to get the student back.

Happy teaching!

Have you read about a rebellion in a primary EFL class yet? You can find it here.

We want more. We ALWAYS want more! Maximising language production

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Here is my favourite character who would be a perfect amabassador for ‘We want more‘, my professional obsession (you might have noticed:-) and some of my favourite solutions for the classroom.

Trick number 1: The language

Regardless of what coursebook is used or what curriculum is followed, there are certain language items that can be included even in the pre-primary programme that will enable children to communicate and produce more language.

Some of these language items include:

  • descriptive adjectives, such as big – small, long – short, happy – sad, beautiful – ugly, serious – funny, old – new, etc. Introducing them in opposites will make it easier for the students to understand and to remember
  • simple linkers, introduced gradually, starting with ‘and’ (‘blue and green’, ‘cats and dogs’, ‘I like bananas and apples’), then moving on to ‘because’ ( starting with ‘I am happy because it is sunny’) and perhaps even ‘but’ (‘I like dancing but I don’t like dancing with a bear’, like in the song from Super Simple Songs).
  • introduce Present Continuous, because it will be easy to play with it in all the miming games and it will come in very handy while describing pictures and telling stories.
  • talking about other people. Personalisation is very important while learning language, not only with the little ones, but it is also a good idea to start introducing other people and the language we need to talk about them such as ‘she/he is / has got / can / likes’

Trick number 2: The freedom of speech

This freedom of speech has got very little with the civil rights. It is all about the degree of freedom that the students are given or, in other words, about the scaffolding and the support that are slowly removed in order not to limit the students and to enable them to choose what they want to talk about.

One way of doing it is shifting from closed yes/no questions towards more open-ended questions. ‘What do you like to eat?’ is more likely to generate more language that only ‘Do you like bananas?’ which will lead to one-word answers or maybe even only gestures. ‘Tell me about‘ will be a lot more generative.

Using this approach while working with illustrations, pictures or any kind of visuals will give students the opportunity to choose for themselves what to talk about. And it is quite likely that they will pick the topics (elements or aspects of the picture) that they are either more interested in, have more knowledge of or are better prepared to discuss. In any case, more language is likely to be generated.

Examples or real activities? Here you are:

Pairs is a speaking activity that uses a simple material of a set of pictures. The students put them in pairs, in any way they want. They also have to justify their choice. In case of the younger learners, this principle can be the colour (‘Panda and zebra. They are black and white’) but kids can also choose any other reason for that, like ‘Zebra and horse, they have 4 legs’ or ‘Bear and deer. They live in the forest’.

This activity can be also used with the older students who are given a list of words and have to put them in pairs, according the knowledge and the language they have.

Below you can see the end of the game with my pre-primary student. It started off slowly, with simple sentences about the colours that the animals have in common but as the activity progressed, the categories changed, too and we have here an example of animals that have a long tail (a lizard and a monkey), animals that live in the forest (a bear, a fox and a deer) or animals that like meat (a tiger and a lion).

This is the final product of our Pairs activity, using the visuals on Miro

Tell me about is another activity that uses a visual, for example a set of pictures with animals or a picture scene. Students choose an element for their peers to describe, for example Tell me about this boy’ and it is easy to imagine the variety of responses that these can generate. Students can choose to talk they boy’s clothes, feelings or actions.

Trick number 3: The appropriate activities and materials

Our students do what we want them to do. It is assumed so, precisely because we are teachers and they are students. The roles have been assigned once and for all. The question to ask yourself, though, is Would they really want to do it, if they had a choice? Is there anything in the task itself that would encourage them to? Or not.

Certainly, it does not meant that all those less-exciting-but-crucial activities will be renounced forever, because even though they are not always fun from the point of view of our students, they might still be necessary and useful, but it is an interesting aspect to start taking into consideration while lesson planning.

Here a few activities that use that principle

Yes or no? This is an activity that also uses visuals as the basis. In the first stages of the activity, the teacher describes the picture using very simple structure ‘I can see’ when some of the sentences are true and some are false. Students listen to the sentences and correct the sentences. In case of the pre-primary students, this is likely to be one-word production but with time, they are learning to respond in full sentences. Later on, when the students are familiar with the format of the activity, they are invited to take a leading role in the activity, also producing true or false sentences about the picture for the teacher and their peers to correct.

Kids love the game because they can correct the teacher’s mistake and they are allowed to create their own un-true sentences about the pictures and to try to trick the teacher. I have used it both with primary and pre-primary students. The younger kids, naturally, needed more time to adjust and to start producing full sentences, in the beginning they would only provide the key information, for example the colour or the number of objects but, eventually, they were comfortable enough with producing full sentences. At approximately the same time, they were ready to lead the game, too. The older, primary students could make this transition within a lesson.

This is how we were telling our own version of ‘Pete the Cat. I’m rocking in my school shoes’ using the visuals on Miro

Storytelling for pre-primary is based on picture description. Here, the easily available materials might involve the stories from the coursebooks for pre-primary, retelling together any other story used in class or even any of the materials in the YLE Starters materials. In this case storytelling is scaled down to simple picture description, in the appropriate sequence.

Storytelling for primary can also use the visuals but it can be more challenging with the use of storydice or a storytelling treasure hunt (see here)

The lion and the kitten is a simple boardgame that has been very helpful in encouraging the students to produce the language. It was created and used with the online 1-1 pre-primary students. The game does not use a dice. Instead the students can choose the box where they want to go next and in each round, they have to talk about one of the pictures hidden under the yellow, orange and blue diamonds. In the beginning the sentences are very simple and focus on simple vocabulary (‘It’s mommy‘), later on these can be exchanged for a more detailed description (‘Mommy is happy‘ or ‘Mommy is dancing‘) and even further extended with the use of ‘because’ (‘Mommy is dancing because she is happy’) or in any other way that is within the children’s linguistic ability.

This game gives children a lot of freedom and almost a guaranteed victory. The cards can be changed easily, especially in the online format, and even if not, new sentences can be made every time the game is played. With a group of children, a dice would probably have to be used.

This is the board for our boardgame, also created using the visuals available on Miro.

Are you in the park? is a simple guessing game turned into a role-play. Each student has a city plan (since this was the language that we were working at the time) and three stickers which they glue somewhere ‘in the city’. They keep their picture secret and they try to guess where their partner is at the time.

Student A: Are you at the bank / park / market?

Student B: Yes, I am / No, I am not.

After a while, they can ask for help.

Student A: Please help me.

Student B: I can see…I can hear…I can smell….

Student A: You are…

Initially, the stickers were introduce only to prevent the kids from ‘cheating’ but they absolutely loved having random leftover stickers all over the place. In the first lesson we play, it was pirates, in the second one, it was farm. They laughed a lot about having little pigs and chicks all over their cities. The other incentive was the opportunity to imagine and to describe the places from the angle of what they saw, heard and smelled in different places in the city. The kids had the full control over the game and they were making the decision themselves when to move to the second stage.

For some more tricks, please see my other posts: the discourse clock, pairwork for preschoolers or using ambiguity to get the students to talk.

Happy teaching!

All you need is…a picture!

by

A post by a lazy teacher who likes to ditch the tasks and the responsibility onto her students, even those little ones.

A post by a greedy teacher who always wants more and whose main aim of every lesson is: language production. And then more language production.

A post by a teacher who first shared these ideas at the Cambridge Back to School webinars in August 2020.

A post by a teacher, about materials management or 00000 different ways to use the same picture.

A post with activities that were inspired by some of the YLE Cambridge exams but approached in an open-minded way…Ready, steady, go!

P.S. Don’t forget to check out of the second part this post.

There is only one picture…

created using an image from classroomclipart.com and Miro

Before you even look: tell the students that it is a picture of a bedroom, have them predict what they might see…Then we look at the real one and check.

Tell me about this room: the students describe the room, using the language that they are familiar with, ‘there is’, ‘I can see’, perhaps only the nouns, perhaps nouns and colours and prepositions.

Riddles: the kids make up simple riddles for their partners to guess. ‘It is black and it is on the chair’.

Stickers dictation: this one is more appropriate for the lower levels and was inspired by the sticker activity in the Superminds coursebooks by CUP. It is also a perfect opportunity to use up all the leftover stickers that no one ever asks for. Students work in pairs and they upgrade the illustrations in their coursebooks (as in: any illustrations) with the stickers. Student A is telling student B where to put the five stickers in one of the coursebooks and then they swap roles.

Teacher = Cheater: the kids open their books and look at the picture. The teacher tells them about her non-existent picture which is, surprisingly, very different from the picture in the coursebook.

Students = Cheaters: the kids describe their made-up rooms, also, very different from the bedroom that they are looking at.

In my real room: particularly appropriate for the online classes since the children will be already sitting in their rooms and can easily compare the illustration with the reality but can be done in the offline lessons, too.

Because: students describe the picture but instead of just focusing on what exactly they can see they try to find the rationale for what they can see. ‘The books are on the floor because….’

The story behind the picture: even such an uninspiring picture in which nothing is happening (really) can be a starting point to writing a story or telling a story. The only thing that you need is a set of questions to get them started, for example: Who lives in this room, a boy or a girl? How old is he/she? What is his / her name? What does he / she like? He / she is not in his/her room. Where is he/she? What is he/she doing? What did he/she do before? What is he / she going to do next?

Dice games: the teacher has to assign the structures to each of the numbers on the dice and these can be easily adapted to the level of the students. The standard set might include: 1 = I can see, 2 = There is, 3 = There are, 4 = It’s on / under / in, 5 = It’s green / red, 6 = It’s big/ small / beautiful. You can also include: I like, I don’t like, …is doing what, is happy/ sad/angry, there aren’t any and so on, depending on the picture. Kids work in pairs, roll the dice and describe the picture using the assigned structures.

Noughts and crosses: It takes three lines to turn any picture into a noughts and crosses game. Students play the game in pairs but before they put their mark in one of the boxes, they have to describe what they can see there in one, two or even three sentences. To keep the kids interests up, a marking scheme can be introduced, a twin grid, with points which is of course kept secret until the end of the round (in Miro – under the noughts and crosses grid, on paper – on the corner that is folded under). This way we always have a winner, the person who collects more points for the boxes that they have described. Sometimes we have two winners, too, the logical one and the mathematical one.

Memory games: first, the students get to look at the picture for a minute or two. The teacher asks them to remember the details, all the colours, actions, number of children and so on. Afterwards, the students are divided into teams. The teacher can use either a set of pre-prepared sentences some of which are true and some of which are false. The teams pick out one of the cards, read the sentence and check how much they remember. This version is more T-centred but it has the advantage of additional reading practice. In another version, the students get to look at the picture again and make up a sentence about it, for the other team to guess. They can also write their own set of sentences which will be later used to test the other team.

There are two pictures…

I can make it different: the starting point is a picture and it can be copied and upgraded in any way the teacher sees fit, using all the beautiful tools that the Miro board has to offer (google image search and icons). It will take some time but it means that it can be adapted to the level, skills and interests of a particular group and then saved and recycled forever. Just like these two pictures here…

Predict the Differences: the children can only see one of the pictures and they try to figure out all the ways in which the two pictures can differ. It might be especially effective if they are already familiar with the task format and know that they have to be looking out for different patterns, activities, objects that the people are holding, throwing, the comparisons between two objects, the location on the right or left side of the picture and so on.

Predict the Differences Quiz: the idea is the same but we add the competitive element and another skill as the teams or pairs of students are asked to write ten potential differences between the picture they can see and the other one. The team that manages to better at predicting wins.

Find the difference: we can ask the students to work in pairs but to find all the differences without showing their picture to the partner. This is not going to be a strict Movers or Flyers preparation task but we are going to raise the level of challenge and they students will really have to listen carefully in order to establish how these two pictures are different.

One big and ten small pictures: it is not necessary to kill another tree to ensure that each child has two pictures right in front of their eye. One, enlarged copy of Picture A can be displayed on the board (or on the screen) and compared with the picture B in students’ coursebooks.

Accidental friends: illustrations that were created not as a ‘find the difference’ task but can easily serve the purpose. Examples? Any of the Movers and Starters reading and writing story tasks or any of the Movers or Flyers speaking story tasks…The theme is already there and looking for differences can be a nice warm-up to storytelling or story-writing activities…

Very, very different: the illustrations that can be used in this kind of a task do not even have to be specifically created with that purpose in mind. Any (and I mean it: any) two pictures depicting ‘a bedroom’ can be used to find the differences. The crazily pink exhibit A here and practically any page of the IKEA catalogue…And pronto!

YLE listening task recycled: these can be used as a listening task, to prepare for the format and to develop listening skills but they can be later used again as a colouring dictation activity. Students work in pairs, one is in charge of the coloured pencils and speaking (‘Colour the bird yellow’), the other one – in charge of the colouring page and listening. Half-way through the activity they swap roles.

This is already more productive but the best is yet to come. Since it is a freer practice activity and students make their own decisions regarding the choice of the colours, it is quite likely that all the pictures will be different. And then…Yes, we can compare them, in groups of four.

Actually, even a leftover listening copies can be used in the same way (Saving the planet, remember?). After all, regardless of which exam it is, the students only have to colour five elements of the picture and the rest of them can be used in a speaking task like that.

Colouring printables: can be used in exactly the same way. Not all the pages will do, for example a large drawing of a cat does not really offer too much as an object to be described and I try not to use colouring pictures which are too big as some students like to be precise and colouring those might take too much of the precious time of the lesson. Other than that, just open google and type in: a child’s bedroom colouring page…Ready! And if there are any words that the students don’t know yet, we can always learn them. Even if they are not on the YLE word list and just because ‘a dragonfly’ might be a cool word to know😊

Which one is different?

Which one is different? Why?

Vocabulary practice: we only need four pictures out of is one is different. It might be a set of four objects, three of which are blue and one of which is red and the students do not even need to know the name of all of the objects. They can still complete the task by using the structure ‘It’s blue’ or even ‘blue’. We can create such by using icons or google images on the Miro board or by arranging and re-arranging the flashcards that accompany our books.

Grammar practice: the focus here can be chosen depending on the topic of the lesson and it can be limited to only ‘it has got…legs’ with animal flashcards, ‘it’s big’ with school objects, ‘I like’ with food, prepositions, Present Continuous and what not.

Kids take over: the students can make up their own chains, either with the coursebooks flashcards or the mini-flashcards (always a good idea to have two or three sets of those for each topic, they can be reused throughout the course).

Chant it! This is the only variation here that I have not had a chance to use in the classroom but if you look at it from the right angle, all of a sudden, there is a lot of potential here: each chain has four pictures and each of them can become a separate verse. The kids can clap for the similar concepts and stomp for the odd one out…

It’s a good idea but it’s not my idea: the kids talk about the pictures and describe the odd one out but they have to go on until they guess the teacher’s original idea (probably better to write it down somewhere in order to be able to prove that we have not been cheating this time😊. If the appropriate topic has been chosen (such as, for instance, animals), this activity can go on for almost forever and the students will produce a terrifying amount of language. Once they learn to think outside of the box, this same activity can be used with all the seemingly less ‘appealing’ topics, too.

How many can you think of: a similar idea but realised slightly differently as students work with the exam materials but try to think of as many reasons to odd one of the pictures out…

Well, 27 activities…Not bad, not bad at all. I might be adding to this list in the future.

I hope you have found something useful here! And if you have used it in class, please let me know!

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.