#primaryelf

Setting up the routine. Four months into the course

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Here we are again, at the next important benchmark / stage / stepping stone in our primary course – the end of the four-month period (enough time to have built up some routine) and before the start of the new calendar year with the kids coming back from the winter break having forgotten everything they have learnt. Maybe to immortalise everything before I have to rebuild the world next week or maybe to help myself remember what it was that we did a week ago, here is the post. There was nothing at the end of November (I was on holiday) and December was unusual with many kids ill, many leaving for the holiday early and with our routine slightly interrupted with the rehersals for the Christmas show, here are my kids.

Please, don’t forget to check our September adventures in the following posts here, here, here and here and our progress in October, here.

Starting the lesson and How do you feel today?

Right now, we have developed a tradition of starting with a little chit-chat before moving on to everything else. In a way, it was kind of unavoidable – the kids wanted to share or to catch up with those who were ill and returned, they had questions ‘about everything’ because our school life was quite busy and adventurous (winter photo shoot, Christmas show rehearsals, the general news). I also noticed that it is also the time that the use to clean up the tables, to organise themselves and to switch from the break into a lesson and that is especially important if our classes are the first lesson of the day. Whenever possible, I try to start this stage even before the bell rings but I gave myself the permission to stop being stressed about it and to just take it in strides. This stage does not last more than five minutes, sometimes even less.

Afterwards we move on to asking ‘How do you feel today?’. We don’t have any new emotions but I am so happy that more and more kids started to answer with ‘because’. In December the kids would also bring their toys (and there were more toys because maybe the presents started to be given out early) and they really really wanted to include them in the hello circle. That is why we started to ask ‘How many new students today?’ and this is when they introduce their toys, they count them and they reply how they feel. Usually we manage to get away with one collective question – answer per student but even so this means twice as much production. And everyone wants to share, even those who did not bring any toys on the day so we had the following items introduced as toys and getting involved in the conversation: a pencil, a Christmas decoration, a cushion and a packet of Oreos.

The roll call is a part of this stage, sometimes I lead, sometimes the kids take turns to ask the questions and only after we are done with that, we move on to our hello song. Counting from 10 to 0 stopped being necessary at this point and I don’t use it, on most days. We go back to it only occassionally, when the kids are a bit more excited and louder. This helps them to calm down.

Songs

A lot of December was hijacked by everything Christmas-related and we listend to everything that Super Simple Songs have to offer as regards the festive season. We really liked S-A-N-T-A and C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S which are great because of the spelling and because the later is a perfect illustration of all the Christmas traditions. I loved it and so did my kids. However, the Absolute Hit for everyone (including our non-English staff) was the Snowflake. We used it as a song, as a calming device and as a track to dance to. Even of my ‘Super Cool’ and ‘Oh, I am much more serious that the rest of you’ kids adored it and to see them twirl to it and just enjoy it was beyond precious. Not to mention that thanks to What do you want for Christmas, now we have our ‘I want to’ and ‘I don’t want to’ clocked in forever in our set of functional language structures.

Dance and freeze got, temporarily perhaps, put on hold but there were two great replacements. First of all, we were counting and working out a lot with Jack Hartman and, while I was on holiday, the cover teacher introduced my kids do Danny Go. It is a great brain-break and it helps kids work on the gross motor skills and focus and we get a few random verbs as a bonus. I have to admit I am not a huge fan, especially when the floor is lava, but the kids just loved it. Of course.

It has to be noted that we no longer have a hello song, not as such. Right now, we just choose one of our favourite song and sing it, at the beginning of the lesson or at any point throughout. The kids are given the responsibility of making that decision. We take turns and I take notes who has already been involved.

Rules and classroom language

We haven’t really changed anything regarding the rules. We still need to revise them but at this point it is only once a week that we do it. I have also noticed that the kids became much better with their own time management, a combination of a better adaptation to the school routine and being more familiar with the digital clock. I don’t need to put the end of the lesson time on the board and I do it only occassionally. It is very rarely now that I get a question from the room ‘How much time left until the end?’ and when I do, I just answer it. Or someone else from the group does.

But there are two new additions to the everyday routine. The first one is a detailed lesson plan for each of the lessons. I put it on the board, on the top, usually a set of 6 or 7 points, outlining the main stages of the lesson. Some of them are the code names that everyone is familiar with (‘read’ = phonics exercises, ‘notebook’ = we write, or ‘suprise’ = there is something good coming our way), some of them are bascially there for me, to remind me the order of activities. The kids read them all, that’s for sure and sometimes they ask questions or suggest more stages, such as another surprise or their favourite song. They have also started to ask for the permission to help me write that and that is another precious thing because it means more writing! They are also very eager to help me erase the bits once we are done with them. You can read more about this kind of a lesson plan here.

The other element, grades for each lesson, was introduced because of the serious issues of behaviour that I encountered after my holiday break. I was away for only seven working days and l left detailed instructions for the cover teacher to ensure that the gap between her lessons and mine were as small as possible, but, still, it did not work and after I came back I found my kids very much in their September mode aka ‘all over the place’. For that reason, I make a list in my notebook and I give everyone a grade at the end of every lesson, or, to be precise, two grades: one for behaviour and one for hard work and at the end of the lesson, or during the break, I announce who got what. It also works as a reminder during the lesson and so far, it has had a positive impact on the group. Their behaviour and hard work is clearly reflected in numbers and it helps them as a reference point. I found it to be more effective than my regular rewards charts because it does not take a whole board (13 kids!) and it is contained within a lesson. I am also hoping that, sooner or later, I will be able to phase it out but for now and, especially, right after the break, it is coming in very handy.

Story

Stories continue to be very much present in our classroom lives. There is a lot that we have in our books and I especially liked the series of stories on memories (Global English 3) because it gave us a chance to talk about feelings, to personalise these stories and to introduce very small bits of the past tense.

Apart from that we also did our first story writing (you can read about it here) and we read Zog (and this post here, is partly dedicated to what happened in that lesson and also to the story follow-up activities).

Socialising

In terms of socialasing, we have done the following:

  • kids have been nominating themselves ‘Who’s next?’ although, because of the behaviour issues I mentioned before, I had to mix it with a more T-centred approach.
  • we have been doing a lot of alternative seating arrangements such as: sitting on the carpet (for the phonics games and pelmanism), sitting around the carpet on the chairs (for all the city + prepositions games), sitting in two rows facing each other for pairwork, working in pairs with changing partners
  • kids have been taking turns to give out and to collect materials and to make decisions about the lesson (songs and games)
  • working together as a class to win snoflakes in the whole school advent calendar winter activities
  • we have done a few projects in which the kids were working individually but sharing the resources such as the cards (on the board) or the stickers, learning how to take turns, how to share, how to wait. I was really proud of the children because it all went well.
  • we have had a lot of activities in which one student was leading the game, especially our riddles
  • as a whole class we created Christmas gardlands to decorate our classrooms and it was a perfect bonding project

Creativity

Our creative projects in December were all Christmas-related

  • used the theme in our Serious Maths Classes, with Christmas Maths Stories, Christmas Puzzles and colouring pictures, Help the Reindeer
  • we created our posters about our favourite characters, the day when we were proud. We also created our Reindeer Hats in the final lessons of the year.
  • we played a lot with songs, creating our own versions and we had a blast for a few lessons playing pelmanism and creating wrong sentences (‘Paul washes the dragon’ instead of ‘Paul washes the car’) which finished with a mini-project of our TV programme ‘Crazy Sentences’ in which we made a video of kids reading their creations. That was fun and I am planning to do it again after the break.
  • and the garlands mentioned above

Teacher

Well, these were busy two months and sometimes very tiring because of the behaviour issues but we are working on everything, we are improving and we are learning.

It is good to know that I am sowing a lot but I can reap a lot, too. We have crossed one super important bridge in Maths with all the regrouping activities, as regards addition and subtraction. It was not the smoothest of rides and I think even my strongest Maths kids are not entirely excited about subtraction but we are making progress and I have to admit, I love it when I hear ‘I get it now!’ and they just move on with it.

Our English classes are more and more English now and I can see how they are making progress and become more and more communicative. We decided to test everyone regarding their English level, using the Cambridge exams framework and we are half-way through with it and it will be great to track the kids’ progress over the year. This, in itself, has been a very interesting exercise for me and I will definitely write about it after I have reflected on everything properly.

We prepared a great dance for the Christmas show and this was an interesting experience for me, too.

And, last but not least, we have completed our first big notebook as in: we filled it up with handouts, notes and drawings up to the last page and we could finally take it home. I loved it watching kids look through the pages, reminisicing on everything we had done already and how much we had learnt. Afterwards, we closed them, said ‘Thank you, Notebook’ for helping us learn and we took them home. Naturally, we have already started the new ones, too.

Another thing that did happen over those last two months, also in the category of ‘last but not least’, after two months of studying only with notebooks and handouts, at the begining of November, we introduced the coursebook for English, Maths, Science and History and now they are a part of our everyday school life. We are much more serious students now. Hooray.

Kids after the break aka what happens next

January will be messy. Some students have missed a week of school, many have missed two weeks, some even more. I bet you everyone has forgotten what the classroom is about. Preparing for the first day and the first week will be quite something, as regards the subject and as regards the classroom management. Good luck to me and see you in a while. I will be back with an update.

Happy teaching!

Storytelling for primary. Ideas for the follow-up activities.

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The way that only the freezing winter sunsets can be

Storytelling and storybooks in the primary classroom

Welcome to one more of my obsessions: the story in the classroom, be it a story from the coursebook, a video, a storybook or even a thing that I invent myself, just to sell my ‘product‘. A story is not only the type of an activity that we introduce because of its many benefits or because we want to prepare our students for the YL Cambridge exams but also because the story can be a way and the means of developing the young children’s language skills, reading and writing, speaking and listening but also their grammar and vocabulary.

I have been using stories for ages and I am not exaggerating when I say that this is one of my favourite teaching tools and different storybooks characters, Marvin, Barry, Pete the Cat or Splat the Cat or Peppa, are like my best mates.

‘What’s new?‘, one could ask.

In this academic year (four months so far), I have been involved in teaching the British National Curriculum, KS 3 to my two wonderful groups who are an amazing but mixed bunch, especially when it comes to their actual English skills. One of my main aims is developing my students reading and writing skills, preferably fast (yes, yes, I know, nothing happens fast) while working with a very mixed ability group, ranging from complete beginners to A1+ children. Stories have been one of the many ways of doing and I decided to share a few examples of what we have done, hoping that they can serve as a source of inspiration, for all kinds of classes, EFL or ESL.

The general idea

The way these five stories were used in the primary classroom follow the same pattern

  • pre-book: looking at the cover of the book, reading the title, introducing the main character, asking some questions about it, trying to predict the story, introducing and practising the key vocabulary.
  • while-book: reading / watching the story, sometimes with pauses to check understanding, sometimes to involve the kids through gestures, sometimes through the phrases, if they are used repeatedly.
  • post-book: a variety of activities related to the content of the story or to the grammar or vocabulary of the week in which the story was introduced.

And this is when the post starts to make more sense, I hope, because I am going to share here five different stories and five story-related, follow-up activities that I used in the last few months.

Hen’s pens and Let’s practise vocabulary!

Hen’s pens is a story, one in the series published by Usborne, a lovely resource with the Ted in a red bed, Fat Cat on a mat and Big Pig on a dig. I usually use them a bit later, with slightly more advanced students, in shared reading sessions (and there probably should be a post about that) but this time, I wanted to introduce a longer story, a video story and a rhyming story, specifically to have kids practise noticing rhymes.

In the follow-up of the story, we completed a very simple reading task, in which we put the words into pairs by colour-coding them and then using the chart to practise reading. You will have also notice a colouring page in the handout. This was an additional task for the kids, only for those who like colouring.

Pete the Cat and Let’s speak!

Pete the Cat is very famous in the EFL circles and the story about rocking in the school shoes is an absolute hit. This is my personal way of teaching Present Continuous ever since I have seen the video for the first time and this year, not quite for the first time, I used it also to introduce the school vocabulary, verbs and places.

In our lesson, apart from watching, singing, miming and even re-enacting Pete’s day at school, we also followed up with a speaking activity in which the kids had to create their own sentences in the Present Continuous. They had the main verb forms, mostly taken from the story, accompanied by visuals to support speaking (in most cases, the kids were unable to read yet) and their task was to finish the sentence by drawing something. ‘I am eating…a pizza, an apple, a cookie, a banana’, according to their preferences. Later on we compared our sentences, creating our own day at school. The handout served as preparation for speaking.

Again, those children who were interested, were given a second handout to colour.

Marvin Gets Mad and Let’s practise grammar!

Marvin is, no doubt, one of my favourite characters and he’s been present in my classroom for about fifteen years now (wow!). ‘Marvin Gets Mad’ by Joseph Theobald is a great story for feelings and for learning about controlling emotions but this time round I decided to use it to reinforce the grammar behind the Present Continuous.

In the follow-up task, which was quite a stretch from the plot of the original story but it was exactly what we needed to practise the Present Continuous and to reinforce the idea of the suffix -ing. The kids had to add the suffix to all the sentences and then read them and match them to the pictures of a particular sheep.

Zog and Let’s take some notes!

Zog by Julia Donaldson was a good lesson, too. We focused on revising the body parts but we also did a lot as regards the language practice, as regards the structures we already learnt (‘I can…fly, catch a princess, breathe fire) and a few structures that were used repeatedly in the story (‘What’s the matter?’ ‘I can help you’ ‘Thank you’). While we were going through the story, the children helped me produce all the key language.

After we were done with the story itself, we ‘took notes’ about the story. All the kids got their copy of the handout and we went on through it: tracing the lines, reading the lines and completing them with our ideas. As usual, some of the lines are actually very restricted (‘Zog is a dragon’), some are more open-ended (‘He can…fly, breathe fire, catch a princess, help’), the others – even more. (‘He is…green, big, small, happy, sad, scared’). The final two lines are for tracing and for circling, depending on whether you liked the story or not. This time I included a small picture of Zog for everyone and some kids took time to colour it after they were done with writing.

Ling and her proud memory and Let’s draw!

Ling is a girl from one of the stories in our coursebook, Global English 3, in a series on memories (a sad memory, a happy memory and a proud memory) and I actually loved teaching all three. The story was quite challenging for my kids in terms of the language and I just wanted a general understanding of the main facts. After we talked about the picture and listened to the story, I did a short Yes / No activity regarding the content. This was followed by a note-taking activity, similar to the one we did with Zog, but it was substantially shorter and more limited in terms of creativity. However, this was only because the real star of the lesson was the drawing activity.

The word ‘proud’ was a new concept to us and I really wanted to make it personal, mostly because it has a huge potential and it is a good word to have at your disposal in the classroom. With the help of my T.A. we explained what it means, we gave examples and suggested some ideas for the kids, based on our shared experiences such as preparing for the Christmas show, doing difficult exercises in class and so on. I showed my students my example (below) and I let them draw.

Admittedly, the lesson (or this project) did not involve a huge lot of language production but it was a beautiful moment, nonetheless. And a very necessary one, too! Some children knew straight away what they were proud of, some others needed to take time to come up with an idea. And they did! Even those who started their search with a desperate ‘I don’t know!’.

My example is below and showing it to my class was another special moment and, guess what, they got the idea straight away! Because when we are doing something very, very difficult in Maths and my students keep raising their hands and everyone wants to give the answer, I am very proud (based on real events:-).

Coda

These are just a few ideas of what can be done in class when a story is involved. One of many ideas!

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #75 Paul and his gran. One more way of approaching the story in the YL classroom.

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Ingredients

  • One of the YLE Cambridge visuals, Movers speaking (4 pictures), Flyers writing (3 pictures) or Flyers speaking (5 pictures). In our case, this time it was Paul and his Granmother from Flyers from the sample tests booklet (volume 2 p. 96), tampered with lightly (see below)
  • A handout created to accompany the visuals, you can download it from here

Procedures

  • Prepare the visuals by covering up the numbers on the pictures and making a copy for each student, cutting these up. Make a copy of the writing handout for each student.
  • Introduce the story: without revealing too much, for examply by telling the kids that they are going to meet a boy and read a story about his day.
  • Give out the visuals, cut up, ask the kids to find out the start of the story (aka picture number 1), talk about this picture with the class. The questions to use might include: Who is it? How old is he / she? What is she / he doing?
  • Tell the kids that this is Paul and his gran (we had different interpretations here but we need grandma for the handout) and their day. Ask the kids to reorder the pictures, check and glue them in the correct order in the notebooks. They number the pictures.
  • Create the story: kids look at all the pictures, in order to be able to construct the whole story and the plot. This can be easily turned into a speaking activity: the teacher makes sentences such as: I can see a boy. Kids answer with: Picture 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, etc. Later on, the students take over by making their own sentences. This can be done as a whole class or in pairs. This is also the time to introduce or to check that all the kids have all the key vocabulary. The kids are not telling the story yet, they are only getting ready, thinking about the characters, their actions and feelings.
  • Write the story: the teacher gives out the handwriting handout, the kids glue it in their notebooks, too. The class go together, picture by picture, they read the sentences and think of their own ways of finishing the sentences. They write the words or they ask the teacher to write the words on the board for them to copy. The teacher monitors and makes sure that everyone is going on at the same pace.
  • Read the story: the groups that I did it with were not very big, only 5 or 6 students, so we could all read our stories out loud and applaud. With the bigger groups, it might be a good idea to put the kids into pairs or smaller groups to read to each other and to applaud. Nonetheless, I still wanted to include this element, purely for the reading practice.

Why we like it

  • I am quite happy with that activity since all the materials worked well in the classroom.
  • The kids enjoyed it. Many of the ideas were the same, especially the feelings but there was also some potential for variety in kids’ answers. I accepted everything, for example ‘Parents are angry’ (picture 5) or ‘Paul is scared’ (picture 4). As we always say: ‘All ideas are good ideas’. In that sense it worked very well as ‘the first story we wrote’. I was very proud of them and they were proud of themselves, too.
  • My students are only 6 and 7 and all of them are in year 1 of primary. Their literacy levels vary and this kind of an activity gave them an opportunity to practise a variety of skills, especially their literacy skills, with more focus on reading and writing. There was enough room for creativity and enough support at the same time. Initially, I was considering including the tracing element but then I decided that it would be too much for one lesson, with five pictures and five short texts to write.
  • There is a lot of potential for adaptation: the number of pictures can be adapted, if you choose to use the Movers speaking resources or the Flyers writing resources. The number of sentences for each picture can also be adapted, extended or cut short. If there is time and if the kids are ready, they can add their own, sixth part and even to draw their own picture.
  • I made sure that everyone had the same order of the pictures for the entire story as my kids are quite young and this was the first time we worked with this kind of a materials. Because of that and because of their literacy levels, they are not yet able to work independently on such a task and I decided to keep it more T-centred and T-led this time. However, for more advanced groups (as regards literacy and independent work), there is a lot more potential. They could tell the story in their own way. If needs be, the writing handout, can also be cut up and rearranged, to match the pictures and their order.
  • One thing that I did not do was to allow creativity as regards the title of the story. We did not focus much on it, I only introduce the brief: Paul and his grandma, but there is so much potential here, especially that the kids are also supposed to learn about a structure of the story and that it includes a title. No harm done, we will be repeating this activity and next time we will write our own titles, too!

Before you go, make sure you have a look at all the other storytelling ideas, here and here.

Happy teaching!

More than drilling, more than flashcards. Teaching vocabulary to young learners.

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It’s been six months now (and four courses) since we introduced the individual consultations to our YL and VYL course and a lot of good has come out of it already for the course, for the trainees and my blog. This post today will be dedicated to one of the course participants, Valentina, who came to the meeting with one question only, namely: ‘I am bored with teaching vocabulary through flashcards and drilling’. This was when I realised that we never really talked about the variety in that area. Hence this post.

Back to the basics…

…or our gurus. For anyone who is not familiar, I would recommend getting hold of Carol Read’s chapter on teaching vocabulary and grammar and all the basic concepts as well as her post in the series of the ABC of Teaching Children in which she highligts the need for the crystal clear meaning, the context as well as opportunites for memorising and for practice.

Carol also offers a lot of ideas for the classroom (as promised) and if you are looking for more, please have a look at the bilbliography where I have left some more interesting links, for inspiration and from two different areas, the teachers of EFL/ESL and just children learning new words. Many of them are quite recent publications so have a look! There is lots and lots to read.

For that reason, also, this post here will focus not on practice activities but on ways of introducing vocabulary to primary and pre-school students, more than just flashcards.

Electronic flashcards

‘Electronic flashcards’ is an umbrella term for a great variety of resources that can be used in the YL classroom. I will try to include here at least the few basic ones

  • Wordwall (wordwall.net), with all its growing number of templates and options. You need to join the community but the membership is free and it gives you access to everything that any member ever created and made public. You can, for example, get access to the whole library that I have created (Azapart). The ability to create resources is only available to the members with subscription but it is cheap and definitely worth it. My favourite resources here to introduce vocabulary include stencil flashcards, cropped images, simple word cards and flashcards or flashcards with the audio.
  • Simple video flashcards of which there are plenty available on youtube, such as offered by Maple Leaf Learning. There are also such products as EFL Kids Videos that present not only vocabulary but also vocabulary + structures.
  • Videos that not only present the new vocabulary but that also offer an option of a game, for example places in the city from Smile and Learn where you get a presentation and a guessing game, ‘What is it?’ games from Fun Kids English or drawing – guessing games from Games4ESL.

Sounds

This might be a more obvious resource when it comes to some topics, such as animals, pets, farm or jungle but it is definitely a lot more potential here. Sounds can be also used to introduce the vocabulary of transportation, places in the city, instruments, Present Continuous or everyday activities and objects, a day in sounds or even weather.

It needs to be mentioned that these materials were not created as educational materials with a specific aim to match the content of one coursebook or another and they are not used to replace the official published materials. They only help to introduce the topic and the idea in an interesting way, with at least some of the items that we are required to cover according to the curriculum.

Gestures

I am a huge fun of using gestures in the classroom. The gesture is king after all! For a good few years now, whenever we introduce new vocabulary we add gestures to it, to help clarify the meaning but also to give the children one more channel that might help them remember and recall the meaning of these new words. This kind of miming can be upgraded to include a lot more speaking (see: a post here) and the children can be involved and invited to come up with their own gestures for certain phrases and express themselves in that way, too! It is not only for the youngest of the youngest. Once we introduced, even my 8 – 10 A2 year-olds loved working with this form of expression.

Realia

Like in the case of sounds, realia would be something that naturally springs to mind when we talk about teaching school objects, food or classroom vocabulary and, perhaps, if you have any access to any friendly children who are willing to share their collection, perhaps also to teach toys, transport or even animals. The other topics seem to be impossible. Or do they?

I think my realia creativity had a chance to skyrocket during the pandemic while we were all stuck at home and with a very limited access to all those beautiful things that we would normally use. A blessing in disguise?

My solution is relatively un-revolutionary and is based on using symbols, items that we agree stand for our chosen concepts. Here are some examples:

  • rooms in the house: a spoon = the kitchen, a pair of socks = the bedroom, a remote = the living room, a key = the hall, a toothbrush = the bathroom
  • weather: gloves = it is snowing, sunglasses = it is sunny, a cap = it is warm, a kite = it is windy, an umbrella = it is raining, a scarf = it is cold
  • school subjects: a tshirt = PE, a mouse = IT, paints = Art, counting sticks = Maths, dictionary = English, a book = Russian, a magnet (from abroad) = Geography, a paper crown or a photo of a king = History etc
  • party aka characters: a star = a sheriff, a crown = a prince / a princess, a red nose = a clown, a witch’s hat = a witch, a flower = a gardener, a plastic stetoscope = a doctor etc
  • seasons: just lots of things, clothes and accessories which we use in winter, spring, autumn and summer
  • family: accessories that different memebers of the family might have, a car = a brother, a doll – a sister, a newspaper = daddy, wool = grandma etc.
  • body: accessories and objects which we use with different body parts: glasses: a nose and ears and eyes, socks = feet and toes, a spoon = a hand and fingers. The confusion might be even beneficial here because we will be repeating the words a number of times.
  • free time and verbs: different objects and accessories that we use, for example: a pen = to write, a ball = to play, a spoon = to eat etc.

Song

In a majority (almost certain here) of our coursebooks songs are introduced as a means of practising and revising vocabulary and grammar but this does not have to always be the case, not when we are in charge.

Since I discovered the existance of the amazing Pete the Cat who is rocking in his school shoes, I have not taught the places in the school (and Present Continuous) in a different way. The song is beautiful, fun and very catchy and the video illustrates the idea of both the vocabulary and the tense in such an obvious way that I am not even looking for any alternatives. We start with the song, we enjoy the music, the video and Pete and only later, we move on to flashcards, drilling and all the other practice activities.

Here are some more examples of songs that can be used in the same way

E pronto? E pronto!

Story

Whatever we do with songs, it can be done with a story. A video, a storybook or storycards can be the starting point in a vocabulary lesson. Here are my favourite storybooks to teach vocabulary:

  • ‘Elmer’ by David McKee to teach jungle animals
  • ‘Marvin Gets Angry’ by Joseph Theobald to teach emotions
  • ‘Cat’s Colours’ by Airlie Anderson to each colours
  • ‘A Very Hungry Caterpillar’ by Eric Carle to teach food
  • ‘Zob’ by Julia Donaldson to teach helth problems

To name just a few. Introducing them will give you a ready made context and it will be a pleasure for the kids to get back to the story over a series of lessons and to be more and more involved in reading and retelling the story. That is a brand new level of the sense of achievement and of the meaningful lessons.

Posters

Admittedly, in the past, a few years ago or in the previous editions of the coursebooks, posters were a more frequent quest. They are not as common today although different schools produce their own posters and so do publishing houses, although not necessarily in connection with a particular title. For that reason, I will extend the definition of poster to ‘any large size visual with a variety of elements’ in order to be able to include any silly pictures, clip art creations to be found on google (really!) or the picture wordlists as these absolute beauties available on the CUP website for Starters, Movers and Flyers exam preparation (but not exclusive to these).

I am a huge fan of using visuals in the classroom and I am proud to say that I have come up with a plethora of ideas for language practice. You can find them in two posts: All you need is…a picture. They can be displayed on screens or interactive whiteboards or even printed and laminated.

As regards vocabulary introduction, however, here are some ideas:

  • labelling the items in the picture together with the kids
  • covering some parts of the pictures with the post-it notes, to elicit from kids (It is a city. What can we see here?) and then to uncover the picture step by step while introducing the equivalents of the words the kids provide, in English
  • covering some parts of the picture with the post-it notes, to uncover them step by step while clarifying the meaning of the words and including elements of drilling
  • covering some parts of the picture with the post-it notes, to play ‘What’s missing?’ (although this slowly moves towards controlled practice / drilling)
  • pointing at two objects in the picture and calling out a name for the kids to recognise. Here, the teacher can use hands (Left! Right!) or, if it is too confusing, two markers of different colours (Blue! Red!), a fun exercise for the auditory practice and word recognition.

Coda

All of the activities mentioned above can be used during the practice stage and they are not to replace flashcards and drilling but to supplement or replace them and to introduce a bit of variety and a breath of fresh air, for the students and for the kids.

The choice will depend on the age and level of the students and, naturally, on the specific set of vocabulary.

Happy teaching!

Bibliography

Carol Read (2007), 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom, Macmillan

Carol Read (2011), ABC of Teaching Children, V is for Vocabulary here.

How to teach vocabulary: 5 fun and easy ideas (2020) from Begin Learning.

17 ways for kids to learn new vocabulary (2020) from Imagination Soup.

Kids and vocabulary (2011?) from British Council, Teaching English.

How to teach vocabulary. Twinkl’s super seven-step guide (2023) from Twinkl.

6 Science-based tips for teaching your kids vocabulary…the fun way (2022) from Maya Smart.

5 fun ideas to make vocabulary jump out of the page for young learners (2021) from CUP.

30 meaningful vocabulary activities for every grade (2023) from We Are Teachers.

Teacher up, dear teacher!

by

This is the second episode in my Made-up Phrasal Verb series which deals with the different aspects of being a teacher who works with kids. The first one is devoted to stepping out of the shoe of a Miss/Mr Serious Teacher in order to become a human in the classroom, who, first and foremost, cares for the child’s well-being and who takes care of the whole child, which sometimes means putting some (or all?) of the methodology principles on the back burner. You can find the post here.

As it often happens, right after I wrote the post I had an opportunity to ‘practise what you preach’. One of my little students got terribly upset about something she didn’t manage to and right after the class ended, she crawled under her desk and, as a result, I spent some quality time on the floor, in my freshly-washed jeans, under the desk, just hanging out and keeping her company in that difficult moment, until she calmed down. All things considered, it was the most useful thing that I did as a teacher last week…Teachering down full time!

But teachering down is the solution for some of the days and for some of the situations. Sometimes, the teacher needs to do the contrary, to be the real teacher and even more than that. Hence this post.

Teacher up!

Like many of teachers, I follow the social media in order to keep my ears to the ground and to find inspiration for teaching. Then, there are activities that my colleagues and teacher friends share and those that my trainees bring to the course, too. Up until a year ago, there was also the monthly intake of the ‘things I saw in the lessons I observed’ but at the moment, I observe less frequently. Nonetheless, there is a steady inflow of ideas or, in other words, lots of food for thought.

Statistically speaking, a lot of brilliance that can be taken into the classroom directly or after some minor adaptation and it is just great! And if you have any doubts, think about the teacher’s life ten or even twenty years ago when googling ‘ideas for a snowman craft for kindergarten was not an option. Nor was raking through your favourite and trusted bloggers’ accounts for insights. Or sharing a story about a horrible day at school to get a few virtual supportive pats on the shoulder. How did we even live back then?

At the same time, the amount of the seemingly educational material out there is just worrying. There are so many ideas that, at a glance, look like something that would work well, that, on closer inspection turn out to be only ‘the Instagram teaching’, high on the WOW factor, and ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’ low on methodology and appropriacy as regards the child in the classroom.

Looking at these, the trainer’s eyebrow raises and the teacher’s muscles twitch. And a plethora of questions floods the mind of both. Why did you think it was a good idea for a group of preschoolers? What is the aim for that activity and how is it even connected to everything else in the lesson? Is it in any way appropriate? Generative? Safe? Is it in any way methodologically justifiable? Is there anything to it apart from the WOW materials and WOW photographs that you will be able to post on the social media or send to parents?

Entering the classroom full of pre-school or primary school students, we assume many roles. We become in loco parentis, sometimes a mix of a nanny and a baby-sitter, sometimes more of a governess or a nurse, sometimes a coach, sometimes a witch, sometimes an actor. But, despite all that, first and foremost, we enter the classrooms as teachers.

Teachers who have clear aims for the lesson, linguistic, personal and child development aims, teachers who have thought of the lesson as a whole and all of the puzzles in it, teachers who selected activities and materials with a full awareness of the children’s needs and abilities. There is nothing that ‘just happens to be there’ and even if there is some fluff, it is a well-thought-out and justified fluff that also has a clear aim.

It is a happy coincidence that the first post and these ponderings came at the same time as a series of posts from @abc_academia_ (Katerina Balaganskaya) and @ginger_teacher_efl (Evgeniya Kiseleva) and their project ELT Expert Hub, especially the one about the need for the teachers to focus on good quality continual professional development (see the link in the bibliography). This is all came together. Enthusiasm is great, passion is a must-have, great ideas are precious, optimism and energy in a human make the world go round but, first and foremost, in the classroom, we are teachers. And Michael, a teacher friend, kept sharing the ideas he came across.

Examples? Yes, please. Here are three.

When you are reading them, please remember about my background and context: I am a teacher and a teacher trainer, I work with pre-schoolers and primary school children, who come in groups, possibly fifteen at a time and for most of my students, English is a foreign language whereas for some it is becoming their second language. With some students we have only 2 academic hours of class a week, with some of them we have a lot more but it is in response to a more demanding curriculum. None of my students has a bilingual background or a full-time exposure to English at home. The time in class is precious.

Craft (but NOT for craft’s sake!)

If you are looking for reasons why craft should (and must) be included in the lessons for primary and pre-primary students, you have come to the right place. The best place, I could even risk saying. I love craft at home, I love craft in my classroom and I have already spent a considerable part of my life trying to convince teachers to be a little bit more excited about it. You can read about five reasons of using it in the classroom here and why craft is so important in the VYL world here.

BUT.

Regardless of how much kids love craft activities and of how passionate teachers might be about them, not everything is a lesson-friendly idea and not everything is feasible. Even in a lesson with pre-schoolers, the choice has to be made in connection with and following the methodological principles of teaching English. We are teachers and we walk into classrooms to develop linguistic skills, first and foremost. We need a language aim, we need language production, we need staging and the coherence with the rest of the lesson, the rest of unit and the curriculum. It cannot be ‘just something that we will do’, just something to kill the lesson time, to keep the kids occupied and that will make them go ‘WOW’.

As an example I decided to use the ideas from the video that I found on youtube, on the Gathered Makes channel, here. I actually love all of the ideas presented here but not one of them is a craft that would would work in the language classroom. The tissue paper wreath is pretty and it would really look good on the door or on the window but preparing them would take a painfully large portion of the lesson and it does not offer any opportunities for language production, not even as regards the functional language. A huge part of the task is repetitive and involves sticking on the green tissue and a lot of it so the kids would not be required to ask for different colours or different resources. This would, naturally, lead to a lot L1 in the classroom and, potentially, to some unwanted behaviour. You cannot even ‘talk about’ the different elements of the wreath because it is all just green. The finished product cannot be used in any speaking activity either.

Button candy canes are perfect for the fine motor skills development but I would not want to give out pieces of wire to a group of children, even with a teacher assistant and I would need lots and lots of buttons for the whole group. I am afraid, the little fingers would need help and assistance in the final stage, with tying and fitting in the candy canes and that would simply not work. What’s more, no communicative purpose here and that is one more big disadvantage.

Paper plate Christmas trees look so pretty and they require only the basic resources (the little pompons could be replaced with paint or stickers) but, again, the process is too complicated for a group of primary and pre-primary students. I love the trick with the paper clip here, to keep hold the tree in shape until the glue sets (although I would still use a stapler because I have some serious glue trust issues) but even in the video the child needed the adult’s help with the shaping of the tree. Exactly the same thing would happen in the classroom, and that could mean one pair of two adult and skilled hands AND eight or ten pairs of little hands in need. I have already tried a WOW Christmas tree craft and I simply have to say no here.

Lolly stick snowflakes. No, sorry. Glitter does not enter my classroom. It is probably the single resource that I personally hate. No matter how hard you try and how careful you are, it is tricky to use, it is accidents-prone and it stays with you forever, on the tables, on the body, on the clothes, everywhere. Even if you are using the glitter sticks. And that’s on top of all the other reasons, similar to those mentioned above.

Easy paper decorations are, indeed, easy and fun, as a way of transforming a 2-D shape into a 3-D shape. There is a little bit of cutting (5 circles for a child in the group) and I am not against cutting up things in large quantities to prepare for a lesson but I do when this helps me get lots and lots of language from the children in the proces (for example here). Here, this aim would be difficult to meet. I am not sure about the staging here as painting of the 3-D finished product would be just too messy and, potentially, too frustrating as it would involve holding a half-painted piece and getting fingers dirty and destroying what already has been done.

As mentioned above, I do love all the craft activities but the effort made, the potential complications and the potential for language and the kids’ safety and well-being are absolutely crucial to be taken into consideration. The WOW effect or the pretty photos on the social media cannot be the driving force behind the decision that a teacher makes to include or not to include something in the lesson plan.

If you are looking for any ideas how to plan craft lessons, please have a look at this blog (Chapter: Craft) where I share the ideas from the classroom, tried and tested. I would also like to recommend MadFox which is Carol Read’s creation and six word manual to the principles of craft activities in the classroom. You can read more about it 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom.

Games. Because educational fun is important

‘Fun’ is one of the most popular words added to titles in education. ‘Young children learn through play’ is probably one of the first things that you will hear in different courses, workshops and trainings devoted to teaching children. It is true, of course, and it applies not only to languages but to all the other skills. This makes our lives much easier and it helps to get the kids interested and keep them involved in the tasks that, at a glace, might be less exciting or those that might involve some hard work. For that reason, only this week, I have decided to teach subtraction to 100 through colouring dictation, through puzzle and through a bunch of reindeer with a serious problem. That is why we have been developing our reading skills through jigsaw puzzles and through Petya, my new invisible student who needed help with his English and that is why I made up a chant about classroom rules. Yes, in a way I was a marketing specialist and an advertising expert, I wanted to sell my product. I did.

In one line: games are good, we need them.

And here is a game that a teacher played with a group of kids in kindergarten. If we had an observation report with the certain standards to observe and to meet, the observer would certainly be able to tick the box: game. Yes, indeed, the teacher prepared a game for the lesson. And that would be all.

Naturally, that is only a small part of the entire lesson and there is no way of knowing what happened before or after and what the aim for the lesson was. However, judging only by this short video, there are quite a few areas for this teacher to work on. It is very difficult why this particular activity was even included in the lesson and what its aims could possibly be. There are no linguistic aims as the kids only do some counting and they use only one colour (orange), only one student is involved at a time while everyone else is watching and it is impossible to figure out whether there were even any child development aims. To be perfectly honest, none of the children taking part seem to be enjoying it and some are even forced to be in, despite their intentions.

If we had to describe the game for someone who did not watch the video, we would have to say that ‘the teacher brings one of the children into the circle, to blow up a balloon and to let the air out right into the children’s ear while the other children are watching and laughing’ and that really turns the category of the activity from a game into ‘a game’. If I had been the observer and the assessor of this lesson, the comments section on the lesson plan or the obervation report would simply say: ‘Please, don’t do this again‘.

A few years ago, there was this tendency at the YL conferences that I happened to attend. Everyone seemed to be criticising the idea of fun in the classroom and replacing it with some other, more serious, methodology-worthy words such as ‘enjoyment’, ‘motivation’ or ‘pleasure’. Maybe it was a trend, maybe just a coincidence but I did not like it. I am up for fun in the classroom, although, for my own personal use and for this blog, I have coined the term: educational fun, to differentiate it from the carefree merry-making.

There is no denying that this carefree merry-making is very necessary in life but since we are teachers, we are obliged (oh-o, the serious words have entered the building) to ensure that we happens in the lesson is deeply rooted in the methodology and child development knowledge that is not only there ‘because because’. Maybe it is true that ‘girls just wanna have fun’ but teachers want to have fun and they also want to smuggle something more while doing it.

To continue with the advertising metaphor from a few paragraphs above, I did have fun but I also had a real product to offer and to promote: a set of classroom rules, a pile of sums and lots and lots of sentences to read and to improve. My students would have done them anyway, we would have to, basically, but it was easier and more pleasant because we did it through and with fun.

Project. What’s love got to do with it?

Here is one more example of the educational path to hell that is paved with very good intentions and the social media teaching that has nothing to do with real classroom methodology but that is extremely photogenic and has ‘WOW’ written all over it. I give you: a CLIL / STEM project devoted to the moon phases.

This is a real example of an activity that one of my teacher friends, Michael, was asked to do with his group and that he happily shared with me, having his own human-adult-fatherly reservations about it. As with the craft activities above, I have nothing against the activity per se but taking it into a classroom full of kids is something that I fail to imagine.

Food allergies aside and the fact that some parents might simply not approve of teachers dishing out sugar portions in class (as, presumably such issues would be dealt with beforehand), there are a few other things that might turn this seemingly amazing and wonderfully appealing project into a complete disaster.

  • somebody needs to buy Oreos and in a situation when a school struggles with providing scissors, glue, paper, plasticine and markers, asking for Oreos is just not worth it and might simply not happen. Purchasing them by the teacher is out of the question.
  • separating the cookies into two even halves, without breaking them and with the cream staying politely on only one of the sides is…well, I don’t know. It’s been years since I played this way and not with Oreos but with my delicious local equivalent and I just don’t remember. Anyway, we separated them for fun. Our main aim was consumption and we would devour them regardless of how much cream there was on either side. At best, no one can guarantee that all the Oreos for all the kids will comply.
  • shaping the cream into the required shape to reflect the phases of the moon is not easy either and it does require something close to surgical precision. And a tool of some sorts (a popsicle stick).
  • you are allowed to eat the final product and, hopefully, there is time to talk about the changes and to admire the work done but, ideally, there has to be a lot more Oreos than the number of students x 4 Oreos. Otherwise, we are going to be the cruel people to have the kids work on the cookies, touching them, smelling them but without eating them for a long time and it is a guarantee that not all the kids will be able to stay strong. In the lesson that my friend was asked to teach, the cookies did not last and the model was never made. Either the kids were too hungry or the smell of the cookies too strong, they could not resist. The resources were eaten before the completion of the project. And, to be perfectly honest, I do get it. As an adult, I would struggle myself and I would be tempted to nibble. Or to do a full-on Cookie Monster.

Perhaps it is a fun project to do and a great way of learning about the phases of the moon. For me as a teacher and as a trainer, there are simply too many ‘but’s’ that make it simply not worth the effort. Especially, that there are plenty of other, less high-maintenance and less high-risk and more methodology- and teacher-friendly replacements that can be done with paper, paints, plasticine or ping-pong balls, craft activities and projects that would be more beneficial for the kids.

Coda

We are teachers. We think about the activities that we bring to class.

We are teachers. We respect the parents who trust us with their children and who pay for our teaching skills and the educational process that we provide.

We are teachers. We walk into the classroom with clear lesson aims, linguistic, child development and personal aims, too.

We are teachers. We want to have fun but not for fun’s sake.

We are teachers. First and foremost, we are teachers.

Happy teaching!

Bibliography

Carol Read, 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom, 2007, Macmillan Education

ELT Expert Hub, Evgeniya Kiseleva and Ekaterina Balaganskaya, Teachers’ CPD. https://t.me/eltexperthub

Crumbs #73 Winter, winter and cheering up Mr Levitan

by

This is a double lesson, actually. Right now my Art Class has been divided into two, the younger and the older. Sometimes they take part in the same project, graded to their level, sometimes the project takes two different directions. This is what happened to Isaac Levitan this week. Here are all the ingredients and all the activities. Feel free to mix and match as you see fit.

Raised Salt Paintings. Santa. No watercolours.
Raised Salt Paintings. With watercolours.

Ingredients

  • Winter vocabulary: we used the following Art Winter, as the theme for the entire month.
  • A recording of Vivaldi’s winter, the first few minutes.
  • The winter scene craft: glue, scissors, pencil and paper: one big square for the box, green for the trees, white for snowman, colourful for presents and white tissue for the snow. I was considering the following version here but it was too complex for my kids. Instead I recycled what I did last year. You can read about it here.
  • The raised salt painting: pencil, cardboard, pvc glue, salt, watercolours. You can see the tutorial here.
  • And, of course, a few of the copies of the winter wonderland according to Isaac Levitan.
March by Isaac Levitan

Procedures

  • The lesson for the younger kids started with the vocabulary introduction and practice. We did a bit of drilling and some miming. We are going to be working on these in the weeks to come. So far we have only used the simplest ‘it is’ and ‘they are’ but I am hoping to take it further as regards description (It is big / small. It is hot / cold) and Present Continuous (Santa is running, reindeer are jumping) and hopefully towards picture description.
  • With the older kids, I wanted to introduce a new element, namely music. I told them about Vivaldi and his ‘Four Seasons’ and then we listened to the first two minutes of ‘Winter’. The kids were asked to listen and to think about their associations with the music. Afterwards, in the open class discussion, we talked about their impressions (Do you like the music? Vivaldi thought that it show what winter is like. Do you agree with his vision?).
  • Afterwards, we introduced the Artist of the Day and both groups looked at a few examples of the winter landscapes painted by Levitan. As usual, we talked about our impressions (Do you like it? Is it sad / happy? What colours can you see?)
  • Next, I presented the finished product to the kids. I showed them how the winter scene can be changed by adding kids’ toys, with whatever the kids had on their tables and in their bags.
  • With the older group, I showed the kids the final product and showed all the materials needed to complete the task.
  • We made the scene in the following stages: drawing and cutting out the snowman, drawing and cutting out two Christmas trees (aka triangles), drawing and cutting out the presents (aka squares). We prepared the pyramid (cut and glue) and started glueing in the figures. The task finished with tearing up the tissue to glue it on the floor.
  • The older kids were given a complete freedom as regards the choice of the design. I prepared a snowflake but they were more interested in representing their favourite things in this drawing, and I allowed for that. We did everything in a few simple stages: giving out the cardboard, drawing the design in pencil, covering the lines with the glue, sprinkling it with salt, using watercolours to add colour and leaving them to dry.
Four Different Wonderlands
The Salt Box
An Artist at Work

Why we like it

  • Both lessons were successful and, again, we managed to combine English, creativity and some interesting techniques. I used two different approaches with both age groups but I am actually very curious how the younger ones might react to Vivaldi and what kind of winter wonderland my older students might create. There is the following week, so who knows? And, naturally, when my little kids saw the drying salt paintings on the window sill, they immediately started to demand that we do it, too so we will have to. I have already promised.
  • The winter wonderland is relatively easy to prepare. To make it more achievable for my younger kids, some of whom are preschoolers, I prepared and folded the squares before the lesson. All of the parts of the picture are simple shapes (circles, squares and triangles) and, if the kids are ready, they can add the little elements themselves or just draw them with a pencil, for example the ribbons on presents. We didn’t do it but snowflakes can be added to the picture, too, for example with a white marker or a pencil. That has to be done before assembling the pyramid, though, otherwise it is a bit tricky to draw on and it can be destroyed by accident.
  • I was demonstrating the activity, step by step and we took our time, to make sure that everyone could finish their cutting, before moving on. If the kids are younger, the task can be made much simpler by limiting the number of trees, the teacher preparing a simple snowman cut-out beforehand. If the kids are ready, Santa or the reindeer can be added to it.
  • The raised salt painting was a lot of fun to create. No matter what you draw, the colours seeping through the salt make it all look amazing.
  • The process is easy to stage and to manage as the teacher gives out and collects materials needed for every stage and kids themselves can grade it to their level by drawing something very basic or something more intricate. They drew their favourite animals, they wrote their names or prepared signs with their favourite things.
  • There is a danger that the salt will make it a bit messy but if you have a big box, a bit bigger than the size of carboard you are using, everything will be great. With the older kids, we used paper plates, from which we took the salt and where it shook off the excess. Please don’t remember that it is not a good idea to touch the paint and the salt, turning the paper upside down and gently patting on it will make the excess salt fall off without destroying the picture.
  • The watercolours can be added before the glue dries which makes it all feasible within a lesson time. The pictures can be left to dry overnight and taken home or put up on the following day.
  • Upd: I did the activity with the younger kids, too and I simply loved how teacher friendly it is. Because of the number of the materials needed and the process, the activity practically stages itself.: cardboard and pencils for everyone, pencils away, glue for everyone, glue away, salt for the kids, one by one (I did use a big box! See the photos.), watercolours for everyone, watercolours away.
  • The finished product (especially if done on the recycled carboard) looks like gingerbread cookies. So pretty!
  • I really liked how the older kids interacted with the art and the artist. I have a very creative group and some independent kids who already have developed a taste for Warhol and Malevich. For that reason, I was a bit worried that they might find Levitan, well, boring and too unimaginative. However, that’s not what happened. My kids were stunned that a painting so realistic could even be created and some of them came up to the screen to check and to confirm that it was, indeed, a painting and not just a photo.
  • I was also very happy that we added music to our lesson. They listened with interest and they were involved in the discussion later on, sharing their views, although, actually, they did not agree with Vivaldi’s interpretation of the winter-themed music. Apparently, it is too energetic and too loud and winter requires peace and silence. I will be experimenting with adding music to our lessons. The younger group first, with Vivaldi himself, and then some other tunes for the older group, too. I hope that, eventually, we will be able to find someone who wrote the good winter music that matches my students’ tastes. I will be very curious to find out who that is, because I, myself, love Vivaldi’s winter.
Raised salt paintings
Raised salt paintings

Happy teaching!

Teacher down, dear teacher!

by
The Bosphorus

This post starts in the classroom (Surprise, Surprise!) and they are generated by me but only in connection with what I do in the classroom and how my audience reacts to it. This is everything, aside from the thoughts of the experienced teachers, aside from what we find in the coursebooks, aside from what we learn about in different workshops and lectures. How the kids react to what happens in the lesson…

And since most of my professional life is spent in the presence of the very young one, the reaction and the feedback is immediate, without the intermediary help of the admin, parents or educational supervisors or trainers. If the lesson is good, you know it. If the lesson is bad, you will know straight away. If you can read the signs and reading there must be a special part of the brain devoted to looking out and reading these signs, while teaching, learning, monitoring, supervising and growing goes on happening.

Hence this post.

Teaching the whole child

This is definitely one of the key words in the EFL / ESL methodology, which teachers, trainers, bloggers, authors are more than eager to recite, together with the ZPD, scaffolding, short attention span and many more. ‘Teaching the whole child‘ will also be on that list.

In order to understand what might be hiding under this term, it is necessary to have a look at the list of the key development areas outlined by Sandie Mourao and Gail Ellis: personal, social, emotional development, communication, language and literacy, problem soling, reasoning, numeracy, knowledge and understanding of the world, physical development and creative development. These are naturally the areas, typical for the early years child development, first and foremost age-related and not specific for any particular context, L1 education or the EFL/ESL education. But, especially, because of that, they need to be included in both and in teaching of any subjects to the early years children, be it their L1, a foreign language, Maths, Art or judo.

Carol Read can also be a point of reference. She has quoted her C-Wheel in quite a few sources and apart from the overlap with the areas mentioned above, she also included a few others that would help to better understand the idea behind the whole child. These are: care, community as well as context and connections (i.e. family and school), coherence and challenge as well as the cultural context. The most important factor, the child, is in the centre of the wheel.

But the quote that really made an impression on me comes from a post I found on Teaching Channel where, on top of some practical solutions for implementing the approach, I have also found this way of explaining what it means to be teaching the whole child: ‘by being responsive to children’s understandings, interests, and abilities, allowing them to deepen their natural curiosity and their eagerness to want to discover and learn more’.

It deeply resonates with me because of the conviction that I have held for a long time (and which I have tried to brainwash my trainees with over the years) that the most important thing that a primary or pre-primary school teacher can do is to sit on the carpet with the kids, literally and figuratively speaking, too, in order to change the perspective and to try to see the world from their point of view. This change of the point of view is absolutely crucial when it comes to classroom and behaviour management, staging, lesson planning, craft, literacy skills development and many many more.

‘That is very well but what is your point here?‘ you might be wondering.

It seems that, sometimes, regardless of our good will, professionalism and even experience (yes, I know what I am talking about), we, the teachers tend to allow our methodological principles take precedence over the child in the classroom and choosing between ‘what I need to do today‘ and ‘what the room needs‘, being the professionals that we are, we choose the standards and the rules, not the audience, not the child. It is all well-intentioned and well-meant, of course, but it might not mean that it is also the best decision as regards the said audience.

In this post today I would like to call the teachers to teacher down a little bit! Remember about the standards, methodological, institutional, cultural and what not, but to put them on the back burner and to focus more on the six-year-old beloved crowd insead.

Below, the three areas and some classroom stories from yours truly.

Storytelling

A story first. It was a lesson with my adorable monsters, in our fifth or sixth year together and it was a story lesson. I got everything ready, the audio, the text, the words to be pre-taught, the comprehension task, a game and, most importantly, a while-reading task. I wanted to be very clever and, since the story had a repetitive element and it was perfect for prediction. I wanted to have us read and listen to it but with pauses, with the kids discussing every stage (‘What happened?’ and ‘What will happen next?’). I thought it was a brilliant idea and, perhaps, it really was. However, once we started to go through the story, after two ‘episodes’, one of my students, one of the more confident ones, looked at me and said: ‘Anka, can we just listen to the story?‘

And I don’t know what it was, the tone of voice or how effectively she used intonation to convey meaning, carefully stressing ‘listen’ in the whole phrase, or maybe it was the faces of the rest of the class showing a mix of dedication but this simple human fatigue that made me realise that I overdid it.

I took a story, a great story, that we would be interested in listening to or reading, something humanly exciting and fun and I turned it into an exercise, a learning activity, a task, at the same time, and totally unwillingly, making it dull and tiring, simply because of the context – our classroom. That made me gasp in shock.

Naturally, we read to learn, to extend our vocabulary and to practise grammar and to develop the reading comprehension skills and all the other skills, too. However, a story is still a story and it deserves to be enjoyed, in a human way, even if we are in an A1 classroom full of kids, at least to some extent, at least in a balance with all the very teacherful activities with a clear learning focus.

In the classroom that can be done through: including a variety of stories, coursebook stories, YL exam stories and storybooks, traditional stories and videos, including elements of reading for pleasure, a school or class library, just listening to a story for fun before any reading comprehension tasks are introduced, giving the students an opportunity to express their views about the story and accepting different opinions, also those negative ones, basically anything that we might do with a story in our real L1-life.

‘My students don’t like to sing!’

It is one of the most common comments that my trainees make and one of the most common questions they ask right afterwards and that is: ‘Should we make them if they don’t? How?’

Well, the short version according to Murao and Ellis is 8 reasons to bring songs into the classroom. Carol Read mentions a few more in her book. In an earlier post here, written based on the materials I found in different sources, there are 60 reasons, for the kids and for the adults. There are so many of them that we have enough justification to change the famous song’s title into ‘The classrooms are alive with the sound of music!’ Or, at least, they should be!

But, with all that in mind, or, almost against all that, what we do with a song in our L1 life, as adults or kids, is to simply listen to it and to enjoy the fact that it is on. Sometimes we dance to it, sometimes we might sing some lines, sometimes not. As people, we are not expected to know all the lyrics, to like all the songs and to sing along every single time. We definitely do not listen to complete some comprehension tasks or to focus on a particular structure or an idiom. There is a danger, then, that by imposing all of these on our students we will be destroying the organic character of this resource.

Again, it would be a good idea to remember the need to teacher down songs in the classroom a little bit. Accepting that not all the students will love all the songs equally and that not all the students will want to sing all the songs every single time seems to be the first step here, although that does not mean that songs will disappear from the coursebooks, curriculums and lesson plans. In the everyday teaching, it might mean simply starting with ‘Let’s just listen to the song!’ before we get down to the vocabulary, grammar, lyrics and all the follow-up activities and asking the kids whether they like the songs or not. Getting the students involved in the song selection is another important way of teachering down here and either focusing on those that they actually really do like and including their suggestions in the lessons, too.

‘We have so many things to do today!’ or about the lesson plan

This time the story took place in my Playway 1 lesson, at the end of the year, somewhere in the food unit. Those who have used the book might remember the listening activity in which students have to listen to a boy, one of the charcacters from the coursebook, who talks about his likes and dislikes and mark these accordingly in the picture. One of my students, Sasha, a 6 y.o. boy, didn’t deal with the task very well. ‘I like pears’, would the character say and my Sasha would say: ‘I don’t like pears’ and then, to my horror, he would cross the heart in the book, instead of colouring it in. Every single time Sasha did not agree with the character in the recording, he would loudly comment and then mark the answers according to his preferences.

I was watching him thinking the following thoughts: Oh, Lord, he is not following instructions, he does not understand what to do, he will not pass any of the exams and, in general, I failed as a teacher. None of which is true. I am happy that, despite the way I felt in the lesson, I reacted as a true educator, I went for the child’s well-being and I did not insist on the ‘correct’ answers. Thinking of the lesson afterwards, I was laughing out loud at my professional silliness. My little student told me, in English, what he thought of certain food items, he clearly understood what he listened to and he reacted to the content. The problem was not me or the child but the activity itself that assumed that the little people are able to disentach themselves from the activity and to de=personalised the content in order to complete a task. This made me look in a completely different way at the YL coursebooks content and it has been a turning point for me.

This same approach can be applied to any lesson plan. We go to school not to teach the lesson plans or the coursebooks but to teach the kids, the particular kids in our classrooms. Not everything that the great authors at the famous publishing houses thought of for the particular lesson, unit, activity will be appropriate for Masha, Katya, Sasha, Tomek, Agnieszka, Juan and Pierre that are entering our classrooms. Not everything that we have prepared for the lesson might not be the best idea on a Monday morning after a long break etc.

In the everyday life teachering down might mean:

  • evaluating the coursebook material carefully as regards its relevance for the particular group of kids and appropriate adaptation and adjustments as regards the content, the cultural context, the emotional context, the personalisation or the lack of, etc
  • adapting the lesson plan on the go, depending on how the students are feeling on the day. Pushing the day agenda at all cost will not be effective and might result in frustration.
  • putting yourself in the kids’ shoes while preparing the activities for the lesson and trying to answer this simple question: Why would they want to do it?, apart from the obvious, the fact that a person in the position of authority, older and taller than them, someone that knows their parents and is also able to assess them is bringing this to class and tells them to do it. Is there anything in the exercise, activity, story, listening, song that they would want to do anyway? And if it is not there, can we add it?
  • while things are not going to plan, looking at the situation through the kids’ eyes to better understand what is going on in order to deal with it more effectively.
  • involving the kids in the decision making process about the lesson, as regards the songs to sing, the games to play, the stories to read or even the order of the activities (when possible), to share the responsibility for the learning but also to find out more about the audience and their preferences.

Coda or what this post is NOT about

I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I am calling for a complete abandonment of all the methodological principles, present-practice-production, good teaching standards. Far from it. ‘Organic’ is a nice word to use to describe a lesson and a teaching approach as long as it is not synonymous with ‘I didn’t bother with planning the lesson, we’ll just go for it!’

It is an invitation to keeping your eyes open and to not forgetting that our students are very young and that the age will be very often the most important factor behind their behaviour and attitude. On the one hand. On the other hand, they are people, too and that we can act as people, too, instead of being teachers 24 / 7.

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments!

And make sure you come back for more because the second part of this mini-series is coming up! ‘Teacher down!’ is ready now. The post about the need to teacher up is already being written!

Happy teaching!

Bibliography

Sandie Murao and Gail Ellis (2020) Teaching English to Pre-primary Children, Delta, page 10 – 11.

Carol Read (2007), 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom, Macmillan, p. 7.

More than a grade! Teaching the whole child from the Teaching Channel.

How to use songs in the English language classroom from the British Council.

Tea for two! Teacher training courses and individual consultations

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A new idea?

Every time we run a course at our teacher training centre, regardless of how formal or informal it is, we always give out a feedback form and ask our questions how useful they found the course and all its components.

‘We want to know what you think’ is not only a nice marketing phrase that should be a part of the end-of-course email. Neither is it a request for only positive feedback, a puff that will make us, the organisers, feel better. For me, personally, it is an opportunity to check and to confirm that I haven’t gone rusty or complacent as a trainer and that we still offer a good product. At the same time, it is also a way of brainstorming ideas for how we can further improve the course. This is post is going to be about one of the examples how these ideas are put into practice.

A few courses ago (a new, teacher training time expression), one of our trainees mentioned in the feedback form that they would really appreciate an opportunity to talk to trainers individually to ask some of more personal questions. It sounded like a great idea and that is what we did.

Tutorials and consultations

Individual communication between the trainees and the trainers hasl always been a part of our courses. We always chat before or after the sessions, regardless of whether they are run online or offline and many of my trainees keep in touch either via social media or via email. Some of the courses also include tutorials but their format and aim is a little bit different. They are run usually half-way through the course, they are obligatory and their main aim is for the trainees to reflect on their progress on the course and for the trainer to run a preliminary evaluation on the said progress.

We added the consultations as an optional individual meeting with the tutor, 30-minutes long, to be used in the way that the trainee chose, to discuss the issues of the particular interest. We arrange these meetings during the time that the course is run, usually before or after the input session.

Topics that were of the particular interest

  • a variety of questions that came up in the course of the reflection on the particular sessions
  • focused lesson planning
  • lesson planning and classroom management for the online YL
  • working with large groups
  • using L1 in the YL classroom
  • designing a curriculum and planning for a year
  • choosing a coursebook
  • bilingual education
  • problematic students and individual case studies
  • support for the novice YL teachers

What do our course participants say?

  • Love this idea! Yes, I did. Find personal consultation very useful, cause we could discuss our issues and challenging situations.
  • To my mind, the additional session is a perfect option that gives an opportunity to ask a question or discuss something.
  • The 30-min consultation helped me, too. I noted down some great ideas about the cases we discussed.
  • I had a chance to share my difficult students’ cases during our consultation and got useful advice.
  • As for the consultation, I prepared a list of questions and got really valuable answers from Anka. I really appreciate her help and encouragement. I feel much more confident and enthusiastic before starting a new page in my career (working with YL).
  • The additional session felt more personal and I believe I could participate more freely. And without being worried about judgmental eyes (not because anyone would judge me, I am just a bit shy) it was easier to ask questions that I had to ask.
  • It’s great to be able to talk about things where i don’t feel very confident (like bilingual kids) sharing experience is priceless ; it helps reminding myself that we all learn all the time and it’s ok to struggle and try. thanks for the meeting!
  • I could only participate in the 30-min individual session. That was really helpful as it helped me clarify a few questions I had about my teaching.
  • This is a very cool addition. The opportunity to ask questions that arose after the course.

What do I get out of it?

  • An opportunity to really meet my trainers. We talk a lot during the discussions in the breakout rooms and in the common room, before and after the sessions. However, the consultations are an opportunity to take it to another level.
  • It gave me a chance to cater for the needs of all the trainees even better. It is obvious that the more extrovert and confident students take part in the whole class discussions more freely and more frequently and that some trainees prefer to share their views only while in the breakout rooms. By adding the individual consultations to the mix helped me ensure that even the shyest and the least confident teachers will have their chance to talk to the trainer comfortably.
  • It is a fascinating diagnostic tool that helps us adapt and improve our courses because they show the fuller range of topics that might be interesting to teachers that are not always included in the current programme. It is a signal that some areas or aspects need to be incorporated in the existing sessions or that, perhaps, we need to start thinking about revising our courses and adding some new sessions. And, as such, they are just precious.

A bonus track, Tea for Two that lent the title to the post here, with Ella Fitzegrald.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #72 Teaching design to kids aka some magic with a paper towel and water

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Page 1 and Page 2 of the Rainbow Volcano

Ingredients

  • Paper kitchen towels, cut up into rectangles. It might be a good idea to test and trial, always, but especially here, not all the kitchen towels have the appropriate density. They cannot be too thin or too thick, for the kids to be able to draw with markers and for the water to wet them fast and efficiently enough.
  • Markers. I am using the thick ones but their tip is not to thick. Roller pens might be too thin.
  • Some water. In order to be able to use it in the classroom, we used a big plastic box. Ours is not very deep and it does not have to be. At home kids can use the washbasin, the sink or even the soup plate.

Procedures

  • This was one of the three experiments I planned for our Science lesson devoted to water.
  • Apart from everything else that we did on the day (which you can read about in an earlier post here), this part of the experiment was called the Surprise Experiment. We started with looking at the materials which I demonstrated and we watched a short but very informative video from the Messy Little Monster that I found on youtube.
  • While in our lab (aka the dining room), I showed the kids the box filled with water and, together, we looked at the pictures I prepared and tried to guess what we might see once they land in the water. These included: Hello – kids! (the visible part – the part that appeared while in the water), a simple sun – a smiling, yellow sun, my name is – miss Anka, you are – fantastic.
  • Then we were dropping cards into the water one by one and checking the full picture.
  • Afterwards we went back into the classroom and started to create our own pictures. I showed the kids two cards and drew one picture with everyone looking, as a model. It was absolutely important that they understand that page 1 is only a part of the picture and that page 2 is going to be more detailed. While we were working on the pictures, we developed a few useful techniques: checking the design against the light, drawing with the picture on the window pane, tracing the lines twice or three times (on page 1) to ensure that they seep through onto the page 2, to facilitate making sure that the pictures match. I was also showing the kids’ ideas to the room as soon as I spotted something interesting, for example the use of the words, the use of the colours or the elements.
  • We established in the beginning that in class we are only going to watch a few examples and create our own, to take home and to surprise the parents.
  • After the lesson, I sent a message to the parents in the messenger to tell them about the surprise coming from school and how they can use it, where they can pour water etc.

Why we like it

  • Apart from the fact that this activity was a great puzzle piece in the lesson and on the Blue / Water day, I loved the fact how it worked.
  • The activity itself is very simple and requires only the minimal resources.
  • All the kids, our preschoolers and primary students, could create it, with varying degrees of detail and complexity. It worked very well with a mixed ability group. Although, of course, I can be further adapted with the teacher starting the activity i.e. drawing circles on both pages or other shapes to which the kids could only add the detail on page 2.
  • It gave everyone an opportunity to design something and I was really impressed that they got the idea of how this simple toy works and what is required to make it. To be honest, I was truly impressed with the kids took to it and how creative they became in the process. The first designs were very simple, a circle that turns into a smiley and so on but, as the time went on, their creativity was simply snowballing and more and more amazing ideas started to pop up, also because everyone was observing everyone else and sharing ideas. The mountain that turns into a volcano (in the photo), a girl that turns into a princess, cards to say hello to mum, dad, grandma, the house that gets all its details…It was amazing and I am just sorry I did not take more photos. And I did not take more photos because I was busy cutting up more and more pieces of the paper towels. I planned to give everyone three bits for three mini-projects but I underestimated my kids, their creativity and the speed with which they started to draw.
  • I was also very happy with my being clever and announcing that all the kids’ experiments will be carried out at home only. Doing it in class could become very messy, especially with the big groups because the pictures need to be taken out of the water as the colours start to run, they get the water dirty. Taking the pictures out means that there are wet balls of paper around…I decided that the kids would enjoy it a lot more at home, especially that they could also take pleasure in showing off what they have learnt at school.
  • The langauge production was a bit limited but, to be fair, for us, it was spread throughout the day. We talked about the pictures while they were being designed and there was a lot of focus on instruction and the functional langauge. There was also some opportunity for the language of prediction / guessing and I would definitely like to explore it more in the future.
  • This experiment can be a part of a lesson on the colour blue, on the topic of water or perhaps also in a lesson on conditional and the langauge of prediction with the older kids. It can be also a very simple craft activity with all age groups.

Happy teaching!

Paul Klee, the cat, the bird and the accidental stained glass. Teaching English through Art

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All the stained glass pictures on the window

The language

I have decided that November will be the month of animals, apparently, for no apparent reason whatsover, just because because. This week was our first lesson and we only focused on introducing and revising the vocabulary using the wordwall cards and playing a great animal sounds quiz that I found on youtube. This is my favourite because it has some less obvious animal sounds and it offers three options, with the visuals and the written words on the screen. It makes it quite challenging, even for the adults who play it the first time but it also offers some support so the kids can learn the new language from the game. There is also a feedback aka the answer, a short video with the animal making the same sound. We have played it with a few groups and it has always been fun.

NY Moma klee cat and bird – Cat and Bird – Wikipedia

The artist

Our artist of the day was Paul Klee and his Cat and Bird, but, somehow, although I have taught this lesson before and I had all the materials ready, this time round, we did not spend any time on talking about the original picture. I was planning on describing different birds and describing different cats using photographs and then on revising the shapes in the paintings which would be a nice connection between the Month of Shapes (October) and the Month of Animals (November)…But it just didn’t happen. We started a bit later (autumn camp and a general mayhem in the school) and I was really preoccupied with the logistics of the technique. However, now that all our cats are on display, I am going to use this idea in the following lesson.

Here are our watercolour cats from 2021

The art

I have used this painting in class but previously we went for simple watercolour and the cats turned out beautiful, too. This was the main aim and the main preoccupation of this lesson because we were to try and to experiment with a completely new technique. I have been on the lookout for new things yesterday and that is how I found out about the melted crayons. My main source was the post on the Artful Parent (which is one of my favourite creative directories) although I adapted it to the needs of our bigger group with a slightly different objectives.

I used the same technique for preparing the crayons, the grater worked just fine (and then all the tiny, unusuable crayons stubs went home to be recycled and melted into brand new crayons, the link to the instructions can be found here) but instead of plates or muffin cups I decided to use sheets of baking parchments. Once I had enough shavings, I simply folded each colour separately and it worked very well during the lesson itself. The kids were passing different little packets to each other, opening them, taking the colour they needed and passing them on.

Preparing the picture was super simple, it is easy to find the Klee’s painting as a colouring page and to make copies. We were sitting at a large table (aka all the small desks huddled together) and each child had a large sheet of the baking parchement and a copy of the picture on it, in my attempt to contain the mess.

We started with colouring in the smallest shapes (the diamonds in the eyes, the heart nose and the bird). Afterwards, everyone was just picking up the shavings in pinches and putting them on the picture. I also gave out paintbrushes which we used as brooms to sweep the shavings off the lines and unnecessary places. The packets with colours were travelling around the table.

As soon as someone was ready, I showed them how to cover the picture with a sheet of baking parchment (we had to use the one that was under the picture but, ideally, I would have had another one for each child, to keep the tables even cleaner) and I walked around with my iron, ironing one picture after another. The kids peeled off the baking parchment right away and put the pictures away for drying and cooling down. I think, overall, we got better results with covering the picture with the baking parchment the matte side down but there is some room for experiments there.

In the following day, I framed all the pictures in simple frames made from the coloured paper and I put them up in the window. I used all the pictures, those that we intended to be pretty and also the baking parchment prints which turned out to be interesting, too!

It needs to be mentioned that I did not intend these as stained glass, despite the fact that this is how I found them. I only wanted a new and interesting technique but the thin layer of crayons really looks beautiful on the window so this is how I decided to display them in the end.

Overall, I think that it is better to be economical with the shavings. First of all, the pictures seem to be more interesting and, what is more, too much shaving creates a thick layer that might crack while drying and it is also quite likely to stick to the parchment more. I still recycled those (as stained glass pictures and for the second ironing round) and I love how they look but, initially, some kids were a bit disappointed with the outcome.

When I am using the technique again, I will definitely start with drawings, either done by the kids or photocopied, just for the framwork. Unless, of course, we decide to create some melting crayons Jackson Pollock…I would also love to try following that up with the drawings or a simple collage…

The Making of…

P.S. Here are my new cool, chunky crayons from the recycled crayons stubs and the leftover shavings…

Happy teaching!