This year’s Magic Bag, Sargent-themed, courtesy of the Tate Gallery in London
Ingredients
a pretty bag, ideally cotton, or something that is not transparent. I am joking, of course, that it needs to be pretty, it doesn’t but it is true that it is better if it is appealing visually. I normally use one of my tote bags.
a set of interesting objects that are safe to touch that fit in.
Procedures
Students sit in a circle, on the chairs or on the carpet, with the teacher in the centre, at a small distance. The teacher revises the vocabulary in question.
I like to take out the bag and make a show of it – take it out of a cupboard or a box, show surprise, shake it perhaps if the content allows it, make a face and ask out loud ‘What’s in the bag?’ etc.
The teacher starts chanting, for example: ‘Anka’s got a secret, Anka’s got a secret!’ and this is a chant that we use for every student.
The teacher demonstrates how she puts the hand into a bag, finds one thing and tries to name it, for example: ‘It’s a lion‘ (topic: animals).
Afterwards, the object is taken out to check what it really is. The teacher asks ‘Is it a lion?’ and the kids answer. It can be also used as an opportunity for additional drilling of the key words.
The students take turns to play the game.
As a follow-up, the kids can do a simple listening activity and help clean up at the same time. The teachers says ‘Sasha, please put the lion in’ etc.
Why we like it?
The main reason is a very strong appeal of an activity that is involves motor skills, guessing, an element of mystery and fun. Kids love to put their hand it and try to recognise or to name the objects. It so happens that we use the same bag during the entire year so after the first time, the kids can recognise it and they look forward to it. This week I was walking in the school with my bag (that on that day was ‘just my bag’ and my kids walking past got excited and started to ask if this is what we would do in class on the day).
The other main reason is that this activity can be used with a wide range of objects and for a wide range of topics, from those more obvious ones such as school objects, toys or materials to some less obvious such as rooms in the house or comparatives. I have also used it for colours, in one of the first lessons of the course, although, of course, the children did not know many of the objects that we used and we focused only on sorting them out according to their colours.
There are plenty of variations of the activity and it can be repeated in a series of lessons. It has not happened yet, over all these years, that I would take out a bag and hear ‘Oh, no, not the Magic Bag again!’ from the audience.
As regards the chant, I like to use ‘Anka’s got a secret!’ or a simple question ‘Anka, what’s in the bag?’ which all the kids repeat and which is a great question to know.
As regards the procedures, the kids can simply take out one object or try to guess it in their L1, they can describe it with the adjectives that they have (for example pairs of adjectives such as big / small, heavy / light, smooth / rough, soft/ hard or the materials: it is made of plastic etc) for the class to guess. Recently, I have used it also to practise comparisons and every child had to take out two objects, to describe them and then to compare them when they were both out of the bag. If it is appropriate for the objects, the kids can also try to shake them in the bag to check what noise they make. Another option is of course the most tactile version of the game – kids touching the objects with both hands without taking the objects out, through the fabric.
The age range of the students can also vary. The youngest kids that I have used it with were 3 – 4 years old, the oldest were my teenagers and they also enjoyed it. The language that we expect the students to produce will depend on their level and age. When we played the game last week with my A1 primary year 1, they were able to produce a set of four sentences in one go because we used it in the final stages of the adjectives unit.
Naturally, the objects can be used to introduce the target langauge, to practise or to revise the language, verbally or in writing or even as an introduction to a listening or reading task.
As regards the less obvioustopics for example verbs or rooms in the house, it is still possible if the objects are used as symbols. ‘A spoon’ can mean ‘to eat’ or ‘the kitchen’, a pair of socks (a new pair!) can symbolise ‘to wear’ or ‘the bedroom’, ‘a tub of toothpaste’ can stand for ‘to brush your teeth’ or ‘the bathroom’ and so on.
During the pandemic, I also used the Magic Bag in class, although in the online version the bag was much thinner and I was putting one object at a time and demonstrating it to the camera. I also used to make noises with them, without showing them to the camera i.e. dropping them on the table, squeezing them, tapping on them etc or, as the last hint, showing only a tiny little corner of the object to the camera. It also worked very well! And, in the online world, it was also possible for my students to take part and do the same with things that they had at home.
Last but not least, this is a unique opportunity for the teacher to take the most random selection of things to school such as pasta pieces in a bag, a soap, a salt shaker, a spoon, a pair of socks, a tube of toothpaste, seeds in a bag, some flour in a bag, shells, stones, tomatoes, cucumbers, soft toys, an electric torch, a small jar, a pair of earrings, a ribbon, cones…
Welcome to the second leg of the academic year! We can already start dreaming of spring and of the end of the year and, more importantly, January is over and we have returned, more or less successfully.
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?
As regards the start of the lesson, very little has changed since December. We still say hello, talk about how we are, about all the toys we have brought and how they feel. Then we sing a song and look at the plan for the lesson.
Songs
The hello song is gone, gone, gone. We have replaced it with a months song and last month it was January, January, to give us additional practice with the names of the months (especially that sometimes we have sung it together with our ‘old’ months song. We sang it every day, at the start of the first lesson and only sometimes did we replace it with our ‘old’ hello song but that is only because my kids loved (as in: LOVED) singing it in the ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary’ style singing ‘bye bye’ instead of every single ‘hello’.
Danny Go is still one of our heroes, mine, too and that is because apart from providing exciting brain breaks, Danny also sings about farms, pyramids, jungles and what not and that means we can always find a relevant Danny, to match our topic in Maths or English. All you need is Danny!
In January we did a lot as regards animals, adjectives, comparatives and superlatives and because of that our playlist included also the following: the Opposites Song which can be turned into a game, with the kids singing the other adjective in a pair of antonyms (especially that there is a little pause in the song, even if you decide not to pause the recording yourself which I only did the first two times), As quiet as a mouse which we have already started to personalise with out own verses and What do you like to do?. This last one, my personal favourite, was only introduced, to give the kids an idea of the concept and the structure of the song. We are going to work on it more in the weeks to come. There is a lot of potential there, for games, for personalisation and for fun.
Rules and classroom language
No major changes here. We still have the same rules, although they needed reinforcement and revision, we still get grades for behaviour and for work in every lesson and we still struggle with not wandering around the room for no reason. However, right now, more frequently than before, kids are getting involved in policing each other and reminding each other that ‘I don’t walk around’. I do that, too, although I am using a simple question: ‘Sasha, are you walking around?’ It works, every other time, basically.
Story
January was not a very long month but we managed to squeeze in a lovely book ‘Who’s for dinner?’ by Claire Freedman and Nick East about very clever farm animals and a (not very clever) fox, with a funny storyline and some bits of the text that my kids could actually read themselves. We also did Eric Carle’s ‘From Head To Toe’ which we read through and through, in a shared reading session and a story that we have in our book about a rattlesnake, a mouse and a clever coyote.
We have been also working on the Past Simple Tense (or the tiny elements of it) and this is how Mr Milk came back to be a part of the everyday life for me and how I introduced him to yet another bunch of kids. Now, at least once a week, sometimes more frequently, we tell stories of everything that Mr Milk does in his life. Or what his friends do, among them Miss Juice and Mr Banana.
Socialising
In terms of socialasing, we have done the following:
I am trying to use a range of the interaction patters in class: kids nominate each other, I nominate, too, for the balance, we have done some pairwork, some S vs the class activities (interviews, miming and guessing, shared reading), a lot of whole class (one of my groups especially needs to work on ‘when people speak, I listen’) and some 1-1, too.
keep a variety of alternative seating arrangements does wanders to the atmosphere and to the focus. In January we did the following: sitting on the carpet, sitting around the TV on the chairs, regrouping, standing or singing for the songs, sitting or standing in front of the group, leading the game. By the way, I started writing this January post with reading the previous month’s entry only to find out that I was very clever to take notes. Not only because of the blog but because of the everyday classroom life and my poor memory. It turns out that I have already forgotten about ‘sitting in two rows’ for pairwork and how much fun we had with it! I did not use it once in January and I so should have!
kids still take turns to help in the classroom although they have the official roles assigned by their Russian programme teacher and because of that, they did fight back a little bit. ‘Miss Anka, but why is Sasha handing out the markers? I am on duty today! I should be doing that!’ I decided not to take that into consideration at all. Mostly because I want to keep my classes independent and because that gives me more flexibility as I do not need to think of the rules introduced by another teacher in my lessons when it is not that relevant. Our class, our rules, routines and traditions.
our Christmas garlands and fairy lights are down and the classroom became bare and sad. We will be thinking of new ideas for February. Some kind of a hearts + boys’ things (the holiday coming up) + term break fun garland. I am thinking.
Maths for Life lessons with us cooperating and interacting with each other’s work.
Creativity
Our creative projects in January involved:
Personalising the songs. We started very slowly with simple ‘Hello song’ that my kids love to sing as a ‘Bye-bye song’ and we have already started coming up with new verses to add to ‘As quiet as a mouse’. There is more to come!
Mr Milk and his adventures which we make with a set of past tense verb cards, as a whole group. In the end of the story we decide if it was a good or a bad day for Mr Milk
We had another lesson with our invisible student, Petya with us helping him with his English homework. It is our tradition now to follow-up the error correction with a series of mini-role-plays when Petya’s mum (me!) calls the teacher (the kids) to find out how her son is doing. He is not doing great but thanks to him we are practising very simple phone conversations. And it is a lot of fun.
We started our Maths for Life series in which we are going to design our shops (posters), then go shopping and do some addition and subtraction to find out how much we have spent and how much change we’ve got back. We had only one round but there is a lot of potential so we are definitely going to repeat it.
Teacher
The biggest challenge for the month of January was the long break we were on, almost two weeks with the bell, the rules and the everyday routine. I was worried what kind of kids will be coming back to school and what to do in order to make sure that we can actually study and focus.
I saw the rules reminder poster on the social media and I decided to adapt it to our context. There are ten rules aka ten challenges and the areas to focus on. As soon as I decide that one of them is already back in life, we mark the challenge as complete. As soon as all ten are done, we are going to be celebrating. I am going to write about it in a separate post.
One of my favourite activies in January involved my Magic Bag full of the most random objects that I brought from home such as: a selection of fruit and veg, a bag of raw pasta, a bag of flour, a tube of toothpaste, a small jar, a stone, a shell, a squishy, you name it. We used it in many lessons: in Maths, to estimate quantity and to check the actual numbers and in English – to describe different objects and their qualities and to practise comparatives. It was a success not only because of its novelty value but because we could touch, shake and sometimes smell the objects and to describe them.
We also wrote our second Milestone tests, with a proper revision / mock test lesson and I am very happy with the results. The kids worked well, they took it seriously and with two exceptions, they did a great job. They were really sitting with their papers and going through the tasks.
I also tested all my kids according to the Cambridge speaking YLE exams in order to have a better idea of the group profile and in order to better track everyone’s progress as these are going to be repeated in March and in May. It was an interesting experience and, again, something that I should / will write about in more detail, one day.
We continue to work on expressing our opinions and on justifying them. Since the Unusual Colours was a huge success with both groups, I decided to continue with a different set of visuals. We revised all the basic structures to express opinions, we looked at all the pictures in the set with the group and we said what we thought of them and why. As usual, it was great to see the growing confidence and the courage to express your preferences even if they are different from your friend’s or the group.
This time round I went more slowly, pausing after each picture, to share ideas. I was also trying to encourage the kids to produce a little bit more than just ‘I like it’ or ‘I don’t like it’, with questions such as ‘Why?’, ‘How does it make you feel about it?’, ‘What are you thinking about?’ etc.
The artist
Beginning October, my Art classes have been divided into two groups, the younger (pre-school and year 1) and the older (year 2 -4) and the decision to do so was a real game changer because I can adapt the level of the language and the Art input sessions to the age and the language level of the students. Each group has only one lesson a week but they are more meaningful, more focued and more child-friendly.
Because of the holidays and the calendar, the lesson with the older kids comes up first right now and it is also very important and handy. I can prepare for the more group with more advanced language skills, motor skills and with more life expience and do what I really want to do and then just adapt to what my younger kids are able to do. I really like it this way.
In our Jackson Pollock lesson, I introduced the artist of the day (name, country, favourite things) and the fact that he is, most likely, the most renowned modern artist today or, at least, the painter that most people associate with modern art.
Later on, we looked at five of his paintings, in different colours, with different titles, from ‘real’ names (‘Summer’) through ‘Number 5’, to the beautiful ‘Untitled’ and we talked about what we think about them and how they make us feel. In the end, we watched a clip from the video ‘How to paint like Jackson Pollock’ to show the students the real process. I also decided to include a short slot devoted to the main characteristics and I called it ‘What Jackson Pollock would tell us’.
The art
Well, this has to be the first thing to say out loud: Jackson Pollock is a serious logicstical challenge for an Art teacher. Especially if this Art teacher works with young kids and in a room that is a regular classroom which lends its square meters to all the creative activities and then goes back again to being ‘just a classroom’, used and shared with other students and teachers. To be prefectly honest, I am not sure I am entirely happy with how I dealt with it.
Things that need to be taken into consideration are as follows: the technique is a mess-generating one and it requires serious preparations. It is supposed to be done on the floor (which is refreshing and exciting) and the floor needs to be protected. So do the walls, the desks, the chairs and the kids’ clothes, because, surprise surprise, the paint spatter is a powerful force and you will find it in the most unexpected places.
The classroom was almost completely reorganised – the tables and the chairs were put aside, to make room on the floor. I perpared the working station for each of my students (an A3 piece of cardboard, on a much larger piece of newspaper, scotched to the floor) as well as the station with all the paints, brushes, water and tissues. Apart from that we had a semi-circle of chairs in front of the TV where we were to sit during the first, theoretical part of the lesson. We spent here around 20 minutes and later on, we moved to our work stations, to create.
The task was really simple – choose your favourite colours, think what idea you want to convey, take the water and the paints and start creating and experimenting with the technique. This part was great. The kids were trying out different hand movements, they were also observing each other and sharing ideas and opinions. The creativity was slow and a bit inhibited at the beginning but, as we moved on, the kids really got into it. Things were coming together. In the end, we talked about the possible titles for our paintings and how we felt during the entire process. This part was amazing. The paintings were left on shelves to dry overnight and some of my students came on the following day to pick up theirs and to take them home. They did enjoy and they did treasure their creations. Aims – met.
However, I have to admit – these preparations were not enough. The stations were too close to each other, the pieces protecting the floor were too small and, overall, the students’ clothes were not protected. We talked about being careful and respecting the other artists’ space, but I could have done better but mostly because I was lucky, with my older group of only seven students. I am to do the same lesson on Monday, with the younger group and I am working on adapting the ideas and the set-up or, also, entirely giving up on Jackson. I will also be adapting the number of resources used, giving up on the acrylic paints and the guache, because only the watercolours are relatively easy to wash and to clean.
The Pollock lesson – round two. Pre-K and year 1
There were a few things that I had to change for the lesson with the younger kids.
I took over a much bigger space on the floor, with the smaller pieces of cardboard (A4) on much bigger pieces of newspapers and with much bigger distance between them. I also marked the place on the floor where the kids were supposed to be sitting, to ensure that they are not facing each other but sitting back to back to minimise the paint spatter.
I also gave out the painting aprons that we apparently had at the school. However, I had my plan B – bin liners with holes for arms and head.
I was more selective as regards the types of paints, limiting them to watercolours only. Watercolours lend themselves to splashing and spattering, too if more water is added. Acrylic and guache paints are more thicker and more difficult to wash. What is more, a box of watercolours is a box of watercolours, with each child working on their own, at their station, without the need to get up, walk around and exchange jars with friends. Hence – fewer opportunities for stepping into splashes and dirty footprints around the room.
I am happy to say that it all worked very well!
Apart from that, I have to say that, somehow, my little students were somehow more open-minded and ready to dive into the modern art world. They were eager to discuss what they could see in the paintings I showed them and I really could not calm them down here. They wanted to talk and talk, although, because of their level of language, they could do it in English and in L1. They were also very eager to come up with titles for their own creations. These were really artistic discussions. I was really proud of them and some of these paintings are just precious!
This time, the whole lesson planning process started with my decision to spend the whole month of January doing fun things with the colour and it was an absolute necessity to start with Vasilyi Kandinsky. This particular lesson did not follow the traditional routine and the painting that is usually the centre piece of the lesson, this time made only a cameo appearance that illustrated what our artist liked to create.
The language
We started in a very relaxed way and in the first lesson we talked about our favourite colours. We also learned some more advanced colours names.
I wanted to get the kids to associate colours with emotions, feelings and music, just like Kandinsky did, and that is why our next stage involved watching a video with the unusual instruments and deciding how we would present each instrument and its sound with a colour. After each short clip, we paused the video and shared our views. Only then did I introduce the artist of the day.
With the youngest group we focused on the basic colours which we revised using two of my favourite songs: What’s your favourite colour? – with looking for colours around us and with My yellow car – with pausing and guessing what product is going to be bought.
Afterwards, to get the kids ready for the alternative approach to colours we looked at the set of cards which I prepared, the everyday objects in unusual colours. I asked the kids to look and to say what they think of the idea, using a simple ‘I like it / I don’t like it’. It was a lot of fun!
Kandinsky, Composition VIII
The artist
The reason for that was the fact that Vasilyi Kandinsky spent a large part of his creative life not only using colours but also trying to understand them (‘Effect of Colour’). After we shared our ideas about different pieces of music, we watched a clip of the video ‘What’s the Sound of Colour‘ to check whether we agree with his interpretation. Sometimes we did and sometimes we didn’t.
As a follow-up to that we looked at Kandinsky most famous creation, Composition VIII, but only to have something to represent him with. We did not analyse the painting apart from the title because the name went nicely with the idea of colours and music.
Our lesson with the little kids was so packed with activities that I had to skip the artist stage, in order to make sure that we had enough time for our creativity. Nonetheless, it all worked very well!
The art
I did not want to create anything in the style of Kandinsky not to steer away from the colour itself. For that reason I chose spread painting – it has the colour at its centre, it is not very challenging and it can be done with a variety of different paints.
Before the lesson, I prepared the paints (acrylic and gouache), the pieces of thick cardboard (photocopying paper box cut up into bits) and the paper. I used the thicker paper sheets used for watercolours to ensure that the paper holds up the amount of paint and water and I decided to go for the A3 size, to give the children more flexibility with the spreading movement and the feel of being real artists who work on bigger sheets.
In this kind of a lesson, it was absolutely necessary to demonstrate the technique and in order to do that, I put my paper on the floor, made a decision about the colours that I wanted to use, put a few blobs of different colours and then showed the students some basic movements to spread the paint on the paper (straight, wavy, circular, semi-circular). Apart from that, I also had a few pictures of my own, prepared before the lesson, with different movements, sets of colours and, in some cases, the additional drawings with a marker. These already had titles, too.
Afterwards, we just went on to create. The most important decision to make was the colour selection and we discussed that while I was walking around the room and monitoring. It was great to see how these decisions were made and how the kids were becoming more confident with the movement and the technique. In the gallery below you can what they produced and how their favourite things are reflected in their creations i.e. ‘the rabbit’ created by a fan of rabbits and Malevich or ‘the goose’ that features in many of our lessons because a goose is my student’s spirit animal. I am also extremely proud of the blue – mustard – silver creation which is the title photo because it was a first for one of my students who so far had been only sitting and participating in our debates. He finally felt curious and ready to get his hands dirty and with what result! I just love the combination of colours here.
Initially, I wanted everyone to name their paintings but then I gave up that. After all, this was our first approach at the abstract art and I just wanted them to enjoy the process without pushing them too much. Our paintings are now on display and we can always get back to them and give them their titles later on, when we are more comfortable with the non-figurative art.
It was a great lesson! Next week I am going to get to repeat it with my younger kids and then, there is the rest of January to celebrate colour!
Here are some of the pictures that my little students created! It was one joy of a lesson, with my students discovering the world of the modern art and the brand new technique, experimenting with it and being proud of their creations. Amazingly enough, they really took to looking for ideas in their paintings and trying to name them. This was just precious.
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!
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.
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.
Codaor 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.
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.
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.
Malevich was the hero of the first October lesson but somehow, it landed in the wrong order on the blog. This whole month we are learning about shapes and you can read about some of the ideas for these here. Thanks to Super Simple Songs we have two cool songs about shapes, this one and this one, and they can easily be turned into a game as we go on singing and looking for shapes around the classroom, on the walls, in the alphabet and on our clothes. I don’t.
Some animals admiring the black square
The artist
There could be only one painter to be invited to this particular lesson, of course, Kasimir Malevich and the Black Square. We started with introducing him and we looked a few of his paintings. I rarely include a lot o detail from the artist’s biography but here it might be quite interesting to see how his creativity went from ‘just realistic paintings’, through many intermediary stages, casting off realism and colours, to the Square.
Because at the time, we also had the mixed age groups and levels group, we could discuss symbol in general and what symbols exist in our everyday life for example the symbols that are logos of different brands or the symbols that we have in the streets or in the public transportation. This is how we arrived at the square that could be a symbol, too. We also looked at some of the parodies of Malevich.
Black on black by one of my students
The art
The preparations for this lesson were quite limited: markers, glue and scissors and a lot of coloured paper. I had white and coloured paper for the background and some bigger and smaller black squares for the main protagonist.
I showed the students my example and the kids were asked to pick a square and the colour of the background. Then, they went on to glue, to cut and to create.
I was monitoring and discussing the choices. I also helped them translate the titles for their creations.
As can be seen, not everyone was very concerned about the perfection of their squares. It is my fault because I gave them relatively big squares and rectangles for them to make their own decisions regarding size. Some of the kids decided to glue them as they were. It is ok. i don’t think Malevich would have minded.
I loved the creative process and I was so proud of them for having created all these lovely pieces. The Camera by Nikita is just briliant and it was actually a 2D creation. The Labirynths by Kostia are out of this world and, although I don’t understand them, there is some link to some computer game. Apparently. One of my students, Sasha, kept walking around the room and trying out the square against different background and, surprise, surprise, she ended up choosing the black one, taking Malevich one step further. With the older students we also had a great discussion in which we shared why we like the square so much. ‘It is like the silence in a picture’, was one of the lines in that conversation.
