#thebasicsofelfkids

How to choose a storybook?

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Seven. This is how many storybooks I own at this point in my life. To be honest, seven is a huge downgrade from these three shelves that I used to have a few months ago: one full shelf at the office, one full shelf at home and one, half-full shelf in the school…

I sigh and I try not to think about the absence of these shelves and, instead, I am thinking of my books circulating in the world, stuck all over the other, guest shelves, my storybooks out of reach but bringing joy to someone, somewhere. On a really good day, I can almost see myself as a fairy who sprinkles not golddust but beautiful pieces of literature.

The thing is, one cannot stay too far away from storybooks. Whether you want it or not, they start piling up, slowly, cautiously but still. Starting from scratch but I already have seven new books. Although ‘new’ should be taken with a pinch of salt here. I do recycle a lot, when possibly, and pick the gems to my collection in all the friendly charity shops. And some of them in my favourite book shop.

How do I choose the storybooks?

Oh, look, my unit 1 vocabulary! I buy the books to teach the lexis

In a perfect world there would be a library in which I would have a storybook for every unit (or for every set of vocabulary) that I am planning to teach. From colours, numbers, pets, transport, shapes to Christmas, Halloween and insects. This is probably never going to happen due to that inability to stick to a shelf for longer (see: Introduction) but it is good to daydream at least.

But I am trying!

When I choose storybooks, I like to look through the illustrations to see to what extent I will be able to use them with a specific topic. Sometimes I read the text, too, but I have also learnt to completely disregard it. The story can always be retold or adapted, graded to the needs of the people in the classroom and the lexis that they are working on at the moment.

That is why I bought Nick Sharratt and Sally Syme’s Something Beginning With Blue (yes, to teach colours!) and Debbie Harter’s Walking Through the Jungle, which has an amazing set of animals, habitats and verbs and which I will be also able to use alongside Walking in the Jungle by Super Simple Songs.

Grrrr! I buy the books to introduce and practise the structure

Because there is more than words, there is also the structure and sometimes I choose the books with the grammar that I will be able to introduce or to practise using a particular story. Oftentimes, the illustrations play the main role here (because, again, the story can be retold and adapted) although the story itself can help, too!

This is how Copy Cat by Mark Birchall landed in the bag and on the shelf. The adventures of the two friends, a cat and a dog, have a lot of verbs which means that I will be able to use it to practise Present Continuous or the Past Simple. I was also thinking of some functional language because the cat and the dog already talk a lot but they can talk even more in the future.

Say it again! I buy the books with repetitive language

Having read those two paragraphs, you might think that I buy the books not to read them but to look at the illustrations. It is not quite true. I use the text, too, but bearing in mind that my students are EFL kids, beginners, with somewhat limited exposure to the target language, I have to be selective as regards the text. At the same time, there are many amazing storybooks which can be used with a beginner child learner and that is because the language is repetitive and, even if it is above the child’s level and even if it has to be introduced, it is a good time investement because it appears throughout the entire story. Some good examples of that could be ‘I wrote to the zoo to send me a pet’ in Dear Zoo (another favourite) or ‘What do you see?’ in Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?.

The story mentioned above, ‘Walking Through the Jungle’ took a similar approach. The entire story is told through the following exchange: ‘Walking through the jungle, what do you see?’ ‘I think I see a lion chasing after me‘.

I know this story! I buy the books with traditional stories

It is great to see that traditional stories are making a comeback into the EFL VYL world. They are not the easiest material to work with, especially with the younger students, because the language is usually complex albeit beautiful, but they have one great advantage – the chances are that kids will be already familiar with them, the characters and the plot, because they are quite likely to have heard them before. At the very least, these are the stories that we can start with while taking the first steps in the traditional stories for pre-schoolers or primary.

That is why I picked up Alexei Tolstoy’s and Niamh Sharkey’s The Gigantic Turnip at the bookshop. I am hoping we are going to have a lot of fun with it, especially that the illustrations are beautiful and there is some repetition in the way the story is told.

Hello again! I buy the books I used to have

The list of the storybooks that are important and close to my heart is long, very long, indeed. The list includes Elmer, Barry, the Caterpillar, Gruffalo and many others, all of the books that I love, that I have been using in class for ages and that I could just take out of my bag and have a lesson with, without any real preparation. The trialled and tested. The best friends forever. The personal top ten, twenty, thirty.

However, when I start recreating the shelf, I do not start from this list, although, perhaps that would be a good idea. Making a fresh start brings with it an opportunity to find new treasures and that is what I like to do, I am on the look-out, I keep my eyes open and when I bump into a title that I know and love, I just get it.

Only when I get to the point of ‘Oh, how I miss Elmer!’, do I go online and just order all of these staples.

This time, my oldie but good is an Oliver Jeffers’ book, Lost and Found which I love for his illustrations and stories.

Guilty pleasures. I buy the books beacause they are just beautiful.

To be perfectly honest, I have to be double reasonable when it comes to this particular category because it is very easy to lose control and to end up with piles and piles of beautiful artifacts that I cannot really use in class. Self-restraint, moderation and temperance are not my favourite words but I have to make an effort, from time to time.

Once in a blue moon, however, comes the day when I am allowed to forage the shelves and the boxes and pick out publications which are (mainly) appealing visually. They are those that are to be used in my art lessons to develop taste, visual intelligence and symbolic representation in children.

This time, the two books that I picked for that very reason were Lauren Child’s Beware of the Storybook Wolves (for the trademark produced-by-a-child-like illustrations) and Kazuno Kohara’s Jack Frost (for the monochrome in black and in blue which will be a starting point for a lesson on the importance of colour). Or Lost and Found…

Most importantly…

It does not really matter why you buy the books as long as you buy them!

The stories that I could tell you of the books that were no one’s favourite and on no one’s wishlist but they came with other treasures or there was a really good price on them or they simply got donated and thus they made it to the shelf…True, they had to wait for their turn, for the inspiration to come, for this special lesson. Every dog has its day. Every storybook has its audience and its lesson.

Go, get the books! Bring them to the classroom!

Happy teaching!

P.S. The only problem now is that it is the middle of July and I already have a head full of new ideas and still – a good few weeks of waiting before I can put them into practice…

Behaviour management in the VYL classroom. When the world begins to fall apart…

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London

I would like to dedicate this post to my trainees on the IH VYL course because it was during the coversations with them, during the session and after the session, during the tutorials and the informal chats on Whatsapp that this article took shape.

The set-up

Imagine: you plan your class, you get the materials ready, you enter your little kingdom and then things happen. They are the things you do not approve of, things you don’t like, things that should not be happening, things that get in the way of learning English. Or, in other words, as Harold Macmillan said ‘Events, my boy, events’, my favourite line of this week or even this whole month (courtesy to Edward).

The number of things that can happen is somewhere around… a few hundred and, naturally, it is simply impossible to put them all into a manual for teacher, with all ‘what to do’s and what not to do’s’. There are too many of these and there are too many variables that will be playing a part and adding the local colouring. Here, it is not the case of ‘one fits all’. Oups.

One thing is certain, the problem is not just going to go away, it is not going sort itself out. Whatever ‘unwanted behaviour’ is taking your lesson apart, it needs to be dealt with.

Here are a few roads to take.

Spinetto, Italy

The worst solution ever? Doing nothing.

Simply because it not a solution at all. The problem (whatever it is) is not going to simply go away, disappear or un-happen. Pretending that it hasn’t happened and moving on, in an attempt to save the activity, the game or the entire lesson, can only lead to even more serious consequences.

The unwanted behaviour needs to be acknowledged and stopped because it can escalate and compromise the well-being and safety of all the people present. So, do something! Perhaps one of these things that you can find below.

Moscow

Signal

The simplest way of doing it will be calling the student’s name but using a voice that is appropriate to signal the unwanted behaviour. The tone of the voice on its own should convey the message that something undesirable is taking place and that it needs to stop. This, of course, does not mean raising the voice or shouting but if the teacher uses the same ‘happy’ voice for praising and for disciplining (or ‘disciplining’), the message will be much more confusing for the kids. Instead of ‘Oups, I’d better stop‘, the child will think ‘Oh, look, my teacher is saying my name in such a nice way. She must really like me‘.

In the same vein, long speeches, in L1 or L2, will be counter-productive in such a situation. It is much better to keep it short, for example ‘No!’ or ‘Stop, please!’, used together with the child’s name and a gesture. And, as soon as the unwanted behaviour finishes, also acknoledge it, perhaps with a smile and a ‘Thank you’.

Very often and with a majority of things that can happen in the VYL classroom, this approach should do, if applied consistently. After all, kids know that we don’t run, we do not push the others, we do not take their toys and so on. In most cases, such a gentle reminder, a speed limiter of sorts, will do the job.

Saint Petersburg

Pause

Sometimes, these kinds of signals are not enough, however and it might be necessary to pause the lesson and deal with the problem in the open, either because more than one student is involved and / or because everyone can learn from it. This might be a situation when more than one child has done something to upset another (ie draw on their work, take their toy, say something) or when there is more than one child involved in any unwanted activity (hiding under the table, pretending to be a very angry dinosaur, hitting the class puppet, drumming with the markers on the table). All these situations do affect everyone present, not only the two students actively involved, and they need to be dealt with in the open.

‘Stop’ is still going to be necessary but it is going to work only as the first step. If there are any resources that contribute to the mayhem, they need to be taken away, for example these markers used to drum on the table. Then, a conversation.

It is very difficult to recommend something that will work in all the situations and all the contexts. Ideally, this part would be done in the children’s L1, but not all the teachers out there speak their little students’ language and not all the schools out there approve of the teachers using the L1 in the classroom.

Now, in Russia, I have the advantage of being able to understand the L1 of my students and what normally happens is we have these conversations in two languages: I speak English and my kids react in Russian, but it was not always the case. Like many of my colleagues in the VYL classrooms around the world, I had to do my magic only in English.

To be perfectly honest, it is not easy to grade the language to the level of pre-A1 and, at the same time, to convey the message in a delicate and sensitive way, but it is not impossible. You can use simple sentences and draw the children’s attention to the fact that their behaviour may make other students unhappy (‘Look, Sasha is sad now’) or that their behaviour is not appropriate (‘Is it a good idea?’). There are some advantages here, as it is almost guaranteed that these conversations will be short and concise and this is how I have dealt with all the issues in my classroom in the past couple of years. Although, to be perfectly honest, sometimes I am sorry that I cannot just sit down and have a real conversation in my students’ L1.

Moscow

Be clever

There are many tricks that the teacher can use in order to manage the behaviour of the group and of the individual students, without interupting the lesson too much but dealing with the problem effectively. Here are some of mine

  • Almost magically remove or stop the catalyst or the distractor, for example, put the hand at the back of the stool to block it and to stop the child from rocking, put the marker on the top of the board or on the top shelf
  • Use the command ‘Freeze’ to physically pause all the class proceedings and in a game-like way stop the unwanted behaviour. Although, of course, the teacher needs to introduce the game first. Once the kids got involved in something else, the disaster has been averted and the teacher is again in charge, the lesson goes on, according to plan. It might be the best solution for all the difficult situations when the world really does begin to fall apart and a quick fix is necessary. Instead of a conversation with the kids, a thorough analysis of the situation and looking for answers and the steps that need to be taken in the future.
  • Create a diversion and draw the kids’ attention to something else – a song (the easiest one to implement), a video, a favourite puppet. Again, as soon as the kids have calmed down, proceed with the lesson. And then take a moment to reflect on what led to the difficult situation.
  • Become the class clown and joke your way out of it. A funny face will do, a silly, clumsy gesture and a well-faked horror at the crayons that spilled out of the box. Then, like in most of the situations above – proceed, reflect and change.
  • Depending on the situation, it might be a good idea to whisper some encouraging message into the student’s ear. It can be in English, it can be in the child’s L1, it might a real whisper or a 5-year-old whisper (a good attempt that everyone present hears anyway). It will help to redirect the emotions, break the spell of sadness or anger, and it will help them to focus on something else and it works really well with the situations in which a child is upset or sad or just withdrawn, for whatever the reason there might be. It might be also a good idea to play a quick round of Broken Telephone with everyone, to involve the whole group in the same activity but it will work only if the kids already know the game.
Vyborg

Praise

There are situations when the best way of dealing with the unwanted behaviour is a complete diversion when instead of addressing the offender (apart from the basic signal and calling to attention), the teacher can choose highlighting the fact that the other children behave well.

Not only will it work well for the behaviour that is aimed at drawing the teacher’s attention (since the teacher is withdrawing this attention) but it will also acknowledge and applaud the behaviour of the class which is something that we often forget to do, taking those ‘angels’ for granted. Although, truth be told, they deserve our recognition.

Praising the students and reinforcing their behaviour will be also a clear message and, short-term, it will create a situation when the ‘offenders’ get a chance to reflect on their actions and to calm down and by the time everyone else has already been praised, they will also be closer to the desired behaviour and the teacher will be able to high-five them, too.

Baikal

Ignore (only not really)

Some disasters are better to be ignored entirely.

Of course, by ‘ignore’ I do not mean here the official Cambridge Dictionary definition of the verb because that is going to get us nowhere good (see above). What I have in mind is a VYL teacher’s (a pre-school teacher’s, a parent’s, a carer’s) definition of ‘ignore’ which, more or less, goes like that: acknowledge that a situation has occurred and, instead of drawing more attention to it, let it sizzle out, while, of course, keeping an eye on the child, paying even more attention than usual, only not openly this time.

Sometimes this will work better than any whole-class conversations or ‘lectures’, especially when we are dealing with a tantrum directed at getting the teacher’s attention hoping for an outcome that will be more favourable (ie we will not sing the song I don’t like, I will get the best sticker, I will be the first one to join the circle) or when two students have had a disagreement (and there are no obvious roles of the offender and the victim or when it is impossible to tell who is who) or when there is obvious resistance from the student and taking the matter further is dragging it into a dead-end street, like in the story here.

It has to be said out loud, it will not always be easy to label a classroom situation as ‘Ignore (only not really)’ because, of course, tens and tens of factors will have to be taken into consideration. Nonetheless, I believe, it is good to remember that this option also exists.

Rybinsk

Ask yourself it is a one-off or a regular feature

Or about working with the events long-term.

It is perfectly natural that all, even the most angelic and most well-behaved children, have a worse day, a crazy day, a tired day or a not-such-a-good day. This is the day when their behaviour might surprise their teacher (or, let’s be honest, completely ruin their teacher’s plans for the lesson). But these are the one-off events and it is not even necessary to analyse them in detail.

If, however, such unwanted behaviour happens regularly and repeatedly, it will be necessary to look into it. Is there a pattern? Is there anything specific that triggers that behaviour, an activity, a person, a stage of the lesson? Analysing all these details will help to choose the right solutions to the problem.

Perhaps it is the time to change the routine? Perhaps some games or activities have to be put on hold for the time being? Perhaps the group needs more settlers? Perhaps they need more stirrers? Perhaps it is time to reconsider the seating arrangement? Perhaps it is the time to talk to the parents?

Find out more

It might happen, too, that the self-reflection of the classroom adventures is not enough and that the teacher will have to reach out to the parents because this background information might help to understand what is happening in the classroom and why and, in turn, lead to finding a solution.

New York

Post-post reflections

Classroom and behaviour management is the theme and the focus of session 3 of the IH VYL course on which I have been a tutor for four years now and that is always the session that, according to our trainees, ‘could last twice as long’, because there are so many issues, so many problems, so many tricky situations that the debate could go on forever…

Unfortunately, that is simply impossible. Fortunately, as another trainee commented, to some extent, we deal with the classroom and behaviour management in every session, while discussing craft, songs, stories and literacy so at the end of the course, our trainees are better prepared to manage a group of the little people. Here is one hoping that this post will be helpful, too!

It is my deeply-held belief that by gaining understanding of all the pre-school brain and heart and by trying to see the world from their perspective, we get better prepared to teach and to bring up very young learners and to deal with the classroom and behaviour management issues that might arise.

For that reason I started a series of posts on the blog, in which I describe the real situations from the classroom and how I dealt with them. The series is called ‘Child development stories’ and you can find it here. While a manual with all the potential situations and all the right answers is never going to happen, we can definitely learn from observing our students and from analysing what happened and get better at managing the pre-primary kingdom, on the good days and on the worse ones.

Happy teaching!

All you need is…a picture!

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is only one picture…

created using an image from classroomclipart.com and Miro

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are two pictures…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which one is different?

Which one is different? Why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy teaching!

P.S. A request!

It is very simple.

I would like to know a tiny little bit more about my readers. There are so many of you, popping in here, again and again, and the numbers of visitors and visits are going up and make my heart sweel with joy. But I realised I don’t know anything about my readers and I would love to know, a tiny little bit more.

Hence the survey.

The first VYL lesson survival kit

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My first VYL teaching experience…

…was in Spain. There were eleven kids in the group, we met for two real hours but only once a week. Some of the students were five and some were six and already in school which, of course, made everything a bit easier.

Our classroom was not quite what you would call a VYL teacher’s dream come true. We had huge, wardrobe-size tables that no one, save for Hulk, possibly, would have been able to move and they were so big that when my students sat down, they were barely visible. There were only eleven little heads bobbing above these huge tops…

In terms of the space, we had a tiny strip of the floor in the aisle and another one between the first row and the podium with the teacher’s desk stood because, of course, there had to be a podium. I did not speak my students’ first language and they were beginners in English.

If that had not been enough, just before the first lesson, I was informed that one of my students was allergic to most foods, and the allergy was so strong that we were not allowed to bring anything edible into the classroom, not to put his life at risk. I was also told that, should I notice anything suspicious, any potential symptoms of an allergic reaction, I should immediately leave the classroom with my underage students (one of them unwell) and run about 200 meters along the hallway to fetch the person who was qualified and equipped with the injection that would save his life.

As a result, naturally, I spent the entire academic year stressing out to the maximum of my brain’s capacity. Because something might happen to him, he might try to tell me and I might not understand. And perhaps I don’t run fast enough to get to the office room on time…Or I have to leave all the kids in the classroom and it will be a huge traumatic experience for them…I was dying before, during and after the lesson and perhaps because of that I managed not to focus too much on the potential methodological failings of my first year with the little ones. We had fun, we learnt a lot and my kids were amazing. And, probably, because of that experience, I am what I am today. Alvaro, Jesus, Luz, Uliana, Itziar, Amalia, Oihana, Beatrice, Andre, Eva, Maria. The amazing students.

If you are about to start teaching English to preschoolers…

Let’s start from a happy ending because there will be one: you will start teaching a new group of preschool beginners, they will fall in love with you and with learning English. You will get the access to a source of pure, undiluted life energy twice a week. You will adore teaching the future to speak a foreign language. The parents will be grateful, the kids will start shouting their first words as soon as they enter the school. The songs you teach will stay with them forever and they will sing them while in the car on the way home. And, many many years later, while they are taking their FCE or CAE exam in a few years’ time, they are going to look back and smile thinking of their first English teacher. See? A happy ending.

Before you get there, though, and it is still a long, long way from now, you just have to survive the first 45 minutes of the first lesson.

Surprise!

That is potentially the biggest problem that during that first lesson anything can happen, literally anything. Some kids will have already started kindergarten so they are used to staying on their own, with ‘a stranger’. Some children have started ballet classes or swimming lessons so they know that mum is not always around and, instead, there is another adult and that they will be ‘learning’. Some kids have had a conversation with their parents that prepared them for this new experience and now they know what to expect. Some children may have even learnt a few words, some red, blue, green, pink and onetwthreefourfivesixseveneightnineten, usually like that, as one word. Some are ready.

However, it will be only some of them and this year, due to the pandemic, possibly fewer than in a regular year since for quite a few of them the academic year and the socialising would have been interrupted. The thing is that you really need to meet them in person and then start discovering them all by yourself.

What can go wrong?

Well, let me think and reminisce a little:

  • tears as soon as you enter the room (for the first two weeks straight, actually)
  • running in the hallway screaming (in their L1) ‘I don’t want to learn any English’.
  • lying on the carpet for 40 out of 45 minutes of the lesson time, looking at you but absolutely refusing to interact in any way whatsoever
  • covering their ears when you speak English
  • responding to you in Turkish (the L2), not in Russian (the L1) and not in English (the foreign language, that was a fun one!)
  • leaving the room to bring the nanny in
  • hiding under the table. Standing by the door during the entire lesson
  • speaking very very quietly
  • asking to see mum every ten minutes
  • asking why you don’t speak Russian
  • hugging the bear and not letting go

Just to name a few things.

Ten things that you can do

One. Do not panic.

Being experienced does give you some heads-up, true, but it is a bit nerve-wracking anyway, no matter how many years you have on your resume. It is quite likely that the first lesson will be an awkward one. It’s ok.

Two. The parents are on your side.

It might not always be possible but it would be great to meet the parents and let them know what you are going to do during the first lesson. Ask the parents to stay at the school, close to the classroom. You will be on your own during the lesson but it is good to know that, should it come to the worst, you can just open the door and call Masha’s dad or Tima’s mum to help you deal with the tears or the unwanted behaviour. Keep the doors of the classroom closed and collect the kids in the hallway. Line the kids up and find out what their names are. Say hello and count everyone. Open the door to the classroom and take the kids in, one by one. The parents will help you here, they will wait with their children and keep an eye of them while you are organising the students in the room.

After the lesson, take the kids out and explain the homework to the parents, too.

Three. Get ready.

Prepare a lesson plan, trying to predict what can go wrong, with the classroom management, instructions or materials and to prepare a plan B. I have found it very useful to put up a poster on the wall with a simplified version of your lesson plan, big font and colour-coded, something that you will be able to glance at without turning your back or taking the eyes off your group.

Get all your resources ready and in order. You will have your plate full as it is so you don’t need to wonder where the pencils are or try to reorganize all your papers when the kids are already in the classroom.

Four. Priorities.

One of the most important things during the first lesson and during the first ten or even twenty lessons, is working on the classroom routine. Your students have no previous learning experience of that kind. They don’t know what is expected of them because they literally, have never done that before. Go step by step, especially between the stages or when you are moving between the parts of the room. In a few weeks’ time, yes, you will be able to say ‘Everyone, let’s make a circle’ but for the time being, do get up, stand where the circle is supposed to be and call Petya. Wait for him. Then call Misha, wait for him to come. Then Marusya, wait for her to join the circle…Don’t worry that you are wasting the precious lesson time. No, you are not. You are establishing the routine and investing in the future.

Five. Your basic teaching tools.

Don’t forget that you have the most important teaching tools on you – your face, your hands and your voice. Use them to help you, to show the kids what to do, to praise them or to discipline them. They don’t speak the language, yet. Your face and your voice and gestures must match the message you want to convey, your soft voice and a smile for praising, your other voice and a serious face when you want to tell them that something should not be happening.

Six. Model.

Demonstrate. Model. Show. Always. Verbal instructions and ICQs (instruction checking questions) matter, too but your students will not know any of the words you are using and modelling will be essential. No matter what your activities are, give the instructions and do it first yourself, possibly a few times. If you are going to use a handout, prepare two spare copies for yourself – one to complete before the lesson and to use as the finished product to show the kids what the aim is and another one to be completing with the kids during the lesson.

Seven. Peer observations

Ideally, there would be enough time for you to arrange a live peer observation session with somes more experienced colleagues. Watching real kids during a real lesson can be especially beneficial, and even more so if you can have a look at the lesson plan and to talk to the teacher after the lesson. Arranging peer observations of the online lessons should be even easier to manage. In the school where I work, we also record lessons for teacher training purposes and we keep them on the database. This way, the newly qualified teachers can access them easily and watch them from home.

If none of these is available, there is still youtube and lots and lots of videos of teachers who want to share their activities and favourite tools. Every little does actually help. A lot!

Eight. Do the reading.

There might not always be enough time for the extensive reading and research before the first lesson but you have to start somewhere. Have a look at these two posts, on the methodology videos and the literature devoted to teaching English to very young learners.

Nine. Smile.

No matter what, keep it up. Smile.

Ten. Bring the ferret.

Last but not least, to quote a great mainstream Hollywood manual into the work with the very young learners ‘The kindergarten is like the ocean. You don’t want to turn your back to it’. Kind of.

But, actually, go on and re-watch the Kindergarten Cop with your teacher’s eyes. Especially the ferret bit…

Have a good one! And remember – the second lesson will be better than the first and the third one – better than the second one. I promise!

Happy teaching!

P.S. Here you can read about how I plan my lessons with pre-schoolers and here about our entering the room routine.

There is one more, newer post, with more focus on the teacher during the first VYL lesson.