#veryyounglearners

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

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

Back to the basics…

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

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

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

Electronic flashcards

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

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

Sounds

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

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

Gestures

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

Realia

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

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

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

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

Song

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

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

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

E pronto? E pronto!

Story

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

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

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

Posters

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

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

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

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

Coda

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

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

Happy teaching!

Bibliography

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A to Z of homework for Very Young Learners***

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What a wonderful book this is, The Worst Alphabet Book Ever, by Raj Haldar and Chris Carpenter. In a way, it has inspired this post here, on all things related to homework for pre-primary EFL students.

Mine is a very messy alphabet, with some letters in, some letters missing, all of them in a very un-alphabetical order…

The Worst Alphabet Book Ever

S is for ‘Should we even think of setting homework for preschoolers?’

Some of the arguments against:

  • Kids are too young
  • It is too much pressure, too early. They will grow up, start school and then they will have to really learn what it means to be a student.
  • Kids forget to do the homework.
  • Parents forget to do the homework.
  • Parents may not speak English well enough to help with the homework task.
  • Parents work and are essentially too busy to deal with the homework tasks.

Some of the arguments for:

  • We are teaching the kids English but we are also teaching them how to be a student. Doing the homework and taking responsibility is a part of that process.
  • It has to be the homework task that is appropriate for the students’ age (2 – 6 years old) and level of English (pre-A1) so also something that non-English speaking parents will be able to do and something that will not take a lot of time
  • Certain procedures for setting the homework and checking the homework should apply to ensure that the tasks are not a hassle for the parents or the children
  • Homework is a wonderful way of creating a link between different lessons

So the short answer to the question in the heading would be ‘Yes, we definitely should’.

The Worst Alphabet Book Ever

E is for the extended exposure and R is for results

This is one more argument in favour of the VYL homework, so important in fact that it is going to have its own paragraph here.

Usually, pre-primary students who learn English as a foreign language have a very limited exposure to the language as they come to class twice a week for 45 minutes or, in some cases, for only 45 minutes once a week. That is not a lot but it is enough to get good results if the time in class is spent well. Or, if there is an opportunity to extend this English exposure time by homework tasks.

In practice, in might mean only the additional five or ten minutes or fifteen minutes per week but it will be the important link that will provide some additional practice between the lessons, which will be very beneficial for the children and it will help to recycle and keep up the language from Tuesday to Thursday and, even more importantly, from Thursday to Tuesday.

As it happens, a few years ago, me and my colleague-teacher, Anya (hello Anya!), we had a chance to be a part of a very informal and very small scale classroom research or an accidental experiment. We both worked with the same levels onsite (at one of our IH schools in Moscow) and, at the same time, offsite (at one of the kindergartens). All the kids were amazing, very bright and a pleasure to teach. They had the same teachers and they were following the same programme and yet, we realised that the onsite students were making more progress. We tried to analyse the situation and the only difference between the groups that we could put a finger on was the fact that our offsite groups were not getting any homework, according to the arrangements with the client.

Then, there were my other groups, a few years ago, that all of a sudden started to make lots of progress and, surprisingly enough, we did not have to devote so much time to drilling and practising the new vocabulary, right after it was introduced.

Normally, the first two lessons with the new material were filled with a lot basic games whose aim was to provide the exposure and the controlled practice before we would move onto more complex vocabulary games and introducing structures. Until, that is, I noticed that all this drilling was not necessary and, in most cases, already in the second lesson the children were using the new vocabulary with a lot of confidence. What it did look like in class, of course, were my students’ faces quickly losing interest in ‘just’ repeating the words with voices and emotions and, even, random comments (or, shall we say, feedback) muttered, here and there, ‘Да, мы уже все это знаем...’ (‘We already know all that...’)

I would never complain about that, we could move on and do the more interesting and challenging things but it took me a while that it was connected to the additional practice opportunities that the parents were providing at home. Just because they wanted to.

The Worst Alphabet Book Ever

P is for the parents

It is not a secret that in case of all the young learners or non-adult groups, the parents are the third party involved in the process and, one way or another, they will have to be included because, really, they are our clients, not the students themsevels. This is particularly true in case of the pre-school groups, mainly because children are very young and if we want to make the learning process effective, with homework or without it, we will be dealing with parents, too. Even more so, we need parents to make it all work.

Parents always want the best for their children but many of them are also taking their first steps in the EFL world, this time through their children. They might have had different previous learning experience (their own or of their kids’), they might have different expectations and aims that might not always coincide with ours, with our previous teaching experience or with our school’s policy. That means that we cannot take things for granted and that we should always talk to the parents, to explain what we do and why we do it. That applies to the homework tasks, too.

Some parents might really not be able to spend time with their children, some might choose to spend the time they have in other ways, not working on the English homework and we should accept and respect that. However, there are also parents for whom the English homework will not be so much of a burden but rather an opportunity to do something together in English. We can help them by showing them what can be done at home and the actual homework task is the first step here.

The Worst Alphabet Book Ever

N is for nuts and bolts

Here are some things to take into consideration

  • The homework should be short. Our students are still two or three or five and will not be able to remain seated for a long period of time, in class or at home.
  • It should be easy to complete, too. The students are still two or three or five and tasks that are very complex cognitively will not be appropriate for them.
  • However, the fact that the task looks like a simple colouring page (see below) does not mean that it is just colouring because the actual physical task will be connected with the language produced that is presented and practised in class with the teacher, practised at home with the parents and then practised again, with the teacher, during the homework check in the following lesson.
  • Ideally, the homework task should be consistent, in form and in content, with the focused task completed in class. This way, we do not only provide additional practice of the vocabulary and structures that we currently work on but we also ensure that the students will know how to complete the task because the instructions are the same, for the focused task and for the homework task. Of course, that is not always possible but it is a good aim to set for yourself while lesson planning.
  • For that reason, the longer I work, the more convinced I become that in an ideal set-up, I would rather work with a coursebook only, without any activity book whatsoever, in order to give myself the flexibility to match and to better combine the programme, the focused task and the homework task. This is, of course, only my very subjective view and I am aware of the fact that it would not be everyone’s choice.
  • The task should be set in class, with the students. After all, these are the ones who are learning to be responsible for the task. For the teacher and the students this is, yet another opportunity for practice. The teacher can bring another copy of the handout or the book and do the task together with the students.
  • The homework task should be explained to the parents, too, because, they will have to remember to take the task out and to complete it before the following lesson. There are different ways of doing it. The teacher can explain the task after the lesson, alone or with the help of the students, the administration of the school can be asked for help, too. Some teachers like to leave the notes about the homework on the door of the classroom and, nowadays, we all have the whatsapp groups which we can use to communicate with the parents, too.
  • The homework checking is a part of the routine and another opportunity to practise the language and to talk to students, one on one, as they walk into the classroom (more about the line-up routines here). In the past, I used to reward my students with stickers for the homework but I stopped doing that when I realised that not everyone does or brings their homework and that is precisely because mum or dad or granny forgot…Now, I only acknowledge the hard work with smileys, suns, flowers, ‘Fantastic!’ and ‘Excellent’ and I keep a spare handout, my homework or any visual in order to be able to have a little chat also with those students who are without a homework task on the day.
The Worst Alphabet Book Ever

B is for the basic homework tasks

Here are some of the staple food tasks that work well as homework tasks. All of these were created using the miro board. These are not actual handouts but only sample tasks in each type.

a) colouring: task: students colour the objects and produce simple sentences ie ‘The apple is green’ or ‘It’s a green apple). This kind of a task is especially appropriate after the new vocabulary has been introduced and colours can and should be revised throughout the course.

*****

b) drill: task: students look at the the sequence of words, name them, using a single word or a sentence and make a decision what should be the final word. This is also a task appropriate in the beginning of the unit. Here, some students might choose to colour the picture but that is not obligatory.

*****

c) odd one out: task: students name all the objects in the sequence and decide which one does not match the others. We usually use very simple langauge here for example: Goodbye, cat.

*****

d) matching: task: students look for the same objects in both columns and connect them with a line. This is also a task more appropriate for the beginning of the unit and for younger students, too. The older students can complete it, too, but in their case it would be a good idea to encourage the kids to produce a full sentence.

*****

e) finish the sentece: task: students try to build simple sentences by naming the elements of it represented by visuals or symbols and by choosing one of the elements.

*****

f) categorise: task: depending on the language, students can categorise the objects into those that they like or don’t like, big or small, animals that can fly or swim or even words beginning with the same sound if you have started working on developing literacy skills. They can either colour or circle different categories with different colours, at the same time producing the target language.

*****

g) count: task: students look at the picture and count all the apples, bananas, kiwis and nuts, they write the number.

*****

h) maze: task: students trace different lines in order to produce the required sentence, for example ‘I’ve got a doll’ and similar. Again, thanks to the fact that all elements of the sentence are represented visually, an activity like that is going to support maximising production, here full sentences.

*****

i) collage: task: in class, students make sentences about mum, dad, grandma (my mummy likes apples) glueing simple pictures in the appropriate part of the handout. All the leftover pictures are given out as homework. Students glue them onto the handout and produce similar sentences but now about brother / sister, grandpa or friends.

A is for the alternatives

Normally, the homework task is set as a handout (or in the activity book) but the pandemic and the lockdown of 2020 has changed everyone’s way of looking at homework and, fortunately or unfortunately, it has closed some doors but it has opened some others. During the lockdown, not all the studnets had access to a printer so sending out homework for the parents to print and complete was not always possible. What is more, not all the students even had coursebooks and so these could not always be used as the basis for homework tasks.

W is for Wordwall

This website has been a real revelation and a milestone in tasks for age groups of students but especially for my pre-primary studnets. Wordwall is available for everyone and free in its basic version. Anyone can register and gain access to all the tasks and games that have been created by the community and made public. These games can be used in class and shared with the parents to play on any device available at home. Another advantage is that each of the tasks or games is available in a few different formats (or ‘templates) which means that the parents (or the teachers) can still practise the same set of vocabulary or structures but in a slightly different game.

If you are willing to invest a small sum of money, you can choose your own plan and start creating your own activities to match the programme or the curriculum of your group or school, too.

Here are some examples of the games that I have created for my pre-primary students

a) Let’s count, created for the students who were in the beginning of level 1

b) Categorising, created for level 2 students (farm animals which can fly, swim, run, jump)

c) Tell me about this picture, created for my level 3 students to practise opposite adjectives.

All of these we played in class, first and then the same or a similar task was shared with the parents.

L is for homemade listening tasks

These are lightly more complex but a real lockdown revelation for my primary and pre-primary classes. You can read more about them here.

Happy teaching!

P.S. All the samples of activities were created using the images on Miro and all the in-text photos come from the same wonderful book, P is for Pterodactyl, The Worst Alphabet Book Ever by Raj Haldar and Chris Carpenter and illustrations by Maria Tina Beddia from Sourcebook Jabberwocky, which by the way can be (and will be) used with my teens. More on that later:-)

*** This post was based on the talk I gave at the 2020 IH YL Conference.

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.

10 ways in which you can use gesture in your pre-primary classroom.

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The Gesture is King!

How can you tell a VYL teacher?

It could be the Mary Poppins’ bag full of markers, stickers, a storybook and random treasures that they carry. It could be because you can catch them hum ‘Baby Shark’ or ‘Broccoli Ice-Cream’ while they think no one’s listening. It could be also that it is difficult to catch them in pretty tights and dresses because many an outfit was destroyed by clumsy little hands. By accident but irreversibly, too.

Look at the hands, too, a lot more expressive than those of an average teacher, hands that constantly gesture and motion, a habit that is difficult to drop even outside the classroom.

It is true that Total Physical Response stopped being the new black a few decades ago and nowadays referring to learning styles is looked down on or even mocked. Nonetheless, the gesture is one of the vital components of the pre-primary classroom, simply because it works and it helps the teacher and the students to communicate more effectively, especially if the students are 5-year-old beginners.

One: participation

Throughout their pre-primary adventure with English, the students will always be pre-A level but as the course progresses, their vocabulary range will grow. But in the first few weeks of the course those kids really are a clean slate. Thanks to gestures, however, they can participate and be involved in class activities.

They can for example wave ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’ to the teacher or other children, silently, they can participate in ‘Head, shoulders, knees and toes’, touching or pointing at the correct body parts because they will be mimicking the teacher’s gestures and not because they know exactly which part of the body is the head and which ones are toes.

That is why including gestures will be important in the beginning of year although they can be used to the same effect at the start of each unit. Students, still not familiar with the new vocabulary, will react to it by miming ‘cat’, ‘dog’, ‘princess’, ‘sheriff’, ‘book’ etc. Before they are ready to produce the words orally.

Two: clarification

Little students cannot use a dictionary or translation into L1 because sometimes the teacher does not speak it. In that case, the teacher has limited resources to clarify the meaning of the new words. The visuals and the realia will help, of course, but adding gestures is definitely going to reinforce the meaning. Two hands together with palms touching and moving apart (a book), fingers of one hand scratching the air (a cat), the arm touching the nose and waving (an elephant and its trunk), a hand cupped around the nose (a clown), two hands touching above the head (a house) and so on…

Three: memorising

Almost automatically, adding these gestures will help to ensure that the kids will remember the words better. There is evidence that suggest that sign language and gestures in general active additional neurons and the information can be stored and retrieved more effectively.

Four: support for production

Once the gestures have been introduced and become a part of the classroom reality, they can be used by the teacher to support the language production by the students. While they are trying to answer a question or to make a sentence and if they experience any difficulty retrieving the word or the structure, instead of whispering the word or giving the L1 equivalent, the teacher can hint at the word by producing the familiar gesture, assisting the student but not actually saying the word.

Five: asking for clarification or support

Similarly, their use can also be extended to asking for clarification or support by the students themselves. Chances are that after the children have become familiar with the gestures used in class on daily basis, they will be using them actively, too.

This was one of the surprising discoveries I made during a classroom research for my MA degree. When a communication breakdown occurred, my five-year olds did resort to familiar gestures to ask for a word they wanted to use but forgot. They still remembered that the word ‘long’ was accompanied by two hands flying apart or that the word ‘sandwich’ was demonstrated by pressing two hands together, one on top of the other, even though the words themselves had not stuck in memory. The produced the gestures asking for my assistance and then, provided with the word, went on with the sentence.

Six: imagination, creativity and symbolic representation

The development of symbolic representation in pre-primary children is an important stage of their growth as human beings (Bruce 2004, p. 170) and introducing and using gestures is one of the ways in which a teacher of English can also contribute to it.

It is fascinating to observe how, at first, very young learners only imitate the teacher and reproduce the gestures exactly, as they are introduced and how, later, they move on to creating their own ways of representing certain words or phrases. And how the teacher can actually learn from the students here because their 5-year-old ways of miming a clock, a flower, a pumpkin or a melted ice-cream are much better and much more interesting!

Seven: instructions

This is, probably the most straightforward way, used from the very first minute of the course. The students, entering the classroom don’t know any English and can’t react to all the teacher’s instructions if they are not accompanied by some gestures: one or both hands being lowered for ‘sit down’, hands palms up being raised for ‘stand up’, waving the hand towards the chest for ‘come here’.

Eight: classroom management

Naturally, gestures can be used to praise the students or to show disapproval for any unwanted behaviour. Both thumbs up or a high five (or a double high five for really special occasions) show the teacher’s approval, both palms crossed at wrists might signal ‘stop’, the index finger put across the lips will work as ‘silence please’.

The gestures may vary, from class to class or even from culture to culture. What matters is that the teacher is consistent with the gestures they use with a specific group. Examples? For my youngest students the small waving hand (something similar to the way the Queen would wave hello) became a sign of warning, although I seriously doubt that anyone else would ever read it this way. For my group, however, it was closely related to our rewards chart, kids’ names on it and stars or smileys drawn next to them. Sometimes, during the lesson, I would indeed wave my hand slightly, to remind them that if they don’t stop misbehaving, I might erase one of their stars. And it worked, for us.

Nine: emotions

Knowing how your students are feeling is very important in general, but especially with the pre-primary children as their reactions and participation will be closely connected to whether they are happy, sad, angry or scared. The teacher should be able to read those emotions but children will also be taught to recognise and to express them, in English.

The first lessons will start from the the basic adjectives accompanied by gestures (a big smile and arms up in the air for ‘I’m happy’, a sad face and fingers drawing the tears rolling down the cheeks for ‘I’m sad’, a frown and stomping for ‘I’m angry’, eyes covered with both hands for ‘I’m scared’) but then more and more of them can be added. These emotions can help the teacher, too, for example to signal that they are happy with students’ achievements or sad when they are misbehaving…

Ten: bonding and creating a community in the classroom

Last but not least, everything that we do together in class, helps the children to bond and to create a community in the classroom, with its own rules and ‘traditions’. Not only songs or stories can be used that way but also all the miming games. They are easy, everyone can participate and they are a great stirrer, too.

After the teacher’s modelling and after everyone becomes familiar with the game, the kids, one at a time, are allowed to lead the game and to suggest what you all could mime. And this is when the real fun begins.

It doesn’t have to be very complicated, only the emotion adjectives and fruit, pets, school objects, anything you are studying at the moment. Have you ever tried to mime a cat? Probably yes. Have you ever tried to mime a happy cat, a sad cat, a sleepy cat? Yes? Then you should definitely try to mime an angry pencil then!

I wonder if I have managed to convince you, dear reader, that the gesture is the absolute king of the VYL world…

Happy teaching!

T.Bruce (2004), Using symblos,in: T. Bruce, Developing Learning in Early Childhood, London: Paul Chapman Publishing, pp 170 – 195