#VYLteacher

We don’t need no…enthusiastic teachers. The dangers of enthusiasm

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Do I hear gasps of horror in the audience? Good. That is how I reacted when I said these words out loud, in a conversation with a teacher friend, retelling her some of the ‘recent events’…

Bear with me, dear reader and let’s see if you still gasp at the end of this post. Or maybe I will get you to at least look at the world through my eyes and give me a tiny little nod of agreement…

The ideal teacher?

‘Enthusiastic‘ is this one term that frequently appears on the list of words to describe an ideal teacher. Qin Zhang goes as far as saying that it is ‘generally recognised as one of the most essential and desirable qualities and characteristics of effective teachers‘ as one almost synonymous with energy or passion. What’s more, it is often presented as key to students’ motivation and engagement and, if you look long enough, you can even find advice how to be enthusiastic about what you teach (and in case you need it – use your voice and gestures, never admit that you don’t like your subject or topic or that it is not important). Enthusiasm then – a key factor in teaching.

Or is it?

Reading all these articles made me want to jump up and shout ‘Objection, Your Honour!’

My definition of a teacher, and especially a YL teacher, is slightly different and, surprise surprise, enthusiasm does not feature there as one of the necessary qualities. I put this list together based on years of mentoring and training of teachers who were either novices in general or novice teachers in the early years ESL/ EFL world. I based it on my own experience, the things that worked and the things that didn’t. I read about it, too, of course.

On my list, I have resilience and stamina and a variety of skills, I have resourcefulness and patience, I have creativity, energy and calmness and all three elements mentioned by my gurus such as Sandie Mourao (2018): the level of language, the knowledge of child development and of the appropriate methodology. A YL teacher is also someone who can teacher up or teacher down. But ‘enthusiastic’, well, somehow I didn’t think of including it. Truth be told, only recently did I begin to understand why.

Case studies

To illustrate that, I will use three case studies, from my professional life as a teacher, a trainer, an educational manager in all the contexts, countries and schools where I have worked and, at the same time, in none of them. The stories may have happened but in the way you think, not in the place you can guess and not with the people you know. No identification with actual persons or places is intended or should be inferred.

Case study 1: A senior teacher is asked to prepare a programme for the summer camp session. This senior teacher does not really have a lot of experience in the area and with this age group and, somehow, they do not bother to ask for advice, recommendations or support from more experienced colleagues. They just put it together, as best as they can because they really, really want to and they believe that something’s gotta give.

The programme has more holes than a slab of some Swiss cheese. There are no real ideas, no lesson plans, no support for the teacher or any attention or knowledge of any methodological principles. The only thing that there is – the enthusiasm and the Wow Factor . The camp lags from one day to the other, the teachers are confused and lost and just doing their best. But, because they are dedicated and passionate, they pull it through.

Execution mode: atrocious and unecessarily exhausting.

Aims: met as in: the world did not fall apart.

Case study 2: A teacher orgnises an excursion for her students, to the cafe, to celebrate. It is not a big group of students, there are four adults accompanying the kids, the paperwork is ready. However, the teacher doe not bother to check and to plan the route, there and back, because they are in the city city, not far from the school and the place is reacheable on foot. On the way there and on the way back, the group wanders around, they have to stop a few time to check the google maps, everything takes forever and on the way back, they take yet another shortcut and, to add insult to injury, they are caught in a blizzard.

Execution mode: messy and unnecessarily exhausting.

Aims: met (meaning: the world did not fall apart and there were a lot of lovely photographs)

Case study 3: An adult student stays after a lesson to talk about a relative who would like to work as a teacher. The contacts are exchanged and the potential applicant is advised to get in touch with the recruitment department of the school. She does and only later doe it become obvious that the enthusiastic would-be teacher has not graduated from the university yet, her studies are not even remotely related to education, she has never every taught in any capacity and does not even have any official confirmation of her language level. For all these reasons, naturally, the school does not hire her. However, she is advised to take a language test and consider starting the basic teaching qualification course. The potential applicant does not reply to these in any way and, her relative, the adult student who comes to the following lesson iss obviously disappointed and she tries to plead, with her teacher. ‘But she is so eager to start teaching. She really, really wants to be a teacher of English. It would be a dream come true...’

Execution mode: a great range of mixed feelings.

Aims: not met. I hope this person found her path.

Put the enthusiasm on the back burner!

It is easy to image that all of the directors, all of the managers, all of the parents and all of the trainers would love to see their teachers full of energy, stars in their eyes, joy in their gait, impatient to start doing their favourite thing, teaching! To impart knowledge, to help the kids learn, to help their students grow! That’s absolutely important and I hope that all my teachers, readers, colleagues have a chance to experience it on daily basis, this passion for what you do. I, personally, cannot imagine a life in which you to work without a tiny spark of happiness, just to do something in exchange for the salary. There are lots and lots of things that I do, solely out of pure enthusiasm and there are lots and lots of things that my colleagues and teacher friends do, on daily basis, that are not reimbursed financially.

But.

Enthusiasm cannot be the only resource available to a teacher. If it is and if it is there to cover up and to make up for all the other adjectives (such as organised, supportive, qualified, skilled, realistic, methodologically sane, planned, reasonable and professional), then I would like to make an objection and a strong one, too!

If we were talking about a different profession, nobody would even consider hiring a person to do the job of a doctor, a driver or a hair-dresser if the only thing they had to show for themselves was their enthusiasm or serving a disgusting cake on a pretty plate and claiming a Michelin star or two. It would not be a good idea to organise a festival without checking all of the bits, pieces and options and going for it just because we really, really want to have it.

No because it does not work like that in other areas and we should not have to deal with that in teaching, either.

Personally, I find it very, very tiring, as a teacher, as a trainer and as an educational manager. Mostly, because, in most cases, it translates into mess, confusion, teaching and learning below standard and last minute preparations and fixing problems as we (happily) go along. Perhaps, on my part, it is some kind of professional OCD but I like things to be in order.

This is not a post against enthusiasm and pession. Let’s not take it off the list, let’s just put it on the back burner, please.

Happy teaching!

References

Instructor’s Corner #3: Teaching with Enthusiasm: Engaging Students, Sparking Curiosity, and Jumpstarting Motivation | National Communication Association (natcom.org)

An enthusiastic teacher of English – How I see it now (wordpress.com)

Being an Enthusiastic Teacher – Swansea Academy of Learning and Teaching

What makes teachers enthusiastic: The interplay of positive affect, self-efficacy and job satisfaction – ScienceDirect

Sandie Mourao (2018), Research into the teaching of English as a foreign language in early childhood education and care, In: S.Garton, F.Copeland, The Routledge Handbook of Teaching English to Young Learners, Routledge, p. 429.

Upside down art. White on black!

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Walking tree. Artist aged 4.

The artist

We did have a set of paintings ready for this lesson as I taught it before, as part of our Monochrome March but we haven’t really used it. The reason for that was the fact that our lesson was brought about by the theme of the Camp Week 3 and that was: Wednesday Addams. Not my favourite topic and, definitely, not my choice but that was the brief, as it were, and I decided to go through with it, thinking of the ways in which the dots could be connected. And I found one as I am pretty sure that miss Addams would be a huge fan of the upside down, drawing with white on black.

Inspired by real events. Artist aged 8.

The language

This lesson was a series of four lessons on the day and that is why we could devote each of them to a specific topic and activities. Our ‘strictly English’ lesson focused on ‘I’ve got’ and pets and we really did lots and lots in terms of practice and speaking. We had a proper craft lesson, in which we created our own unusal pets and we talked about them, too and that is who we could easily devote our Art lesson to just creating and experimenting with all the new materials.

The art

I simply loved the look on my students’ faces when I showed them the materials that we would work with in class, on the slide and on my desk, a pile of tiessues, chalk, white pencils, cotton pads, cotton buds, toothpaste and black sheets of paper. It was an amazing and beautifully executed surprised ‘WHAT?! You want us to use THAT?’ When I joyfully announced ‘And tootpaste!’, someone even echoed ‘Toothpaste?’, without any conviction whatsoever in their voice.

We went to the carpet to experiment a little bit with the white pencils and the blending stump pencils. Everyone had a go. I also showed the children a few pictures that I made at home to show them how it is possible to mix a variety of materials in a collage painting.

Then we put on our aprons and sat down to work and I distributed all the materials, the paper, the pencils, the cardboard plates with some tootpaste on them, the tissue, the cotton pads and the cotton buds (to dip in the paste to draw). The kids were told that they could choose any topic for their painting.

Once the paintings were ready we came up with the titles, we cleaned up and we put up the paintings on the board, to dry.

As usual, I was surprised and amazed how my students, of different ages, took to the task. We went from disbelief through first dabs at the new resources and materials to creating all the beautiful masterpieces that you can see in this post. Everyone made their own creative decisions and, as a group, we ended up creating such a variety of themes and approaches. The kids were absolutely thrilled with the process and happy with the result. What more would you want from an Art lesson?

Naturally, we are going to do it again, for sure, and now I am only wondering what else I could add to the list of the white resources to use on the black sheet of paper…

Here are some of our creations:

Artist aged 6.
Artist aged 6.
Artist aged 6.
Artist aged 5.

Happy teaching!

Don’t eat the materials! Salty dough creations

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The language and the artist…

…were completely given up on in this particular lesson. I was considering looking for someone who created something that we would be creating but I quickly realised that the process will be the more important part of the lesson and, again, because of the materials and of the many stages, we will need time. I just wanted to make things out of the salty dough.

The art

While I was preparing for the lesson, I considered different scenarios, also the one in which we make our little things and leave them to dry for a week and decorating them during the following lesson. There are microwaves at the school but I did not want to use them. I wanted to keep everything as simple as possible and after experimenting at home at the weekend and testing the drying and colouring and I had a solution. I also tried to paint my dough while still wet and that went well, too.

I made the dough at the school, just before the lesson. I didn’t have any bowls there but I used one of the big plastic boxes and even though though it did get stuck to the box and dried up a bit, I washed it easily after the lesson. There are many recipes out there but I used this one here.

I prepared the working stations for my kids (a double spread of the newspaper scotched to the table) and got changed into our aprons.

I showed the children the dough, I explained the ingredients I used and I repeated my basic health and safety drill that is the title of this post. I showed them the tools that we had at our disposal (cookie cutters of random shapes and two small bottles to be used as rolling pins) and paintbrushes that were to be used in lieu of the little knives to shape up our creations.

I also showed the children the photos of different things that I made at home while trialling and testing: a letter A, a snail made out of one piece of rolled string of dough, a flower made out of blobs etc. I wanted the kids to get at least a vague idea of the opportunities that the dough presented.

On the board I wrote out the main stages of the lesson and they went as follows: 1. Look (at the model), 2. Make, 3. Paint, 4. Transfer to the window sill, 5. Dry. I wanted to make sure we are all on the same page and that we all finish in time.

I told the kids that since we are experimenting with a brand new material and technique, everyone can make whatever they want. ‘Anything?’, they asked, incredulously. ‘Anything! Go on, experiment and have a go!’ And they did!

The outcomes

It is possible to go through the whole process in 45 minutes, from instructions, through creation to painting and cleaning. Some of the students did finish early but we made sure everyone waited for everyone else to finish before moving on to the following stage.

The paint was dry within minutes but the cookies (that’s what the kids started to call them) were still to fragile to be transported so they were left on the window sill until the following day, when we packed them into plastic zip lock bags.

Once the creations were ready, we transfered them onto A5 pieces of cardboard, for painting, drying and safe travelling later on.

For colouring we used acrylic paints, with a pearl shine and that made them look even prettier. I was really proud of all my students because we took all the necessary precautions and there were no splatters or spatters. Our clothes, tables and chairs were safe.

The kids’ creations simply blow my mind. As usual, my amazing artists looked, thought and then went on creating in their own style. Most of them are simple cookies, cut out with a cookie cutter and painted. Some are decorative pieces, like the three hearts made for mum. One of my students thought of making a necklace and she even made a whole for the ribbon. Some students decided to create 3-D figures of their favourite things, some of them very elaborate. And of course they snatched them even before I could take a photo…

Guess, we are definitely doing this again! I am not sure when but we definitely are! Maybe they will be Christmas decorations, maybe little pumpkins for Halloween, maybe Easter egs! The salty dough will be back!

Even more things that can be done with salt dough (updated 18 August 2024)

I happen to have a 1-1 lesson with one of my students and, knowing that he loves making and creating, I decided to spend this time with craft and salty dough. Somehow, this was a very creative lesson as we could make, try and experiment and the ideas were bouncing off, back and forth. We have tried:

  • using shells and beads as decoration
  • applying beads onto an already painted surface (good idea!)
  • applying beads and shells, then painting with acrylic paint and wiping the surface gently with a wet tissue (good idea!)
  • constructing a piggy bank on a frame of a glass jar. Not sure what I can say about it, the shaping went well, but the piggy bank is still drying. The success of this one will be determined later)

Happy teaching!

Drying in the sun…

Guess what happened at work? Or the things that YL teachers live for.

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A suggestion from a student that we should add a ‘Danny Go!’ song to our lesson, written by my student, in his first year of learning English.

Time to admit it, we are a strange breed!

First of all, our work stories are not really glamorous. There are no celebrities in them, no events that make the news, no interesting places and no brand names. Speaking from experience here, in comparison with the copywriters, marketing experts, nurses and doctors, engineers and accountants in my life who also come back home and share theirs. What teachers bring from school are the tales of behaviour issues, funny quotes, developmental stories, getting things right and getting things wrong.

And then even as teachers…a while ago, I met a friend whom I hadn’t seen for a while and we were catching up on life and work and all things related. I shared my adventures and my recent and relatively short-lived (thank heavens) period of revisiting adult EFL. My friend was at the same time in awe and taken aback. ‘In awe’ happened because this year added a nice few pretty-looking lines to my resume as the weight that would come with the names of international banks and IT companies or with the noble and serious sectors of the high levels, Business or Financial English. ‘Taken aback’ came about as a result of my attitude, a tired ‘Yeah, whatever’ that turned into bored or openly dismissive as the conversation went on. Apparently, I should have been very excited and proud.

It is not that I did not enjoy these lessons or that I did not do a good job or that I was not grateful for the enthusiasm with which my students came to class. I did and very much so (you can read it about here) but that was nothing special, just the everyday.

Take baking, for example. If you bake and if you have been baking for some time, a batch of cookies or a batch of brownie is not a holiday, it is a must. It doesn’t mean that you will eat delicious cookies every single time, things go wrong, of course, but more often than not, if you take out your flour, soda, sugar and chocolate out, you can expect that at the end of the road, there will be good cookies. You have this experience, nothing to celebrate and nothing to write home about.

Same with teaching. After all these years, putting together a good lesson for an exam class or for a C1 group is kind of a must, not a special event. And yes, the respectable clients add a layer of fine veneer to the whole experience or, if we are to go on with the baking metaphor, a layer of icing but that’s it. And, really, students are just students and everyone deserves a good lesson, a top-notch businessman, an bank CEO or a five-year old boy.

That is why there is no special pride or excitement. It is a job well done. Still, it is only a job.

Teaching kids is not only a job.

It is also a job but it is not only that. It cannot be only a job when you are not only teaching your subject, whatever it is, but you are also taking part in bringing up the little human and helping them to understand the world, to learn how to function in it and how to interact with the rest of it that is not you. It cannot be ‘only a job’ when you are surrounded by the stories of these lives, the joys and the dramas and when whatever you are planning to do in class might be affected by everything that happened out of the lesson time and that simply because the little people cannot yet disassociate. It is not only a job when you get to sing and jump to the songs or to get your own hands dirty practising for the art classes.

The things that make me gasp, the things that make me get excited.

  • My kids doing a pair-work activity: it can be a very simple activity, just a ‘guess my flashcard’ game that involves nothing but reciting all the words from the set, until you get the right now. All the exciting elements, like asking a full question, taking notes of the answers or repeating the activity with a new partner, they come later. But to see them work on their own, keeping the conversation going and moving from point A to point B of the activity, this is precious. Introducing it is a process, it does not just happen, it does not happen overnight and introducing it takes time, a few lessons, weeks or months, depending on the child’s age. But it is possible and it is beautiful. When it finally happens, it is yours and can be used forever and ever. Here you can find a post about my experiment and a controlled and conscious way of introducing pairwork with my pre-school group. A successful one, too!
  • My kids creating their own songs and producing the language because of a song: I realised (and not such a long time ago) that I introduce some songs only because they contain a pretty chunk of the language, hoping that soon (or even sooner), these structures will become a part of what we can say. A good example here can be ‘What’s your favourite colour?’ by Super Simple Song. It is my favourite colour song, not because it is the easiest (that would be just ‘I can sing a rainbow‘, because that is, mostly, just a list of the words, ideal for a beginner group) but because it includes a very good question ‘What’s your favourite?’ and a very good answer ‘I like’ which, when mastered, can be used with any topic. I love singing and my kids love singing (not everyone loves the same songs, of course) and I say that right now, six months into the course, singing and creating our songs based on what we have sung already is one of our favourite activities. Right now, we have a habit of creating a song for the month and many version of it and we also love creating our own versions of all the other songs we sing. Here you can find a post from four years ago about un-singing the song. We still do it!
  • My kids beginning to do their task truly independently: What I mean by that is the shift and the huge stepping stone from doing a task, in the coursebook, workbook or any handout, step by step, led by the teacher, not copying the teacher’s answers but taking the exercise or the task in small bites, moving on together as a group of individuals, waiting for everyone to a situation when the teacher sets the task and everyone does it at their own pace and in their own way, choosing for example parts of the exercise that they deal with. It is always a big day for me and it is a sign that kids are becoming more independent learners. The expert is right next to them but they don’t need the support that much. Why? Because their zone of proximal development has expanded a little bit! Hooray!
  • My kids making decisions: I cannot tell you how many times, in this academic year, I have used the phrase: ‘It is your decision’ in response to anything that my students did, said or asked, as regards their English, Maths or Art lessons or any actions in class or during the breaks. I actually started to wonder if they know the phrase or if they can produce it as I always use English and Russian when we talk about it…It is necessary to include opportunities to make decisions but it is also necessary to develop the awareness of the fact that some things belong in the category ‘we do it, I cannot opt out’, such as tests. It is an interesting process and I am getting a lot of joy out of it. And pride.
  • My kids improving their literacy skills: The literacy skills and their development are probably the greatest challenge of the first year of English in primary but at the same time, they are the source of the greatest joy, passion, hype, reward and happiness. Firstly, because it is a long-term process and you can enjoy bits and pieces of it throughout the entire year, every single lesson and in many different variations: blending and segmenting, writing your own name in English, checking out our alphabet poster for reference, shared reading, looking at the materials and reading things themselves, just before they saw them, not because we were actually doing it, applying the phonemic awareness that they already have, choosing to write anything in English, especially when not induced by the lesson and the teacher and so on and so forth…Or, because they are able to, they proceed with the task independently (see point 3).

The life outside of the classroom

You can easily imagine that all these stories would not be enjoyed as much by anyone who is not a teacher. I am visualising me coming back home, meeting friends or getting in touch with my brother and sharing the story from this week:

‘Guess what happened today in class? Sasha wanted us to sing ‘Danny Go!’ in class and he asked to add it to the lesson plan. And he wrote it himself, almost 100% correctly! Look at the photo! (see: above). He only started to learn English with us in September! And now he writes all two words and I only help him letters, he writes them from memory!’

I think it is fair to say that the response would be, most likely, a polite smile or a nod, or, if the people are used to these kind of stories, maybe even a funny meme. Only a fellow YL teacher would appreciate it more. Or the readers on the blog, perhaps. It is all good. These are the stories that I bring from work.

What about you? What are the things that make you happy in the classroom? Please share in the comments!

Happy teaching!

3 songs to get the kids moving

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I have decided to write this post as a follow-up on the earlier post that I put together for novice teachers who are looking for inspiration for the soundtract to their VYL and YL lessons. I shared there my favourite hello and goodbye songs as well as my top five for the music and movement stage of the lesson. But that was almost four years ago and, of course, the playlist has grown longer and the time has come to share my new favourite songs that make us get up and move.

Why do we need these songs? Here are a few reasons:

  • the lessons are quite long
  • kids need some structured active fun to punctuate the lesson
  • and to balance the periods of the focus and hard word
  • these songs can also be the source of the language
  • they help to develop the gross motor skills, balance and focus
  • there is a huge multitude them, in different styles, genres and topics and these songs can be used to make the whole lesson consistent
  • they can be used as an additional support and a way of learning Maths, Science and literacy
  • they were written by adults who know kids and they have become real hits among my students

Danny Go!

Danny Go appeared all by himself. I went on holiday for a week and when I got back, he was already there, introduced by the subsitute teacher. I was not overly enthusiastic about it but the kids were and so we listened to my first Danny Go’s song Sharks in the Water! I suppose, if I were to describe it in one line, I’d say it is like a mini interactive computer game-like experience. The song tells the story (Danny is swimming to the island to get the treasure) and while he is doing that, he performs different movements which the kids had to repeat. Then, the sharks appear and you have to ‘jump out’ of the water. There is some vocabulary there but the biggest advantage of the song is that it is a perfect stirrer and it gives the kids an opportunity to develop focus, gross motor skills and coordination.

Danny has got many topical songs and in that he resembles Peppa Pig – there is an episode for every occasion (or almost) so I have been using this songs to accompany our songs on the topic of deserts, farm, jungle and what not. This is how we found out about such hits as ‘Pigs on the loose‘.

There is another type of songs that you can find on this channel and they are proper dance songs, for example ‘In the mood for food‘, with great movements and a bit more vocabulary input.

Jack Hartman

I have to be honest, Mr Hartman popped up ones or twice in my youtube searches but I did not find him appealing enough, visually, and I did not bother to click and to research. Until one day, when I was walking past by Miss Kate’s classroom and through the open door I saw the kids working out and counting, during the break time…Of course, I joined in! Jack Hartman was counting to 100, by ones and everyone was counting with him AND doing exercise, one type for every ten. I knew I had to introduce him to my year 1 kids.

Apart from different counting workout songs, there are also some alphabet songs, move and freeze songs and, the recently discovered series of ‘Multiply by…’, with a separate song for each table which help us practise and remember! And each of them in a different style so we are also getting educated musically, with rap, rock and roll, disco and reagge!

Dance Freeze!

The idea of all of the songs from the series is pretty simple: you have a few movements which you repeat until you hear the command ‘Freeze’. Your task is to repeat the movements, to listen and, when necessary, to freeze. It is a great and a very simple brain breaker because you get to jump, to dance like a robot, to dance in slow-mo, but because the original song has been so successful, new and new episodes have been added to practise sports, instruments, chores verbs and many more. The five basic songs lasted us a good few months and the channel ‘Scratch Garden’ has a lot more to offer. I am just going through their recordings…Like the ‘Stop Copying Me’ that I haven’t used yet and ‘The Sentence Song’ that will come in SO HANDY in our English lessons!

And, dear reader, here is the bonus! As you have noticed – these are not three songs but three wonderful channels that have a lot to offer! Let’s get moving!

Happy teaching!

Figurative and non-figurative art. Teaching English through Art

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‘Calm night’ that started as an apple, if I remember correctly…

I am happy. As a teacher of English and a teacher of Art – I am happy. I have my Art Explorers classes twice a week, there are two groups so every lesson is not only taught twice and every idea trialled and trialled again. I am happy because I am getting better at coming up with ideas and with combining all the elements and finding the links between the artist, the language and the technique. And I can see how my kids are reacting to it and becoming more familiar with the paintings and more confident as artists.

I have also realised that all of us, we are more involved in the process and we are enjoying it more. The final product is important, of course, but so is the journey. It is all very rewarding and I am just happy that it is a part of my weekly schedule.

‘You destroyed my food’
Sasha’s favourite food

The art

As usual, out of the three components, one had to be prioritised and, this time, it was the art itself. I wanted to give my students an opportunity to experience the process of creating a non-figurative art piece. We tried doing it a little bit in our Jackson Pollock lesson but there the lead was taken by the very specific technique. The outcomes, amazing as they are, were absolutely accidental, and only at the very end of the lesson, we gave our paintings their names.

This time, I wanted it to be fully conscious, purposeful and planned, from A to Z for the kids to understand how a figurative painting may become a non-figurative piece and the artist (aka US!) takes the responsibility for that.

The goose after the wind blew it away
The goose

In order to achieve it we did the following:

  • we decided what to paint. I suggested a fruit and veg still life since it was still our Fruit February but I allowed the kids to opt out of it if they really wanted to. Some did.
  • we made decisions about the composition and started to drip draw with the paints. I had a set of paints that I bought for the stained glass lessons but they turned out to be of a very bad quality, too watery, to liquidy and I could not use them for stained glass. They spent about five months in the drawer and last week I had already taken them out to bin them when the hoarder in me hesitated and decided to use them somehow. Since they were so good at dripping, dripping was what I chose to be their destiny. We used a technique we experimented with before, spread painting.
  • we drew the contours with drips of the paint (sharing the one set of paints, hooray to the social skills development!)
  • we photographed the ready picture
  • we used pieces of thick cardboard to spread the paint and a decision had to be made here to, regarding the movement (or movements) of the hand.
  • we gave the paintings a name. In most cases, it was a list of the items of the picture but some of the children came up with different names, not related to what the painting first was. Real artists, I am telling you!

As usual, the creation started with a quick modelling session during which I produced a painting of a watermelon and then turned it into a non-figurative item.

A watermelon and a horse
Same watermelon and same horse

The artist

This was one of the lessons in which we did not have one superhero but a whole dinner party. I divided them into two groups to illustrate what figurative and non-figurative art is. Our definitions were very simply, in order to convey the message even to my youngest students. ‘Figurative’ was defined as ‘I can see real things’ and represented by a still-life by Cezanne, by Rene Magritte’s Son of Man, by an apply by Yayoi Kusama and a still-life by Ilya Mashkov. ‘Non-figurative’ was defined as ‘I can see shapes and colours’ and represented by a piece by Jackson Pollock, Kandinsky’s circles, Mark Rothko and Yves Klein that I have just discovered for myself.

I also brought two pictures that I created at home and I asked the students to guess what fruit I tried to paint by the colours that they could see or the shapes that were still visible, just to highlight the fact that the fruit might be only represented by a fruit, not necessarily by shape.

Lemon, orange, chocolate, banana…
…and when they still resembled themselves a bit more

The language

The langauge in this lesson was, as in every lesson of this month – fruit and vegetables. Apart from that I wanted to play with the language and to reinforce the idea of looking at the world from a different perspective. In order to do that, we looked at a set of pictures of the everyday objects and fruit and vegetables, seen either under a microscope or in a close up. This was a lot of fun and I am definitely going to use this resource again!

A selection of favourite things…
And a favourite blur

Outcomes

It’s not going to be the first time I say it, here or in the real life, but this, indeed, was one of my favourite Art lessons ever. The rest you can see in the paintings my students created.

‘First colours of the rainbow’

Happy teaching!

Teaching Out of the Box. Teaching English through Art

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Natalia Goncharova-inspired peacock

This article was published in the Modern English Teacher in the March / April issue of 2023 and it is one of my favourite pieces ever committed which summarises my (almost) two years in the classroom as a teacher of English and Art. I have included there all the main considerations and as many as ten different ideas for the classroom. (Although it has taken me a whole year to add it to the blog (rolling the eyes).

I am very proud of it and if you are not a MET member and have no access to the article, I can only recommend all the other lesson ideas that I have shared here, on the blog. You can find them here.

Happy teaching!

Ilya Mashkov and our first still-life. Teaching English through Art

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Still life ingredients

The language

February is our month of food and fruit and this is what we focus on in the language part of the lesson. With my younger group we listened to a great song from the Singing Walrus and we used cards to guess the fruit and vegetables from the stencils. We did some drilling, too and we talked about whether we like them or not.

The older students needed a more advanced activity and for that I used my magic bag which, indeed, on the day was full of fruit and veg that I brought for the still-life installation. Kids put their hands into the bag and tried to describe the object they were holding using basic adjectives (big / small, hard / soft, smooth / rough, light / heavy). Despite the fact that some of the kids were as old as ten, they all did enjoy it. We also talked about the fruit and vegetables we like and don’t like.

Ilya Mashkov, Pumpkin (1914)

The artist

Our artist of the day was my still-life here, Ilya Mashkov. I have used his painting in my Art classes before and it was only natural that this time I would want to take it up to another level. I did and I am quite happy how it went.

First of all, we introduced the artist himself and his famous (in my opinion) painting ‘Pumpkin’. We defined what a still life is (‘a painting of things’) and we looked at a few chosen paintings by Mashkov. I put together a set of questions, inspired and adapted from the material online Essential Questions to ask about each still life photographs. My final, go-to set for this topic includes: What colour is it? What objects can you see? What shapes can you see? What is the biggest shape? What is the smallest shape? Is it light? Is it dark? Is it smooth? Is it light?, although in the lessons this week we have gone through only a few of them.

In order to prepare for our creative activity I prepared a special slide for ‘Pumpkin’ made entirely of shapes, one to represent every fruit and every vegetable. I was revealing them one by one and the task for the kids was to call out the object that they represent. In the end, I showed them the real painting and we checked our answers. I was a fun activity and it helped them the kids the basics of the composition of the painting and to prepare them for drawing.

The art

We started with putting together our installations and while I was the one responsible for arranging the items for the younger kids, my older group just took over the bag, the table and all the elements. And, it has to be said, not all the fruit made it to the table. Avocado and aubergine were not deemed worthy of our set. I accepted.

We outline the main stages of the lesson: 1. sketching with a pencil, 2. tracing the lines with crayons (one colour or a set of colours) and 3. colouring in with watercolours. I also showed my students the homework that I did before the lesson: a small still-life I painted at home and a photo of it, for comparison.

Since it was our first lesson with a still-life I did not want to invade too much and to direct the kids for example by guiding them in which order to draw the fruit. I wanted to let them try to face the task on their own and, also, to see what they can do. I was preparing my own copy and moving around, handing in the resources for each step (which also help with staging) and admiring what I was looking at. The only thing that I said to encourage them was something along the lines of ‘Don’t be scared, trust your hand. This is our first still-life. Let’s see how it goes’.

And guess what? It was beyond amazing. Some of my students are already very confident as regards drawing and they have a good eye for detail so I expected some good work but still they managed to surprise me, especially the little ones. They approached the task with curiosity, without fear and they were just working diligently on their paintings.

The only question left to answer is: What are we painting next?

Happy teaching!

Apples and an average Art lesson that sent me directly cloud number 9.

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The apples? The apples!

‘What sometimes happens is that an artist, a real and creative person, gets what we call ‘a comission’: someone orders a special piece to be created and the artist agrees although, maybe, they did not really have that in mind. That is exactly what we are going to do today.’

This is how the lesson started. I delivered this little speech and my students were looking at me, puzzled. Apples (thanks to Isaac Newton) are some kind of a symbol of my school and I was asked to prepare some school decorations apple-related. To be perfectly honest, that had nothing to do with anything that I had in mind for February but since that was comissioned I decided to accept the challenge, to look for something and to change the idea for the month to food in art, moving ‘flowers’ to March. Which, actually, might not be such a bad idea altogether, for when we are a bit closer to the real spring. Fine.

Much to my surprise, it turned out that apples are very much present in Art and it is possible to find enough pieces from different centuries, including such gems as Magritte, Cezanne or Raphael and more contemporary pieces from Kusama or the random literal apple carvings. Apple is a symbol and it is a brand, too and we had fun looking at them and talking about them, both with my younger and older group.

The craft

What was comissioned was some kind of a set of apples to put around the school, made of clay or paper mache or plasticine, but I have given myself a permission to interpret it my way, to create a 2D apple garland inspired by these two finds here and here. We used cardboard for the basis and coloured paper for the front and glue, scissors and crayons. The craft is easy and the base of the apple can be a square or a circle, even if it is not very expertly cut out by the students. The little strips can be glued in a few different ways and they are little hands-friendly, too. Kids can use the strips of one colour or they mix them and everyone can make as many as possible, maybe only one, maybe a few, giving us an even longer garland. And, unlike in the case of the Pollock’s lessons, there is a lot less preparation and cleaning. The teacher is relieved to be taking this kind of a time out.

The lesson went smoothly and now we have two garlands hanging over the arches in the main hall of the school, for everyone to admire. It is an easy task and if you need apples or oranges or any other fruit – here is an idea for you.

The lesson was ‘meh’ but I loved it

It was just an OK lesson. ‘Meh’, I’d say if you asked me if I liked it. I’d shrug my shoulders.

Yes, we prepared the garlands, more or less according to the creative brief, we now have something to put up on the wall and, really, it is a pretty garland, it looks good, especially with the multi-colour apples. My kids worked well, everyone made 4 or 5 apples, getting better as they went along and some students even chose to make one for themselves to take home (always a good sign!).

But we were not impressed. I was not and nor were my students. It really did feel like working on a commission that you just cannot say no to. Everyone was involved but the Muses did not enter the room last week. No one was inspired, no one got excited about their task, no one was calling ‘Miss Anka, miss Anka! Look! What do you think?’ from all corners of the classroom…’Meh’.

And yet I loved it. Even though my kids went ‘Meh’, both the younger ones and the older ones.

Why?

This lesson was a fantastic piece of evidence to prove how much we have developed and how much progress we have made since September. Whatever we were five months ago, we are not that anymore. We are artists now.

We have had a chance to work with a variety of techniques (spatter, print, ironed crayons, watercolours, stained glass paints, acrylic paints, guache, markers, crayons, collage, books and surprises) and we have imagined being in the Shoes of the Great (Warhol, Goncharova, Kandinsky, Picasso, Kusama, van Gogh, Malevich, Levitan and Pollock). Could a simple paper apple be of any challenge or interest to us? Debatable.

There was no challenge in the technique itself (because it was easy), there was no suprise of creation (because it is an apple) and there was no inspiration from the Artist of the Day (because there were too many and because we could not really interact with them).

My kids politely did what I asked them to do but there was no spark. They are already much older and more advanced. They need something else now. The teacher has had an OK lesson but the teacher is OVER THE MOON!

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #76 Magic Bag!

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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 obvious topics 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…

Happy teaching!