#VYLteacher

English on the carpet: The 5 milestones

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Writing one of the previous posts, on creating the curriculum for pre-schoolers, and I compared the pre-school EFL on the pre-A level to an ocean. It is huge, it is surprising and it is uncharted. It is!

At the same time, while travelling across it, to the first beacons of the A1 level, you can and you will come across those buoys that help you understand that yes, you are making progress and moving forward.

Today, I would like to look at these five important posts that we arrive at in our journey across the curriculum of the VYL English learning. Disclaimer: it is a very personal list and it might be getting extended, changed or removed with time.

One: We start producing sentences

All the learning in pre-school starts with single words, our first hello (although this is a proper sentence), our first blue, green, yellow and pink and our one, two, three, four, five. When that happens, it is Christmas, Easter and birthday put together. I love the start of the course and I spend these first few weeks in awe, observing how my little students venture out into a new territory and how they learn how to navigate it and how to enjoy it. Some of them run into it and embrace it from the word go, some of them are a bit apprehensive and they slowly warm up to it. I take a lot of pleasure in helping them do it and in supporting them on the way.

However, that is just the first step, something that needs to happen and something that the course needs to move on from, to the real first aim and that is: phrases and sentences! These can be very simple and their range might remain narrow for a long time, limited to ‘it is’, ‘I like’, ‘I can’, ‘I’ve got’ but they can be introduced, developed, practised and used from early on. Among all the contributing factors there are: the teacher creating the appropriate exposure by using full sentences while introducing and drilling new vocabulary (‘It’s a dog’, instead of ‘a dog’), introducing structures, supporting the use of the structures with gestures or visuals, encouraging the kids to use full sentences, introducing and using the functional language chunks.

Sooner or later, the kids will develop the habit of using full sentences and they will be doing it more frequently, although, of course, that does not mean that they will only use full sentences because, in their real, L1 life, kids also respond in single words sometimes!

Two: We start producing langauge spontaneously

Let’s imagine this moment: you have covered a few units or modules, your little students already have some vocabulary, they feel comfortable in the classroom and they have even started to use some simple structures. It is going well. The next step might be to focus on creating conditions that would favour some spontaneous language production in order to ensure that children communicate not only with the teacher and not only when prompted by the teacher but when they have something to say and something to share.

The activities that foster this freer communication include: letting children lead activities, setting up pairwork and allowing students communicate to other students, not only the teacher, showing children that the language can be played with and creating opportunities for that with, for example changing and creating own versions of stories or songs and, in general, being creative in English, for example our own version of ‘Do you like broccoli ice-cream?’, deciding what five questions thay may want to ask starting with ‘What’s your favourite…?’ or even by giving commands to the class during the Abracadabra game (‘Abracadabra, 1, 2, 3. You are…’). One of the most powerful questions that can be used in class is ‘Who’s got an idea?’ this way inviting students to take part in shaping up the games and, effectively, the lesson.

Three: We start using a variety of communication strategies

This is the one that I was unaware of for a very very long time and only during the first term of my MA programme, while going through piles of articles and publications in search of something that I might get interested in, I found the idea of communication strategies. This is a fascinating topic anyway, for me as a teacher and for me as a speaker of foreign languages but it turned out to be even more amazing because I decided to check whether my little students use any of those or, more specifically, any more than initially claimed, namely – do the little kids do something else than just refering to their first langauage. And yes, they do!

I still need to publish the outcomes of this research in any way but here I would like to highlight only all these instances of the pre-school students trying to deal with the communication breakdowns and in the way they do it because, in my opinion, it does show that kids become language learners and langauge users, taking control and trying to deal with the situation. The most common go-to solution is falling back on their L1 but there are many many more such as approximation (using a word that is similar enough and may do the job effectively), repeating, self-correction, using gestures to clarify. According to the findings of my small scale research done as part of the MA programme mentioned above (small scale as it was), even those very young beginner students are capable of using some of those strategies, showing that they are becoming aware of the learning process and their place in it.

Among the activities that can help foster and promote the use of communication strategies, there are the use of gesture as part of instructions and new language presentation and practice (to include some alternative, easier communication channels), using riddles in class (to get the kids used to describing objects) as well as modelling repetition or self-correction, to name a few.

Four: We start reading

A large part of the story in the EFL pre-school happens without any written word, unless you count the random words of instructions in the coursebook or the words at the back of some of the flashcards or the letters in the storybooks that we do not really pay any attention to in any active way. Many of the preschool EFL students are too young to start learning to read and write in English as the instruction can start as early as 3. What is more, the curriculum in some of the countries is organised in such a way that the literacy component is purposefully excluded from pre-school and the early years of primary in order to interfere with the literacy skills development in the kids’ L1 and not to overburden the students.

However, since the EFL world encompasses many countries and many teaching contexts and formats, there are out there the pre-primary that include some literacy skills development and there are some pre-school kids who start reading and writing in English.

In the context in which I am working at the moment (pre-primary EFL, 2 academic hours per week or 2 real hours a week), we start introducing some elements of literacy in the second year of the EFL instruction and / or when the kids are older than 5. The first steps involve: introduction of the alphabet, revising the vocabulary according to the alphabet / phonics, simple blending and the CVC words as well as some elements of the sight words and creating the written English exposure in the classroom.

Five: We start learning grammar

The pre-primary EFL world is a fascinating place to be and the element of grammar (or structure) in it is one more piece of evidence.

Traditionally, the pre-primary coursebooks focus on the introduction and practice of vocabulary and not structure. On the one hand, such an approach seems to be justified – the students are very young and the explicit grammar presentations are the last thing that they need or are able to deal with. On the other hand, however, learning a language is not about reproducing lists of words, organised thematically into colours, pets and fruit and ‘structure’ must be introduced in order to enable the kids to communicate in a natural way, even if only as the beginner learners.

It does not require any serious change of materials or any extensive supplementing because even if the coursebook itself does not include any structures, these can easily be added, practised and used. Naturally, the way in this is done needs to be different from the traditional explicit grammar presentation. Other methods have to be found and I have already written about my favourite in an article for the Modern English Teacher in May 2022. The article is only available if you have a subscription but MET recorded two related videos which have been made public and can be found on youtube. Make sure you check out one of the earlier posts here.

Coda

These are my five milestones in the pre-primary EFL world and, at the same time, my top 5 favourite moments to be a part of. There are no certain times or days schedules for them, they happen when the kids are ready

So far, there are five. If you have anything to add to that list, please do so in the comments section below!

Happy teaching!

Off the leash. Creating the curriculum for preschoolers

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How it started?

Throughout my teaching career…oh no. STOP. No energy for all these big words.

There have been many different context in which I have met my pre-school students. There has been teaching for big schools and for small schools. There have been groups and individual kids. There have been institutions and neighbour’s and friend’s kids. There have beenn the English clubs, temporary and permanent, courses based on songs, stories, craft, Art and courses based on coursebooks.

This time, however, with my private student, Sasha (it is always Sasha:-), I found myself in a completely different place. She was already quite a mature preschooler, about to turn 6 and she was not a complete beginner. The initial reaction was that I would test her to evaluate her level and then, somehow, match it with one of the courses (aka coursebooks) that I am familiar with. Because it is just easier this way and although I am not a zealous follower of a coursebook, I suppose, I wanted to have a ready-made curriculum at hand.

There is nothing wrong with that approach, essentially, but I started to think about all the implications. I needed to find the coursebook in my country. Sasha’s parents would have to find the book in her country. She is between the levels so we would not be able to use only one book and I would have to supplement anyway. Too much hassle. I decided to let go of the coursebook and to let go of the whole coursebook-related curriculum. I decided to let the teacher (myself) off the leash and to put the student in the centre of this whole adventure. And see what happens.

After all, the whole pre-A level is like an ocean – big, surprising and pretty much uncharted and you are allowed to do whatever you want. My favourite set up, you might say.

How it’s going?

In one word, it is going great and I am having a lot of fun desigining the curriculum and adapting it to my students’ particular needs. In the beginning I did consider using some handouts and coursebooks-related materials, when applicable, but it was only an initial idea. With time, these were phased out and at this point the course materials inlcude: wordwall games, miro activities, songs and videos available on youtube and all the resources we use to develop our literacy skills, such as specific phonics platforms and resources and the notebook we used for writing.

Overall, I am very happy with my student’s progress and development, in all the areas and skills. And, apart from that, I am having a lot of fun on the way. I have especially enjoyed the freedom that this approach gives the teacher and the opportunity to find out more links and new links between different topics, themes, structures and vocabulary.

All my reflections and tips, in the paragraph below.

How to go about creating a curriculum for the EFL pre-schoolers?

  • Choose a time frame for your courses in order to better manage the time and the content. With two real hours of the lesson time per week (2 x 60 minutes) available, I decided to work on the monthly basis, choosing a different theme for each calendar month.
  • Make a decision regarding the target vocabulary, as regards the topic and the number of words to be introduced throughout the entire unit. This list will depend on how old the students are and how many of these words overlap with the words in the students’ L1. For example, in the topic of animals or jungle animals, words such as ‘a tiger’ or ‘a zebra’ are not new for the L1 speakers of Polish, Russian or Portuguese.
  • Make a decision regarding the structures and / or the target language to be introduced and practised alongside the target vocabulary. These should be relevant to the kids’ age and life experience and, at the same time, relevant and connected to the target vocabulary.
  • Select the songs, stories, videos and craft activities that could be included in this unit. This requires some research and googling but it is also a lot of fun because new videoes are created and added, more up-to-date, more fun and more EFL-friendly. There are some topics that I taught two years ago, for example, and today I use completely different materials to those that were my favourite in the past. The same applies to stories and craft.
  • The coursebooks can be consulted for ideas or resources since there are a lot of lovely, ready-made resources in all the published materials but I wanted to avoid doing that, on purpose, in order not to be bound by everything that has been created so far.
  • The sequence of topics as well as structures chosen has been determined by one or more of the following factors: the time of the year (Christmas, spring), student’s interests (life aquatic) and the connection between the topics. We have managed to move from one to the other, at every step revising the previous units. Some of the decisions were predictable, some of them were completely unexpected,
  • This is a fully student-centred curriculum. It is a combination of what I would like us to cover and of what she is really interested in. Understandably, it is much easier to achieve with a 1-1 student and it would be slightly different with a group, although the students’ views would also be taken into consideration while shaping up the curriculum. Some of the topics appeared in a most random of way like life aquatic which we started to deal with because my student simply fell in love with orcas, dolphins and whales and I decided that not using this passion to learn English would be a waste. Apart from learning the key vocabulary and revising everything that we did in the ‘animal unit’ a few months earlier, I figured out that we could use it to learn and to practise talking about what the animals can do. We started with the basic verbs (because the ocean animals cannot really do a lot, apart from swimming, jumping and walking) but we extended later on. In the same way, my idea to introduce the topic of transport fell flat on its face and had to be directed towards the city because Sasha was not especially interested in cars, boats and helicopters.
  • The course aims are as they would have been for any pre-school EFL course but I do make an effort to formulate the aims for every single lesson I teach as has been my habit and since I started, this has had a huge impact on my teaching and lesson planning. You can read more about it here.

Topics we have covered so far

  • Food, fruit and vegetables and I like, I don’t like, Do you like? as well as What’s your favourite food / drink / fruit / vegetable?
  • Animals: wild animals and pets, habitats and adjectives to describe animals such as big and small, fast and slow, beautiful and ugly. The main structure was the verb to be (3rd singular), used to describe the animals and to make riddles, in the affirmative, negative and question form. We also managed to revise like / don’t like while talking about the animals’ favourite food but in order to keep it coherent we used the plural form (Lions like to eat meat).
  • School: school objects, rooms in the school and Present Continous to describe what we do at school. This unit was fully based on Pete the Cat, Rocking in my school shoes.
  • House: rooms in the house and verbs in Present Continuous to describe where we are and what we are doing. We also revised the family members and started to talk about them.
  • Weather: an opportunity to revise a few different sets of vocabulary and structures: clothes (It is sunny. I am wearing a dress), feelings (It is sunny, I am happy), objects (It is sunny. I’ve got an umbrella).
  • Christmas: Christmas characters and decorations, more adjectives to describe these (long / short, cold / hot) to make riddles about these, as well as prepositions of place (in, on, under, next to) which we need to describe where the Christmas decorations were located. We also managed to go back to the rooms and Present Continuous (‘Mum is in the kitchen. She is cooking’)
  • Life aquatic: different animals that live in the ocean, adjectives to describe these animals with a few body parts typical for animals (legs, a tail, a head, ears). We also started to talk about what the animals can and cannot do, starting with the aquatic animals and three main verbs (swim, jump, walk) and then extending the number of verbs and all the animals.
  • Transport and the city: different means of transport and places in the city. We further extended the list of adjectives (fast / slow, loud / quiet) and we talked how we travel to different places (I go to school by car). We also revised the prepositions of place while constructing our own city (The school is in Green Street. The school is next to the park.)
  • Professions: our target langauge in this unit is related to professions, although I am planning to extend it towards characters (fairy tales and people in our life). As regards grammar, this is our first step towards talking about other people. We have already covered she / he is and, only yesterday, she likes and he likes.

What’s next?

To be perfectly honest, I have no idea. This is still an ongoing project and I have not been planning it with a lot of time in advance. The professions unit is coming to an end and it seems that we are going to take it towards fairy tale characters, superheroes and ‘people’ in general as this will be a chance to revise and further reinforce the 3rd singular (to be and likes / doesn’t like). That will be our May.

As for June and July, I have not decided yet. I know that I would love to introduce some elements of the past tense and a structure to talk about the future, too, but I am not sure how it is going to go. The more immediate plans involve the extension of the current unit by revising the family and introducing a variety of fairy tales characters which will allow us to start telling stories. Then we will see. I am sure to be reflecting on it here in the future.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #57 Early reading: Secret words

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Ingredients

  • The most important thing is a set of words to represent each letter / sound of the alphabet. Some teachers like to use the set from a song to make it possible to use and reuse the same set of words and to help the students memorise and practise them in an easy way, in class and outside of class. One of these more popular songs is this one from Kids TV 123, Phonics Song 2. I use the song, too, although I created a different set of words for myself and for our teachers with b is boy, g is for girl etc. What is more, in our exercises we use a wider range, too, as an opportunity to revise all the words that the kids already know. Sometimes b is for boy and sometimes b is for banana, ball, blue or black.
  • The other thing that is necessary is a place to display the words. It can be a whiteboard, a noticeboard, a powerpoint or, as in the case of my online classes, a miro board. All the photos presented here are the screenshots from my miro board from the past two weeks.
  • Depending on the type of display, a different set of resources will be necessary. In the classroom, I simply draw and write on the whiteboard. As regards miro, I duplicate pictures and post-it notes. It would be possible to do the same using a set of specific flashcards and letter cards. In this case, the words could even be displayed on the carpet or on the table.

Procedures

  • The teacher chooses the word(s) for the lesson and prepares the visuals to represent them.
  • The pictures are drawn on the board or arranged on the miro board.
  • In class, the students, aided by the teacher, sound out all the pictures (‘What’s this?’ ‘Apple’ ‘Ok. Apple starts with …aaa or ooo’ ‘A’).
  • The teacher writes the letters as the kids call them out.
  • When all the letters of the words are on the board, the students try to read them as one word, supported by the teacher.

Why we like it

  • This game is introduced as a part of every lesson, as a starter or as a final game and normally two or three words are used.
  • We start playing the game only when the kids are familiar with all the letters / sounds of the alphabet and alongside the traditional phonics and sight words work, not instead of it. It is a way of encouraging kids to read the familiar words that might not and do not fall into all the patterns of the phonics system and which are not going to be as frequently used as the sight words.
  • In a way, it is a decoding activity that is made fun and achievable with the use of the familiar visuals and it has worked well as a transition from sounds to letters through an intermediary of the carefully chosen images, before we are ready to decode words using only letters.
  • Kids enjoy this activity and they quickly improve their skills. In our lesson yesterday, my student Sasha started to call out the sounds in the sequence of the pictures so fast that I could not catch up with typing the letters. Recently, we made even more progress. She just looked at a series of pictures and called out the hidden word out loud, not even bothering to wait for me. I guess that means that we are ready for the next step.
  • The next step and the development of the activity will be decoding secret words with a mix of letters and visuals before we finally move to reading only letters.
  • The choice of words used is up to the teacher. It makes sense to start with the easy, short words, the students’ names, the familiar cvc words or the frequently used words such as sight words or the functional words (‘Hello’, ‘Bye’, ‘Thank you’ etc). The decisions made here are in no connection with the phonics or the sight words that we currently work on. Most frequently, these represent some of the target vocabulary or the words that are interesting for the student (hence all the Frozen characters here).

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #56: VYL Miming Upgraded

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Ingredients

  • Any set of new vocabulary, at the stage when it is introduced or when it is practised.
  • A set of flashcards, electronic or paper, to support the clarification and building the connection between the word, its visual representation, its meaning and the gestures and phrases chosen to represent it
  • The teachers and their face, hands and voice

Procedures

  • The teacher introduces the vocabulary, as usual, with a set of flashcards or realia
  • What follows is a set of practice activities appropriate for the students’ level, age and interests
  • The teachers add miming but apart from gestures accompanying the key words, there are also simple phrases for each of those i.e. ‘a doctor’ represented by a flashcard, a gesture (for example, putting on the stetoscope) and a phrase (‘Open your mouth and say ‘aaaa’).
  • Students look, listen and say the words.
  • In the later stages, students also mime and produce the language for the teacher or the other students to guess.

Why we like it

  • First of all, this particular trick (I would not dare to use the term ‘an activity’ here) was simply a coincidence. We were practising the vocabulary in the unit of professions and, as part of the revision stage of the lesson, I was miming jobs for my student to guess, just like we had done many times before, with other sets of vocabulary. It was then that I realised that there are certain limitations and that miming some of the jobs might be confusing for the students. ‘A ballerina’, ‘a singer’, ‘a photographer’ were easy enough but I got stuck with ‘a firefighter’, ‘a doctor’ and ‘a teacher’. Until I realised that to my miming and gestures, I can add a word or two.
  • The main aim here is still the same – the gestures, the TPR, the miming are supposed to help the children understand the target vocabulary better and remember it better, for example, while miming the word ‘firefighter’ the teacher can pretend to be directing the hose and the stream of water at the invisible fire but, to make it more obvious and visual and rich, the teacher can also say a simple phrase, for example ‘Look! A fire!’, to illustrate the word and to create associations with it. All in all, the combination of different learning channels is beneficial for the language learning.
  • This added linguistic element to our TPR means an extended exposure to the target language and an opportunity for more listening practice.
  • The set of phrases used with the specific vocabulary should be kept the same in the beginning, not to overcomplicate and to overburden the children, but, naturally, there is a lot of potential here for a wider range of the structures later on.
  • Initially, it is the teacher who is going to be producing the language here, however, with time, the students can also be encouraged to take over. We have only been doing it for about two weeks at this point but I have already noticed that my students started to pick on the language and start using it. And that means a lot more potential for maximising language production.
  • So far we have been using this approach in two different activities: Guess my word (miming, as a revision of the target language in the beginning of the lesson) and Abracadabra (setting a word for the other students / teacher to mime, with a wider range of vocabulary).

Happy teaching!

Teaching English Through Art: Water! (and the Jellyfish craft!)

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The artist

This is an unusual situation for me and for my course designer experience. This time the artist is not one person but a whole bunch and they are only connected by the theme of their paintings and this is water.

In class, I introduced a whole set of all the water words, in photograhps and in paintings, such as Turner, Hokusai, Monet and Levitan. We mimed all the words, we drank the water because when the picture of the bottle came up, we all realised that we were thirsty and we mimed all the words. We also started to talk a little bit about all the pictures i.e. I like it / I don’t like it. It is big and quiet, stormy, beautiful etc. There is definitely more to come here.

The language

There were two language aims in this lesson and, because there two, I am planning on the kids to be able to use them with ease after a series of lessons only.

The more important set were the ocean animals. I am planning to study ocean animals and then take it towards verbs movement and ‘I can’, ‘I can’t’ and ‘it can’, ‘it can’t’. We practised the names of the ocean animals and played different vocabulary games, such as One, Two or Many. We also sang ‘Baby Shark’, how else? We also categorised the animals into big and small on the Miro board.

The other set, for now on the back burner, are all the words related to water, which I described above.

The craft

It had to be a jellyfish, as the first of many life aquatic craft activities and the reason for that was the generally low level of challenge. Plus I have done this kind of craft before because it is easy and a great opportunity for the practise of colours and it can be done even with the youngest of students. Frequently, this has been the first craft in many of my year 1 pre-school classes. This is what it looks like.

This is a lovely jellyfish but I was worried whether it would be appealing enough for my already craft-advanced kids. I needed something to spice things up although without any fireworks because my lessons are online at the moment and I could not ask my online parents to buy something extremely fancy. I have to admit that I spent the whole morning last Monday, teaching my C1 English and my financial English classes, fully devoted to the lesson in progress minus the 10% of the brain that was trying to come up with ways of making the jellyfish more exciting. Effectively, because I remembered the tinfoil in my drawer. Bingo.

This part of the lesson started with us going over the list of all the materials ready for the activity (white paper, glue, scissors, tinfoil, markers) by showing them to the camera.

First step was to draw a big circle on the A4 paper. I modelled, of course, but the kids were supposed to do it themselves, without any stencil. It can be done this way because even if the circle is not quite perfect, the jellyfish is going to be a success. Afterwards, we cut the circle. Afterwards we fold the circle in half and we draw a line on the fold. In the end, we cut the circle in half, along the line.

The next step was to draw the jellyfish face on one of the halves. We drew the eyes and the smile and then the kids decorated their in any way they wanted. Some jellyfish ended up being princesses. I made sure we put them away, on the side, to make sure that we don’t glue anything on it until it’s time.

Next, we took the roll of the tinfoil and we tore off a sheet. Afterwards I demonstrated how to tear it into strips. It can be done with scissors but I tried before the lesson and it didn’t work very well, actually. Tearing strips off is more fun and, more or less naturally, kids choose how thin or how thick the strips are.

We take the additional half-circle and put the glue all over the half and then arrange the strips along the edge. In the end, we put more glue on the back of the jellyfish princess’s face and we put one on top of the other. Stick and press.

The jellyfish can be hung in the window or anywhere in the sun to let it reflect the sunrays or in the doorway to let it float in the air. If you can permanent markers, the tentacles can be decorated (inspired by Our Beautifully Messy House). My friend Michael also had a nice idea for an adaptation (being in need of a jellyfish carft but with not tinfoil in sight). He prepared a very simple template of a jellyfish (imagine not a half-circle but a half-oval) that the kids can cut out and simply cut the bottom part into strips this way practising their scissors skills.

Finally, and traditionally, we talked a bit as our jellyfish and we sang the final song.

Happy teaching!

Damien Hirst and butterflies! Teaching English through Art

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The artist

It was interesting this time. The spring came and I really wanted to a related theme. It is true that at the time the snow was still lying around or still falling but I just wanted bees, butterflies and flowers. And caterpillars, of course. Only later did I start to look for an artist who could help us with it. Believe or not, dear reader, I found one! Just to prove that with this Art and English, if only you try hard enough, you can connect any two dots, even the most random ones.

I have heard about Damien Hirst before. He is, after all, one of the leading British artists and his name pops up here and there. But only now was I able to see his art in all its beauty, the dots that I had seen in so many places without realising what they were and the butterflies!

As usual, we introduced the artist, the photogragraph, the country and his two favourite things and we looked at his butterflies. And our Miro board was just perfect for it. We looked at the circles first (‘Can you see the circle?’, ‘Can you see the butterflies?’) and then we zoomed in (‘Can you see the circle?’, ‘Can you see the butterflies?’) as the circle disappeared and a multitude of butterflies emerged. Almost like magic).

Afterwards, I showed them my mini-graph and moved it around to illustrate how Damien turned butterflies into a circle and how we are going to turn circles into butterflies.

The language

This whole unit and the lesson revolved around spring, gardens and all the garden creatures, insects and not only. We have practised our vocabulary, we were describing gardens (‘I can see’), we practised numbers 1 – 20 and we sang a song about gardens, too.

We watched and tried to retell the cartoon about Six Hungry Caterpillars from Playway to English and a series of lessons we made a garden (see the photo below) and our own caterpillars which you can find out about in this post here. We also looked at different gardens in art and we talked about those that we like and don’t like.

The craft

My main inspiration for our butterflies was the video from World of Art and Craft because it is supereasy and very effective. However, because our classes take part online everything has to be made achieveable for the kids to do on their own and on the other side of the screen. For that reason I gave up on the stapler and experimented first with paper and glue. It worked.

As usual we went through the list of all the resources (‘Have you got the glue?’ ‘I’ve got the glue’ with showing it to the camera) to make sure that all the parents prepared what I asked for in a message before the lesson.

We started with choosing the two colours of the coloured paper, drawing the circles (‘not very small, not very big’) and cutting them out. I was a little worried about that bit but the thing is that even if the circles are not very regular and even the butterflies will be pretty. I was using the craft paper (one sided, the white inside), the kids were using some double-sided coloured paper, thinner and thicker, everything worked.

Afterwards we drew a line across each circle (to make sure that we don’t spread the glue all over the circle) and put some glue on the line. We closed folded the circles in half, and pressed in the middle. Afterwards, we fluffed up the sides a little bit. After both parts were ready, we put some glue in the middled and pressed the two halves together.

In the end we cut out a thin strip of paper, folded it in half and glued it as the butterfly’s antennas.

And then the second version of the butterfly appeared. I could not reuse the 3-D butterfly because while making the caterpillar, we had some problems with the glue and the paper which was just too thick and so another butterfly had to appear.

This one started with us going over the resources and choosing two colours of the coloured paper. We drew a circle on each, again, not too small, not too big and we cut them out. Afterwards, we drew the line across each circle, on the B side, and we folded each circle into half. The next step was to cut off a slice of the folded circle (‘Look, it is like cutting off a slice of cake’), to create the edge to shape the wings. Afterwards we drew the body of the butterfly on a piece of A4 paper, and we glued the wings on. We made only one butterfly in class but, of course, depending on the skills of the children, there is definitely a potential for more.

In the photo, you can see the intended butterfly and what happened in the classroom because students started to play with the materials and experiment how you can turn them into a butterfly.

Footnotes

It is only now that I have found out about the many surprises that Damien Hirst has up his sleeve. It turns out that his mandalas are made out of dry butterfly wings from real butterflies and that he himself is the biggest importer of butterflies in the UK. And I have to admit, I feel a little bit less enthusiastic about it all.

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #54 Caterpillars everywhere

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Ingredients

  • A4 paper, one sheet (for the leaf) and some coloured paper, I have tried both cardboard and regular craft paper and they both worked very well. The smaller caterpillar in the photo was done with the cut-up cover page of the drawing album and it works well, too. Some of my students were using ultra-thin craft paper and it worked, too so I presume cut up colourful pages of glossy magazines could be recycled this way, too.
  • Glue, scissors, markers and crayons.
  • This lesson was a part of the series of lessons devoted to spring so among all the other materials that can be used there are: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, the book or the video, the story or the video from Playway to English 3 about 6 Hungry Caterpillars, a video about the life cycle of a butterfly, the garden craft and the butterfly craft. It can also be a part of the Art lessons on the topic of weather and seasons. More about it – soon!

Procedures

  • Check that we all have all our resources, one by one showing them to the camera and, more often than not, finding the missing bits.
  • Show the kids the final product. This is not something that I do in every lesson, sometimes this element is left out for the surprise element. This time, however, I wanted the kids to understand exactly what we are doing and why.
  • Draw the leaf on the A4 paper, colour it green and cut it out. Demonstrate each step to the camera and wait for the kids to complete it before moving on to the next one. During this particular lesson I have also came up with a little chant that we started to sing while colouring and cutting (‘It’s a big, big leaf for a very hungry caterpillar’)
  • Ask the kids to prepare the strips of the coloured paper, of any colour they want. The paper can be cut sideways (probably the easier option as it involves less cutting) or lengthways (in this case each strip needs to be cut in half). I didn’t tell the kids how wide the strips should be. We have been doing craft online for a few months now and my kids are now able to make such decisions themselves. I assumed that everyone will choose the width themeselves (as wide as they can handle).
  • We glue the strips into a ring by putting the glue on one end and shaping it into a circle. We glue all the rings first.
  • Glue all the rings together by applying the glue and attaching the rings and pressing them with two fingers.
  • Cut out one circle for the face, draw the eyes and the smile, glue the circle onto the caterpillar. If possible, the little antennas can be added, too.
  • Sit the cateripillar on the leaf, introduce the caterpillars, say hello, use them in a dialogue etc. We sang the song about the garden that we had been practising for a week then.
Here are the caterpillars made by my kids. Courtesy of FunArtKids

Why we love it

  • It is very easy to make.
  • It is beautiful and sweet. Whenver I choose and prepare activities for my groups, I always wonder if my kids will simply approve of it, if they just like it. When I showed them the caterpillar, simple as it is, I got this very special ‘Ahh!’ and big smiles.
  • It can be done in the offline classroom but it is also possible in the online classroom.
  • It gives the kids some opportunities to make decisions about the creative content, the size of the leaf, the colours for the caterpillar etc.
  • It can be easily combined with any spring lesson or with any story lesson.
  • The level of challenge can be adjusted. In the classroom the teacher can prepare the strips of paper or the parents can be asked to pre-cut them if the lesson is taught online. We used five strips / rings but the caterpillar can be made longer or shorter.
  • There is some potential for the literacy skills development – kids could write the key words on the outside or on the inside of all the strips before glueing them together.

Happy teaching!

Adults learning from kids. Or how I accidentally formulated my teacher beliefs

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I have already been writing about ‘the shock’ of a teacher of YL going back into the adult EFL classroom in an earlier post ‘What an old dog learnt?‘.

A message to the parents

Two weeks ago, after one of the lessons, I sat down to write to the parents about the homework, the upcoming test and some feedback. It was just a lesson and a busy one because we were doing a lot of preparation for the test. ‘Nothing special’ you might say because we didn’t have any amazing activities, no ‘fireworks’ or ‘surprises’, only a lot of hard work and practice. And yet, somehow, the lesson was just beautiful, so great, in fact, that I decided to write about it to my educational parents, too. I just wanted to tell them that the kids were amazing (they are!) and that we had a speaking activity and it all went very well. ‘You know, I wish I could show our group to some of my adult students to show them what communication might and should look like‘, I typed, and it was only then that I did sigh, in awe at my own wording and the very idea.

Oh, how I wish I could do just that.

What would my adults see…

First of all, they would see children of different ages, aged 10 in this group, but also 3 or 17 in my other groups, kids studying together, in groups or individually. If they came, they would be surprised at the level of English the kids already have at this point. Or, rather, as a proud teacher of my kids, I hope they would be impressed. Just a little bit.

I would also hope that they could notice how comfortable the kids feel in their other language version. It is not an accessory that you carry around in your hand, a tool that you try to use although you are not quite sure how to. Nor is it a costume that you have to put on and become something else, a dragon, a princess, a cat, something that you are not. On the contrary, I would love them to see how, regardless of the age and the level, English can and does feel like the second skin. Something that is just you, the other version of you but also the very self that you are.

I would love my adults to be inspired by the open-mindedness and the general attitude to anything that is new and out of the box, especially the readiness to see, to try, to experiment. That does not mean that everything that I bring into the lesson and everything that I dump at them, grammar, tests, exam preparation, all the games are welcomed with the open arms and everyone, but absolutely every single person jumps at the opportunity of diving in. It is absolutely not the case. My kids are ‘normal’ kids who get tired, who have lots of homework, who sometimes, I bet you, would be doing something else entirely, not the things we are dealing with in the classroom. And, consequently, they are looking for the ways out, for the ways of cutting the corners, for taking a time out. Which, to be honest, is something that I secretly admire them for, although I will never own up to it. But, even so, overall, they are ready for a challenge.

I would love to the adults to notice the egalite as one of our rules and standards that everyone has the right to and that everyone has to learn to accept, because, indeed, sometimes this is something that we have to work on, although for kids the reasons are slightly different. The younger kids are developing their social skills for the first time, as it were. The adults hide either behind their personality or good manners or, perhaps, the corporate culture that might be developing the habits in some relation to the hierarchy in the company. Although here, I don’t know, I am just guessing.

Last but not least, it would be very interesting to have my adult students see that the teacher is not some kind of an air traffic controller, deciding who goes next but more of a head chef, the individual, who, although fully present and involved, is only keeping an eye on the process and making sure that the food is made and served or, in other words, that the aims are met. What is more, and very closely related, is that everyone gets to execute their freedom of speech, or in simple and less grandiose words: that people talk whenever they have something to say, not only because the teacher asks a question and when she does it.

I have no idea why but with every word typed up here, it started to feel more like typing up a teaching manifesto, my own teaching commandments almost. I can promise that I will leave it here as it is and I will get back to it in a few weeks to see if it still feels like that and if I still believe in it.

As a result…

The truth is that I wouldn’t really do it. The kids’ need to stay protected, in the precious coziness of our online classroom and without any ‘invasions’ from strangers. The adults, on the other hand, might not appreciate having their teacher suggest that their new role models in communication are some ten-year-olds. Everyone will stay in their own classroom and I will just continue doing my job and learning from observing and reflecting on two different environments and types of lessons.

And using them as a source of inspiration for new activities, like this new series on the blog Discourse Development. Here’s to hoping that staging, scaffolding and practising will lead to automacy and to the development of new habits and even my adults, all my adults, will be interacting with more freedom and ease.

So far, there have been four but I got a feeling that there will be more coming up

There is definitely more to come!

Happy teaching!

Crumbs #51 Peppa Pig in the VYL classroom

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Lisbon

Ingredients

Procedures

  • Work with the vocabulary and structures of the unit, here the weather and the clothes
  • Introduce or revise all the weather accessories and all the other key words (i.e. umbrella, hat, warm milk etc)
  • Watch the video, with pauses to ask short questions about the video and the story. These will depend on the level of the children and their ability to produce. In the beginning we often talk about the emotions of the characters and about everything that we can see. As soon as students can use some elements of the Present Continuous or to evaluate the behaviour and the actions of the characters, the conversation really takes off.
  • We follow-up with a speaking activity. The yes / no quiz is an easy version and it is based on the students comprehension and the listening skills. They listen to the teacher and react with a simple yes or no, but, with time they will be also better able to produce simple sentences. The other activity, the reordering, was created for a more advanced pre-school student and we retold the story together, with the teacher reorganising the cards and helping the student produce the sentence. Sometimes it was a full sentence (‘It is raining”), sometimes, the teacher started a sentence and the student finished (‘Dr Brown Bear it talking…’ ‘to George’)
  • The activity can be repeated in the following lesson to give the students an opportunity to participate with more confidence and, hopefully, more language produced.

Why we like it

  • Kids already know and watch Peppa and it is fun to bring her into the English lessons, too.
  • The episodes are relatively short (around 5 min) and it is an amount of time that will not be a challenge for the students and it can be relatively easily included in a typical lesson for pre-schoolers
  • Although the language of the cartoon is not graded and it is possible to find the episodes that will be easy to understand also for the very young students who have just started to learn English as the foreign language.
  • The videos can be shared with parents and watched again at home.
  • In my classes, we use the videos in the final stages of the unit, as one more source of the target language and of the target langauge in context and to create some opportunities for production.
  • Usually, I don’t watch the videos twice in the same lesson. It might have been beneficial for the general comprehension but I am not sure about the effectiveness of such an approach. Ten minutes is a large chunk of a lesson with pre-schoolers and I doubt the kids would be still interested and focused. I prefer to pause and to chat getting the kids ready for a more communicative video-watching. In the beginning, our conversations are quite simple, very often limited to calling out the words we can see in the video or discussing ‘Is that a good idea?’, a phrase that we frequently use in our classes anyway but it helps kids reflect on the story and perhaps predict the events to follow.
  • Some other episodes that we used in class included: Peppa Pig and the Pet Day, followed-up by matching the kids and their pets, Peppa Pig Lunch followed by a Yes / No quiz, and Peppa Pig and the Fruit Day followed by an activity in which we made our own smoothies on our Miro board.

Happy teaching!